Blessed James Bell

As well as a now established shrine at St Mary’s Church, run by the FSSP, Warrington is also is distinguished by having its own priest martyr, with descendants here and in the USA, as Alan Frost explains

James Bell was born in 1524 in Warrington. He would eventually become a man of great importance to Warrington, both spiritually and historically, for he would become a martyr of the Catholic faith. We do not, it would seem, have an actual day for his birth, but records in numerous sources tell us of the day of his death, a day he was martyred along with another devout, though lay, Catholic, John Finch from Eccleston: two martyrs from the county of Lancashire (Warrington having been a Lancashire town from its earliest days until 1974 boundary changes), a county which figured greatly in the 16th Century for its commitment to the true Faith in a time of cruel persecution.

Bell must have been born into a reasonably well off family for he was educated at Oxford, and from a Catholic family with strong Anglican influence. Even so , shortly after his graduation he w as ordained a Catholic priest, this being in the time of the reign of Queen Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII: Mary reigned from 1553-8. However, the succession of her half-sister Elizabeth marked the return to heavy and widespread persecution of Catholics, and recusants seeking to worship God in the true and traditional Mass suffered much hardship, both financially and physically. As the major text on the life of James Bell, Lives of the English Martyrs by Burton and Pollen, Longmans 1914, comments, “after the change of religion, he had not the courage to become a confessor of the faith”, and continued as a priest in the Anglican order in different parts of the country. It is to be remembered of course that at this time fellow Lancastrian William (later Cardinal) Allen had to go abroad to promote the Faith and establish a seminary (at Douay), and that Pope Saint Pius V issued his Bull Regnans in excelsis declaring Elizabeth deposed and her subjects free of obedience to her, which hardly made life comfortable for Catholics.

However, the authors also note that it was strange James Bell never had a benefice in the twenty or so years he practised as an Anglican minister, speculating that he retained, “some scruples of conscience…being in part a Catholic”.

For whatever reason he did not obtain or accept a safe means of financial livelihood. He was nearly 60 and in failing health. The opportunity of a small stipend arose simply for reading the Mass in English, but the wife of the beneficiary w as a Catholic w ho persuaded him to return to practising as a Catholic priest, which he was allowed to do in 1581, after "spending some months devoting himself to penance and spiritual exercises, and duties of the priesthood”. He laboured zealously as a missionary priest for two years among the poorer Catholics, in nearly all of the Catholic houses and Mass-centres in Lancashire.

The fact that there were numerous such venues for the celebration of the true Mass reflected the fact that the strongest of the Catholic minorities was in Lancashire: 20% of its recusants were from the gentry. An even higher percentage came from the yeoman and farming families. At this time Lancashire was divided into deaneries, and the real Catholic heartland was in the southwestern deanery of Warrington, with a recorded 465 recusants, the largest of the numerous concentrations of the faithful in the county.

During January 1584, James was travelling on foot from one Catholic house to another when he asked directions of a man who turned out to be a spy. Bell was subsequently apprehended in the town of Golborne, tried at the Manchester quarter sessions on 17 January, and imprisoned in Salford Gaol.

While in this prison in January and February 1584, he was questioned frequently about his reconciliation with Rome, the supremacy of the Pope, the Bull of Excommunication, the spiritual position of the Queen, and related matters. Whatever his unrecorded answers were, he was subsequently brought to trial at the Lent Assizes at Lancaster "on horseback with his arms being pinioned and his legs bound under the horse", a very painful form of transportation for an old man. There he was brought before Justices Huddleston and Parker. Arraigned with him were two priests, Thomas Williamson and Richard Hutton, and a layman of yeoman stock, John Finch, a convert to the Catholic faith in his early twenties.

“He laboured zealously as a missionary priest for two years among the poorer Catholics, in nearly all of the Catholic houses and Mass-centres in Lancashire”

A stained-glass window depicting Finch’s farming background can be seen in St Mary’s Church in Chorley. Descendants of his, including from the well-established Bowling and Speak families of Lancashire, are to be found today, including in the USA, several having emigrated after his death to Maryland.

Blessed James Bell

Finch w as a young ma n, only 36, arrested and cruelly tortured over three years for harbouring priests and being a catechist. He was tried along with James Bell, who was now hard of hearing and did not pick up all the questions. Both were convicted, Bell, being a priest, of high treason. In response he behaved with great courage, asking Judge Huddleston to add to his sentence the cutting off of his lips and fingertips “for having sworn and subscribed to the articles of heretics, contrary both to my conscience and God’s truth”.

Both he and Finch were condemned to be executed the following day, 20 April 1584, by hanging and quartering. Bell was made to watch Finch’s disemboweling, but rather than being terrified into any retraction by this, he said: “Oh, why do I tarry so long behind my sweet brother, let me make haste after him. This is a most happy day.” These were the first two of sixteen executions of Catholic martyrs at Lancaster Castle between 1584 and 1646.

Blessed James Bell and Blessed John Finch were beatified in 1929. They are remembered and honoured, along with many others who died for their Faith during the Reformation, on 4 May, the Feast of the English Martyrs. Blessed James Bell, whose own personal Feast Day is 20 April, has now been remembered and further honoured by giving his name to the new merged parish of Warrington, canonically established by Archbishop McMahon of Liverpool from 1 May this year. As well as being commemorated on a stained glass window in St Mary's Church, Warrington, James’s name is included on the Martyrs' Plaque in Lancaster Cathedral and there is a statue of him in the Lady Chapel of St Werburgh's Church, Birkenhead.