George Haydock

George Haydock (born 1556; executed at Tyburn, 12 February 1584) was an English Roman Catholic priest. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1987.

He was the youngest son of Evan Haydock of Cottam Hall near Preston, Lancashire, and Helen, daughter of William Westby of Mowbreck Hall, Lancashire. He was educated at Douai College and the English Colleges at Douai and Rome. He was ordained priest (apparently at Reims), 21 December 1581.

He arrived in England in mid-January 1582 and was arrested around 4 February while visiting an old acquaintance named Hawkinson. In the five years since they'd last met, Hawkinson, a former Catholic, had apostatized and having then encountered Haydock in London, informed the priest hunters Norton and Sledd.

Arrested in London soon after landing in England, he spent a year and three months in confinement in the Tower of London, suffering from a malarial fever he first contracted in the early summer of 1581 when visiting the seven churches of Rome. About May, 1583, though he remained in the Tower, his imprisonment was relaxed to "free custody", and he was able to administer the Sacraments to his fellow-prisoners. During the first period of his captivity he was accustomed to decorate his cell with the name and arms of the pope scratched or drawn in charcoal on the door or walls, and through his career his devotion to the papacy amounted to a passion.

On 16 January 1584, he and other priests imprisoned in the Tower were examined at the Guildhall by the recorder touching their beliefs. He frankly confessed, with reluctance, that he was eventually obliged to declare that the queen was a heretic, and so seal his fate.

On 5 February 1584, he was indicted with James Fenn, a Somersetshire man, formerly fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, William Deane who had been ordained priest the same day as himself, and six other priests, for having conspired against the queen at Reims, 23 September 1581, agreeing to come to England, 1 October, and setting out for England, 1 November. In point of fact he arrived at Reims on 1 November 1581.

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