St. Margaret Clitherow

Who they were

Margaret Clitherow was a butcher's wife in the Shambles of York: a capable, cheerful businesswoman who ran the shop, was liked by neighbours of both religions, and converted to the outlawed Catholic faith as an adult. For a dozen years her narrow house was a station of the underground Church, with Mass in the attic, priests hidden between the walls, and her children schooled in the faith at real risk. She had already served prison spells for recusancy and joked about the rest her cell afforded her.

Arrested in 1586 when a search turned up the vestments, she made the choice that defines her. She refused to enter a plea, because a trial would have compelled her own children and servants to testify. English law's penalty for refusing trial was death by pressing, and she accepted it knowingly, saying only that she was not worthy of so good a death. She was about thirty, and contemporaries believed her to be with child. She was canonized in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Why people turn to St. Margaret Clitherow

Businesswomen, and it is worth saying plainly how rare a formal patronage for the woman running the shop actually is. Converts paying a family price, with St. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. And mothers who would take the weight themselves rather than let it touch their children, which is exactly what the refused plea was.

How to ask their intercession

For a mother carrying something so her children do not have to, by name. Her own register was cheerfulness under pressure, so ask her for that too.