In many of these reflections, I must have said the line “St n. was probably endured one of the most gruesome deaths/or was treated the worst of the 40” quite a few times. Yet every saint I research seems to fit this bill in some way. However, I think it will be hard to beat Saint Alexander Briant for the severity of his torture, treatment in prison and execution. He was deprived of food and drink for six days, was racked at least twice to the point that he couldn’t move any part of his body and during his martyrdom, the executioner adjusted the noose to make his death even more painful. We have examples where persecutors of some martyrs at least enjoyed a drink together or allowed people to visit them in prison. But Briant seemed to be an exceptional case.
Like so many of the martyrs, however, he was remarkably resilient. After his body was twisted and torn by the so-called “master of the rack”, Briant taunted his persecutors saying (like an elder brother when his younger brother is trying to hurt him in a pretend fight): “Is that all you can do?” A Protestant minister who was trying to get his to conform said: “It’s a miracle.”
Alexander Briant was born in Somerset in 1556. Little is known of his early life until he studied at Hertford Hall at Oxford. He became a pupil of Robert Persons, who with Saint Edmund Campion later joined the Society of Jesus. Persons, like Briant, was from Somerset and both became Roman Catholics while still at University. Briant later moved from Hart Hall and joined Persons at Balliol College, founded in 1263.
In 1576, Alexander travelled to the English College at Douai and continued his studies there and at Rheims. He was ordained to the priesthood in Cambrai on March 29 1578 and embarked on the English mission on August 3 1579.
For a time he ministered in his own part of the country, where he reconciled the father of his Oxford friend, Fr. Persons, S.J., to the Catholic Church. Later Briant moved to London and lived in the house of Fr. Persons near Saint Bride's Church in the Strand.
During these years Fr. Persons was probably the recusant priest most "wanted" by the Government. His energy and enthusiasm had set him at the heart the English Mission. The authorities were out to get him.
When early in March 1581 the Government's pursuivants raided the house, Fr. Briant was caught but Persons and others had fled. Fr Alex’s chamber was ransacked, three pounds and a silver chalice was taken from him. He was thrown into The Counter Prison, Wood Street. Among the other Catholic martyrs to be held there was Blessed George Napper. This jail usually housed people unable to pay debts and those arrested for being drunk a disorderly in public. But the charges Briant was imprisoned for were much more serious.
He was jailed in strict isolation and was starved of food and water for days. In the end, he managed to get hold of a penny’s worth of stale cheese, some bread and a pint of strong beer. Because many of the inmates were drunks, beer was probably the easiest item to get. But this sustenance caused his thirst to become even more desperate and in the end he resorted to catching the drips of rainwater that leaked into the cell in his hat.
As if the agony of starvation and gasping for water wasn’t enough, Fr Briant was in for much more brutal treatment that would leave him paralysed. Because of his links to Fr Persons, the authorities considered Fr Alex as a vital man to get information from as to the priest’s whereabouts and activities.
The day after Ascension, he was moved to the Tower of London. Predicting he may well be starved there, he hid some of the cheese he had picked up from the Counter but it was taken from him during a search.
On March 27 he was brought before Lieutenant Dr Hammond and a pursuivant called Norton for interrogation. Fr Alex refused to say anything about where he had said Mass or anything to do with Fr Person’s whereabouts. They began to torture him, ordering needles to be driven under his nails. But the priest took the pain and prayed for the forgiveness of his tormenters. On April 6 he was consigned to "The Pit", a deep dungeon, where he was in complete darkness for eight days.
The importance of Briant to the Government is emphasised by a letter from the Council to the Lieutenant in May 1581, more than a month after he was first tortured. It said Fr Briant was caught with “books and writings carrying matters of high treason”. Part of the letter read: “…If he shall refuse by persuasion to confess such things as you shall find him able to reveal unto you, then shall you offer unto him the torture of the Tower, and in case upon the sight thereof he shall obstinately refuse to confess the truth, then shall you put him unto the torture and by the pain and terror of the same, wring from him the knowledge of things as shall appertain.”
Fr Briant was stretched on the rack on two successive days. The scavenger's daughter was an A-frame shaped metal rack. The head was strapped to the top point of the A, the hands at the mid-point and the legs at the lower spread ends. This meant the head swinged down, forcing the knees up in a sitting position so the body compressed to force blood from the nose and ears. They also used the thumbscrew on Briant. The victim's thumbs, fingers or toes were placed in the vice and slowly crushed.
The rackmaster boasted he would make Fr. Briant a foot longer than God had made him, unless he would give the required information about Fr. Persons. It was during this ordeal that Fr. Briant started to laugh, saying: “Is this all that you can do? You’ll have to do much better if you want to get anything out of me. If the rack is no more than this, let me have a hundred more for this cause.”
Fr Alex went back to his cell for the night. He had a temperature, unimaginable pain and his wounds were scabbing over. He was barely conscious. But they tortured him again the next day. Fr Alex was conscience he could be racked to death this time and prepared himself for the end. During the torture, Briant did faint but they sprinkled water on his face so he endured all the pain. But the humble priest united all his sufferings with Christ on the cross.
Seeing he would not crack, Norton asked him if he agreed the pope, and not the queen, was the supreme head of the Church in England. Briant said yes I reply. He was also asked a version the so-called “bloody question”. This was asked of many of the martyrs, particularly those of the 1580s, and was along the lines of: “If the Pope sent over an army turn England back to its Catholic roots and asked everyone to support him, whose side would you be on then – the Pope’s or the Queen’s?” Whatever the answer in favour of the Pope the replier was doomed. Briant treated the question as hypothetical and said: “Whether the pope have authority to withdraw [subjects] from obedience to her majesty, [I] know not.”
Upon his response to these questions, the lieutenant shouted abuse at the priest and slapped him in the face. Briant was thrown back in prison and was unable to move anything. He laid without bedding for 15 days in the cell, wearing itchy, bloodstained clothes. The fact he survived these conditions say a lot about his prayer life, trust in God and the strength he got from the Holy Spirit. Requesting admission to the Jesuits, he wrote a letter in which he revealed some of his thoughts.
The soon-to-be martyr said prayers after his first round of torture replenished him and he was filled with “a kind of supernatural sweetness of spirit”. He said his adversaries “fulfilled their wicked lust in practising their cruel tyranny upon my body”. When he found out that he was to endure more racking, Briant notes he trusted that, with the help of God, “I should be able to bear and suffer it patiently”.
There are conflicting accounts as to whether he was accepted formally as a Jesuit before the execution. But the Society does recognise him as one of theirs.
At his trial on November 16 1581, Alex made a wooden cross that he publicly carried to Westminster Hall, the highest court at that time in the land. But the cross was aggressively taken from the priest prompting him to say: “You can take it out of my hands, but not out of my heart.” It apparently made its way eventually to the English College in Rome.
There is little information about his trial, only that he was found guilty of treason and instantly shackled. The irons were not removed until his hanging, drawing and quartering.
On December 1 1581 he was in good company, martyred with two of his Oxford friends Edmund Campion and Ralph Sherwin. He was dragged through the muddy London streets to Tyburn. Having to watch his two friends being brutally killed, with the realisation that his body would be ripped to shreds in the same way, must have been terrifying. In fact, the records suggest he had a more painful death than the others. He was cut down while still alive so that he could be disembowelled and his body cut into quarters. His heart, bowels and entrails were burnt in front of a crowd that seemed to enjoy the spectacle.
Briant was just 25 when his earthly life came to an end. That’s just two years older than I am now. It’s amazing to think what he went through during that quarter of a century. When you think about it, December 1 is a momentous day for English Catholicism. Arguably three of the most scholarly and intelligent priests in English Catholic history gave their lives for Christ, enduring the most intense suffering. Little is known about Saint Alexander Briant’s ministry but it’s clear he was an intellectual young man and had the ability to convert people with the help of the Holy Spirit.
It is difficult to accept that Briant survived his torment without strength and determination from the Holy Spirit. The trust he had in God to get him through the excruciating torture, and even to laugh at his torturers, is an example to us all. During Lent, many of us struggle even to abstain even from having that chocolate bar we would usually have at lunchtime or whatever. Saint Alexander Briant can help us with fasting so it becomes a fruitful action in bringing us closer to Christ.
Saint Alexander Briant, Pray for Us.
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