Blessed George Beesley
Blessed George Beesley was born in the house which is now our parish presbytery in about 1562. He came from a family which had always been staunchly Catholic and which had suffered much on account of their faith through fines and imprisonment during penal times. George had four brothers, Francis, Richard, William and John. All became recusants, Richard and George, at great danger to their own wellbeing, were ordained catholic priests. About George’s early education we know nothing but, as a young man, he became a student at the English College, Rheims and was ordained a priest on 14 March 1587. He remained in the College for more than a year but finally set out for England on 2 November 1588, landing on the Yorkshire coast near Flamborough Head. While he was at large, George Beesley was a notably active apostle. A spy described him as a powerfully built man with very dark hair and a full and well-grown beard. In an attempt to counteract information gathered by government spies, George used the alias ‘Passelaw’. He was in Yorkshire for a brief time travelling from one ‘safe house’ to another saying mass in secret for catholic families.
In addition to the time he spent in the north of England, Beesley spent part of the two years of his missionary career near London. However, the Crown Authorities soon had information about him and, towards the end of 1590, he was arrested, probably at the home of John and Mary Gage in Hayling, Surrey, where he appears either to have stayed or to have been a frequent visitor. A warrant authorising Beesley’s committal to the Tower of London is dated 18 December 1590. John Gage and his wife were later found guilty of harbouring Beesley and condemned to death.
After almost a year of being brutally tortured, George was sentenced to death and was hung, drawn and quartered between 6.00am and 7.00am on 1 July 1591 in Fleet Street London. Montford Scott aged 41, a priest from Suffolk who was tried with George Beesley, was executed on the same morning. Blessed George Beesley was beatified by Pope John Paul II on the 22 November 1987 alongside a further 85 Martyrs.
An inscription, carved by George Beesley on the wall of his cell in the Martin Tower of the Tower of London, can still be seen. It reads:
IHS GEORGE BEISLEY. PRIST
MARIA. 1590
QUEMADMODUM DESIDERAT CERVUS AD FONTES
AQUARUM ITA ANIMA MEA AD DEUM
These are the words of Psalm 41 verse 1:
Like the deer that yearns for springs of water, so my soul is yearning for You, God
(A copy carved in stone can be seen in the garden at Hill Chapel)