Richard Herst

Who they were

Richard Herst, a well-to-do yeoman farmer near Preston, was a recusant. When men came to arrest him, one of them fell and broke his leg, and though he swore before dying that it was an accident, Herst was charged with murder.

Despite a petition supported by the queen, the government procured his conviction by pressure on the jury, and he was executed at Lancaster on 29 August 1628.

The miracles

As a martyr he was raised to the altars without a miracle.

Why that counted as sanctity

A farmer condemned on a false charge for being a Catholic.

Connected on this site

• Edmund Arrowsmith Saint
  “This document, conforming to the ancient style of the "Acts of martyrs" includes the story of the execution of another 17th-century recusant martyr, Richard Herst.” — Wikipedia