Anne Line (''c.'' 1563 – 27 February 1601) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

. After losing her husband, she became very active in sheltering clandestine

Catholic priest The priesthood is the office of the ministers of religion, who have been commissioned ("ordained") with the Holy orders of the Catholic Church. Technically, bishops are a priestly order as well; however, in layman's terms ''priest'' refers only ...

s, which was illegal in the reign of

Queen Elizabeth I Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was the last of the five House of Tudor monarchs and is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". El ...

. Finally arrested, she was condemned to death and executed at

Tyburn Tyburn was a manor (estate) in the county of Middlesex, one of two which were served by the parish of Marylebone. The parish, probably therefore also the manor, was bounded by Roman roads to the west (modern Edgware Road) and south (modern O ...

. The

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

declared her a

, and

Pope Paul VI Pope Paul VI ( la, Paulus VI; it, Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, ; 26 September 18976 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death in Augus ...

canonised her in 1970.

Biography

Anne is believed to have been born as "Alice Higham" or "Heigham", the eldest daughter of the Puritan William Higham of Jenkyn Maldon. William Higham was the son of Roger Heigham, MP, a Protestant reformer under Henry VIII.Martin Dodwell, "Revisiting Anne Line: Who Was She and Where Did She Come from", ''Recusant History'', Vol. 31, No. 3 (May 2013), pp. 375-89. London: Catholic Record Society. A recently scholarly and extensively annotated biography has been published by Roger Scully S.J. She was born circa the early 1560s, and at some time in the early 1580s converted to the

Roman Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

along with her brother William and Roger Line, the man she married in February 1583. Both Roger Line and William Higham were disinherited for converting to the

and Alice Higham lost her dowry. Among Catholics, the married "Alice" became known as "Anne", presumably a name she took at her conversion. Roger Line and William Higham were arrested together while attending

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

, and were imprisoned and fined. While William Higham was released on surety in England, Roger Line was banished and went to

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to cultu ...

.Dodwell, Martin. ''Anne Line: Shakespeare's Tragic Muse''. Brighton: The Book Guild, 2013. Line received a small allowance from the King of Spain, part of which he sent regularly to his wife until his death around 1594. Around the same time,

John Gerard John Gerard (also John Gerarde, c. 1545–1612) was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated ''Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes'', first published in 1597, became a popular gard ...

opened a house of refuge for hiding priests, and put the newly widowed Anne Line in charge of it, despite her chronic ill-health. For about three years Anne Line continued to run this house while Fr John Gerard was in prison. He was eventually transferred to the Tower of London where he was tortured, and from which he escaped. In his autobiography he writes:

After my escape from prison nne Linegave up managing the house. By then she was known to so many people that it was unsafe for me to frequent any house she occupied. Instead she hired apartments in another building and continued to shelter priests there. One day, however (it was the Purification of Our Blessed Lady), she allowed in an unusually large number of Catholics to hear Mass … Some neighbours noticed the crowd and the constables were at the house at once.

Arrest and execution

Line was arrested on 2 February 1601 when her house was raided during the

feast of the Purification Candlemas (also spelled Candlemass), also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Feast of the Holy Encounter, is a Christian holiday commemorating the presentati ...

, also known as Candlemas. On this day a blessing of candles traditionally takes place before the Mass, and it was during this rite that the raiders burst in and made arrests. The priest, Fr Francis Page, managed to slip into a special hiding place prepared by Anne Line and afterwards to escape, but she was arrested, along with another gentlewoman called Margaret Gage. Gage was released on bail and later pardoned, but Line was sent to Newgate Prison. She was tried at the Sessions House on Old Bailey Lane on 26 February 1601 and was so weak from fever that she was carried to the trial in a chair. She told the court that, so far from regretting having concealed a priest, she only grieved that she "could not receive a thousand more."Quinn, Stanley
"St. Anne Line."
''The Catholic Encyclopedia''. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 25 December 2012 Sir John Popham, the judge, sentenced her to death for the felony of assisting a seminary priest. Line was hanged on 27 February 1601. She was executed immediately before two priests,

Roger Filcock Roger Filcock (alias Arthur Naylor) (died 27 February 1601, London) was an English Jesuit priest. He was beatified as a Catholic martyr by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987. Life Born at Sandwich, Kent, England, the son of Simon and Margar ...

and Mark Barkworth, who received the more severe sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering. At the scaffold she repeated what she had said at her trial, declaring loudly to the bystanders: "I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand."

Possible Shakespeare allusions

It has been argued that Shakespeare's poem ''

The Phoenix and the Turtle ''The Phoenix and the Turtle'' (also spelled ''The Phœnix and the Turtle'') is an allegorical poem by William Shakespeare, first published in 1601 as a supplement to a longer work, ''Love's Martyr'', by Robert Chester. The poem, which has be ...

'' was written shortly after her death to commemorate Anne and Roger Line, and its setting is the Catholic requiem held in secret for her. This theory was first suggested in the 1930s by

Clara Longworth de Chambrun Clara Eleanor Longworth de Chambrun, Comtesse de Chambrun (October 18, 1873 – June 1, 1954) was an American patron of the arts and scholar of Shakespeare. Ezra Pound included her in a list of contemporary persons "ham ignorant of things they sho ...

in her novel ''My Shakespeare, Rise!'', and is linked to claims that Shakespeare was a secret Catholic sympathiser.Longworth, Clara, ''My Shakespeare, Rise!'', London: 1935 The theory was revived and developed by

John Finnis John Mitchell Finnis, , (born 28 July 1940) is an Australian legal philosopher, jurist and scholar specializing in jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. He is the Biolchini Family Professor of Law, emeritus, at Notre Dame Law School and a ...

and Patrick Martin in 2003. It has been extended by Martin Dodwell to suggest that Shakespeare takes the fate of Anne and Roger Line to symbolize the rejection of Catholicism by England, and he then returns to this allegorical scheme in the play ''

Cymbeline ''Cymbeline'' , also known as ''The Tragedie of Cymbeline'' or ''Cymbeline, King of Britain'', is a play by William Shakespeare set in Ancient Britain () and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celti ...

''. A series of other Shakespearean allusions to Anne Line have been proposed by various scholars (Colin Wilson, Gerard Kilroy) most notably in '' The Tempest'' and in Sonnet 74.

Veneration

Anne Line was

beatified Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their nam ...

by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929. She was

canonised Canonization is the declaration of a deceased person as an officially recognized saint, specifically, the official act of a Christian communion declaring a person worthy of public veneration and entering their name in the canon catalogue of ...

on 25 October 1970, as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Her feast day, along with all the other English Martyrs, is on 4 May. However, in the Catholic dioceses of England, she shares a feast day with fellow female martyr saints,

Margaret Clitherow Margaret Clitherow (1556 – 25 March 1586) was an English saint and martyr of the Roman Catholic Church, known as "the Pearl of York". She was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea to the charge of harbouring Catholic priests. She was ...

and Margaret Ward on 30 August. The three were officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day on 30 August. The St. Anne Line Catholic Junior School in Wickhay, Basildon, Essex, is named for her. So is the Catholic parish of St Anne Line, Great Dunmow, Essex, where local tradition has it that her family lived in the Clock house, Great Dunmow.

References

External links