This is a summary of the life of the holy man Eustace White, a native of our market town of Louth in north Lincolnshire, in the district currently named East Lindsey.
Eustace was born in about AD 1560, to William White of Louth and Anne Booth of Killingholme. White was warden and civic head at Louth, and Eustace must have been educated at the grammar school on the Kidgate, which for a considerable time had for one of its governors William White himself. The old man in about 1581 charged his sons George and Eustace with the execution of his will and to keep the home with their mother, but after his death Eustace arrived at the English College at Rheims (1584), although we have no record of when he may have become a Catholic. We do know of the conversion of a relative of his in 1580, John Thimelby of Irnham, which may have had an influence. The Whites were for quite all protestants.
Eustace was only passing through Rheims, not joining the young seminary there, but he was soon at Rome (1586) as a convictor, who was paying his own expenses at the English College there. In 1588, he took the College oath, which committed him to Holy Orders and the English Mission. He was ordained on the 16th of April, the same year, and must have been shortly ordained priest, for he returned to Rheims in October, 1588, on his way back to England with Christopher Bales and George Beesley, who would be martyrs too, and William Leg. The recent planned assault of the Spanish armada had placed England on high alert, and a spy planted in Normandy identified the group and sent notice to the spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Despite this, the group must have arrived safely, for Eustace was soon at work in the West Country.
A later description of Eustace White, made by Mr. Stephen Barnes, a priest who had known him in his younger days, demonstrated a refinement of soul, a gentleness and modesty, and an ardent charity, with a clear mind for his apologetics work. Mr. Barnes tells of the horror that began on the 1st of September, 1591, when Father White was riding westward from London in the guise of a gentleman, and very near Blandford encountered a lawyer he thought might be a Catholic, and betrayed himself. The local magistrate being informed, he was soon arrested and when asked if he were a priest, declared without hesitation that he was. He was carried away to Basing, and then on the 18th of September to the prison at Bridewell, which was known for its evil conditions and the abuse of its prisoners. In October, the Privy Council determined to examine him.
So very soon after the threatened and failed Spanish armada, there was yet fear that the Spanish would launch a second attack, and all priests and Catholics in the kingdom lived under the suspicion of treason. After the Goverment produced the Declaration of the great troubles intended against the realm (October, 1591), Father White became one of the first victims of the cruelties that were mandated for treason: torture, followed by the execution by hanging, drawing and quartering. The priest hunter and torturer, Richard Topcliffe was engaged here, and Father White was hung for hours by his manacled wrists, which cruelty re-created many of the bodily torments of crucifixion. His words during this evil are recorded to be, ‘Lord, more pain if Thou pleasest… and more patience…’ Topcliffe soon wearied of his constancy, and of his own inability to find any collaboration of the priest with some imagined new Spanish invasion of the future. It was not quite easy to demonstrate the treason of the seminary priests, who loved their country and prayed for their queen. When he was lowered to the ground, Father White reportedly said to Topcliffe, ‘I have no anger against you… I pray God for your welfare and salvation,’ to which that unworthy man replied that he would have no prayers from a traitor. As S. Paul had said long ago to the Romans, of Christian charity, ‘…if thy enemy be hungry, give him to eat; if he thirst, give him to drink. For, doing this, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head…’
Father White was somehow able with his tortured hands (or probably with the assistance of the messenger) to write to the Jesuit Father Henry Garnet at the end of that November of the grievousness of the physical abuse, while asking for material assistance for his stay in the prison. There is no note of his trial, which was possibly on the 6th of December, when others who were executed with him were tried. These were Father Polydore Plasden, and three laymen, John Mason, Sidney Hodgson and Brian Lacey. Eustace White was to witness their agony and was slain at the last. His final declaration was of his condemnation for being a priest of the Catholic religion working for many years to reconcile England to the ancient religion and to bring the Sacraments to Catholics in England, of his gratitude for the crown of martyrdom, and of his determination to die for the Catholic Faith and for his priesthood. He declared no knowledge of any further treason committed than all that, and that if he had had many more lives he would live them and end them likewise. His final calls in his agony were ‘Sweet Iesu, sweet Iesu…’
Source: A. M. C. Forster, Blessed Eustace White, published by the Office of the Vice-postulation, London Farm Street, 1961.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 