St. Ralph Sherwin had thirty-one years to prepare himself for martyrdom, but concerning the first twenty-four we know very little. He was born in Darbyshire, and he was awarded one of the Petre scholarships to Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained his B.A. in 1574. The next year he was received into the Church.

Exeter was one of the many places in England where sympathy for the old faith, if not always the practice of it, remained strong; and while we may be grateful for the atmosphere that was instrumental in the conversion of such splendid young men as Ralph Sherwin, one of the brightest and most promising of his generation, still there is much to deplore about it as well. Many of those who watched the destruction of the Catholic religion in England, and who did nothing about it but wring their hands, justified themselves by saying, "If this new thing is of God, it will last; if not, it will perish." They no doubt put on grave looks of humble resignation to the will of God in saying this, but we may wonder if its lasting and its perishing was expected to go on for over four hundred weary years and was to cost not only the blood but the souls of multitudes.

Ralph Sherwin, however, was of a different temper and immediately enrolled in the English seminary at Douay, France, after two years of which he was transferred to the new English seminary at Rome. As with many seminarians, Sherwin's readiness to serve on the English mission was recorded as an oath in the college register. The first entry at the Rome college is dated 1579: "Father Ralph Sherwin, English, a priest, aged 29, a student of sacred theology, declares and swears upon the Holy Scriptures that he is ready today rather than tomorrow, at the intimation of Superiors, to proceed to England for the help of souls." A later hand adds in the margin, "He was sent and became a martyr."

While he was at the seminary there arose one of those disputes that academic people are prone to. The first rector was Welsh, and he was thought to favor the Welsh students to the disadvantage of the English ones. St. Ralph participated fully in the disagreement and was in fact a leader of the winning faction, the one that wanted the seminary turned over to the operation of the Jesuits. Other early records comment on his love of holy obedience and his zeal to go to the aid of his beseiged country: "While here in Rome the news of the inflictions and tortures which his Catholic fellow-countrymen were made to suffer, far from daunting, rather fired him with more intense longing ... to fly to the help of his wretched country."

St. Ralph was among that notable company, which included St. Edmund Campion, S.J. (Angelus, Aug., Sept. 1978) that set out from Rome in 1580. Also among them was the aged and infirm Bishop of St. Asaph, Thomas Goldwell. The absence of a bishop in England not only deprived Catholics of the sacrament of Confirmation, which was especially needed in those bloody times, but it also caused endless and tiresome misunderstandings and frustrations, for want of an ecclesiastical government. The Bishop was unable to complete the journey, and the unfortunate situation prevailed for many decades. Another in the company was a young layman, John Pachal, St. Ralph's pupil and special charge.

Their laborious journey toward England took them to Milan and the archiepiscopal palace of Saint Charles Borromeo, where Campion and Sherwin were invited to preach. St. Charles was a model of Catholic prelacy, for the Catholic faith engenders a right style of life not only for the lowly and the persecuted but also for men of affairs and great authority. When they stopped at Geneva, the center of Protestantism, with Campion disguised as the Irish serving-man of Mr. Paschal, they taunted the Protestant ministers, but with a prudent regard for their more serious mission.

The warm and charming personality of St. Ralph Sherwin is revealed in several lengthy letters he composed during the journey. They are filled with references that show a multitude of personal friendships: tell this one that I met his brother at Rheims, that one that I have not forgot his special request, and remind so-and-so that he promised to say his beads for me. In one letter he tells of young Paschal helping to fit him out in French frippery and then laughing at the poor figure Sherwin cut as a dandy. "God give us still priests' minds, for we go far astray from the habit here," the mortified saint wrote. To one of his superiors he wrote: "Believe me, the nearer we get to the labors and perils of England, the more eagerly we advance . . . Nor is there any reason why we should fear much as to a victorious result, for our Master and Redeemer has conquered the world long ago . . . and now he calls us not so much to the conflict as to the crown."

Upon arriving in England, Saint Ralph practiced his principal skill, preaching, in London, and it was in the act of preaching that he was captured in the house of Nicholas Roscarrock, a wealthy layman, just four months after his arrival. Father Robert Persons, a member of his company, described the beginning of St. Ralph's imprisonment:

St. Ralph referred to these chains in a letter: "I wear now on my feet and legs some little bells, to keep me in mind who I am, and whose I am."

He was placed in a cell next to these heretical brethren, who professed a radical and fanatical form of Protestantism (for Queen Elizabeth persecuted not only Catholics but many others who opposed her government-issued religion), and they took him at first for a lunatic. However, through his kindliness and his Godly conversation, they soon came to understand not only his holy cheer but also his fasts, vigils, breviary, and beads; and through him they, like several others, were incorporated into the Body of Christ.

Our saint was moved to the Tower for experts to extract information from him concerning plans for the imagined insurrection and invasion, and concerning the whereabouts of Campion and the other priests. He was joined there by several with whom he had travelled from Rome and by Mr. Roscarrock. After St. Ralph's first session of being stretched on the rack in the Tower's dungeon, his helpless and tortured body was laid out in the snow, not so much to inflict more pain, for he was probably beyond that, but so as to break down the resolution of Roscarrock, who listened in anguish to his groans. He was also joined in the Tower by his young pupil and ward, Paschal. To Father Sherwin's inexpressible heartbreak, Paschal was induced by a skillful mixture of threats and flattery to purchase his freedom by apostasy.

One of the indignities inflicted on St. Ralph and the other recusants was that they were forced to attend Protestant services and listen to the ministers' harangues. But the prisoners sometimes hooted them down, sometimes engaged them in disputation, and usually managed to turn the affair into a debacle. It is a comment on the age that both sides in the Reformation had enormous confidence in the power of reason and discourse to change men's minds, and consequently they perfected their skills of preaching and disputation, reinforcing them with years of theological study. And it is a reflection on our own age, and our lower regard for truth and human intelligence, that we resort instead to public relations campaigns and other techniques of behavior modification to win people's hearts—let their heads be where they may.

The intellectual and 'disputatious' character of the faith of the martyrs of the English Reformation should cause no disquiet. A majority of the martyrs of this period were university men, and in the universities as well as the seminaries disputation was an important area of study. This seems to be altogether suitable for defending the truth. There was no danger that Father Sherwin's religion would be reduced to dry abstractions or oratorical gimmickry. An early biographer records, "The order of his life, in his spare diet, his continual prayer and meditation, his long watching, with frequent and sharp discipline used upon his body, caused great admiration to his keeper, who would always call him a man of God, and the best and devoutest priest that he ever saw in his life."

And on the occasion of his second experience upon the rack, the day after his first, "he lay five days and nights without any food or speaking to anybody," his brother John reported. "All which time he lay, as he thought in a sleep, before our Savior on the Cross. After which time he came to himself, not finding any distemper in his joints by the extremity of the torture." His brother also added, "It was offered him by the bishops of Canterbury and London, that if he would but go to Paul's Church, he should have the second bishopric of England."

Saint Ralph Sherwin was tried as a traitor with St. Edmund Campion and fifteen others, and he shared a hurdle for the cold, muddy journey from the Tower to Tyburn with Saint Alexander Briant (Angelus, May 1979). When the butchery of Campion was complete, the executioner with his bare arms and hands all bloody took hold of St. Ralph, saying, "Come, Sherwin, take thou thy wages." The saint embraced him and kissed his friend's blood on the man's hands.

He was invited to address the crowds, but his speech was often interrupted by hecklers. Sir Francis Knollys, a principal tool of Elizabeth, was particularly bothersome about some legal points, enough to try the patience of a saint. Saint Ralph finally dismissed him with "Tush, tush! You and I shall answer this before another Judge, where my innocence shall be known and you shall see that I am guiltless of this." When Sir Francis persisted, St. Ralph replied, "If to be a Catholic only, to be a perfect Catholic, be to be a traitor, then I am a traitor."

He then expressed forgiveness of those who procured his death. When he prayed for Queen Elizabeth, some objected that he wished her to be a Papist, to whom he answered, "Else God forbid." As he stood in the cart with the hangman's noose about his neck, the fickle crowd began to call out, "Good Mr. Sherwin, the Lord God receive your soul." "And so they kept crying, and could not be stayed even after the cart had been drawn away, and he had been some time dead."

Saint Ralph Sherwin was killed on December 1, 1581, and was canonized in 1970.