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The House System
From the 1920s a house system was in place at the school. There were four houses – Arrowsmith, Barlow, Campion and Whitaker – based on four of the English martyrs from the time of the Reformation. This system, which would remain in place for over forty years, was central to games and sports days. Each boy was assigned to a house on arriving in the first year and remained affiliated to that house for the duration of his time at the school. Each house had its own particular colours and captains. A brief profile of each of the martyrs is given below.
Edmund Arrowsmith (1585-1628)
An English priest and martyr, Edmund Arrowsmith was born in 1585 in Haydock, Lancashire. In 1605, at the age of twenty, Edmund left England and went to the English College at Douai in the Low Countries (now France) to study for the priesthood. He was soon forced to return to England due to ill health, but recovered and returned to Douai in 1607. He was ordained in Arras in 1612 and sent on the English mission a year later. He ministered to the Catholics of Lancashire and was eminent for “fervour, zeal and wit”. He worked without incident until around 1622, when he was arrested and questioned by the Anglican Bishop of Chester. Edmund was released when King James I ordered all arrested priests to be freed. He joined the Jesuits in 1624.
In the summer of 1628, Father Edmund was reportedly betrayed by a man named Holden who denounced him to the authorities. He was tried at Lancaster and found guilty of high treason for being a Jesuit priest and a seducer in religion. He was sentenced to death and butchered: he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Lancaster in August 1628.
Ambrose Barlow (1585-1641)
Ambrose Barlow was an English Benedictine monk and martyr who was born in 1585 at Barlow Hall, now the clubhouse of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Golf Club in Manchester. He was educated at the Benedictine monastery of St Gregory at Douai. On returning to England, he worked in south Lancashire with apostolic zeal and fervour. Ambrose was arrested four times during his travels and released without charge. King Charles I signed a proclamation on 7th March 1641, which decreed that all priests should leave the country within one calendar month or face being arrested and treated as traitors, resulting in imprisonment or death. Ambrose’s parishioners implored him to flee or at least go into hiding but he refused. Their fears were compounded by a recent stroke which resulted in the 56-year-old priest being partially paralysed.
On 25th April 1641, Easter Day, Ambrose and his congregation of around 100 people were surrounded at Morley’s Hall, Astley, by the Vicar of Leigh and his armed congregation of some 400. Father Ambrose surrendered and his parishioners were released after their names had been recorded. The priest was restrained, then taken on a horse with a man behind him to prevent his falling and escorted by a band of sixty people to the Justice of the Peace at Winwick before being transported to Lancaster Castle.
After four months’ imprisonment, Father Ambrose appeared before the presiding judge, Sir Robert Heath, on 7th September when he professed his adherence to the Catholic faith and defended his actions. On 8th September, the feast day of the Nativity of Mary, Sir Robert Heath found Ambrose guilty and sentenced him to be executed. Two days later, he was taken from Lancaster Castle, drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, hanged, dismembered, quartered, and boiled in oil. His head was afterwards exposed on a pike.
Edmund Campion (1540-81)
Edmund Campion, who was born in London, was an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest and martyr. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Anglican England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. In 1581, after a ridiculous trial in Westminster Hall at which Campion pleaded not guilty to the charges made, he and two fellow-defendants were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. Lord Chief Justice Wray read the sentence: “You must go to the place from whence you came, there to remain until ye shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight, then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s [Queen Elizabeth’s] pleasure. And God have mercy on your souls.”
The execution of the three priests took place at Tyburn in December 1581. Edmund Campion was 41 years of age.
Thomas Whitaker (1614-46)
Born in Burnley, Lancashire, Thomas Whitaker was an English Roman Catholic priest and martyr. He was sent to Valladolid in northern Spain, where he studied for the priesthood. After ordination in 1638, he returned to England and for five years worked in Lancashire. On one occasion he was arrested but escaped while being conducted to Lancaster Castle.
He was again seized at Blake Hall in Goosnargh and committed to Lancaster Castle on 7th August 1643, being treated with unusual severity and undergoing solitary confinement for six weeks. For three years he remained in prison, remarkable for his spirit of continual prayer and charity to his fellow-captives. Before his trial he made a month’s retreat in preparation for death. Though naturally timorous and suffering much from the anticipation of his execution, he steadfastly declined all attempts made to induce him to conform to Anglicanism by the offer of his life. Having watched the gruesome executions of Edward Bamber and John Woodcock, he again refused to deny his faith and conform to Anglicanism. He was executed in August 1646, saying to the sheriff: “Use your pleasure with me, a reprieve or even a pardon upon your conditions I utterly refuse.” Thomas Whitaker was the last priest to be executed at Lancaster.
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