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933J Challoner, Richard, 1691-1781. (Anonymous. By Richard Challoner.)

Memoirs of missionary priests, as well secular as regular; and of other Catholics, of both sexes, that have suffered death in England, on religious accounts, from the year of our Lord 1577, to 1684. Gathered, partly from the printed accounts of their lives and sufferings, published by cotemporary authors, in divers languages. And partly from manuscript relations, kept in the archives and records of the English colleges and convents abroad, and oftentimes penned by eye-witnesses of their death. Divided into two parts.

[London] : Printed in the year [and sold by F. Needham], M.DCC.XLI.-M.DCC.XLII. [1741-1742] $2,000

Two Octavo volumes, 19×11.5cm. Bound in matching contemporary eighteenth century calf with spine labels housed in a clamshell box . “Part. I. Containing an account of those that suffered from the year 1577, till the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who died in 1603.” “Part II. Containing an account of those that suffered from the year 1603, the first King James I, to the year 1684, the last of King Charles II. finding that the sufferings of the English martyrs were in danger of being forgotten, he published in two volumes, “Memoirs of Missionary Priests”, in which he gives an account of the martyrs from 1577 to 1681. This work, laboriously compiled from original records, has been the chief means of perpetuating the tradition of the English martyrs and remains the standard work on the subject.

ESTC No.T125100

Two Octavo volumes, Bound in matching contemporary eighteenth century calf with spine labels housed in a clamshell box . “Part. I. Containing an account of those that suffered from the year 1577, till the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who died in 1603.” “Part II. Containing an account of those that suffered from the year 1603, the first King James I, to the year 1684, the last of King Charles II. Challoner, finding that the sufferings of the English martyrs were in danger of being forgotten, devoted years to collecting documentary evidence from the archives of the English colleges at Douai, Valladolid, Lisbon, and Rome. His Memoirs draws from both printed and manuscript accounts—many by eyewitnesses—and provides the most comprehensive eighteenth-century martyrology of English Catholics executed under Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles II.
The first volume covers martyrs from 1577 to 1603, the close of Elizabeth’s reign; the second from 1603 to 1684, the last years of Charles II. Its publication revived the memory of more than 160 missionary priests and Catholic laypeople who died for their faith between Campion’s mission and the Popish Plot.
The Memoirs was long regarded as a companion to Bishop Challoner’s Douai Bible (1750) and Garden of the Soul (1740)—texts that together shaped English Catholic identity in the long eighteenth century. It became, in effect, the canonical source for the nineteenth-century Catholic revival and for later canonization causes (notably the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, canonized 1970).

ESTC No.T125100