By Joanna Bogle
In London, on the corner near the Marble Arch, there's a noteworthy medallion on a traffic island commemorating Tyburn Tree. When English Catholics think of Tyburn, they think of the martyrs who died there – dragged through the streets after torture in the Tower of London, hanged, racked, and disemboweled, denied mercy unless they were prepared to deny loyalty to the Catholic Church and Peter's successor in Rome.
Their names have come down to us with honor: Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin, John Stoughton, and more. Today there are churches and schools named after them, and pilgrims flow steadily to Tyburn where nuns at a thriving convent nearby hold a 24-hour vigil before the Blessed Sacrament.
The shrine, and the site of the gallows itself, have undergone a notable change in my lifetime. From being a slightly obscure shrine, known to devout Catholics, but not to the general public, they are now widely publicized, not least with an official Transport for London sign at the Tube station (Marble Arch).
The English Martyrs, as they are collectively known, were canonized by Paul VI in 1970. It was done with wisdom and with tact – the pope referred briefly and in a generous spirit to those Protestants who also lost their lives in the grim years of the English Reformation. And Catholic devotion to the 40 Martyrs (there were many more, of course, and it seems likely that there will be future canonizations as historical research is completed and miracles reported) has grown steadily. Today their stories are spread by new websites, videos, and TV features, taking over from the booklets and leaflets of my youth.
But Tyburn is also the name of a river – one of the half-forgotten rivers of London that still flow beneath us as we hurry about on everyday business or relax in a park or café.
There were two branches of the Ty – the old word "burn" for a river, still used in Scotland, is linked to bourn, meaning a spring (as in place names such as Eastbourne or Bournemouth). One branch flowed through what is today called Marylebone (Mary-le-bourne), the other through what is, today, Hyde Park, along Park Lane and the Bayswater Road.
I say "flowed" but of course a river never really ceases to exist. You can still hear the Tyburn if you stand above the Thames Water Authority's manhole cover in the park – and just occasionally the water rises to flood, and the river makes a brief reappearance as a large and spreading puddle.
London is full of lost or, rather, forgotten rivers. Their names are still with us – the Falcon that runs down from Clapham Junction to Battersea, giving its name to the street that now covers it, and to the local pub – the Beverly Brook that flows through the suburbs of New Malden and Raynes Park, partly through local public gardens, partly between the backs of houses and blocks of flats.
The Westbourne flows through Kensington and Paddington. The Fleet, which famously gave its name to the street of newspapers, flowed into the Thames at Blackfriars and fed a great Dominican monastery still honored in the name of the pub and the tube station.
The hidden or half-forgotten stream is not a bad analogy for the extraordinary revival of the Catholic Faith in England in the modern era. St. John Henry Newman spoke of the "Second Spring" in 1852 when he addressed the gathering of newly appointed bishops following the restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. He was speaking, of course, of the season rather than of bubbling water, but both make an interesting analogy for the unfolding events.
"Oh yes," you will say, with the sad shrug of the modern Western Catholic, "There was a revival in the 19th century, and it lingered into the 20th – but what about now?" And it is true that the fastest-growing religion in Britain is Islam, and the Catholic Church is running desperately short of priests, has merged many parishes, and runs schools that are notable for producing students who are non-practicing long before they leave.
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