John Wall was born 1620 near Preston in Lancashire. He
was the son of wealthy and staunch Lancashire Catholics. He was sent to
Douai for his schooling. He enrolled at the English College in Rome in
1641 (as John Marsh, one of various aliases he used during his
ministry), was ordained priest in 1645 and sent to the English mission
in 1648. In 1651 he received the Fransiscan habit at St Bonaventure’s
Friary, Douai. He returned to England some years later, and worked as a
priest for more than twenty years, mainly based at Harvington Hall in
Worcestershire. He was arrested in December 1678 during the flurry
following the Titus Oates Plot, at Rushock Court near Bromsgrove, where
the sheriff’s man came to seek a debtor. Once it was clear that he was a
priest, he was ordered to take the Oath of Supremacy; on refusing to do
so he was committed to Worcester. He was tried on the charges of
receiving and exercising his priesthood, and of refusing the oaths. He
was duly sentenced to death, and sent to London. On being sentenced he
said: “Thanks be to God; God save the King; and I beseech God to bless
your lordship and all this honourable bench” Under further questioning
he was offered his life if he would abjure his religion. He later wrote:
“I told them I would not buy my life at so dear a rate as to wrong my
conscience.” He was brought back to Worcester, and was executed at
Redhill. His quartered body was given to his friends, and was buried in
St. Oswald’s churchyard. The long speech he composed for his execution
was circulated among Catholics after his death; and the authorities
issued as a broadsheet the public account of his execution containing “a
true copy of the speech…with animadversions upon the same”.
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