Saint Edmund Arrowsmith SJ (1585 – 28 August 1628) is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales of the Roman Catholic Church. The main source of information on St Edmund is a contemporary account written by an eyewitness and published a short time after his death. This document, conforming to the ancient style of the "Acts of martyrs" includes the story of the execution of another 16th century Recusant martyr, Richard Herst.
Edmund was the son of Robert Arrowsmith, a yeoman farmer, and Margery Gerard, a member of an important Lancashire Catholic family. Among his mother's relations was Father John Gerard, who wrote The Diary of an Elizabethan Priest, as well as another martyr, the Blessed Miles Gerard. Edmund was born at Haydock, England in 1585, the eldest child. He was baptized Brian, but always used his confirmation name of Edmund. The family was constantly harassed for its adherence to Roman Catholicism, and in 1605 Edmund left England and went to the English College, Douai 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 on December 9, 1612, and sent on the English mission a year later. He ministered to the Catholics of Lancashire without incident until around 1622, when he was arrested and questioned by the Anglican Bishop of Chester. Edmund was released when King James I of England ordered all arrested priests be freed. He joined the Jesuits in 1624. In 1628, he was arrested when betrayed by the son of the landlord of the Blue Anchor Inn in south Lancashire, whom he had censured for an incestuous marriage. He was convicted of being a Roman Catholic priest in England. He was sentenced to death, and hanged, drawn and quartered at Lancaster on 28 August 1628. His final confession was heard by Saint John Southworth, who was imprisoned along with Edmund.
Arrowsmith ministered to Catholics of Lancashire at the still-standing Arrowsmith House, located in Hoghton before being arrested and questioned on Brindle Moss where his horse refused to jump a ditch. His hand was preserved and kept by the Arrowsmith family as a relic until he was beatified and it now rests in the Catholic Church of St Oswald and St Edmund Arrowsmith, Ashton-in-Makerfield. His beatification occurred in 1929. He was canonized as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope Paul VI in 1970. His feast days are 28 August alone and 25 October with 39 others.