Nicholas Garlick - After His Death

After His Death

A poem by an anonymous writer, who seems to have witnessed the executions, describes the scene as follows:

When Garlick did the ladder kiss,
And Sympson after hie,
Methought that there St. Andrew was
Desirous for to die.

When Ludlam lookèd smilingly,
And joyful did remain,
It seemed St. Stephen was standing by,
For to be stoned again.

And what if Sympson seemed to yield,
For doubt and dread to die;
He rose again, and won the field
And died most constantly.

His watching, fasting, shirt of hair;
His speech, his death, and all,
Do record give, do witness bear,
He wailed his former fall.

The heads and quarters of the three priests were placed on poles in various places around Derby. Garlick's student, Robert Bagshaw, writes as follows:

And the penner of this their martyrdoms, who was also present at their deaths, with two other resolute Catholick gentlemen, going in the night divers miles, well weaponed, took down one of their heads from the top of a house standing on the bridge, the watchmen of the town (as was afterwards confessed) seeing them and giving no resistance. This they buryed with as great decencie as they could, and soon after the rest of the quarters were taken away secretly by others.

Dr. Cox, a Derbyshire historian writing in the second half of the nineteenth century, and quoted by Sweeney, mentions a tradition that Garlick's head was buried in the churchyard at Tideswell. It has never been found.

The three priests were declared venerable in 1888, and were among the eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.