Nicholas Garlick - Execution

Execution

Henry Garnet, cited in Sweeney, recounts that the priests spent their last night in the same call as a woman condemned to death for murder, and that in the course of the night, they reconciled her to the Catholic Faith, and she was hanged with them the next day.

On 24 July 1588, the three priests were placed on hurdles, and drawn to St Mary's Bridge, where the executions were to be carried out. Garlick remained witty and cheerful to the end. A passer-by reminded him that they had often gone shooting together, to which Garlick replied, "True, but now I am to shoot off such a shot as I never shot in all my life". When they arrived at the Bridge, the cauldron was not ready for burning the entrails. According to Sweeney, "his sort of bungling was frequent in provincial executions; the local men were amateurs, unversed in the ritual of butchery."

Garlick used the time to give the people a long sermon on the salvation of their souls, ignoring the attempts of officials to make him stop. He closed his speech by throwing into the crowd a number of papers which he had written in prison, and which he said would prove what he affirmed. Bede Camm reports a tradition that everyone into whose hands these papers fell was subsequently reconciled to the Catholic Church. Simpson was apparently to have been executed first, but reports state that Garlick hastened to the ladder before him and kissed it, going up first, either because, as suggested by Anthony Champney, Simpson was showing some signs of fear, or, as suggested by Challoner, Garlick suspected that there was a danger that his companion's courage might fail him. Simpson was executed next, and, according to an eyewitness, "suffered with great constancy, though not with such (remarkable) signs of joy and alacrity as the other two". Ludlam was the last of the three to be executed, and is reported to have stood smiling while the execution of Garlick was being carried out, and to have continued smiling when his own turn came.