York Civic Trust plaques

Saint Margaret Clitherow (1552/3-1586)

Catholic Martyr and Saint

Location of plaque: Ouse Bridge

The majority of tourists who bustle down Shambles probably fail to notice that one of the buildings is a shrine to York's very own saint. It is easy to miss Margaret Clitherow's house in the jostling crowds.

Yet in her own way, Saint Margaret is one of York's most redoubtable citizens: a woman who lived at a time of huge religious upheaval and persecution and whose devotion to the Roman Catholic faith to which she converted as a young woman remained steadfast until her death.

And what a death. In 1586, she paid the ultimate price for harbouring Roman Catholic priests in a secret room at her home on Shambles. Refusing to plead when charged at the assizes for fear that the names of other Roman Catholics would emerge at trial, she was sentenced to death by 'peine forte et dure'. On March 25, 1586, still a young woman - a wife and mother in her mid thirties - she was taken to the toll booth on Ouse Bridge and 'pressed to death'. It is said that her body was placed on a sharp rock and a door from her own house was placed on top of her then loaded with heavy stones until she was crushed.

Her death was an example of appalling religious intolerance and cruelty. And yet in the week before her execution, she was visited by protestant preachers who begged her to submit, or at least to admit she was pregnant so she could receive a stay of execution. She remained obdurate. Her biographer, John Mush, claimed she was 'attracted to martyrdom'.

So who was this extraordinary woman? Margaret was born in York, the youngest of four children of Thomas Middleton, a wax chandler and freeman of the city.

At 18, she married John Clitherow, a prosperous butcher and a widower with two sons. Upon marriage, Margaret moved to Shambles, where she bore John at least two children, and possibly more.

Margaret converted to Catholicism in her early twenties, apparently drawn to the faith by stories of the suffering of priests and other Catholics for their faith. She not only hid fugitive priests, but also provided space in her home for secret Catholic ceremonies. She was imprisoned several times, and her husband John, who remained Protestant, was fined regularly because of his wife's behaviour.

Following her death, John married again. Margaret, meanwhile, was beatified in 1929 and canonised on October 25, 1970, as one of the 40 English martyrs. A relic, said to be her hand, is held at the Bar Convent in York.

To read the stories behind other York Civic Trust plaques, visit yorkcivictrust.co.uk