The Martyrs of Douai, by Stephen P. White

By Stephen P. White, The Catholic Thing, October 30, 2025

Stephen P. White is executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

In June of 1577, an Englishman by the name of Cuthbert Mayne was taken under arrest by the High Sheriff of Cornwall and imprisoned in Launceston Castle to await trial for high treason. Mayne was born in Devon, in southwest England, and had been a Protestant cleric as a young man. But during his subsequent studies at Oxford, he converted to Catholicism.

Mayne had narrowly escaped arrest once already and, in 1573, he fled England for the north of France. There, he joined the new English College in the town of Douai where he would receive ordination and complete his studies. ….

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