Special Guest Blogger: St Margaret Clitherow

At the start i had just about everything on life's menu going for me, a steady job in my fathers wax candle shop, a lovey home overlooking the picturesque Pennines and was engaged to a rich butcher but something was missing, raised a Protestant i had a deep yearning to be a Catholic.
It was the time of Elizabeth I and the Church of England’s breakaway from the Catholic Church due to the Queens randy father and being Catholic was a big no-no, punishable by death but when my father died and my mother remarried i decided it was a good time to step out of the religious closet and announce myself as a Catholic.
One of Elizabeth's laws was everyone had to attend parish church services but as i considered them to be heretically Protestant, i refused to go and pretty soon i was on the list of non-attenders, the neighbours having noticed the empty pew space next to my husband who did attend.
I was summonsed to appear in court and was sentenced to York Castle Prison for 3 months along with several other Catholic women who were also found guilty of non-attendance of church.
My step father was one of the local municipal assembly alderman and he did his best to keep me out of prison when i still refused to go to the services but when my mother died he changed his tune and decided that his troublesome Catholic stepdaughter was not his problem anymore and i was arrested.
True, when they turned up they did find a load of Catholic priests holding Mass in a secret room in my house so when i was in the dock in front of the judge, when he asked me if i was guilty or not guilty, i just shrugged.
The judge sentenced me to strong and harsh punishment, or in his words: 'Stripped naked, laid down, with a sharp stone placed beneath your back, with as much weight laid upon you until you are pressed to death' which satisfies the pretty strong and harsh condition i think you will agree.
My family first claimed i was pregnant and as it was illegal to harm an unborn child i should not be squished to death but the judge ordered an examination which in 16th Century England meant a doctor asking 'Are you pregnant?' Again i shrugged and the death penalty was upheld.
A few Protestant preachers tried to convince me to renounce Catholicism but i said 'Nah' so that's how i found myself naked, on a stone with a heavy wooden slab on my body.
There was a brief moment when the Sheriffs men refused to place the heavy weights onto my body but the Sheriffs rounded up beggars and got them to do it instead and that's how i became one of 300 executed in England for not attending a church full of ignorant Protestants who had yet to realise that the only reason they are not Catholic anymore is because their founder wanted to slip it to his wife's hot, young friend.