STONE, JOHN, ST.

English Augustinian friar, martyr; b. date, place unknown; hanged, drawn, and quartered at Canterbury, probably Dec. 27, 1539. Nothing is known of Stone's early life. In the absence of evidence to the contrary it may be assumed that he became an Augustinian friar at the house of the order founded in 1318 at Canterbury, where it is not unlikely that he was born; two namesakes of his were monks of Christ Church in the same city. In April 1534 Henry VIII, as a step preparatory to the suppression of the friaries, appointed Thomas Cromwell's friend, George Browne, prior provincial of the Augustinians, with a commission to visit all houses of the order and obtain the individual acknowledgment of every inmate to the validity of Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn and to his headship over the Church in England. The following November the Act of Supremacy made it treason to deny this. Shortly afterward the Treason Act extended the penalty to all who might "maliciously" desire to deprive the king of his title of supremacy. Somehow Stone avoided taking the oath, but when in December 1538 Richard Ingworth, suffragan bishop of Dover and agent of Cromwell, took possession of the Augustinian friary at Canterbury in the name of the king, he forced the community to sign a deed of surrender that contained an explicit acknowledgment of the king's supremacy. Stone refused to sign. On December 15 Ingworth, in a letter to Cromwell, wrote of Stone that "he still held and still wills to die for it that the king may not be head of the Church of England, but it must be a spiritual father appointed by God." Stone stood alone among the Augustinians in his resistance; the same day he was taken to London, where in the Tower he was interviewed by Cromwell, who, perhaps hoping that Stone would die in prison, did not hasten to bring him to trial but waited until the following December, when Stone was returned to Canterbury and there sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. The historian Nicholas Harpsfield wrote that "before [his execution] having poured forth prayers in prison to God and fasted continuously for three days, he heard a voice, though he saw no one, which addressed him by name and bade him be of good heart and not to hesitate to suffer death with constancy for the belief which he professed." The delay in his execution was due to the preparations at Canterbury for the arrival of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's fourth bride. Stone was executed either shortly before or on the day of Anne's arrival at Canterbury (Dec. 29, 1539). He was beatified by Leo XIII on Dec. 9, 1886, and canonized by Paul VI on Oct. 25, 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Feast: May 12; October 25 (Feast of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales); May 4 (Feast of the English Martyrs in England).

See Also: england, scotland, and wales, martyrs of.

Bibliography: b. hackett, Blessed John Stone (Postulation Pamphlet; London 1961). a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater, 4 v. (New York 1956) 2:292. r. challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. j. h. pollen (rev. ed. London 1924; repr. Farnborough 1969).

[g. fitzherbert]