“The Philipsons of Colgarth coveted a field like Ahab, and had the possessor hung for an offence which he had not committed. The night before his execution the old man (for he was very old) read the 109th Psalm as his solemn and dying commination, verses 2, 3, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.” The verses contain a prayer for vengeance upon “the wicked and deceitful, who have spoken with a lying tongue,” and whose days are to be few, and their children to be fatherless, their descendants continually vagabonds and beggars, and their posterity to be cut off. “The curse,” Southey adds, “was fully accomplished; the family were cut off, and the only daughter who remained sold laces and bobbins about the country.” Two remarkable and, as may be well believed, supernatural events occurred (which may be fittingly recorded here) with regard to the cruel and shameful death of Edmund Arrowsmith, a Roman Catholic priest of the county of Lancaster, in the year 1628. He was born at Haddock in the parish of Winwick, five miles from Warrington and seven from Wigan. His father was Robert Arrowsmith, a yeoman, and his mother Margaret Gerard, of the ancient and noble family of that name. His immediate ancestors had suffered much for their religion. Edmund, their son, having been received into the College at Douay in 1605, was eventually ordained priest at Arras on December 9th, 1612. A year afterwards he was sent to England to minister to his fellow religionists. One of his flock being exasperated against him because he refused to marry him to his first cousin and had rebuked him for evil-living, informed against him to the vigilant authorities; and Arrowsmith, being apprehended, was sent to Lancaster Castle, “for not having taken the oaths, and upon vehement suspicion that he was a priest and a jesuit.” The judge on circuit was Sir Henry Yelverton. “Are you a priest, sir?” asked the judge, when the accused person was brought before him. Arrowsmith, signing himself with the cross, replied, “My lord, I would to God I were worthy.” On the judge repeating the question Arrowsmith replied coolly, “I would I were.” When the accused, in reply to a minister on the bench, suggested a disputation regarding religion, and claimed to defend his Faith, the judge silenced him at once, and declared that he would not allow him to make any defence at all. “I am ready, my lord, bear in mind,” replied Arrowsmith, “not only to defend it in words, but in deeds, and to seal it with my blood.” The judge then told him, in an insulting and savage manner, that he should die, and see his bowels burnt before his very face. “And you too must die, my lord, and that within a year.”[49]