Oliver Plunkett

Born in 1625 into the Irish gentry and trained at Rome, where he stayed twenty years and taught theology for twelve, he was named archbishop of Armagh in 1669 and returned to an Ireland where Catholic worship was proscribed. There he ordained priests, opened schools admitting Protestants as well as Catholics, and tried to calm rivalries among the clergy. In 1678 Titus Oates's fabrication of the Popish Plot set off a wave of arrests. Accused of preparing a French landing, he was tried first in Ireland, where no witness appeared; he was moved to London, where the jury could not understand testimony given in Irish and his defence was obstructed. Hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 1 July 1681, he was the last Catholic put to death for his faith in England. Paul VI canonised him in 1975.