Ven. Richard Sergeant

English martyr, executed at Tyburn, 20 April, 1586. He was probably a younger son of Thomas Sergeant of Stone, Gloucestershire, by Katherine, daughter of John Tyre of Hardwick. He took his degree at Oxford (20 Feb., 1570-1), and arrived at the English College, Reims, on 25 July, 1581. He was ordained subdeacon at Reims (4 April, 1582), deacon at Soissons (9 June, 1582), and priest at Laon (7 April, 1583). He said his first Mass on 21 April, and left for England on 10 September. He was indicted at the Old Bailey (17 April, 1586) as Richard lea alias Longe. With him was condemned and suffered Venerable William Thomson, a native of Blackburn, Lancashire, who arrived at the English College, Reims, on 28 May, 1583, and was ordained priest in the Reims cathedral (31 March, 1583-4). Thomson was arrested in the house of Roger Line, husband of the martyr Anne Line (q. v.) in Bishopsgate St. Without, while saying Mass. Both were executed merely for being priests and coming into the realm.

CHALLONER, Missionary priests, I (London, 1878), nos. 32, 33; KNOX, Douay Diaries (London, 1878); FOSTER, Alumni Oxonienses, (Oxford, 1892); Harleian Soc. Publ. xxi (London, 1885), 258; POLLEN, English Martyrs 1584-1603 in Cath. Rec. Soc. (London, 1908), 129; Cath. Rec. Soc. II (London, 1906), 249, 255, 271.

John B. Wainewright.