Following is a funeral oration by Pericles (495BC to 429), who grew up among artists and philosophers. He speaks over the brave dead, and his speech is a recommendation to us to defend what we believe with our lives.
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
John Almond
Edmund Arrowsmith
Ambrose Barlow
John Boste
Alexander Briant
Edmund Campion
Margaret Clitherow
Philip Evans
Thomas Garnet
Edmund Gennings
Richard Gwyn
John Houghton
Philip Howard
John Jones
John Kemble
Luke Kirby
Robert Lawrence
David Lewis
Anne Line
John Lloyd
Cuthbert Mayne
Henry Morse
Nicholas Owen
John Payne
Polydore Plasden
John Plessington
Richard Reynolds
John Rigby
John Roberts
Alban Roe
Ralph Sherwin
Robert Southwell
John Southworth
John Stone
John Wall
Henry Walpole
Margaret Ward
Augustine Webster
Swithun Wells
Eustace White
Shakespeare wrote the poem about Anne Line and her husband, Roger Line.
According to Wikipedia, “Line was hanged on 27 February 1601. She was executed immediately before two priests, Roger Filcock and Mark Barkworth, who received the more severe sentence of hanging, drawing, and quartering.
“At the scaffold she repeated what she had said at her trial, declaring loudly to the bystanders: ‘I am sentenced to die for harbouring a Catholic priest, and so far I am from repenting for having so done, that I wish, with all my soul, that where I have entertained one, I could have entertained a thousand.’”
If she is not someone to emulate, who is?