Alexander Briant

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Saint Alexander Briant
Forty Martyrs of England and Wales
Born	c. 1556, Somerset, England
Died	1 December 1581, Tyburn, London, England
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Canonized	1970 by Pope Paul VI
Feast	1 December
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Saint Alexander Briant (c. 1556; 1 December 1581), was an English Jesuit and martyr, executed at Tyburn.

He was born in Somerset, and entered Hart Hall, Oxford (now Hertford College), at an early age. While there, he became a pupil of Father Robert Parsons to which fact, together with his association with Richard Holtby, is attributed his conversion.

Having left the university he entered the English College at Reims, and was ordained priest 29 March 1578. Assigned to the English mission in August of the following year he labored with zeal in his own county of Somersetshire.

A party of the persecution, searching for Father Parsons, placed Alexander Briant under arrest on 28 April 1581, in the hope of extorting information. After fruitless attempts to this end at Counter Prison, London, he was taken to the Tower where he was subjected to tortures that, even in Elizabethan England, stand out for their viciousness: To the rack, starvation, and cold was added the touch of shoving needles under his nails.

With six other priests he was arraigned, 16 November 1581, in Queen's Bench, Westminster, on the charge of high treason, and condemned to death. The details of his last dose of suffering, which occurred on the 1 December like those of the previous tortures, are revolting. In his letter to the Jesuit Fathers he says that he felt no pain during the various tortures he underwent, and adds: "Whether this that I say be miraculous or no, God knoweth". He was scarcely more than twenty-five years of age at the time of his martyrdom.

He was canonised in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.