John Duckett

Who was John Duckett?

John Duckett was an English Catholic priest and martyr.

He was born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, in Yorkshire, in 1603, the son of the Protestants James Duckett and his wife Frances Girlington who had been married in the parish on March 19, 1600. The boy was baptized after a long delay on February 24, 1614. The boy was educated at Sedbergh School and brought up a Protestant like his parents but was received into the Catholic Church by the priest Andrew North. At the age of about thirty he entered the English College, Douai, arriving on 1 March 1633 and was ordained a priest by the Archbishop of Cambrai in 1639 and was then sent to study for three years at the College of Arras in Paris.

He is said to have had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and as a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. After Paris it came time to embark on the English mission, but on his way he spent two months in retreat under the direction of his uncle, John Duckett, prior of the Charterhouse at Nieuport. Once arrived in England around Christmas 1643, Duckett worked largely in the North and laboured for about a year in Durham.