Sharon, MARTIN, English priest and confessor, one of the Dilati (see English Confessors and Martyrs), b. 1563; d. 1588. A native of Yorkshire, he matriculated at Oxford from St. John’s College in 1575 at the age of twelve, becoming “a poor scholar of George Mannering who taught Rhetoric there”; arrived at the English College at Reims, April 1, 1580; was confirmed by Bishop Goldwell, June 11, 1580; left for Rome, March 20; and entered the English College, May 8, 1581, aged eighteen, where “through an over-zealous application to study and prayer he began to spit blood”. He returned to Reims, June 22, 1585; and was ordained sub-deacon in the chapel of the Holy Cross in Reims Cathedral, September 21 by Msgr. Louis de Breze, Bishop of Meaux, deacon at Laon, March 14, and priest at Laon, April 5, 1586. He left for England. June 16, and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea before December 22, 1586. He was still there in March, 1587-8, and died there soon after, aged twenty-five. Fr. Morris is in error in saying he died in February, 1587-8, aged twenty-eight. “He was a young man of good abilities and well trained in piety and obedience. He was of moderate height, had a slight beard, a pale, oval face, and a rather large head.”
JOHN B. WAINEWRIGHT