Background
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.
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. At the age of about thirty he entered the English College, Douai, arriving on 1 March 1633. He 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.
Once he arrived in England around Christmas 1643, Duckett worked largely in the North and laboured for about a year in Durham. lieutenant was in the time of the Civil War and he was seized only a few months later, on 2 July 1644, near Wolsingham in the neighbourhood of Lanchester, County Durham, while on his way to baptize two children.
Taken to Sunderland, he was examined by a Parliamentary Committee of sequestrators and placed in irons. They were both confined in Newgate, where they were the cause of crowds of Catholics gathering.
On these and on others who encountered them they made an impression by their cheerfulness and sanctity.
He was brought to trial on September 4, and given the inevitable and terrible sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering the day after. lieutenant was carried out at Tyburn in London on 7 September 1644. His fate was shared by Ralph Corby.
Both priests were declared Blessed (the last stage prior to sainthood) by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929.