Background
Sherwood was born in London of Catholic parents and began his adult life as a woollen draper.
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Thomas Sherwood
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He eventually decided to travel to the new English College at Douai and study for the priesthood in 1576. Before completing his studies he decided to return to London to settle his affairs and find money to support his further studies. In the city he was a visitor to the house of the Catholic Lady Tregonwell, where it seems that Mass was secretly offered.
Happening to see Sherwood in the street in Chancery Lane, he began to cry "Stop the traitor" aloud.
In this way he managed to have Thomas brought before a judge. Although there was no proof of any kind against him, he implicated himself by answering openly on the issue of the Queen"s supremacy.
Racked with a view to extracting details of houses where Mass was celebrated, Thomas kept silent. As a result he was then thrown into a dungeon to rot, where he endured hunger and cold for three winter months.
His story then finished with a hasty trial, and the inevitable sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering, carried out at Tyburn on 7 February 1579, when he was 27 years of age.
He is said to have been a small man, witty, cheerful and loved by many. He was beatified "equipollently" by Pope Leo XIII, by means of a decree of 29 December 1886.
