150 A HISTORY OF LOXGRIDGE. [Chap. 6. 



Father Holden belonged, it is believed, to the family of Holden, 

 near Stonyhurst, a family which, in time of trial and persecution, never 

 swerved from the faith. His Christian name and the date and place 

 of his death are not known ; but a well-authenticated tradition says 

 that he was " cut down at the altar" by a party of " Cromwell's 

 soldiers ;" and stains of blood are still visible on his vestments. In a 

 cottage on Longridge Fell, which bears the name of " the Martyr's 

 Head," that sacred rehc — dry, indeed, but incorrupt, and with the 

 stains of blood still looking fresh — was kept for generations by his 

 pious family. These precious memorials, together with the old oak 

 chest which contains his chalice and other requisites for masses, are 

 now in the hands of Mr. Ealph Holden, of Woodj)lumpton. — " Memo- 

 rials of a few who suffered for the Catholic Faith." 

 Rev. Fr. Nicholas Sanderson. 



" Singleton, Nicholas, vere Sanderson, Lancashire, aged 18. Ad- 

 mitted November 14, 1666, and took the oath. After minor orders, 

 ordained sub-deacon and deacon in May, and priest August 3, 1670. 



" Nicholas Sanderson was the son of William and Alice Sanderson, 

 and was born at Alston, in Lancashire, about Easter, 1648. His 

 parents were respectable, of the middle class, and Catholics. He was 

 always a Catholic, and made his humanity studies at St. Omer's College. 

 (Students' EepHes.) Several members of this family became Jesuits. 

 Nicholas Sanderson, born 1692, entered the Society as a lay-brother in 

 1725, and died at St. Omer's CoUege, September 22, 1761. Nicholas 

 Sanderson, alias Thompson, born 1731, entered the Society 1750, was 

 professed 1768, and died at Alnwick in 1790. He learned his rudi- 

 ments under Mr. Occleshaigh, in Lancashire, who had been a student 

 at the Jesuits' College in Wigan, which was destroyed by a uo-Popery 

 mob on the outbreak of the Orange Revolution in 1688. Robert 

 Sanderson, born in Lancashire in 1715, entered the Society in 1738, 

 was professed 1756, and died December 2, 1781. Also a John Sander- 

 son, who died at Bath, 1813."— (Foley's " Diary and Pilgrim Book.") 

 Rev. Fr. Seth Eccles, D.D. 



" Seth Eccles, D.D., was born in 1800, at Longridge, co. Lancaster, 

 of an ancient yeomanry family which figures in the Recusant Rolls 

 fi'om the earliest periods. In 1811 he was sent to Sedgley Park School, 



