December 10th. St. Swithun Wells.

A native of Hampshire (Brambridge) he was a village schoolmaster until he became a Catholic in 1583. He later moved to London, and his house in Gray's Inn Fields became a Mass centre much used by St. Edmund Gennings and St. Polydore Plasden (see below). Wells was absent when the house was raided by the Government agent Richard Topcliffe, but was arrested on his return. He was put to death outside his own house on December 10, 1591. Saint Edmund Gennings, who died with him, came from Lichfield (Staffs.) and was converted to Catholicism after being a page to a Catholic gentleman. He later attended the English College in Rheims, though his studies were punctuated by severe ill health. He returned to England in I590 and was saying Mass in St. Swithun Wells' house (see above) when the Government agent arrived. The congregation kept the door forced, shut until the Mass was over, when they all surrendered. With him at the Mass was St. Polydore Plasden (a pseudonym: his real name was Oliver Palmer), a Londoner, ordained in Rome. Plasden was put to death on the same day as Gennings and Wells, but at Tyburn, along with St. Eustace White, a Lincolnshire man from Louth, converted to Catholicism (when he was solemnly cursed by his father), who was ordained priest in 1588 and worked mostly in Dorset.