Bible Dictionaries

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

Forest, John, Blessed

Martyr, born Oxford, England, 1471; died 1538. He was a Franciscan friar who became chaplain and confessor to Catherine of Aragon and from the first resolutely opposed the divorce. He was burned at Smithfield, the fire being fed with fragments of an enormous wooden statue of Saint Derfel Gadarn which from time immemorial had been venerated in Wales and concerning which there was an old saying that it would one day burn a forest. Beatified, 1888.