Blessed Margaret Ball was a wealthy laywoman in sixteenth-century Dublin who was arrested during a persecution of Catholics by her own son, who sent her to prison in Dublin Castle, where she eventually died.

Margaret Ball was born in 1515 in County Meath, which neighbors Dublin County, in Ireland’s eastern province of Leinster. Her family—the Berminghams—were originally from England, as their name suggests. They emigrated to Ireland and became landed Irish gentry when her father purchased a farm. The Berminghams were fairly politically active and staunch supporters of the Catholic cause as a Protestant government began to form.

In 1531, when she was sixteen, Margaret married Bartholomew Ball, a city councilman in Dublin. The Balls were a wealthy Dublin family and Bartholomew was elected Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1553.

Margaret and Bartholomew had ten children, five of whom survived into adulthood, and lived comfortably in their fine home in the city. Margaret oversaw the education of not only her own children but of many other children throughout the city, holding classes for them in her home.

In 1558, when Elizabeth I ascended the throne of her two kingdoms of England and Ireland, she reversed her sister Mary I’s declaration of Catholicism as the state religion. Her Religious Settlement of 1558 declared the throne the head of the Church in England and decreed that all Elizabeth’s subjects attend worship at a Church of England, using the Book of Common Prayer, each Sunday. Obviously, then, attending a Catholic Mass was now illegal, which led to the arrest and persecution of Catholic clergy, religious sisters and brothers and lay Catholics. 

During this tumultuous time, Margaret and Bartholomew provided a safe haven in Dublin for many priests.

Not all members of the Ball family were still committed to their Catholic faith. Margaret’s eldest son, Walter, embraced the political sea change in the air.

In 1580, Walter took over as Lord Mayor of Dublin and promptly arrested his sixty-five-year-old mother and had her carried to the dungeons beneath Dublin Castle. The rest of the family demanded Margaret’s release, but Walter stubbornly refused, unless Margaret took the Oath of Supremacy which recognized Elizabeth I as head of the Church.

Walter’s younger brother, Nicholas, brought his mother food and clothing and took care of her while she was in prison. Nicholas became Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1582 after his brother was promoted to Commissioner of Ecclesiastical Causes. Nicholas could still not free his mother, despite his new power, as Walter had royal oversight over religious matters and would not allow him to release Margaret. 

Margaret died in 1584, after enduring the rank air and damp cold of Dublin prisons with a strong spirit. All her property after her death still went to Walter, as she never once changed the terms of her will.

Margaret was beatified in September 1992 by Pope John Paul II, in a group of seventeen Irish martyrs.

The image above is a photo by Connell McCabe of a statue of Margaret and Blessed Francis Taylor (a martyr beatified by John Paul II in the same group as Margaret) that stands outside the St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in Dublin.

Blessed Margaret Ball, loving mother and brave martyr for the Catholic faith—pray for us!