Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Anlaby, William
ANLABY, WILLIAM (1552?–1597), catholic missioner, a native of Etton in Yorkshire, matriculated in the university of Cambridge as a pensioner of St. John's College, 12 Nov. 1567, and proceeded to the degree of B.A. in 1571. He had been brought up in the protestant religion, and entertained a strong aversion to the catholic dogmas; but when about twenty-five years of age, during his travels abroad, he was introduced at Douay to Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, who had established a seminary there. This meeting resulted in Anlaby's conversion and his reception into the college (1574). In 1577 he was ordained priest, and in the following year sent upon the English mission. His missionary labours were in his native county of York. ‘For the first four years of his mission,’ says Bishop Challoner, ‘he travelled always on foot, meanly attired, and carrying with him, usually in a bag, his vestments and other utensils for saying mass; for his labours lay chiefly amongst the poor, who were not stocked with such things. Afterwards, yielding to the advice of his brethren, he used a horse and went something better clad.’ After nearly twenty years' labour on the mission he was condemned as a seminary priest, and was drawn, hanged, and quartered at York on 4 July 1597.
[Diaries of the English College, Douay, 8, 26, 117, 118, 139, 260, 276; Challoner's Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1803), i. 192; Dodd's Church History (1737), ii. 72; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 225.]