Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Woodcock, Martin
WOODCOCK, MARTIN, alias Farington, John (1603–1646), Franciscan martyr, born in 1603 at Clayton-le-Wood, Lancashire, appears to have belonged to the Lancashire families of Farington or Woodcock, though it is not clear which was his real name, nor has his parentage been traced. He was educated first at St. Omer and then at Rome. He began his novitiate with the Capucins of Paris, but left within a year and was admitted among the Franciscans at Douai in 1631, and was professed in 1632. Towards the end of 1643 he was sent on the English mission, and landed at Newcastle, but was seized almost immediately while on a visit to his relatives in Lancashire. After more than two years' imprisonment he was tried at Lancaster in August 1646, condemned on his confession of being a Roman catholic priest, and executed at Lancaster on the 7th. Granger mentions a small quarto portrait of Woodcock (Biogr. Hist. ii. 207).
[Certamen Seraph. Provinciæ Angliæ, Douai, 1649, 4to; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 109; Baines's Lancashire, iv. 802.]