Ralph Buckland (priest)
Ralph Buckland (1564–1611) was an English Roman Catholic divine. Life. Ralph Buckland, born in 1564, was the son of Edmund Buckland, who was descended from an ancient family living at West Harptree, Somersetshire. He was admitted into Merchant Taylors' School on 15 June 1571, and in Michaelmas term 1579 he became a commoner of Magdalen College, Oxford, but before he took a degree he came to London and studied the municipal laws for some time. At length, being "inflamed with a love to the Roman catholic religion, he left his parents, country, and the prospects of a  fair inheritance", and went to the English College at Rheims. He proceeded to the Roman seminary in February 1585–6, returned to Rheims in September 1588, and, having been ordained, was in December the same year sent to England to labour on the mission. Wood supposes that Buckland lived chiefly in his own county, and "spent above twenty years in doing offices belonging to his profession". His name appears on a list of forty-seven priests and Jesuits banished in 1606. He died in 1611, leaving behind him "among the brethren" the character of a "most pious and seraphical person,—a person  who went beyond all of his time for fervent devotion". Dodd mentions that Buckland presented a piece of St. Thomas of Canterbury's hair shirt to Douay College, where it was preserved with due respect in a silver case.