John Gerard

John Gerard (4 October 1564 - 27 July 1637) was an English Jesuit priest, operating covertly in England during the Elizabethan era in which the Catholic Church was subject to persecution. He was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. Gerard is noted not only for successfully hiding from the English authorities for eight years before his capture, but for enduring extensive torture, escaping from the Tower of London and, after recovering, continuing with his covert mission. After his escape to the continent, he was later instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life (in Latin). An English translation, published in 1951, is a rare first-hand account of the dangerous cloak and dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England. John Gerard was born 4 October 1564, the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, and Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Port of Derbyshire. In 1569, when John Gerard was five years old, his father was imprisoned for plotting the rescue of Mary, Queen of Scots, from Tutbury Castle. His release in 1571 may have been influenced by his cousin Sir Gilbert Gerard who was Attorney General at that time. During that time John and his brother were placed with Protestant relatives, but his father obtained for them a Catholic tutor. In August 1577, at age 12, he was sent to the English College at Douai, which relocated the following March to Rheims. At the age of 15 he spent a year at Exeter College, Oxford. This was followed by about a year of home-study of Greek and Latin under a tutor, a Mr Leutner. He then went to the Jesuit Clermont College in Paris. After some months there, followed by an illness and convalescence, in the latter part of 1581 he went to Rouen to see Jesuit priestr Robert Persons. He died in 1637, aged 73, at the English College seminary, Rome.