John Gerard (Jesuit)

John Gerard (4 October 1564-1637) was an English Jesuit priest, operating covertly in England during the Elizabethan period in which the Catholic Church was subject to persecution. He was the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn, near Ashton in Makerfield, Lancashire.

John 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 (Latin text). An English translation was published in 1951. This is a rare, first-hand account of the deadly 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 in 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 fifteen, 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, 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 Father Robert Persons.

As Gerard had left for Clermont without the requisite travel permit, upon his return to England, he was arrested by customs officials upon landing at Dover. While his companions were sent to London, he was released in the custody of a Protestant in-law. But after three months, having still not attended the established church, he was remanded to the Marshalsea prison. He spent a little over a year there in company with William Hartley, Stephen Rowsham, John Adams, and William Bishop. In the spring of 1585, Anthony Babington, who was later to be executed for treason for being involved in a plot to free the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, posted bond to secure Gerard's release.

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