John Gerard (4 October 1564 – 27 July 1637) was a priest of the Society of Jesus who operated a secret ministry of the underground Catholic Church in England during the Elizabethan era.
He was born into the English nobility as the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard at Old Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. After attending seminary and being ordained abroad, Gerard returned to England covertly shortly after the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. Fr. Gerard not only successfully hid from the English authorities for eight years before his capture but also endured extensive torture, escaped from the Tower of London, recovered and continued with his covert mission until the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot made it impossible to continue.
After his escape to Catholic Europe, Fr. Gerard was instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life in Renaissance Latin. An English translation by Fr. Philip Caraman was published in 1951 as John Gerard: Autobiography of an Elizabethan and is a rare first-hand account of the dangerous cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England. Ignatius Press published a second edition in 2012 under the title "The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest: John Gerard, S.J."
Early life
John Gerard was born 4 October 1564, the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard of Bryn Hall, 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, which was followed by about a year of home-study of Koine Greek and Ecclesiastical Latin under a tutor, a Mr Leutner (Edmund Lewkenor, brother of Sir Lewes Lewknor Master of the Ceremonies to King James I). 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 priest Fr. Robert Persons.
First mission
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 Anglican services, 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 executed for treason for his involvement in a plot to free the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, posted bond to secure Gerard's release.