Alban Roe

Bartholomew Roe was born on 20 July 1583 in Suffolk and raised a Protestant. With his brother James he later entered the Catholic Church; both became Benedictine monks. His conversion was striking: intending to persuade an imprisoned Catholic to abandon the old faith, he was himself defeated in argument. Uneasy in mind, he read, confessed to Catholic priests, embraced the ancient faith, and longed to share that treasure with others. In 1607 he entered the English College at Douai to prepare for the priesthood.

His temperament was explosive and unpredictable rather than typically monastic. When a prior had cupboards removed near his bed he retorted that there was more trouble with a few fools than with all the wise, and that if they pulled down he would build up. In 1610 he was dismissed for contempt of discipline and superiors and for misleading younger students. He did not leave quietly, organizing support and appealing; a body of companions regarded him as something of a hero. In 1613 he joined the English Benedictine Priory of St Laurence at Dieulouard in Lorraine, was professed, and was ordained priest in 1615. He became a founding member of the new English Benedictine Priory of St Edmund in Paris and took the religious name Alban of St Edmund. There is no record of further trouble at Dieulouard.

After ordination he was sent on the English mission and worked in London. Arrested and deported soon after arrival, he returned in 1618, was imprisoned until 1623, and was released and re-exiled through the Spanish ambassador Gondomar. Two years later he slipped back into England and was held for some seventeen years in the Fleet Prison. Conditions there were relatively relaxed: by day he might leave to care for souls provided he returned at night. Zealous for conversions and lacking a church, he frequented alehouses and played cards with customers; the stakes, permitted by the English Benedictine Constitutions of the time, were short prayers rather than money. Puritans were scandalized, yet as a prisoner he could scarcely be further punished. He received visitors, taught them prayers, made many converts, and, according to Challoner, translated several pious tracts into English, some printed and others left in manuscript.

In 1641 he was moved to close confinement in Newgate. Tried in 1642 under the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584 simply for being a priest, he was found guilty of treason. He at first refused to plead; the chief witness proved a fallen Catholic he had once helped. Hoping still to win the man, he pleaded not guilty yet objected to trial by "twelve ignorant jurymen" careless of innocent blood. The judge, unsettled by Roe's mockery of the proceedings, took him aside; Roe answered that his Saviour had suffered far more and that he was willing to suffer the worst torments for His sake. Advised by grave and learned priests to consent to trial like those before him, he did so; the jury convicted him in about a minute. He bowed low to the bench in ironic thanks for the great favour he desired. Sentence was suspended a few days; visitors thronged him, and one smuggled in what was needed for Mass in his cell.

On the morning of 21 January 1642 he and the priest Thomas Reynolds were drawn on hurdles from Newgate to Tyburn. There Roe preached jovially on the meaning of his death. Still playing to the crowd, he asked the sheriff whether turning Protestant would save his life; when the sheriff agreed, Roe turned and cried that the people might see what his only treason was—religion. To a former gaoler he remarked, "My friend, I find that thou art a prophet; thou hast told me often I should be hanged." He and Reynolds absolved each other. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered. A scramble followed for relics: handkerchiefs dipped in his blood and straws stained with it. His speech is said to have been sent to Parliament.

Declared Venerable and beatified by Pope Pius XI in December 1929, he was canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His martyrdom is also kept on 21 January. Cheerfulness and tenacity marked his sanctity; he loved God and neighbour even in prison and on the scaffold.

May Saint Alban Roe obtain for us steadfast joy in confessing the faith, and let us practise today the cheerful tenacity with which he served Christ to the end.