[MR] Wikipedia: Father Gerard's Tower Escape

[Garth Groff via Atlantia]

Noble Friends,

It is a slow news day at the BBC, and there are no significant events to 
commemorate on Wikipedia. Today I will write about the Jesuit priest 
John Gerard (1564-1637).

Father Gerard was one of a number of English Jesuit priests educated and 
ordained in Europe, then sent to back England to minister to "recusant" 
Catholics during the reign of Elizabeth I. Most faithful English 
Catholics had gone underground, figuratively and literally, and the 
Jesuits moved among this network of closet believers to say the Mass and 
offer other sacraments. This made the secret Jesuit priests guilty of 
treason. In addition, some Jesuits and their followers actually plotted 
to overthrow or assassinate Queen Elizabeth and restore England to the 
Catholic faith. Thus the priests were hunted down, tortured, and some 
were executed.

Gerard was captured in London in 1594 in the company of Nicholas Owen, 
an infamous builder of priest holes, secret rooms and passages in 
Catholic houses where priests could hide or escape their enemies. Gerard 
was eventually imprisoned in the Salt Tower, part of the Tower of 
London, where we was tortured horribly in the hope he would name other 
Catholics. Gerard's wrists were mangled when he was suspended in chains. 
Father Gerard never broke, even when confronted with the rack.

Despite his injuries, Father Gerard and another prisoner named John 
Arden slid down a rope stretched from the Salt Tower across the moat by 
Catholic agents on 4 October 1597. They then were taken by boat to a 
safe house. Father Gerard was eventually smuggled out of England in the 
Spanish ambassador's retinue. The priest spent the rest of his life in 
Europe teaching and writing, and died of natural causes in Rome at the 
age of 73.

You can read about Father Gerard at 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gerard_(Jesuit) .

Here is more about Nicholas Owen and his priest holes: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Owen_(Jesuit) and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole .

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge