In October 1588, a few short weeks after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, a young Jesuit priest, just turned 24 years old, landed secretly on the coast of Norfolk. This was Father John Gerard, who was destined to become one of the most successful of all the missionary priests and therefore one of the most wanted by Elizabeth’s government.
He would serve the English mission in East Anglia for the next five and a half years, evading arrest and eluding the authorities. He was finally arrested in April 1594 and then, after three years in prison, was moved to the Tower of London to be tortured. In October 1597 he made a daring escape from the Tower, by means of a rope stretched from a cannon on the roof of one of the towers across the moat to a wharf on the river Thames.
Father Gerard remained at large for the next eight years, moving mostly between Northamptonshire and London, serving England’s Catholics, including those high-ranking Catholics who had access to the queen’s court, such as the Earl of Southampton, a favorite of the queen who was, at the same time, a devout Catholic and confidant of the Jesuit
