ROBERTS, JOHN, ST.

Welsh Benedictine priest, martyr; b. Trawsynydd, Merionethshire (now Gwynedd), Wales, 1576 or 1577; hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn (London), Dec. 10, 1610. Nothing is known of his parentage or his early education. On Feb. 26, 1593, he entered St. John's College, Oxford. Before taking his degree, he left the university to study at the Inns of Court, London. In 1598, while visiting Paris, he was received into the Church at Notre Dame. From Paris he went to Valladolid and there entered the English College on Sept. 15, 1598. Convinced that he had a vocation to the monastic life, he later joined the Benedictine monastery of S. Martino de Compostella, Valladolid. He was ordained in 1602; he left for England, reaching London (April 1603) where he became very famous among the English papists, and many resorted to him, some out of curiosity to see a Benedictine monk once again in England. Roberts was arrested and then released (1603), and exiled with Sigebert Buckley, a priest aged 86, a prisoner for 30 years and the last survivor of the pre-Reformation English Benedictine congregation. The same year Roberts was back in England ministering to the plague-stricken in London.

During the next seven years Roberts was arrested four times and banished at least twice; on one occasion he escaped from Gatehouse Prison, Westminster. His final arrest occurred on Dec. 2, 1610, the first Sunday of Advent, while he was finishing Mass at a house in Holborn. On Dec. 5, he was brought for trial before George Abbot, bishop of London, and Edward Coke, chief justice. He defended himself eloquently. When accused of being a "deceiver of the people," he turned on Bishop Abbot: "I do not deceive, but try to lead back to the right path those poor wandering souls whom you and your foolish ministers have led astray and infected with a thousand deceits and heresies"; then he told Abbot: "You had done much better, my Lord, to remain in your palace and in your church and chapter, reforming the dissolute conduct of your clergy than to come and sit on this bench, while matters of life and death are being decided." Roberts was found guilty. When three days later he was taken again before the bench to hear the sentence, he spoke nobly. On December 10 he was dragged from Newgate to Tyburn, where he was executed along with (Bl.) Thomas Somers, a Douai priest who had stood trial with him. He was beatified on Dec. 15, 1929, and canonized by Paul VI on Oct. 25, 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. Roberts is honored as the protomartyr of St. Gregory's Abbey, now Downside.

Feasts: December 10; October 25 (Feast of the 40 Martyrs of England and Wales); May 4 (Feast of the English Martyrs in England).

See Also: england, scotland, and wales, martyrs of.

Bibliography: w. phillipson, Blessed John Roberts (Postulation Pamphlet; London 1961). r. challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. j. h. pollen (rev. ed. London 1924; repr. Farnborough 1969). b. camm, A Benedictine Martyr in England: The Life and Times of Dom John Roberts (London 1897). a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater, 4 v. (New York 1956) 4:534–536. t. p. ellis, Catholic Martyrs of Wales (London 1933). j. gillow, A Literary and Biographical History or Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics from 1534 to the Present Time, 5 v. (London-New York 1885–1902; repr. New York 1961) 5:431–432.

[g. fitzherbert]