Roger Filcock (Blessed)
Encyclopedia
Blessed Roger Filcock was an English
English people
The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 Jesuit
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

 priest. He was beatified as a Catholic martyr by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.

Life

Born at Sandwich, Kent
Sandwich, Kent
Sandwich is a historic town and civil parish on the River Stour in the Non-metropolitan district of Dover, within the ceremonial county of Kent, south-east England. It has a population of 6,800....

, the son of Simon and Margaret Lowe (or Low), he entered the English College at Rheims
Reims
Reims , a city in the Champagne-Ardenne region of France, lies east-northeast of Paris. Founded by the Gauls, it became a major city during the period of the Roman Empire....

 on 15 June 1581. From there he was sent on 29 September 1581 to the English College, Valladolid
English College, Valladolid
The Royal English and Welsh College, Valladolid, under the patronage of St Alban, was founded in 1589 during the protestant reformation for the training of Catholic priests for the English and Welsh Mission....

, where he arrived on 20 February 1591. There is no record of where and when he was ordained a priest, but this happened by October 1597, when he left the college and sailed from Bilbao to Calais
Calais
Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....

 in December. His desire was to enter the Society of Jesus
Society of Jesus
The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

, but it was considered prudent that he first gain some experience on the mission, as indeed he did. He was admitted as a Jesuit novice by Father Henry Garnet
Henry Garnet
Henry Garnet , sometimes Henry Garnett, was a Jesuit priest executed for his complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Born in Derbyshire, he was educated in Nottingham and later at Winchester College, before moving to London in 1571 to work for a publisher...

 in 1600 and should have proceeded to Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

 to the novitiate, but was in the meantime arrested on suspicion of being a priest and sent to Newgate
Newgate
Newgate at the west end of Newgate Street was one of the historic seven gates of London Wall round the City of London and one of the six which date back to Roman times. From it a Roman road led west to Silchester...

 gaol in London.

During his time as a missioner he had known Anne Line
Anne Line
Saint Anne Line was an English martyr who was executed during the reign of Elizabeth I for harbouring a priest. She was born in 1567, the second daughter of Heigham, Esq., of Essex, a strict Calvinist, and was, together with her brother William, disinherited for converting to Catholicism...

, a convert to the Catholic faith and widow whose husband had died in exile after being caught attending Mass. She had managed a variety of safe-houses for priests and lay faithful. Filcock had also been Line's confessor.

On Candlemas Day, 1601, Father Francis Page
Francis Page
Francis Page may refer to:*Francis Page , Roman Catholic priest condemned to death at the same time as James Duckett *Francis Page , MP for Huntingdon and a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and King's Bench...

 was about to celebrate Mass in her lodgings when priest-catchers broke in. The priest escaped in the confusion but his hostess was arrested and put on trial at the Old Bailey on 26 February, either 1601 or 1602, indicted for harbouring a priest. Although this could not be proved, she was condemned and led to the gallows the next day. She was executed at the same occasion as Dom Mark Barkworth
Mark Barkworth
Mark Barkworth was a Catholic priest and martyr .He was born about 1572 at Searby in Lincolnshire. He studied for a time at Oxford, though no record remains of his stay there. He was received into the Catholic Church at Douai in 1593, by Father George, a Flemish Jesuit and entered the College...

, a Benedictine
Benedictine
Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 monk, and Filcock, who had gone on trial on 23 February. This was the first execution of Catholics at Tyburn
Tyburn, London
Tyburn was a village in the county of Middlesex close to the current location of Marble Arch in present-day London. It took its name from the Tyburn or Teo Bourne 'boundary stream', a tributary of the River Thames which is now completely covered over between its source and its outfall into the...

since 1595.

Source

The most reliable compact source is Godfrey Anstruther's Seminary Priests, St Edmund's College, Ware, vol. 1, 1968, pp. 21–22, 116, 274-275.
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