Robert Persons later known as Robert Parsons, was an English 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.

Early life

Born to yeoman

Yeoman

Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...

 parents, by favour of the local parson John Hayward

John Hayward

Sir John Hayward , English historian, was born at or near Felixstowe, Suffolk, where he was educated, and afterwards proceeded to Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took the degrees of B.A., M.A. and LL.D....

, Parsons was sent in 1562 to St. Mary's Hall, Oxford. After completing his degrees with distinction, he became a fellow and tutor at Balliol

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

 in 1568.

Priesthood

On 13 February, 1574, he was forced to resign because of his strong Catholic leanings. Reconciled overseas through discussions and pupillege with Father William Good, became a Jesuit in St Paul's, Rome on 3 July, 1575.

English mission: 1579–1581

Parsons accompanied Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion

Saint Edmund Campion, S.J. was an English Roman Catholic martyr and Jesuit priest. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Protestant England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. Convicted of high treason by a kangaroo court, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn...

 (who was later canonized) on Campion's mission to aid English Catholics in 1579. The Jesuit General, Everard Mercurian

Everard Mercurian

Everard Mercurian was the fourth Superior General of the Society of Jesus.- Brief Biography :Born Lardinois into a humble family in Marcourt, near La Roche-en-Ardenne in what is now the province of Luxembourg in 1514, in the south-east corner of what is now Belgium. This is the origin of his...

, had been reluctant to involve the Jesuits directly in English affairs. The mission was compromised because the pope had sent a separate group, unbeknownst to the Jesuit mission, to support the Irish rebel, James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald

James FitzMaurice FitzGerald

James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was a member of the 16th century ruling Geraldine dynasty in the province of Munster in Ireland. He rebelled against the crown authority of Queen Elizabeth I of England in response to the onset of the Tudor conquest of Ireland and was deemed an archtraitor...

. Parsons and Campion learned of this in Reims

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....

 while en route to England.

Later life

After Campion's capture, torture, and execution, Parsons left England, never to return. He was associated with Cardinal William Allen in his hopes of a swift conquest of England by the Spanish Armada

Spanish Armada

This article refers to the Battle of Gravelines, for the modern navy of Spain, see Spanish NavyThe Spanish Armada was the Spanish fleet that sailed against England under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia in 1588, with the intention of overthrowing Elizabeth I of England to stop English...

. With the failure of that enterprise, he spent nine years in Spain.

Recalled to Rome in 1585, he was professed there 7 May 1587 and sent to Spain at the close of 1588, to conciliate King Philip, who was offended with Father Acquaviva. Persons was successful, and then made use of the royal favour to found the seminaries of 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....

, Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

, and Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 (1589, 1592, 1598) and the residences of San-Lucar and of Lisbu (which became a college in 1622). Already in 1582 he had founded a school at Eu, in Picardy, in France, the first English Catholic boys' school since the Reformation; and he now succeeded in establishing at St Omer

Saint-Omer

Saint-Omer , a commune and sub-prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais department west-northwest of Lille on the railway to Calais. The town is named after Saint Audomar, who brought Christianity to the area....

 (1594) a larger institution to which the boys from Eu were transferred, and which, after a long and romantic history, still flourishes as Stonyhurst College

Stonyhurst College

Stonyhurst College is a Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is located on the Stonyhurst Estate near the village of Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley area of Lancashire, England, and occupies a Grade I listed building...

 at Stonyhurst

Stonyhurst

Stonyhurst is the name of a rural estate owned by the Society of Jesus near Clitheroe in Lancashire, England. It is dominated by Stonyhurst College, its preparatory school Stonyhurst Saint Mary's Hall and the parish Church of St Peter's.-The Estate:...

.

In 1596, in Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

, he wrote Memorial for the Reformation of England, which gave in some detail a blueprint for the kind of society England was to become after its return to the faith.

He had hoped to succeed Allen as Cardinal on the latter's death. Unsuccessful, he was rewarded with the rectorship of the English College at Rome, the most important seminary for English Catholic priests.

Sources

• Hogge, Alice. God's Secret Agents; Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. HarperCollins: 2005.
• Ceri Sullivan, Dismembered Rhetoric. English Recusant Writing, 1580 1603 (Madison/London: Associated University Press, 1995).