ROE, ALBAN (BARTHOLOMEW), ST.

Benedictine martyr; b. Suffolk, 1583; executed at Tyburn, Jan. 21, 1642. As an undergraduate at Cambridge he was an ardent Protestant. A visit to a recusant named David in St. Alban's prison, ostensibly to convert him, instead unsettled Roe's own Protestant convictions; he returned to Cambridge very disturbed. After reading, and conferring with Catholic priests, he was received into the Church. In November 1607 Roe applied for admission to the English College at Douai; he was accepted in February 1608. The college was going through a difficult period, and perhaps there was still something of the conceited undergraduate about Roe. In any event, he was dismissed for insubordination in January 1611. Still determined to be a priest and armed with a testimonial from his fellow students, Roe arrived in 1613 at Dieulouard (later Ampleforth) to try his vocation as a Benedictine. He was professed in October 1614, taking the name Alban. The following year he was ordained, and the same year he left for Paris to help found the community of St. Edmund (Woolhampton).

By now Father Alban was no longer a brash undergraduate, and his superiors judged him ready for the English mission. He was caught in 1618, fairly soon after his arrival in England, and imprisoned. Roe was kept in New Prison, Maiden Lane, until 1623, when the Spanish ambassador procured his release. He was banished and warned that if he returned he would die as a traitor. Nevertheless, after a short stay at St. Gregory's, Douai (later Downside), he returned. Within two years he was again apprehended and, by a strange turn of fate, committed to jail in St. Albans, the same prison in which his encounter with the recusant had occurred. Friends succeeded in obtaining his transfer to the Fleet Prison in London. He then began a long prison apostolate. Charles I was a relatively lenient monarch, and the Fleet, a lax prison, so that Roe was able not only to minister to the Catholics inside the prison but to go out on parole. This arrangement ended at the time of the anti-Catholic Long Parliament. Roe was transferred to Newgate Prison and brought to trial on Jan. 19, 1642. After an initial refusal, Roe consented to be tried by a jury and was charged as a priest and seducer of the people. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. On January 21 he said Mass before the other prisoners and made a short speech to them before his execution. He was beatified on Dec. 15, 1929 and canonized on Oct. 25, 1970, as one of the england, scotland, and wales, martyrs of.

Feast: May 4; Oct. 25.

Bibliography: b. camm, Nine Martyr Monks … (London 1931). r. challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, ed. j. h. pollen (rev. ed. London 1924). j. mccann and c. caryelwes, eds., Ampleforth and Its Origins (London 1952). j. forbes, Blessed Alban Roe (Postulation Pamphlet; London 1960). j. h. pollen, Acts of English Martyrs (London 1891).

[g. fitzherbert]