The following is a guest submission by Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore.
Evidence from English Catholics in Recusant England during the late 16th and early 17th centuries, who were devoted to the rosary, demonstrates historian Lisa McClain’s point perfectly and how the rosary brought solace in the midst of tribulation.[1] Fr. Alexander Brian, who was arrested by Protestant authorities on April 18, 1581, experienced harsh torments in the Tower of London for his faith, not relenting to renounce his faith or expose any information about his priestly duties or fellow Catholics.[2] One day when Fr. Brian waited to be tortured he wrote a letter in which he stated:
The same day that I was first tormented on the rack, before I came to the place, giving my mind to prayer, and commending myself and all mine to our Lord, I was replenished and filled up with a kind of supernatural sweetness of spirit; and even while I was calling upon the most holy name of Jesus, and upon the Blessed Virgin Mary (for I was saying the Rosary), my mind was cheerfully disposed, well comforted, and readily prepared and bent to suffer and endure those torments which even then I most certainly looked for, &c.[3]
Fr. Brian’s peace of mind continued throughout his torture on the rack that day and the next, dwelling upon the Passion of Christ before his second day’s torment, and his eventual martyrdom in 1581.[4]
Another example comes from Fr. William Davies, who was arrested around March 20, 1591/1592, and endured dark prison cells and forced at one point to be at a Protestant service.[5] While in prison with four other Catholics, Fr. Davies organized times of prayer, spiritual readings, and mass services with his fellow Catholics, which included “recit[ing] together the Litanies of the Blessed Virgin, and the remainder of the afternoon and evening they spent in their studies and in reciting their rosary, and Mr. Davies in mental prayer and in treating with those that came to him about the concerns of their souls.”[6] Fr. Davies eventually suffered martyrdom on July 27, 1593, enduring around sixteen months in prison.[7]
Fr. John Gerard, S.J., committed himself to the rosary as well. Fr. Gerard was a Jesuit missionary who began his mission in England in 1588 while still a novice.[8] Eventually, after serving English Catholics for six years, Fr. Gerard was arrested in 1594.[9] But he demonstrated his love for the rosary and how the English laity desired it while he stayed in the Tower in 1597.[10] Fr. Gerard recorded the following in his autobiography, which took place while he was in the Tower and after suffering extreme torture by enduring being hanged by his wrists in iron gauntlets; he wrote:
My finger exercises consisted in cutting up the orange peel into small crosses; then I stitched the crosses together in pairs and strung them on to a silk thread, making them into rosaries…My next move was to ask the warder to take some of the crosses and rosaries to my friends in my old prison. As he did not think that any harm could come from this, he consented…then [I] asked him for some paper to wrap the rosaries in, and, lastly, I obtained his leave to write a few lines in charcoal, begging my friends to pray for me. All this he [the warder] allowed, suspecting nothing at all in my action; but, in fact, on the same sheet of paper I wrote to my friends in orange juice, telling them to reply in the same way if they received the note, but not to say much at first, and to give the warder a little money, promising him something each time he brought them a rosary or cross and a short written message from me assuring them that I was well. My friends received the rosary wrapped in paper.[11]
Fr. Gerard again took time to hand out one of his handmade rosaries when he stated that he desired to have his warder transport to another prisoner “one of my crosses or rosaries.”[12] Fr. Gerard’s account demonstrates not only his love of the rosary but the love that English Catholic laypeople possessed of praying the rosary during these dark days in England, consenting to pray the devotion even on orange peels.
Fr. Edward Barlow, O.P., and Fr. Thomas Everard, S.J., also serve as examples of rosary devotion and how it brought consolation. Fr. Barlow began to serve as a missionary in the region of Lancashire around 1615, and Bishop Challoner explains how this faithful Dominican possessed a great love for the rosary during his ministry: “He [Fr. Barlow] had also a great devotion to the rosary which he daily recited, and recommended much to his penitents; and was very tenderly affected with the sacred mysteries of the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of the Son of God (which he there contemplated), and was much devoted to His blessed Mother.”[13] Fr. Barlow stayed in England and continued his ministry until his martyrdom on September 10, 1641.[14] Fr. Everard, a Jesuit missionary among the English from 1603-1604, 1617-1620, and from 1623 until his death in 1633, lived in a house in London during his older years and experienced days of being alone in his residence.[15] But Fr. Everard’s constant companion was the rosary, for Fr. Henry More, S.J., described how Fr. Everard “was accustomed to wile away his loneliness by the continual recitation of the rosary and other prayers, especially the Jesus psalter, which he used from boyhood.”[16]
For the English Catholics of Protestant England during the mid 16th and early 17th centuries, the rosary was a source of consolation and devotion in which the Catholic faith was kept alive their hearts, minds, and souls. The rosary was a refuge for these exiles in their own country, and it served as way to receive God’s grace continually in their daily lives, even when they received the sacraments became very few and far between and endured torture and martyrdom. The rosary was a simple yet powerful weapon for the English Catholics that bound them to Christ and His Holy Mother. Will you give it the same chance to benefit your spiritual life, like the English Catholics did? If they were willing to devoutly pray the rosary on orange skins, certainly we can be willing to pray our well constructed rosaries every day.
[1] “As English Catholic needs for comfort, protection, and saving grace grew, so too did their reliance upon Mary as protector and intercessor. As the ability of English Catholics to invoke Mary’s aid through Marian cathedrals, chapels, altars, shrines, images, relics, and public prayers decreased, their reliance upon the rosary to access Mary increased” (Lisa McClain, “Using What’s at Hand: English Catholic Reinterpretations of the Rosary, 1559–1642,” The Journal of Religious History 27, no. 2 (June 2003):174).
[2] Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, As Well Secular as Regular, and of Other Catholics of Both Sexes, That Have Suffered Death in England on Religious Accounts from the Year of Our Lord 1577 to 1684, ed. John Hungerford Pollen, (New York, NY: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1924), 35-36.
[3] Emphasis added. Bishop Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, 37.
[4] Ibid, 37-38.
[5] Ibid, 190-193.
[6] Ibid, 194.
[7] Ibid, 196.
[8] Bernard Basset, S.J., The English Jesuits: From Campion to Martindale, (New York, NY: Herder and Herder, 1967), 110, 128.
[9] Basset, S.J., The English Jesuits, 131. Fr. Donald H. Calloway, M.I.C., Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon, (Stockbridge, MA: Marian Press, 2016), 84.
[10] Basset, S.J., The English Jesuits, 131.
[11] Fr. John Gerard, The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest, trans. Philip Caraman, (Garden City, NY: Image Books), 132, 137, 145, 146.
[12] Ibid, 158.
[13] Bishop Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, 393, 394.
[14] Ibid, 396, 399-400.
[15] Fr. Henry More, The Elizabethan Jesuits: Historia Missionis Anglicanae Societatis Jesu (1660) of Henry More, ed. and trans. Fr. Francis Edwards, S.J., (London, UK: Phillimore, 1981), 313, 314. Thomas Cooper, “Everard, Thomas,” in Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Vol. 18, Wikisource, accessed March 23, 2025, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Everard,_Thomas.
[16] Fr. More, The Elizabethan Jesuits, 314.
Dr. Daniel T. L. Moore earned his B.S. in History (2019), M.A. in History (2021), and Ph.D. in History (2025) from Liberty University. During his Ph.D. studies, he converted from Reformed Protestantism to Catholicism, along with his seven living siblings, instrumentally being brought in by their father who reverted to the faith. His dissertation is titled “‘Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam: The Religious and Political Missions of the American-Catholic Military Chaplaincy during the Mexican-American War,” which will be taken and published as his first book. He also runs a scholarly YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TheSt.BedeCenter), Instagram page (https://www.instagram.com/thestbedecenter/), and Substack account (https://substack.com/@thestbedecenter), named The St. Bede Center, where he posts Catholic and Catholic-related history content for academics and history buffs to learn and enjoy alike. He is also a freelance writer for 1Peter5, with his first article to be published this April, a history teacher for Scholè Academy, and a freelance editor for Arouca Press. He lives in North Carolina with his large family.
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