Who Was Saint Alban Roe?

Alban Bartholomew Roe is one of the Forty English and Welsh Martyrs of the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Suffolk in 1583 was educated at Cambridge University and became an ardent and aggressive Protestant at a time when it was illegal to practice the Catholic faith. He is said to have had a meeting with an imprisoned recusant to try and covert him to Protestantism. However, the meeting seemed to have the opposite effect. He became a Roman Catholic in 1587 and went to seminary at the English College in Douai, France, in 1608. He was banished for insubordination three years later but became a Benedictine monk at Dieulouard, Lorraine in Yorkshire (now Ampleforth Abbey). He was ordained in 1615.

He helped to establish a monastery in France, but was arrested on his return to London and imprisoned for five years. He managed to get released thanks to the help of the Spanish Ambassador and was banished from the country. However, he returned and was caught again, this time spending 15 years in prison before being sentenced to death for being a priest and "a seducer of the people". He was hanged, drawn and quartered on 21 January 1642.