John Gerard (4 October 1564 – 27 July 1637)[1] was a priest of the Society of Jesus who operated a secret ministry of the underground Catholic Church in England during the Elizabethan era.
He was born into the English nobility as the second son of Sir Thomas Gerard at Old Bryn Hall, near Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire. After attending seminary and being ordained abroad, Gerard returned to England covertly shortly after the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. Fr. Gerard not only successfully hid from the English authorities for eight years before his capture but also endured extensive torture, escaped from the Tower of London, recovered and continued with his covert mission until the exposure of the Gunpowder Plot made it impossible to continue.
After his escape to Catholic Europe, Fr. Gerard was instructed by his Jesuit superiors to write a book about his life in Latin.[2] An English translation by Fr. Philip Caraman was published in 1951 as John Gerard: Autobiography of an Elizabethan and is a rare first-hand account of the dangerous cloak-and-dagger world of a Catholic priest in Elizabethan England.[3] Ignatius Press published a second edition in 2012 under the title "The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest: John Gerard, S.J."