St John Roberts

Today is the Anniversary of the execution of one of the many namesakes of mine.  Saint (for that is how he has become known) John Roberts was Welsh (as Robertses always ultimately are), born in 1577 to a farming family.

Namesake he may have been, but in very many ways our paths seem quite opposite.  Born into a Protestant home John was converted to Catholicism in France.  In the febrile world of Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious politics he found himself in the wrong religion in the wrong place.

In returning from Europe to London he knew he was in mortal danger, but he wanted to work among London's poor anyhow.  From this act of foolery or bravery came his execution.  Yet even at his Tyburn execution the usual cruelties of that age were mitigated by his popularity with the poor.  They would not permit the authorities to treat his body with quite the cruelty they normally would have done - at least not before he was dead.  London has a very long list of cruelties on its hands;  it has also, as Charles Dickens for one reminds us, always had plenty of The Poor.

From his village birth to die at 33 years of age in the capital city after having a reputation for looking after the poor?  Well, for all my Protestantism I can see some reasons to think of him as saintly and a reminder of Someone else.