Rev John Rough


This pious martyr was a Scotchman: at the age of 17, he entered himself

as one of the order of Black Friars, at Stirling, in Scotland. He had

been kept out of an inheritance by his friends, and he took this step in

revenge for their conduct to him. After being there sixteen years, Lord

Hamilton, Earl of Arran, taking a liking to him, the archbishop of St.

Andrew's induced the provincial of the house to dispense with his habit

and order; and he thus became the Earl's chaplain. He remained in this

spiritual employment a year, and in that time God wrought in him a

saving knowledge of the truth; for which reason the Earl sent him to

preach in the freedom of Ayr, where he remained four years; but finding

danger there from the religious complexion of the times, and learning

that there was much gospel freedom in England, he travelled up to the

duke of Somerset, then Lord Protector of England, who gave him a yearly

salary of twenty pounds, and authorized him, to preach at Carlisle,

Berwick, and Newcastle, where he married. He was afterward removed to a

benefice at Hull, in which he remained till the death of Edward VI.



In consequence of the tide of persecution then setting in, he fled with

his wife to Friesland, and at Nordon they followed the occupation of

knitting hose, caps, &c. for subsistence. Impeded in his business by the

want of yarn, he came over to England to procure a quantity, and on Nov.

10th, arrived in London, where he soon heard of a secret society of the

faithful, to whom he joined himself, and was in a short time elected

their minister, in which occupation he strengthened them in every good

resolution. Dec. 12th, through the information of one Taylor, a member

of the society, Mr. Rough, with Cuthbert Symson and others, was taken up

in the Saracen's Head, Islington, where, under the pretext of coming to

see a play, their religious exercises were holden. The queen's

vice-chamberlain conducted Rough and Symson before the council, in whose

presence they were charged with meeting to celebrate the communion. The

council wrote to Bonner and he lost no time in this affair of blood. In

three days he had him up, and on the next (the 20th) resolved to condemn

him. The charges laid against him were, that he, being a priest, was

married, and that he had rejected the service in the Latin tongue. Rough

wanted not arguments to reply to these flimsy tenets. In short, he was

degraded and condemned.



Mr. Rough, it should be noticed, when in the north, in Edward the VIth's

reign, had saved Dr. Watson's life, who afterward sat with bishop

Bonner on the bench. This ungrateful prelate, in return for the kind act

he had received, boldly accused Mr. Rough of being the most pernicious

heretic in the country. The godly minister reproved him for his

malicious spirit; he affirmed that, during the thirty years he had

lived, he had never bowed the knee to Baal; and that twice at Rome he

had seen the pope borne about on men's shoulders with the false-named

sacrament carried before him, presenting a true picture of the very

antichrist; yet was more reverence shown to him than to the wafer, which

they accounted to be their God. "Ah?" said Bonner, rising up, and making

towards him, as if he would have torn his garment, "hast thou been at

Rome, and seen our holy father the pope, and dost thou blaspheme him

after this sort?" This said, he fell upon him, tore off a piece of his

beard, and, that the day might begin to his own satisfaction, he ordered

the object of his rage to be burnt by half past five the following

morning.



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