- John Percy
John Percy (Piercey; alias John Fisher) (born at
Holmeside ,Durham ,27 September 1569 ; died at London,3 December 1641 ) was an EnglishJesuit priest and controversialist.Life
A Catholic convert aged 14, he went first to
Reims , in 1586, then to theEnglish College, Rome , 1589-94. Returning to Belgium, he entered the Jesuitnovitiate , 2 May, 1594, and then set out for England in 1596. He was, however, arrested by the Dutch, tortured, and sent prisoner to London.He managed to escape, and became the companion of
Father Gerard in several adventures. He was seized atHarrowden (November, 1605) at the time of theGunpowder Plot , but was eventually banished at the request of the Spanish ambassador (1606). Retiring to Belgium he was for a time head of the English Jesuits, then professor of Scripture at theCatholic University of Leuven , after which he returned again to England.He was again imprisoned and condemned to death (1610). He had already begun to write on current controversies, and when
James I of England desired a series of disputations in 1622, Percy, who was then in a prison in London, was required to defend the Catholic side. In these disputations King James himself andWilliam Laud took a leading part. These controversies were afterwards printed and discussed by Percy and John Floyd on the Catholic side, and by Laud, Francis White, John White,Daniel Featley , andAnthony Wotton on the Protestant. [W. B. Patterson, "King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom" (1997), pp. 342-5, for a full account.]Percy was eventually released in 1625 and ordered to banishment in 1635; but he was allowed to remain in London until his death. As a result of Percy's efforts,
Mary, Countess of Buckingham andWilliam Chillingworth became converts to the Catholic Church.References
*
Henry Foley , "Records of the English Province S. J." (London, 1877);
*Sommervogel , "Bibliothèque de la C. de J." (Paris, 1892);
*William Laud , "Conference with Fisher the Jesuit" (London, 1901).Notes
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