Alban Roe
English Benedictine martyr
Feast: 21 January (not on the universal Roman calendar; kept in the Roman Martyrology or local calendars)
Who they were
Alban Roe was born in Suffolk in 1583 and educated at Cambridge; visiting a Catholic prisoner at St Albans unsettled his beliefs and led him to the Church. He went to Douai, was professed a Benedictine at Dieulouard in 1612 and returned to the English mission in 1615.
Imprisoned from 1618 to 1623, banished, and arrested again in 1625, he spent years in prison. Condemned for being a priest, he was executed at Tyburn on 21 January 1641 (Old Style) with Thomas Greene, aged eighty.
The miracles
As a martyr he was raised to the altars without a miracle.
Why that counted as sanctity
A convert and Benedictine priest who spent years in prison and died a martyr at Tyburn.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), via New Advent - Venerable Bartholomew (Alban) Roe
- Wikidata Q2267095 — dates, feast day and identifiers (CC0)
- English Wikipedia — Alban Roe (CC BY-SA)
Checked against the sources listed on 21 September 2026. Corrections welcome.