From his satin doublet to the tip of his gilt-handled rapier, John Gerard was the classic Elizabethan gentleman. He was tall and handsomely dark. The son of a noble Lancashire family, he had studied at Oxford, and spoke excellent French and Latin. He was a dashing horseman and a minor authority on falconry and the chase.
But there was one thing that set Gerard apart from other English gentlemen of his time: he was a Jesuit priest. Under the fine doublet he wore a monastic hair shirt. Concealed in his saddlebags he carried a Mass kit and a Latin breviary. For 17...
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