Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Filcock, Roger
FILCOCK, ROGER (d. 1601), jesuit, a native of Sandwich, Kent, arrived at the English College of Douay, then temporarily removed to Rheims, on 15 June 1588, and was enrolled among the grammarians and batelers. On 29 Sept. 1590 he was sent with nine other students to colonise the seminary of St. Alban, which had just been founded at Valladolid by Philip II of Spain (Douay Diaries, p. 234). After his ordination he petitioned to be sent on the English mission. He had long desired to enter the Society of Jesus, but Father Henry Garnett, the superior, from prudential motives declined to admit him until he had had two years' experience of the English mission, to which he was sent in 1598. At the expiration of that time he entered the society and was about to proceed to Flanders for his two years' noviceship, when he was apprehended and committed to Newgate, where he made a brief probation of a few months instead. On 23 Feb. 1600–1 he was arraigned, under the statute of 27 Elizabeth, for being a priest and coming into this realm. He was convicted upon the bare suspicion of his being a priest, for he neither admitted nor denied that he was one, and no evidence was produced. He was executed at Tyburn on 27 Feb. 1601. Mark Barkworth [q. v.], a Benedictine monk, and Mrs. Ann Line suffered at the same time. Filcock's portrait has been engraved.
[Challoner's Missionary Priests (1741), i. 395; Douay Diaries, p. 219; Foley's Records, i. 405, vii. 254; Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, 5th ed. i. 276; Kobler's Martyrer und Bekenner der Gesellschaft Jesu in England, p. 151; Morris's Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, i. 158, 181; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 90; Tanner's Societas Jesu usque ad Sanguinis et Vitæ profusionem militans, p. 50.]