Robert Parsons

Robert Parsons (born Robert Persons, 1546-1610) was an English Jesuit priest in the 16th century. He secretly and illegally ministered to English Catholics during Elizabeth I's reign and went into exile after his companion, St Edward Campion, was caught and executed in 1581. He lived out his life in exile, founding seminaries around Catholic Europe, and publishing Memorial for the Reformation of England.

Robert Parsons in Ruled Britannia
Robert Parsons (1546-1598) returned from exile in 1588 when the Spanish Armada and the Duke of Parma's Spanish army conquered England in 1588, desposed Queen Elizabeth, and installed Queen Isabella and King Albert as monarchs. Isabella and Albert reintroduced Catholicism as England's official state religion. At this point, Pope Sixtus V made Parsons a cardinal and assigned him to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury.

In 1597, Cardinal Parsons enlisted the help of Spanish playwright and soldier Lope de Vega in the investigation of the English playwright William Shakespeare. Parsons suspected a conspiracy in the English theater, in part because the alchemist Edward Kelley called out to Shakespeare before being executed by the English Inquisition in an auto da fe. Apparently, Parsons's encounters with persecuted Catholic John Shakespeare several years earlier had not absolved the younger Shakespeare of suspicion in the Cardinal's mind. See: Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work.

After the successful English rebellion, inspired by Shakespeare's play, Boudicca, Elizabeth returned to the throne. She ordered Parsons executed and his head placed on a pike outside St. Paul's Cathedral.