Rosier was born 1 June 1573 in
Winston, Suffolk, the son of James Rosier (d. 1581), a Church of England clergyman, and his wife, Dorothy Johnson. He was baptised 6 days after his birth. After his father's death in 1581, he was brought up in
Ipswich by Robert Wolfrestone, a relative of his mother's, and then in Sir Philip Parker's household. After graduating BA from
Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1593 and MA in 1596, he entered the household of Sir Philip Woodhouse at Kimberley Hall in
Norfolk where he became a Roman Catholic about 1602 under the influence of Lady Woodhouse, a member of the Catholic Yelverton family. Rosier was among those who sailed to present-day Maine with
Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602. About that time he met
Thomas Arundell, who hoped to establish a colony in America for his fellow Catholics. Arundell joined with
Plymouth merchants and perhaps his brother-in-law,
Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, to set forth an expedition under Captain
George Weymouth to explore the Maine coast. The voyage lasted from 5 March to 18 July 1605, with Rosier on board as
cape merchant and reporter. According to
Quinn, there were three versions of Rosier's account of the voyage: a now-lost journal; a manuscript version obtained first by
Hakluyt and then by
Purchas, who abridged it in
Purchas his Pilgrimes in 1624; and yet another manuscript, perhaps edited by Hakluyt, which was published as
A True Relation of the most prosperous voyage made this present year by Captaine George Waymouth in the Discovery of the Land of Virginia: where he discovered 60 miles of a most excellent River; together with a most fertile land, (London, 1605). The exact location of the "excellent river" is not specified, possibly because Rosier was being deliberately vague in order to preserve the expedition's knowledge to secure backing for a future expedition. David C. Morey argues that the expedition explored the
Penobscot River. However, it has also been suggested that he travelled up the
St. George River. The native
Algonquian vocabulary he records has been identified as
Etchemin. More recently it has been argued that it is more likely to be Eastern
Abenaki. For the next two years Rosier was in the service of
Lord Buckhurst. On 7 May 1608 he left for Rome, where he was admitted into the
Jesuit English College. The account he gave there of his life omits his involvement in the voyage of 1605. He was ordained on 18 April 1609, taking the name Philip James. He died at
Loreto later that year on his way back to England to participate in the Jesuits' English mission. ==Footnotes==