He left his parents when about seventeen years of age, on account of having been deprived of some property to which he thought himself entitled, and entered the Dominican friary at Stirling.
According to his own statement, his opposition to the papacy was aroused or confirmed by his two visits to Rome on Dominican business, when he saw ‘with his own eyes that the pope was anti-Christ,’ inasmuch as more reverence was given to him in the procession than to the sacrament.
[1] He acquired such a reputation as a reformist Catholic preacher that in 1543, after the arrest of Cardinal Beaton, the regent Arran procured a dispensation for him to leave the monastery so that he might become one of his chaplains.
[3] On account of the advice, as is supposed, of John Hamilton, Abbot of Arbroath, and David Panter (afterwards bishop of Ross), who had arrived from France, they were both prohibited from preaching; and Rough took refuge in the wild districts of Kyle in Ayrshire, where he remained until after the murder of Cardinal Beaton in 1546.
After his ‘marriage to a countrywoman of his,’ he was appointed by Robert Holgate, Archbishop of York, to a benefice near Hull, where he ministered until the death of Edward VI in 1553, when he fled with his wife to Norden in Friesland.
Having on 10 November 1557 come to London to buy some yarn for his business, he was induced to become minister of the underground church, a secret congregation of protestants who used the 1552 Prayer Book.
On Sergeant's information, Rough was arrested on 12 December, along with other members including the deacon Cutbert Symson, at the Saracen's Head, Islington, where the congregation was meeting.