Robert Johnson, a Shropshire native, was a Catholic priest and martyr during the reign of Elizabeth I. Robert Johnson had grown up in one of the four parishes of Claverley, Hales, Owen or Worfield in what was then the Anglican Diocese of Worcester.
After a pilgrimage to Rome in 1579 he returned to England in 1580, was arrested on 12 July and put in the Poultry Counter.
[4] Johnson was one of 19 priests who stood trial with St Edmund Campion in Westminster Hall in the late autumn of 1581.
They were charged with treason under an Act of 1351 that did not pertain to religion but to a fictitious conspiracy against the Queen known as the "Plot of Rome and Rheims".
The purpose was to send out the message that the priests were not condemned for their faith but for conspiring against the Queen, an accusation which they adamantly denied.