He threw the last thing he possessed to the crowd

Saint John Ogilvie (1579-1615) was a Jesuit martyr who was executed in Glasgow, Scotland, by Anglican Protestants on March 10, 1615. Why? Because he would not renounce the pope by submitting to the outrageous heresy that the king of England was the head of the Church in the British realms…

Just before they tied his hands on the scaffold the saint quickly pulled out his rosary and tossed it to the crowd as a token of farewell. There was a Protestant Baron, a traveler, who happened to be in the crowd and the rosary bounced off his chest. The man tried to reach down for the beads but was beaten to them by the surrounding faithful anxious to get such a relic … Here is how the event is related, in the words of the Baron:

“Religion was the last thing I was then thinking about: it was not in my mind at all; yet from that moment I had no rest. Those rosary beads had left a wound in my soul; go where I would I had no peace of mind. Conscience was disturbed, and the thought would haunt me: why did the martyr's rosary strike me, and not another? For years I asked myself this question it followed me about everywhere. At last conscience won the day. I became a Catholic; I abandoned Calvinism; and this happy change I attribute to the martyr’s beads, and to no other cause those beads which, if I had them now, gold could not tempt me to part with; and if gold could purchase them, I should not spare it.”

Catholicism.org