Bl. Thomas Abel
(Also ABLE, or ABELL.)
Priest and martyr, born
about 1497; died 30 July, 1540. He was chaplain to Queen Catharine,
and defender of the validity of her marriage with Henry VIII, for
which reason he was eventually put to death. He was a graduate of
Oxford, and appears to have taught the queen modern languages and
music. After a journey to Spain in her behalf, he received the
parochial benefice of Bradwell in Sussex. He soon published (May,
1532?) in defence of the queen's marriage a work entitled:
"Invicta Veritas, an answer to the determination of the most famous
Universities, that by no manner of law it may be lawful for King
Henry to be divorced from the Queen's grace, his lawful and very
wife". For this he was thrown (1532) into Beauchamp Tower, and
after a year's liberation again imprisoned, in December, 1533, on
the charges of disseminating the prophecies of the Maid of Kent,
encouraging the queen "obstinately to persist in her wilful opinion
against the same divorce and separation", and maintaining her right
to the title of queen. He was kept in close confinement until his
execution at Tyburn, two days after the execution of Cromwell
himself. There is extant a very pious Latin letter written by him
to a fellow-martyr, and another to Cromwell, begging for some
slight mitigation of his "close prison" -- i.e. "license to go to
church and say Mass here within the Tower and for to lie in some
house upon the Green". It is signed "by your daily bedeman, Thomas Abell, priest". His act of attainder states that he and three
others "have most traitorously adhered themselves unto the bishop
of Rome, being a common enemy unto your Majesty and this your
Realm, refusing your Highness to be our and their Supreme Head of
this your Realm of England". There is in Beauchamp Tower a rebus
of the Martyr, probably executed by himself; the figure of a bell
carved on the wall, the letter A in front and the word "Thomas"
above. He is one of the fifty-four English martyrs beautified by Leo XIII 29 Dec., 1886.
POLLEN, Lives of the English Martyrs, I (London, 1904), 462-83.
THOMAS J. SHAHAN
Transcribed by Thomas M. Barrett
Dedicated to the Poor Souls in Purgatory
The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia