Blessed Thomas Abel

Thomas Abel (or Abell) (ca. 1497 – 30 July 1540) was an English priest who was martyred during the reign of Henry VIII. The place and date of his birth are unknown. He was educated at Oxford, where in 1516 he took the degree of Master of Arts, and subsequently acquired a doctorate in theology. He entered the service of Queen Catherine as her chaplain some time before 1528 and appears to have taught the queen modern languages and music. Catherine sent him to Spain in 1528 to the emperor Charles V on a mission relating to the proposed divorce. On his return she presented him with the parochial benefice of Bradwell, in Essex, and he remained to the last a staunch supporter of the unfortunate queen in the case of the validity of her marriage with Henry VIII. In 1532, he published his Invicta veritas. An answere, That by no manner of law, it may be lawfull for the most noble King of England, King Henry the eight to be divorced from the queens grace, his lawfull and very wife. B.L.. Abel's treatise was printed by Merten de Keyser in Antwerp with the fictitious pressmark of Luneberge, to avoid suspicion. The work contained an answer to the numerous tracts supporting Henry's ecclesiastical claims. The king bought up copies of the book in order to destroy them. For this he was thrown into the Beauchamp Tower in the Tower of London, 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 Smithfield, two days after the execution of Thomas Cromwell. There is still to be seen on the wall of his prison in the Tower of London a rebus consisting of the symbol of a bell with an A upon it and the name Thomas above, which he carved during his confinement.