Page "Thomas Abel" Paragraph 3

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.

For this he was thrown 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 Smithfield, two days after the execution of Thomas Cromwell.

Abel was sentenced to " be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, there to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast in the fire, your bowels burnt before your eyes, your head smitten off, your body to be quartered at the King's will, and God have mercy on your soul.

" 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.

He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as one of a group of fifty-four English Martyrs on 29 December 1886.