Thomas Bell (Catholic priest)

Thomas Bell (fl. 1573–1610) was an English Roman Catholic priest, and later an anti-Catholic writer.

Life

He was born at Raskelf, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1551, and is said to have been beneficed as a clergyman in Lancashire. Subsequently, he became a Roman Catholic, and was imprisoned at York, around 1573. In 1576 he went to Douay College, and in 1579, when twenty-eight, entered the English College, Rome as a student of philosophy. In 1581, by then a priest, he was in the English seminary at Rome, and in the following March (1582) was sent into England. [1]

In 1586 he appears as the associate of Thomas Worthington and other priests in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and elsewhere. He was mentioned in 1592 as one ill-affected to the government, and he shared the fate of other seminary priests in being arrested. He was sent to London; but he recanted, and was sent back to Lancashire to help look for Jesuits. After this he went to Cambridge, where he began the publication of his controversial writings.[1]

After leaving Catholicism he participated in the persecution of Catholics, advocating the use of the rack, leading night time searches of Catholic homes and made a list of Catholics who had previously given him money as well as Lancastrian houses where Catholicism was still practiced.[2]

Works

They include:

In his Jesuites Ante-past he states that Queen Elizabeth granted him a pension of fifty pounds a year, which James I continued.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Sutton 1901.
  2. "Blaming the Victim". Christian Order. June–July 2011. Retrieved March 4, 2013.
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