[The following takes place during the legal dispute that would end the marriage between Henry VIII of England and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. It was a horribly messy and public divorce that would later turn into one of the larger sparks responsible for setting off the Protestant Reformation and religious dogma throughout Europe. Most seem to be of the opinion that Henry did this for selfish reasons (though the matter of a male successor complicates such arguments), and that Catherine, who by all accounts still loved Henry and who was loyal to him, was devastated and defended her case viciously, to no avail.
In particular, this is about Thomas Abell, an English diplomat who defied his King and whose conscience recognized that Catherine was being treated unfairly, and which guided his actions in defending her case until he was executed for refusing to retract his opinions. He’s one of the little-known figures of history that deserve respect and remembrance. By all accounts, he was a good man.]
The official messenger had been selected already, Thomas Abell, one of the Queen’s chaplains, a convincing bearer for what was meant to look like a confidential personal appeal. Catherine, suspicious of Abell or anyone picked out by her enemies, was driven to committing a brief verbal message to one Montoya, a Spaniard who was accompanying Abell as guide and interpreter.
One would like to know more of this Thomas Abell, whom Wolsey selected for his attempt to impose on the [Spanish] Emperor, and whom Catherine, for all her knowledge of the English, felt she could not trust. A shy, reserved man, one imagines, seeming cold and self-centered, even to those who had observed him casually for years, slow to make up his mind on a difficult question and even slower to speak it, but unshakeable, once his teeth were set, by all the legions of hell.
On the outvoyage [to Spain] Montoya must have gabbed to him something of the Queen’s secret, and Abell must have seen, what Catherine knew, how leaky a can this courier was. For when they reached the Emperor’s court it was Thomas Abell who took full charge of the Queen’s interests, drew up a businesslike Latin document setting forth succinctly the reasons why the original brief must be kept safe in Spain, suggesting, what neither Catherine nor Mendoza had thought of, a properly attested notarial copy, valid in any Church court, and summarizing crisply the steps the Emperor should take to prevent his aunt’s divorce.
He waited calmly, this quiet clergyman, amid the smells and chatter of the strange, foreign city, until his attested copy was ready, and calmly took it back with him, to settle down and write a book against the King’s case – a good book, a devastating book, which he published in the teeth of the King’s campaign of terror, and for which, and for his obstinate refusal to retract a line of it, he spent the last six years of his life in the Tower [of London], and died, when his persecutors tired of trying to break his spirit, at the hands of the common hangman.
When Mendoza, furious at the behavior of Catherine’s counsel, wrote that “in matters of self-interest the English are without conscience or common honesty,” he was not thinking of men like Thomas Abell.
Source:
Mattingly, Garrett. “Part III: The Divorce of Henry VIII (1527-1536); Chapter Two, Section ii” Catherine of Aragon. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 276-77. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Ellis, Original Letters, I, 88.
Further Reading:
The Blessed Thomas Abel (or Abell)
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