ABEL (ABLE, ADBLE), THOMAS, Blessed. - English theologian, d. at Smithfield on 30 July 1540. In 1516 he became Magister Artium at Oxford and was appointed domestic chaplain to Queen Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII.
A staunch defender of the marriage bond, he worked to strengthen the queen in the same convictions. Against Henry VIII he wrote first Invicta veritas (Luneburg: fictitious place of printing, 1533), and then a Tractatus de non dissolvendo Henrici et Catharinae matrimonio (1534). After six and a half years in prison he was condemned with others, including Edward Powel and Featherstone, to be beheaded. He was beatified by Leo XIII in 1886.
BIBL.: B. Camm, Lives of the English Martyrs, I, London 1904, pp. 463-83; J. H. Pollen, Acts of the English Martyrs, I, London 1904, pp. 462-83; J. Spillmann, Geschichte der Katholikervorfolung in England, I, 3rd ed., Freiburg im Br. 1910, pp. 276-83.