GARNET, THOMAS, Blessed. - Jesuit, martyr, b. at Southwark (London) in 1575, d. on the scaffold at Tyburn, London, on 23 June 1608. He pursued his ecclesiastical studies abroad, at the Colleges of St. Omer and Valladolid; then, ordained priest (1599), he worked in the English itinerant mission.
Received into the Society of Jesus by his uncle Enrico (1604), he was imprisoned (1606) and then expelled from England, where, however, he returned to his ministry in 1607. But, since the “Gunpowder Plot” had intensified the persecutory laws, he was discovered, arrested, and, having refused to pronounce the oath of allegiance, by which the king was acknowledged as supreme arbiter even of consciences, condemned to death. He was beatified by Pius XI in 1929.