POWELL, EDWARD, Blessed
Theologian, born c. 1478 in Wales, martyred on 30 July 1540 in London. A member of Oriel College, Oxford, he held various ecclesiastical benefices; as a preacher he was highly esteemed by Henry VIII, but when he defended the validity of the king’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon and attacked Anne Boleyn, he was stripped of all his offices by the king and imprisoned in the Tower of London (1534). He was beatified on 29 December 1886.
He wrote: *Propugnaculum summi sacerdotii evangelici ac septentrioni Sacramentorum adversus Lutherium* (London 1523); *De non dissolvendo Henrici regis cum Catharina matrimonio* (ibid., n.d.): a lost work, all copies having been destroyed.
Bibl.: J. Gillow, *Bibliographical dictionary of the English Catholics*, V, London 1902, pp. 355-56; J. Spillmann, *Gesch. der Katholikenverfolgungen in England*, 3rd ed., Freiburg im Br. 1910, p. 245. Hermine Kühn-Steinhausen.