POWELL, EDWARD, blessed. – Theologian, born ca. 1478 in Wales, he suffered martyrdom 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 marriage to Catherine of Aragon and attacked Anne Boleyn, the King deprived him of all his offices and imprisoned him in the Tower of London (1534). He was beatified on 29 Dec. 1886.
He wrote: Propaguaculum summi sacerdotii evangelici ac septenarii Sacramentorum adversus Lutherum (London 1523); De non dissolvendo Henrici regis cum Catharina matrimonio (there, n.d.): a lost work, since all copies were destroyed.
BIBL.: J. Gillow, Bibliographical dictionary of the English Catholics, V, London 1902, pp. 355–56; J. Spillmann, Gesch. der Katholikverfolgungen in England, 3rd ed., Freiburg in Br. 1910, p. 245. Hermine Kühn-Steinhausen