Saints celebrated on the 6th of July
BLESSED THOMAS ALFIELD, PRIEST AND MARTYR
Thomas Alfield, or Aufield, as some call him, was born in Gloucestershire, studied his divinity in the English college then residing in Rheims, where he was made priest in 1581; and so went upon the English mission, where I find him a prisoner in April, 1582.
In the latter end of the year 1583, or the beginning of 1584, there came out a book, penned, as it was supposed, by Cecil, lord treasurer, entitled, The Execution of Justice, &c., or Justitia Britannica. The drift of this book was to persuade the world, that the Catholics, who had suffered in England since the queen's ascension to the crown, had not suffered for religion, but for treason. The book was immediately answered by Dr Allen, and the author fairly convicted of notorious untruths; but people in power will not bear to be told they lie.
Mr Alfield, therefore, who had found means to import into the kingdom some copies of Dr Allen's Modest Answer to the English Persecutors, and had dispersed them, by the help of one Thomas Webley, a dyer; was called to an account, as was also the said Webley, and both the one and the other were most cruelly tortured in prison, I suppose, in order to make them discover the persons to whom they had distributed the said books.
They were afterwards brought to their trial, and condemned on the 5th of July, and suffered at Tyburn on the day following: where both the one and the other had their life offered them if they would renounce the pope, and acknowledge the queen's church headship; which they, refusing to do, were both executed.
From the Douay Journal and Catalogue, and from Dr Bridgewater's collections, fol. 203, 2.
[Fr Thomas was beatified on December 29, 1886 by
Source: Bishop Richard Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests, Volume 1
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