On his return she presented him with the parochial benefice of Bradwell, in Essex,[2] and he remained to the last a staunch supporter of the unfortunate queen in the case of the validity of her marriage with Henry VIII.
B.L.. Abel's treatise was printed by Merten de Keyser in Antwerp with the fictitious pressmark of Luneberge, to avoid suspicion.
There is still to be seen on the wall of his prison in the Tower of London a rebus consisting of the symbol of a bell with an A upon it and the name Thomas above, which he carved during his confinement.
There is extant a very pious Latin letter written by him to a fellow-martyr, and another to Cromwell, begging for some slight mitigation of his "close prison"; "license to go to church and say Mass here within the Tower and for to lie in some house upon the Green".
"[4] Thomas Abel was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as one of a group of fifty-four English Martyrs on 29 December 1886.