10 Facts About Thomas Garnet

Thomas Garnet, SJ was an English Jesuit priest who was executed in London during the English Reformation.

Thomas Garnet was executed at Tyburn and is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Thomas Garnet was born into a prominent family in Southwark.

Thomas Garnet's example provided leadership to a generation of Oxford men which was to produce Edmund Campion, Robert Persons, and other English Catholics.

Thomas Garnet met a confessor named James Atkinson who, under torture, had divulged names.

Thomas Garnet fell ill and was sent home under bond to return to custody at Oxford by a certain day.

Thomas Garnet was now imprisoned first in the Gatehouse, then in the Tower, where he was tortured in order to make him give evidence against Henry Thomas Garnet, his famous uncle, superior of the English Jesuits, who had recently admitted him into the Society of Jesus.

The authorities suspected that Henry Thomas Garnet was implicated in the plot, for which suspicion he was later executed.

Thomas Garnet now went to his old school at Saint Omer, then to Brussels to see the superior of the Jesuits, Baldwin, his companion in the adventures of 1595.

Thomas Garnet was offered his life if he would take the oath, but he steadfastly refused, and was executed at Tyburn at the age of 32, protesting that he was "the happiest man this day alive".