Thomas Bell (Catholic priest)
Thomas Bell (fl. 1573–1610) was an English Roman Catholic priest, and later an anti-Catholic writer. Life. He was born at Raskelf, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, in 1551, and is said to have been beneficed as a clergyman in Lancashire. Subsequently, he became a Roman Catholic, and was imprisoned at York, around 1573. In 1576 he went to Douay College, and in 1579, when twenty-eight, entered the English College, Rome as a student of philosophy. In 1581, by then a priest, he was in the English seminary at Rome, and in the following March (1582) was  sent into England. In 1586 he appears as the associate of Thomas Worthington and other priests in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and elsewhere. He was mentioned in 1592 as one ill-affected to the government, and he shared the fate of other seminary priests in being arrested. He was sent to London; but he recanted, and was sent back to Lancashire to help look for Jesuits. After this he went to Cambridge, where he began the publication of his controversial writings. After leaving Catholicism he participated in the persecution of Catholics, advocating the use of the rack, leading night time searches  of Catholic homes and made a list of Catholics who had previously given him money as well as Lancastrian houses where Catholicism was still practiced. Works. They include: In his "Jesuites Ante-past" he states that Queen Elizabeth granted him a pension of fifty pounds a year, which James I continued.