Thomas Preston (monk)
Thomas Preston (15633 April 1640?) was an English Benedictine monk serving as one of the leaders of the mission to re-establish the Benedictine Order in England after the closure of monasteries during the 16th century. He is also remembered for his writings upholding the cause of James I of England in the allegiance oath controversy. Life. Born in Shropshire, Preston studied in the English College, Rome, where he was taught by Gabriel Vasquez. He joined the Benedictine Order at Monte Cassino in 1590. Following the decree granted by the Inquisition and confirmed by Clement VIII in  1602 for a mission to the Benedictines in England, Preston and Anselm Beech were sent to England in the spring of 1603. They landed at Great Yarmouth and made contact with Sigebert Buckley, last survivor of the monks of St. Peter, Westminster, who had recently been released from imprisonment in Framlingham. They lived with Buckley, who by letters of 1607 and 1609 granted and confirmed to them authority to admit brethren to membership of the monastery and Congregation of which he had been the only surviving representative. To Preston, already the superior of the English of the Congregation of Monte  Cassino, he entrusted the care of the English Congregation. Buckley died in 1610. Meanwhile, Preston had been indicted as a priest, and was soon afterwards imprisoned. Expelled from England three years later, he took part at Rheims in the negotiations for the union of the English monks of Monte Cassino, Valladolid, and the old English Congregation. He returned to England and was again imprisoned, first in The Clink in Southwark, and later in Croydon Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Preston passed much of the rest of his life in prison. He died in The Clink prison, 5 April 1640 . In one prison or another he wrote, under the assumed name of Widdrington, several works treating of the oath of allegiance. Preston "evermore disowned" the books written under the name of Widdrington, but there is no doubt that he was the author of them. Towards the end of his life, however, he seems to have altered his views, or at any rate to have made full submission on the question of the oath to the authorities of Rome. Works. Preston took the pen name of Roger Widdrington for his controversial writings, concealing his own authorship, and using the real name  of a Roman Catholic squire in Northumberland, a Bailiff of Hexham who was associated with the recusant Radcliffe family and the conspirator Thomas Percy. These publications upheld the oath of allegiance to King James I which the King himself was proposing (Preston being one of the group of Benedictines and secular priests who were apologists for it), against the opposing policy of the Jesuits. The 1611 "Apologia" was given a false imprimatur although in fact being published in London by government order: it is possible that the real Widdrington was complicit in the use of his name, though it was  quickly recognised that he was unlikely to be the true author. Among his works are: Schulckenius was Adolf Schulcken, a Dutch theologian and supporter of Robert Bellarmine, thought at the time by many opponents to be pseudonymous.