Thomas Mason (priest)

On his own account, his father was the heir of Sir John Mason.^[1] Mason was admitted at Magdalen College, Oxford, on 29 November 1594, matriculated on 7 January 1595.^[1] He may not have graduated; there is possible confusion with another Thomas Mason at Magdalen of the period.^[1]

From 1614 to 1619, Mason held the vicarage of Odiham in Hampshire, and probably died around 1620. On 13 April 1621 his widow, Helen Mason, obtained a licence for twenty-one years to reprint his version of Foxe's Book of Martyrs for the benefit of herself and her children.^[1][2] Its dedications to George Abbot and Sir Edward Coke probably proved their value in getting this protection, for a book that reflected typical political prejudices of the time after the Gunpowder Plot.^[3] About ten years later Helen Mason's attempt to stretch the monopoly to cover a new abridgement of Foxe's work ran into a legal rebuff.^[4]

He published:

• Christ's Victorie over Sathan's Tyrannie, London, 1615; a condensed version of John Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs,’ with extracts from other works. The running title is ‘The Acts of the Church.’ An enlarged edition appeared in 1747–8 in 2 vols., edited by "Rev. Mr. Bateman, Rector of St. Bartholomew the Great", i.e. Richard Thomas Bateman.^[5][6]
• A Revelation of the Revelation … whereby the Pope is most plainly declared and proved to be Anti-Christ, London, 1619.^[1]

Mason's widow Helen married Stephen Bachiler, as his second wife,^[7] or third wife, in 1627. Richard Dummer married Thomas and Helen's daughter (Mary) Jane.