Powell, Edward

, a learned popish divine, was bora about the latter part of the sixteenth century, and was educated at Oxford. He appears to have been fellow of Oriel | college in 1495, and afterwards became D. D. and was accounted one of the ornaments of the university. In November 1501, he was made rector of Bledon, in the diocese of Wells, and in July 1503 was collated to the prebend Centum solidorum, in the church of Lincoln, as well as to the prebend of Carleton. In 1508, by the interest of Edmund Audley, bishop of Salisbury, he was made prebendary of that church, and in 1525 became prebendary of Sutton in Marisco, in the church of Lincoln. In November 1514, Pope Leo gave him a licence to hold three benefices, otherwise incompatible. His reputation for learning induced Henry VIII. to employ him to write against Luther, which he did in a work entitled “Propugnaculum summi sacerdotii evangelici, ac septenarii sacramentorum numeri adversus M. Lutherum, fratrem famosum, et Wickliffistam insignem,” Lond. 1523, 4to. This performance, says Dodd, was commonly allowed to be the best that had hitherto been published. There are two public letters from the university of Oxford, one to the king, the other to bishop Audley, applauding the choice of a person so well qualified to maintain the cause of the church and in these letters, they style him the glory of their university, and recommend him as a person worthy of the highest preferment. But all this could not protect him from the vengeance of Henry VIII. when he came to employ his learning and zeal in defence of queen Catherine, and the supremacy of the see of Rome, on both which articles he was prosecuted, hanged, drawn, and quartered in Smithfield, July 30, 1540, along with Dr. Thomas Abel, and Dr. Richard Fetherstone, who suffered on the same account. He wrote in defence of queen Catherine, “Tractatus de uon dissolvendo Henrici regis cum Catherina matrimonio” but it is doubtful if this was printed. Stow, indeed, says it was printed in 4to, and that he had seen it, but no copy is now known. Mr. Churton, in his “Lives of the Founders of Brazenose college,” mentions Dr. Powell’s preaching a Latin sermon, in a very elegant style, at the visitation of bishop Smyth at Lincoln. ¹