Life

On his own account, he was the grandson of Sir John Mason

Sir John Mason

Sir John Mason was an English diplomat, spy and Member of Parliament.Mason was born in Abingdon in Berkshire , southern England. He was educated at Abingdon School, part of the local abbey in his native town, where his uncle, Thomas Rowland, was abbot. Later, he went to All Souls College, Oxford...

. Mason was admitted at Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, on 29 November 1594, matriculated on 7 January 1595. He may not have graduated; there is possible confusion with another Thomas Mason at Magdalen of the period.

From 1614 to 1619 Mason held the vicarage of Odiham

Odiham

Odiham is a historic village and large civil parish in the Hart district of Hampshire, England. It is twinned with Sourdeval in the Manche Department of France. The current population is 4,406. The parish contains an acreage of 7,354 acres with 50 acres of land covered with water. The nearest...

 in Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, and probably died around 1620. On 13 April 1621 his widow, Helen Mason, obtained a license for twenty-one years to reprint his version of Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Foxe's Book of Martyrs

The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...

for the benefit of herself and her children. 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

Gunpowder Plot

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.The plan was to blow up the House of...

. 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.

Works

He published:

• Christ's Victorie over Sathan's Tyrannie, London, 1615; a condensed version of John Foxe
  John Foxe
  John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
  
  '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.
• A Revelation of the Revelation … whereby the Pope is most plainly declared and proved to be Anti-Christ, London, 1619.

Family

Mason's widow Helen married Stephen Bachiler

Stephen Bachiler

Stephen Bachiler was an English clergyman who was an early proponent of the separation of church and state in America.-Early life:...

, as his second wife, or third wife, in 1627. Richard Dummer

Richard Dummer

Richard Dummer was an early settler in New England who has been described as "one of the fathers of Massachusetts"....

married Thomas and Helen's daughter (Mary) Jane.