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Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More,[7][8] was an English lawyer, judge,[9] social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532.[10] He wrote Utopia, published in 1516,[11] which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.
More opposed the Protestant Reformation, directing polemics against the theology of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and William Tyndale. More also opposed Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and executed. On his execution, he was reported to have said: “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first”.
Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.[12][13][14]
Early life
Born on Milk Street in the City of London, on 7 February 1478, Thomas More was the son of Sir John More,[15] a successful lawyer and later a judge,[9] and his wife Agnes (née Graunger). He was the second of six children. More was educated at St Anthony’s School, then considered one of London’s best schools.[16][17] From 1490 to 1492, More served John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, as a household page.[18]:xvi Morton enthusiastically supported the “New Learning” (scholarship which was later known as “humanism” or “London humanism”), and thought highly of the young More. Believing that More had great potential, Morton nominated him for a place at the University of Oxford (either in St. Mary Hall or Canterbury College, both now gone).[19]:38
More began his studies at Oxford in 1492, and received a classical education. Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he became proficient in both Latin and Greek. More left Oxford after only two years—at his father’s insistence—to begin legal training in London at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery.[18]:xvii[20] In 1496, More became a student at Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, when he was called to the Bar.[18]:xvii
Spiritual life
According to his friend, the theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career to become a monk.[21][22] Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London and joined in the monks’ spiritual exercises. Although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following year.[18]:xxi
More continued ascetic practices for the rest of his life, such as wearing a hair shirt next to his skin and occasionally engaging in self-flagellation.[18]:xxi A tradition of the Third Order of Saint Francis honours More as a member of that Order on their calendar of saints.[23]
Family life
Rowland Lockey after Hans Holbein the Younger, The Family of Sir Thomas More, c. 1594
More married Jane Colt in 1505. In that year he leased a portion of a house known as the Old Barge (originally there had been a wharf nearby serving the Walbrook river) on Bucklersbury, St Stephen Walbrook parish, London. Eight years later he took over the rest of the house and in total he lived there for almost twenty years, until his move to Chelsea in 1525.[19]:118;271[24][25] Erasmus reported that More wanted to give his young wife a better education than she had previously received at home, and tutored her in music and literature.[19]:119 The couple had four children before Jane died in 1511: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John.[19]:132
Going “against friends’ advice and common custom,” within thirty days More had married one of the many eligible women among his wide circle of friends.[26][27] He chose Alice Middleton, a widow, to head his household and care for his small children.[28] The speed of the marriage was so unusual that More had to get a dispensation from the banns of marriage, which, due to his good public reputation, he easily obtained.[26]
More had no children from his second marriage, although he raised Alice’s daughter from her previous marriage as his own. More also became the guardian of two young girls: Anne Cresacre would eventually marry his son, John More;[19]:146 and Margaret Giggs (later Clement) would be the only member of his family to witness his execution (she died on the 35th anniversary of that execution, and her daughter married More’s nephew William Rastell). An affectionate father, More wrote letters to his children whenever he was away on legal or government business, and encouraged them to write to him often.[19]:150[29]:xiv
More insisted upon giving his daughters the same classical education as his son, an unusual attitude at the time.[19]:146–47 His eldest daughter, Margaret, attracted much admiration for her erudition, especially her fluency in Greek and Latin.[19]:147 More told his daughter of his pride in her academic accomplishments in September 1522, after he showed the bishop a letter she had written:
When he saw from the signature that it was the letter of a lady, his surprise led him to read it more eagerly … he said he would never have believed it to be your work unless I had assured him of the fact, and he began to praise it in the highest terms … for its pure Latinity, its correctness, its erudition, and its expressions of tender affection. He took out at once from his pocket a portague [A Portuguese gold coin] … to send to you as a pledge and token of his good will towards you.[29]:152
More’s decision to educate his daughters set an example for other noble families. Even Erasmus became much more favourable once he witnessed their accomplishments.[19]:149
A portrait of More and his family, Sir Thomas More and Family, was painted by Holbein; however, it was lost in a fire in the 18th century. More’s grandson commissioned a copy, of which two versions survive.
Early political career
Study for a portrait of Thomas More’s family, c. 1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger
In 1504 More was elected to Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth, and in 1510 began representing London.[30]
From 1510, More served as one of the two undersheriffs of the City of London, a position of considerable responsibility in which he earned a reputation as an honest and effective public servant. More became Master of Requests in 1514,[31] the same year in which he was appointed as a Privy Counsellor.[32] After undertaking a diplomatic mission to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, accompanying Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York, to Calais and Bruges, More was knighted and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer in 1521.[32]
As secretary and personal adviser to King Henry VIII, More became increasingly influential: welcoming foreign diplomats, drafting official documents, and serving as a liaison between the King and Lord Chancellor Wolsey. More later served as High Steward for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
In 1523 More was elected as knight of the shire (MP) for Middlesex and, on Wolsey’s recommendation, the House of Commons elected More its Speaker.[32] In 1525 More became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with executive and judicial responsibilities over much of northern England.[32]
Chancellorship
After Wolsey fell, More succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor in 1529. He dispatched cases with unprecedented rapidity.
Campaign against the Protestant Reformation
Sir Thomas More is commemorated with a sculpture at the late-19th-century Sir Thomas More House, Carey Street, London, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice.
More supported the Catholic Church and saw the Protestant Reformation as heresy, a threat to the unity of both church and society. More believed in the theology, argumentation, and ecclesiastical laws of the church, and “heard Luther’s call to destroy the Catholic Church as a call to war.”[33]
His early actions against the Protestant Reformation included aiding Wolsey in preventing Lutheran books from being imported into England, spying on and investigating suspected Protestants,[34] especially publishers, and arresting anyone holding in his possession, transporting, or distributing Bibles and other materials of the Protestant Reformation. Additionally, More vigorously suppressed Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament.[35]
The Tyndale Bible used controversial translations of certain words that More considered heretical and seditious; for example, it used “senior” and “elder” rather than “priest” for the Greek “presbyteros“, and used the term congregation instead of church;[36] he also pointed out that some of the marginal glosses challenged Catholic doctrine.[37] It was during this time that most of his literary polemics appeared.
Many accounts circulated during and after More’s lifetime regarding persecution of the Protestant “heretics” during his time as Lord Chancellor. The popular sixteenth-century English Protestant historian John Foxe, who “placed Protestant sufferings against the background of… the Antichrist”,[38] was instrumental in publicising accusations of torture in his Book of Martyrs, claiming that More had often personally used violence or torture while interrogating heretics. Later authors such as Brian Moynahan and Michael Farris cite Foxe when repeating these allegations.[39] Peter Ackroyd also lists claims from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and other post-Reformation sources that More “tied heretics to a tree in his Chelsea garden and whipped them”, that “he watched as ‘newe men’ were put upon the rack in the Tower and tortured until they confessed”, and that “he was personally responsible for the burning of several of the ‘brethren’ in Smithfield.”[19]:305 Richard Marius records a similar claim, which tells about James Bainham, and writes that “the story Foxe told of Bainham’s whipping and racking at More’s hands is universally doubted today”.[40] More himself denied these allegations:
Stories of a similar nature were current even in More’s lifetime and he denied them forcefully. He admitted that he did imprison heretics in his house – ‘theyr sure kepynge’ – he called it – but he utterly rejected claims of torture and whipping… ‘as help me God.’[19]:298–299
More instead claimed in his “Apology” (1533) that he only applied corporal punishment to two heretics: a child who was caned in front of his family for heresy regarding the Eucharist, and a “feeble-minded” man who was whipped for disrupting prayers.[41]:404 During More’s chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake for heresy; they were Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, Thomas Dusgate, and James Bainham.[19]:299–306 Moynahan argued that More was influential in the burning of Tyndale, as More’s agents had long pursued him, even though this took place over a year after his own death.[42] Burning at the stake had been a standard punishment for heresy: 30 burnings had taken place in the century before More’s elevation to Chancellor, and burning continued to be used by both Catholics and Protestants during the religious upheaval of the following decades.[43] Ackroyd notes that More zealously “approved of burning”.[19]:298 Marius maintains that More did everything in his power to bring about the extermination of the Protestant “heretics”.[40]
John Tewkesbury was a London leather seller found guilty by the Bishop of London John Stokesley[44] of harbouring English translated New Testaments; he was sentenced to burning for refusing to recant. More declared: he “burned as there was neuer wretche I wene better worthy.”[45] After Richard Bayfield was also executed for distributing Tyndale’s Bibles, More commented that he was “well and worthely burned”.[19]:305
Modern commentators are divided over More’s religious actions as Chancellor. Some biographers, including Ackroyd, have taken a relatively tolerant view of More’s campaign against Protestantism by placing his actions within the turbulent religious climate of the time and the threat of deadly catastrophes such as the German Peasants’ Revolt, which More blamed on Luther,[46][47][48] as did many others, such as Erasmus.[49] Others have been more critical, such as Richard Marius, an American scholar of the Reformation, believing that such persecutions were a betrayal of More’s earlier humanist convictions, including More’s zealous and well-documented advocacy of extermination for Protestants.[41]:386–406
Some Protestants take a different view. In 1980, More was added to the Church of England’s calendar of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church, despite being a fierce opponent of the English Reformation that created the Church of England. He was added jointly with John Fisher, to be commemorated every 6 July (the date of More’s execution) as “Thomas More, scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535”.[13] Pope John Paul II honoured him by making him patron saint of statesmen and politicians in October 2000, stating: “It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience … even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time”.[12]
Resignation
As the conflict over supremacy between the Papacy and the King reached its apogee, More continued to remain steadfast in supporting the supremacy of the Pope as Successor of Peter over that of the King of England. Parliament’s reinstatement of the charge of praemunire in 1529 had made it a crime to support in public or office the claim of any authority outside the realm (such as the Papacy) to have a legal jurisdiction superior to the King’s.[50]
In 1530, More refused to sign a letter by the leading English churchmen and aristocrats asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and also quarrelled with Henry VIII over the heresy laws. In 1531, a royal decree required the clergy to take an oath acknowledging the King as Supreme Head of the Church of England. The bishops at the Convocation of Canterbury in 1532 agreed to sign the Oath but only under threat of praemunire and only after these words were added: “as far as the law of Christ allows”.[51] This was considered to be the final Submission of the Clergy.[52] Cardinal John Fisher and some other clergy refused to sign. Henry purged most clergy who supported the papal stance from senior positions in the church. More continued to refuse to sign the Oath of Supremacy and did not agree to support the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Catherine.[50] However, he did not openly reject the King’s actions and kept his opinions private.[53]
On 16 May 1532, More resigned from his role as Chancellor but remained in Henry’s favour despite his refusal.[54] His decision to resign was caused by the decision of the convocation of the English Church, which was under intense royal threat, on the day before.[55]
Indictment, trial and execution
In 1533, More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England. Technically, this was not an act of treason, as More had written to Henry seemingly acknowledging Anne’s queenship and expressing his desire for the King’s happiness and the new Queen’s health.[56] Despite this, his refusal to attend was widely interpreted as a snub against Anne, and Henry took action against him.
Shortly thereafter, More was charged with accepting bribes, but the charges had to be dismissed for lack of any evidence. In early 1534, More was accused by Thomas Cromwell of having given advice and counsel to the “Holy Maid of Kent,” Elizabeth Barton, a nun who had prophesied that the king had ruined his soul and would come to a quick end for having divorced Queen Catherine. This was a month after Barton had confessed, which was possibly done under royal pressure,[57][58] and was said to be concealment of treason.[59]
Though it was dangerous for anyone to have anything to do with Barton, More had indeed met her, and was impressed by her fervour. But More was prudent and told her not to interfere with state matters. More was called before a committee of the Privy Council to answer these charges of treason, and after his respectful answers the matter seemed to have been dropped.[60]
On 13 April 1534, More was asked to appear before a commission and swear his allegiance to the parliamentary Act of Succession. More accepted Parliament’s right to declare Anne Boleyn the legitimate Queen of England, though he refused “the spiritual validity of the king’s second marriage”,[61] and, holding fast to the teaching of papal supremacy, he steadfastly refused to take the oath of supremacy of the Crown in the relationship between the kingdom and the church in England. More furthermore publicly refused to uphold Henry’s annulment from Catherine. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused the oath along with More. The oath reads:[62]
…By reason whereof the Bishop of Rome and See Apostolic, contrary to the great and inviolable grants of jurisdictions given by God immediately to emperors, kings and princes in succession to their heirs, hath presumed in times past to invest who should please them to inherit in other men’s kingdoms and dominions, which thing we your most humble subjects, both spiritual and temporal, do most abhor and detest…
In addition to refusing to support the King’s annulment or supremacy, More refused to sign the 1534 Oath of Succession confirming Anne’s role as queen and the rights of their children to succession. More’s fate was sealed.[63][64] While he had no argument with the basic concept of succession as stated in the Act, the preamble of the Oath repudiated the authority of the Pope.[53][65][66]
His enemies had enough evidence to have the King arrest him on treason. Four days later, Henry had More imprisoned in the Tower of London. There More prepared a devotional Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. While More was imprisoned in the Tower, Thomas Cromwell made several visits, urging More to take the oath, which he continued to refuse.
Site of scaffold at Tower Hill where More was executed by decapitation
Commemorative plaque at the site of the ancient scaffold at Tower Hill, with Sir Thomas More listed among other notables executed at the site
The charges of high treason related to More’s violating the statutes as to the King’s supremacy (malicious silence) and conspiring with Bishop John Fisher in this respect (malicious conspiracy) and, according to some sources, included asserting that Parliament did not have the right to proclaim the King’s Supremacy over the English Church. One group of scholars believes that the judges dismissed the first two charges (malicious acts) and tried More only on the final one but others strongly disagree.[50]
Regardless of the specific charges, the indictment related to violation of the Treasons Act 1534 which declared it treason to speak against the King’s Supremacy:[67]
If any person or persons, after the first day of February next coming, do maliciously wish, will or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king’s most royal person, the queen’s, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates … That then every such person and persons so offending … shall have and suffer such pains of death and other penalties, as is limited and accustomed in cases of high treason.[68]
The trial was held on 1 July 1535, before a panel of judges that included the new Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, as well as Anne Boleyn’s uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, her father Thomas Boleyn and her brother George Boleyn. Norfolk offered More the chance of the king’s “gracious pardon” should he “reform his […] obstinate opinion”. More responded that, although he had not taken the oath, he had never spoken out against it either and that his silence could be accepted as his “ratification and confirmation” of the new statutes.[69] Thus More was relying upon legal precedent and the maxim “qui tacet consentire videtur” (“one who keeps silent seems to consent”[70]), understanding that he could not be convicted as long as he did not explicitly deny that the King was Supreme Head of the Church, and he therefore refused to answer all questions regarding his opinions on the subject.[71]William Frederick Yeames, The meeting of Sir Thomas More with his daughter after his sentence of death, 1872
Thomas Cromwell, at the time the most powerful of the King’s advisors, brought forth Solicitor General Richard Rich to testify that More had, in his presence, denied that the King was the legitimate head of the Church. This testimony was characterised by More as being extremely dubious. Witnesses Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer both denied having heard the details of the reported conversation, and as More himself pointed out:
Can it therefore seem likely to your Lordships, that I should in so weighty an Affair as this, act so unadvisedly, as to trust Mr. Rich, a Man I had always so mean an Opinion of, in reference to his Truth and Honesty, … that I should only impart to Mr. Rich the Secrets of my Conscience in respect to the King’s Supremacy, the particular Secrets, and only Point about which I have been so long pressed to explain my self? which I never did, nor never would reveal; when the Act was once made, either to the King himself, or any of his Privy Councillors, as is well known to your Honours, who have been sent upon no other account at several times by his Majesty to me in the Tower. I refer it to your Judgments, my Lords, whether this can seem credible to any of your Lordships.[72]
Beheading of Thomas More, 1870 illustration
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The jury took only fifteen minutes, however, to find More guilty.
After the jury’s verdict was delivered and before his sentencing, More spoke freely of his belief that “no temporal man may be the head of the spirituality” (take over the role of the Pope). According to William Roper‘s account, More was pleading that the Statute of Supremacy was contrary to the Magna Carta, to Church laws and to the laws of England, attempting to void the entire indictment against him.[50] He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered (the usual punishment for traitors who were not the nobility), but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation.[73]
The execution took place on 6 July 1535 at Tower Hill. When he came to mount the steps to the scaffold, its frame seeming so weak that it might collapse,[74][75] More is widely quoted as saying (to one of the officials): “I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up and [for] my coming down, let me shift for my self”;[76] while on the scaffold he declared that he died “the king’s good servant, and God’s first.”[77][78][79][80] After More had finished reciting the Miserere[81][82] while kneeling, the executioner reportedly begged his pardon, then More rose up merrily, kissed him and gave him forgiveness.[83][84][85][86]
Relics
Sir Thomas More family’s vault
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Another comment he is believed to have made to the executioner is that his beard was completely innocent of any crime, and did not deserve the axe; he then positioned his beard so that it would not be harmed.[87] More asked that his foster/adopted daughter Margaret Clement (née Giggs) be given his headless corpse to bury.[88] She was the only member of his family to witness his execution. He was buried at the Tower of London, in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in an unmarked grave. His head was fixed upon a pike over London Bridge for a month, according to the normal custom for traitors.
More’s daughter Margaret later rescued the severed head.[89] It is believed to rest in the Roper Vault of St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury,[90] perhaps with the remains of Margaret and her husband’s family.[91] Some have claimed that the head is buried within the tomb erected for More in Chelsea Old Church.[92]
Among other surviving relics is his hair shirt, presented for safe keeping by Margaret Clement.[93] This was long in the custody of the community of Augustinian canonesses who until 1983 lived at the convent at Abbotskerswell Priory, Devon. Some sources, including one from 2004, claimed that the shirt, made of goat hair was then at the Martyr’s church on the Weld family’s estate in Chideock, Dorset.[94][95] The most recent reports indicate that it is now preserved at Buckfast Abbey, near Buckfastleigh in Devon.[96]