Thomas More

• 1. Introduction

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  Thomas More climbed the scaffold at Tower Hill on the 6th of July 1535 and, finding the structure so rickety it might collapse, told the waiting official: "I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up and for my coming down, let me shift for my self." Then, once on the platform, he declared that he died "the King's good servant, and God's first." Those parting words, spoken by a man who had served as Lord Chancellor of England, authored one of the most debated books in the history of political thought, and been convicted on evidence he called a fabrication, have echoed across five centuries. Who was this lawyer's son from Milk Street, London, who mastered Latin and Greek, wrestled with monkhood, educated his daughters in Greek when almost no one did, and yet approved the burning of heretics with chilling directness? How did a man that Erasmus described as born and designed for friendship become the figure his enemies called a dessicated fanatic? And what does it mean that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England eventually claimed him as a martyr? The answers span a single remarkable life that ends at the executioner's block, but the questions it raises about conscience, law, and power have never gone away.

• 2. The Making of a Humanist

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  John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England, noticed something in the household page serving him between 1490 and 1492. Morton enthusiastically supported what he called the New Learning, and he was so convinced of young Thomas More's potential that he nominated him for a place at the University of Oxford. More arrived there in 1492 and studied under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, emerging proficient in both Latin and Greek. His father then pulled him out after only two years, insisting on legal training in London. More entered New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery, and in 1496 became a student at Lincoln's Inn, where he remained until he was called to the bar in 1502. He was a noted linguist who could speak and banter in Latin with the same ease as in English. He translated the Life of Pico into English, having been particularly influenced by the philosopher Pico della Mirandola. He wrote and translated poetry. And between 1503 and 1504, he lived near the Carthusian monastery outside London's walls, joining the monks in their spiritual exercises. Erasmus later reported that More had seriously considered abandoning the law to become a monk. He chose instead to stand for Parliament in 1504 and to marry the following year. He never quite abandoned the ascetic impulse: for the rest of his life he wore a hair shirt against his skin and occasionally engaged in self-flagellation. The lawyer and the monk coexisted in one body, and that tension never fully resolved.

• 3. Family, Friends, and a Famous Portrait

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  More married Joanna, known as Jane, Colt, the eldest daughter of John Colt of Essex, in 1505. He leased space in a house called the Old Barge on Bucklersbury in London, eventually taking over the entire property and living there for almost twenty years, until he moved to Chelsea in 1525. Erasmus reported that More wanted to give his young wife an education she had not received at home, tutoring her himself in music and literature. The couple had four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Jane died in 1511, and within thirty days, and against friends' advice and common custom, More had married again. He chose Alice Middleton, a widow, to head his household and care for his small children. The speed of the second marriage was so unusual that he required a dispensation from the banns, which his good public reputation helped him obtain quickly. More also raised Alice's daughter from her previous marriage as his own, and became guardian to two young girls, Anne Cresacre and Margaret Giggs. He wrote letters to his children whenever legal or government business took him away, and insisted that his daughters receive the same classical education as his son. His eldest daughter Margaret attracted wide admiration for her fluency in Greek and Latin. In September 1522, More showed a bishop a letter Margaret had written; the bishop, seeing from the signature that it came from a woman, read it again with even more attention and praised it for its pure Latinity, its correctness, and its erudition, offering her a Portuguese gold coin as a token of his regard. Hans Holbein the Younger painted a large family portrait of More and his extended household, but it was lost in a fire in the eighteenth century. Two surviving copies include the family's fool Henry Patenson, two pet dogs, a monkey, and, in the background, a lute and a viol. More played the recorder and viol himself and made sure his wives could join in the family's musical ensemble.

• 4. A Career Built in Plain Sight

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  More first attracted public attention in the Parliament of 1504, when he broke a nervous silence in the House of Commons and moved members to reduce a subsidy that King Henry VII had demanded. One of the king's chamberlains told his master that he had been thwarted by a beardless boy. Henry never forgave the audacity; his retaliation fell not on More directly but on More's father, whom he threw into the Tower of London and released only after a fine of one hundred pounds. More found it wise to withdraw from public life temporarily. Henry VII died in 1509, and his son became Henry VIII. From 1510, More served as one of the two undersheriffs of the City of London, earning a reputation as an honest and effective public servant. He became a Commissioner for Sewers in 1514, the same year he was made Master of Requests and appointed a Privy Counsellor. After accompanying Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to Calais for the Field of the Cloth of Gold and to Bruges on a diplomatic mission to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, More was knighted and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer in 1521. As secretary and personal adviser to Henry VIII, he welcomed foreign diplomats, drafted official documents, and sat in the Star Chamber. In 1523, he was elected knight of the shire for Middlesex and, on Wolsey's recommendation, the House of Commons elected him its Speaker. In 1525, he became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with executive and judicial responsibilities over much of northern England. When Wolsey fell, More succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor in 1529, becoming the highest official responsible for equity and common law. He dispatched cases with what contemporaries called unprecedented rapidity. No foreign wars were fought during his tenure. In 1532, he was responsible for introducing the Statute of Sewers into law, making concrete a proposal he had first floated in Utopia.

• 5. Utopia and the Written Word

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  More completed his best-known and most controversial book, Utopia, and Erasmus published it in Leuven in 1516. Written in Latin, it was a frame narrative in which More himself appears as a character, along with a narrator-traveller named Raphael Hythlodaeus, whose surname alludes both to the healing archangel Raphael and to the Greek phrase for "speaker of nonsense." The two men, joined by Pieter Gillis and Hieronymus van Busleyden, discuss political ills in Antwerp and then describe the imaginary island country of Utopia, a name that plays on the Greek for "no place" and "good place" simultaneously. The book's original edition included a symmetrical Utopian alphabet that later editions omitted, and which some scholars consider an early precursor of shorthand. Book I surveys real European problems: the treatment of criminals, the enclosure movement, private property. Book II revisits those problems in the fantastical but concrete arrangements of Utopia, where there are no lawyers because the laws are simple, communal ownership replaces private property, men and women are educated alike, and religious toleration is nearly universal, with the single exception that atheists are allowed but despised. Utopia was not translated into English and published in England until 1551, sixteen years after More's execution. The book gave rise to a literary genre, utopian and dystopian fiction, and works it influenced include Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, Samuel Butler's Erewhon, and Voltaire's Candide. Between 1512 and 1519, More also worked on a History of King Richard III, never finished but published after his death; it greatly influenced William Shakespeare's play Richard III. Erasmus collected and published a book of More's Latin epigrams: the final 1523 edition, Epigrammata, contained two hundred and fifty-three short poems, described by historian Damian Grace as political theory in a poetic idiom. The range alone, from diplomatic correspondence to prison letters to a half-million-word theological polemic, marks More as one of the most prolific writers of his era.

• 6. War Against the Reformation

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  Martin Luther published three major works in rapid succession in 1520, setting out his doctrine of salvation through faith alone, rejecting certain Catholic practices, and attacking abuses within the Catholic Church. In 1521, Henry VIII formally responded with the Assertio, written with More's assistance, and Pope Leo X rewarded the king with the title Fidei Defensor, Defender of the Faith. Luther then attacked Henry in print, calling him a pig, a dolt, and a liar. At the king's request, More composed a rebuttal, the Responsio ad Lutherum, published at the end of 1523, writing under the pseudonym Gulielmus Rosseus. In it he described Luther as an ape, a drunkard, and a lousy little friar, among other epithets, while defending papal supremacy, the sacraments, and Church traditions. Stephen Greenblatt has noted that where More's scatological language expressed communal disapproval, Luther's expressed deep personal rage and vastly exceeded More's in quantity and intensity. More then directed his energy against William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament. More wrote the Dialogue concerning Heresies in 1529; Tyndale responded with An Answer to Sir T. More's Dialogue in 1530; More replied with his Confutation of Tyndale's Answer in 1532, eventually running to half a million words. One notable exchange centered on Tyndale's use of the word congregation in place of church. Tyndale pointed out that he was following Erasmus's own Latin translation. More replied by distinguishing intent from word choice, saying he had not contended with "Erasmus my darling" because Erasmus detested the heresies that Tyndale plainly taught and abided by. In his role as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, More also fronted a diplomatically sensitive raid in 1525 on the Hanseatic Merchants in the Steelyard, targeting the illegal book trade. During his chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake for heresy: Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, Thomas Dusgate, and James Bainham. More took a personal interest in the three London cases and commented on Tewkesbury and Bayfield in terms that leave no doubt about his approval.

• 7. Silence, Trial, and the Scaffold

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  On the 16th of May 1532, More resigned as Lord Chancellor, triggered by the convocation of the English Church's submission to the king the day before. He had already refused in 1530 to sign a letter by leading English churchmen asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1533, he refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn. In early 1534, he was accused of giving counsel to Elizabeth Barton, a nun who had prophesied that Henry had ruined his soul. More was called before a committee of the Privy Council and the matter was apparently dropped. On the 13th of April 1534, More was asked to swear allegiance to the parliamentary Act of Succession. He accepted Parliament's right to declare Anne Boleyn queen but refused the oath's preamble repudiating papal authority. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused alongside him. Four days after his refusal, Henry had More imprisoned in the Tower of London. There More prepared a devotional, Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, and handwrote De Tristitia Christi, his account of Christ's agony in the garden, in his cell. Writing to his daughter Margaret, he described feeling held by God: "For methinketh God maketh me a wanton, and setteth me on his lap and dandleth me." The trial was held on the 1st of July 1535, before a panel that included the new Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley and members of Anne Boleyn's own family. More relied throughout on the legal maxim qui tacet consentire videtur, "one who keeps silent seems to consent," arguing his silence could not constitute treason. Solicitor General Richard Rich then testified that More had, in his presence, explicitly denied the king's supremacy over the Church. More challenged that testimony directly, noting that he had never revealed his private conscience on the matter to the king himself or any Privy Councillor, and found it incredible that he would have disclosed it to Rich. The jury took fifteen minutes to find him guilty. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; Henry commuted the sentence to beheading. His daughter Margaret Roper later recovered the severed head, and it is believed to rest in the Roper Vault at St Dunstan's Church in Canterbury.

• 8. Afterlife of a Contested Saint

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  Pope Leo XIII beatified More, John Fisher, and fifty-two other English martyrs on the 29th of December 1886. Pius XI canonised More and Fisher on the 19th of May 1935, describing them as the leaders and chieftains of those who resisted the new errors with unflinching spirit. The British press greeted the ceremony, which Parliament and universities officially boycotted, with a reception described as minimal and hostile. On the 31st of October 2000, Pope John Paul II declared More the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians, stating that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience, while acknowledging that in his actions against heretics he reflected the limits of the culture of his time. In 1980, the Church of England added More and Fisher to its calendar as Reformation Martyrs, commemorated every the 6th of July, the date of More's execution. Scholar Bill Sheils linked that decision partly to what he called a long-standing tradition of More as an unschismed Anglican, and partly to the influence of Robert Bolt's 1960 play A Man for All Seasons and its 1966 film adaptation, directed by Fred Zinnemann, which starred Paul Scofield, who called the part of More the most difficult he had played. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Scofield won Best Actor. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy, completed with The Mirror and the Light in 2020, portrayed More as an unsympathetic persecutor of Protestants, viewed through the eyes of a sympathetically rendered Thomas Cromwell. Modern assessment has remained genuinely divided. Historian Richard Rex observed that More, as Lord Chancellor, was in effect the first port of call for those arrested in London on suspicion of heresy, and can be connected with proceedings against around forty suspected or convicted heretics between 1529 and 1533. G. K. Chesterton predicted More might come to be counted the greatest Englishman, while writer Richard Marius called his campaign against Protestants a betrayal of his earlier humanist convictions. More himself is a statue subject at the Kremlin, named in ninth position on Moscow's Stele of Freedom, erected in 1918 at Lenin's suggestion, honoring thinkers who promoted liberation from oppression, a placement that would have mystified and possibly appalled him.