On the 7th of February 1478, a child was born in the City of London who would one day behead the King's conscience. Thomas More entered the world as the second of six children to Sir John More, a successful lawyer and future judge, and his wife Agnes. While biographers have long debated the exact location of his birth, with some pointing to Milk Street where his father lived, no contemporary record confirms the spot. What is certain is the environment that shaped him. More attended St. Anthony's School, one of London's finest institutions, before entering the household of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Morton, a champion of the New Learning or humanism, recognized the boy's potential and nominated him for Oxford. More studied under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, mastering Latin and Greek with such fluency that he could banter in both languages as easily as English. Yet, at the age of fourteen, his father pulled him from Oxford to begin legal training at New Inn, and later Lincoln's Inn. By 1502, he was called to the bar, but his legal career was merely the stage for a much larger drama. He was a man of immense learning, yet he chose to live a life of asceticism, wearing a hair shirt next to his skin and engaging in self-flagellation, all while raising a family and serving the Crown.
A Father's Devotion
In 1505, Thomas More married Joanna Colt, the eldest daughter of John Colt of Essex. They lived in a house known as the Old Barge on Bucklersbury, which he leased and eventually purchased, remaining there for nearly twenty years until moving to Chelsea in 1525. More was an affectionate father who wrote letters to his children whenever he was away on business, encouraging them to write back. He insisted upon giving his daughters the same classical education as his son, an unusual attitude for the time. His eldest daughter, Margaret, attracted much admiration for her erudition, particularly her fluency in Greek and Latin. More told his daughter of his pride in her academic accomplishments in September 1522 after showing a letter she had written to a bishop. This decision to educate his daughters set an example for other noble families, and even Erasmus became more favorable once he witnessed their accomplishments. The couple had four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. When Jane died in 1511, More did something that went against friends' advice and common custom. Within thirty days, he married Alice Middleton, a widow, to head his household and care for his small children. He obtained a dispensation from the banns of marriage due to his good public reputation. More had no children from his second marriage, although he raised Alice's daughter from her previous marriage as his own. He also became the guardian of two young girls, Anne Cresacre and Margaret Giggs, the orphaned daughter of his biological daughter's wet nurse. The family portrait painted by Hans Holbein the Younger, though lost in a fire in the 18th century, depicted the family's two pet dogs and a monkey, with musical instruments like a lute and viol in the background, showing that More played the recorder and viol and made sure his wives could join in the family consort.
Thomas More's political career began to ascend in 1504 when he was elected to Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth, and in 1510 he began representing London. He first attracted public attention by his conduct in the parliament of 1504, by his daring opposition to the King's demand for money. King Henry VII was entitled to a grant on occasion of his daughter Margaret Tudor's marriage to James IV of Scotland, but he came to the House of Commons for a much larger sum than he intended. The members were afraid to offend the King until the silence was broken by More, whose speech moved the house to reduce the subsidy to £30,000. Henry VII never forgave the audacity and threw More's father into the Tower, releasing him only upon payment of a fine of £100. More later withdrew from public life into obscurity until Henry VIII succeeded his father in 1509. 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 and Master of Requests the same year, also appointed as a Privy Counsellor. After a diplomatic mission to the 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 became increasingly influential, welcoming foreign diplomats and drafting official documents. In 1523, More was elected as 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 Cardinal Wolsey fell, More succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor in 1529, the highest official responsible for equity and common law. He dispatched cases with unprecedented rapidity and introduced the Statute of Sewers in 1532, putting into effect his proposals for public sanitation that he had first suggested in Utopia.
The War of Words
More supported the Catholic Church and saw the Protestant Reformation as heresy, a threat to the unity of both church and society. He 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. More wrote a series of books and pamphlets in English and Latin to respond to Protestants, and in his official capacities took action against the illegal book trade. He fronted a diplomatically-sensitive raid in 1525 of the Hanseatic Merchants in the Steelyard in his role as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. More wrote several books against the first edition of William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament, including the Dialogue concerning Heresies in 1529. Tyndale responded with An Answer to Sir T. More's Dialogue in 1530, and More replied with his Confutation of Tyndale's Answer in 1532. One of More's criticisms of the initial Tyndale translation was that despite claiming to be in the vernacular, Tyndale had employed numerous neologisms such as Jehovah, scapegoat, Passover, atonement, mercy seat, and shewbread. More also accused Tyndale of deliberately avoiding common translations in favor of biased words, such as using the emotion love instead of the practical action charity for the Greek word agape, and using the Latinate congregation instead of church. Tyndale's Bibles included text other than the scriptures, with some prefaces being direct translations of Martin Luther and including marginal glosses which challenged Catholic doctrine. More, though considered a much steadier personality, described Luther as an ape, a drunkard, and a lousy little friar. Writing under the pseudonym of Gulielmus Rosseus, More told Luther that for as long as his reverend paternity would be determined to tell these shameless lies, others would be permitted to throw back into his paternity's shitty mouth all the muck and shit which his damnable rottenness had vomited up.
The Silence That Spoke
As the conflict over supremacy between the papacy and the king reached its peak, More continued to remain steadfast in supporting the supremacy of the Pope as Successor of Peter over that of the King of England. 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. 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 prosecution for praemunire and only after these words were added: as far as the law of Christ allows. This was considered the final Submission of the Clergy. 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. However, he did not openly reject the King's actions and kept his opinions private. On the 16th of May 1532, More resigned from his role as Chancellor but remained in Henry's favor despite his refusal. 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. In 1533, More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as 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. 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. 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.
The Headless Saint
On the 13th of April 1534, More was asked to appear before a commission and swear his allegiance to the parliamentary Act of Succession. The First Succession Act passed parliament in March 1534, investing Henry VIII with the power to visit, redress, reform, correct or amend all errors, heresies and enormities, to define faith, and to appoint bishops. The Treason Act 1534 passed in the same month, making it treasonable to deny the King's role as Supreme Head of the Church. 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. More also publicly refused to uphold Henry's annulment from Catherine. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused the oath along with More. The oath read in part that the King was the Supreme Head of the Church, and 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. 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. 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. In his unfinished History of the Passion, written in the Tower to his daughter Meg, he wrote of feeling favored 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 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. Thomas Cromwell 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 characterized by More as being extremely dubious. The jury took only fifteen minutes 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. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation.
The Last Goodbye
The execution took place on the 6th of July 1535 at Tower Hill. Biographer Peter Ackroyd reports that family members were excluded from the event, but historian Jaime Goodrich describes how his daughters Margaret More Roper and Margaret Clement were present. When he came to mount the steps to the scaffold, its frame seeming so weak that it might collapse, 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. While on the scaffold he declared that he died the king's good servant, and God's first. Theologian Scott Hahn notes that the misquoted God's first is a line from Robert Bolt's stage play A Man For All Seasons, which differs from More's actual words. This is a translation from the archives of Michel de Castelnau, a later French ambassador to England, of an anonymous French eyewitness. After More had finished reciting the prayer while kneeling, the executioner reportedly begged his pardon, then More rose up, kissed him and forgave him. Another comment More 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. More asked that his adopted daughter Margaret Clement be given his headless corpse to bury. 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 Roper later recovered the severed head. It is believed to rest in the Roper Vault of St Dunstan's Church, Canterbury, perhaps with the remains of Margaret and her husband's family. Some have claimed that the head is buried within the tomb erected for More in Chelsea Old Church. Among other surviving relics is his hair shirt, presented for safe keeping by Margaret Clement. This was long in the custody of the community of Augustinian canonesses who until 1983 lived at the convent at Abbotskerswell Priory, Devon. It is now preserved at Buckfast Abbey, near Buckfastleigh in Devon. Pope Leo XIII beatified Thomas 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, pre-eminently for their martyrdom. Pope John Paul II declared More the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians on the 31st of October 2000.