Despite such evidence of royal favor, it is likely that More chafed at his service to the king. He was no fool; he noted Wolsey’s great – and increasingly ostentatious – wealth. His natural piety was at odds with other courtiers, all of whom jockeyed ceaselessly for the king’s favor. Ironically, it was his own honesty and probity which ensured his continued service to Henry.
We come now to the great event of Henry’s reign. By 1527, the king was in his mid-thirties, and his wife six years older. The queen had suffered a series of miscarriages throughout their marriage; their only surviving child was the Princess Mary. Henry needed a son and heir. He had an illegitimate son, called Henry Fitzroy, by one of his early mistresses. The boy, born in 1519, was welcome proof to Henry that he could father a son – and that his lack of an heir was entirely Katharine’s fault. Even special physicians summoned from Spain could not help the queen to conceive again.
And so, when More returned from a diplomatic mission to France in summer 1527, the king laid the open Bible before his favorite councilor. It was, Henry told him, proof that his marriage to Katharine was incestuous due to her previous marriage to his brother. It was unlawful before man and God and thus void. The king added that his lack of a legitimate son was clear proof of God’s displeasure.
Was More surprised by this speech? We do not know. We do know that he tried in vain to support the king’s position. He read anything and everything he could find on the subject. In the end, he could not be persuaded. Katharine was the king’s true wife. He did not share his opinion with the king. And the king did not force the issue. Certainly Henry wanted More’s support. As England’s premier intellectual, More’s opinion mattered. It mattered to London shopkeepers, and to great churchmen. If the great Sir Thomas More believed the king’s marriage to be unlawful, why, it must be so! But if the great Sir Thomas More believed the king to be wrong? Henry was wise enough to state his case and let it go, – for a little while at least. And More was more convinced than ever that he needed to leave royal service.
Unfortunately, Cardinal Wolsey was unable to secure an annulment for the king. The reasons were various, but the most important was Katharine’s position as aunt to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Charles would not let his aunt be cast aside (he was also considering the dynastic appeal of her daughter with Henry), and he pressured the pope to deny Henry’s petition. Wolsey, for all his brilliance and cunning, could not compete with that influence. And the king was now newly enamored of a young noblewoman called Anne Boleyn. His desire for an annulment was now not merely to secure a legitimate heir; it was also spurred by his desire to marry Anne.
Anne’s personal religious feeling was unimportant. She was by necessity hostile to the Catholic church. They were preventing her marriage to the king. Likewise, Henry became understandably angry at the papacy’s refusal to repudiate Charles. Perhaps his earlier justification for the annulment had been a matter of self-interest, a selective interpretation of opaque text. But time and impatience had made him emphatic in his righteousness. It was perfectly clear to any objective observer that the marriage was unlawful before God! The king raged. He sent envoys. He dictated letter after letter. He badgered Katharine ceaselessly. Nothing worked. The pope would not relent. Meanwhile, time was passing and a king used to instant obedience was determined to wait no longer. Wolsey was destined to die for his failure to secure the annulment. Fortunately for the old cardinal, he died before the king could kill him. Unfortunately for More, Henry appointed him Lord Chancellor of England. The honor was tremendous; notably, More was the first layman to hold the office. He handled his responsibilities with his usual skill, but it was a balancing act, and an increasingly dangerous one. For example, as Lord Chancellor, More proclaimed the opinion of the English universities as favorable to the king’s annulment. But he himself did not sign the letter in which most of England’s nobles and prelates petitioned the pope to declare the marriage unlawful. And when the English clergy were forced to acknowledge Henry as the supreme head of their church, More attempted to resign his office.
His resignation was at first not accepted. Henry still hoped for More’s support. But eventually the break between the king and his chief minister could not be ignored. More suffered a sharp chest pain, possibly angina, and begged the king to release him from his duties. This was on 16 May 1532, the date on which the archdiocese of Canterbury, as head of the English clergy, sent a document to Henry VIII in which is promised to never legislate or even convene without royal assent, thus making the king – a lay person – head of the spiritual order in England.
Henry accepted More’s resignation. Their old friendship was past; the king’s new advisors were anti-Catholic and pro-Protestant, most notably among them was Thomas Cromwell. He had once served under Wolsey and knew More well. Cromwell was an astute politician whose beliefs changed at the whim of his royal master. He was even more aware than the king of More’s popular appeal; and this was to More’s detriment for it meant that his refusal to publicly support the king was not something that could be forgiven or forgotten. More would have to either acknowledge the king’s spiritual supremacy and marriage to Anne Boleyn, or he would die. That was clear to Cromwell almost from the first, and perhaps to More, too.
But in the meantime, More had eighteen months of seclusion and study at his home in Chelsea. He lived in relative poverty, for he held no office and relied solely upon the hundred pounds per annum he collected from a property rental. He did not struggle with the reduction in means, and busied himself with planning a tomb for himself and his wives , as well as defending his faith in various pamphlets. He never explicitly courted controversy, but he felt compelled to answer the ‘reformers’ such as William Tyndale. His months of peace ended in 1533, when he refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn.
This blatant disrespect could not be tolerated and More’s name was included in a Bill of Attainder against Elizabeth Barton, the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’, who had prophesized against the king’s annulment. More’s only communication with Barton had been to warn her against meddling in affairs of state. It did not matter. His name was on the attainder and he was brought before the Privy Council in February 1534. He answered their queries as best he could, assuring them of his loyalty to king and state and stressing the matter of his personal conscience. It was his great popularity that saved him. It gave the king pause, and More was allowed to return home. But he knew what was coming. And his old friend, the duke of Norfolk, took care to warn him of his danger, “Indignatio principis mors est.” To which More famously replied, “Is that all, my lord? Then, in good faith, between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die today, and you tomorrow.”
It was the Act of Succession, passed the following month, that sealed his fate. It stated that all who were called upon must take an oath acknowledging Anne as Henry’s wife and their future children as legitimate heirs to the throne. This More was fully prepared to do. Anne was the anointed queen. But – and of course this clause was added simply to trap More – the Act also required a repudiation of “any foreign authority, prince or potentate.” More could recognize Anne as the crowned queen of England. But he could not recognize the king’s authority as head of the new church of England. And so he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on 17 April 1534.
More was not a man to be broken by prison, but he suffered physically. His spirits were high when visited by family and friends, though they were only permitted to see him if they took the Oath which he had refused. He encouraged them to do so. After several months, he was visited by Cromwell, but More refused to engage him in debate and merely declared himself a faithful subject of the king. In June 1535, after he had been imprisoned for over a year, Cromwell’s servant, Richard Rich, now solicitor general, stated that he had spoken with More and More had denied Parliament’s power to make Henry head of the church. This was an obvious lie; More had never said anything of the sort to any other visitor, – why Rich? And why such an obvious and clumsy admission?
Despite widespread belief, even amongst Protestants, that Rich was lying, his statement was enough for a fresh inquiry to begin. It was then discovered that More had written to John Fisher, the bishop of Rochester, who was also imprisoned in the Tower for not taking the oath. This discovery resulted in removal of More’s books and writing materials. He could now only write to his wife and favorite daughter Margaret with a piece of coal or burnt stick on scraps of paper.
On 1 July 1535, he was indicted on high treason. The resulting trial was mere show; despite his impassioned and brilliant defense, no one ever expected More to be found anything other than ‘guilty’. And so he was. He was sentenced to a traitor’s death – to be drawn, hanged, and quartered – but the king changed it to beheading. It was a small mercy.
The story of More’s last days is terribly affecting. One does not have to share his religious convictions to appreciate his inner strength and noble character. He waited five days before being summoned to the scaffold on Tower Hill. “See me safe up,” he told the lieutenant who escorted him, “and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” He blindfolded himself and exhorted the assembled crowd to witness his end “in the faith and for the faith of the Catholic Church, the king’s good servant but God’s first.” Even More’s Protestant enemies did not believe him a traitor; his death was almost universally held to be nothing less than martyrdom. Erasmus mourned his friend and wrote that More’s “soul was more pure than snow” and his “genius was such that England never had and never again will have its like.” More was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1886, and canonized by Pius XI in 1935.
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