Fifteen minutes was all the jury needed

LONDON, September 17, 2010 AD — A brass plate is set into the floor of Westminster Hall in London. It marks the spot where St. Thomas More stood in front of his judges and was sentenced to death.

St. Thomas More had been Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII. The King wanted him to say out loud that the King was supreme head of the Church in England. He wanted him to say that the King’s second marriage was lawful too. St. Thomas More would not say it, and he never told anyone his reasons.

On April 13, 1534 AD, at Lambeth, he was asked to swear an oath. He refused. Four days later he was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London. That November, Parliament gave the King the title of Supreme Head for the first time. The same law made it high treason to deny any of the King’s titles, and the punishment was death.

The answer he never gave

In the end he was convicted because of one talk in the Tower. On June 12, 1535 AD a man called Richard Rich came to carry away St. Thomas More’s books. Rich had just been made the King’s Solicitor. While two other men packed the books up, Rich asked him a made-up question. If Parliament passed a law making Rich king, would St. Thomas More accept him as king? He would, St. Thomas More said.

Then Rich asked the same thing about being made pope, and St. Thomas More asked a question back. If Parliament passed a law saying that God was not God, would Rich say God was not God? No parliament could make such a law, Rich said.

Afterwards Rich said there had been one answer more. St. Thomas More had also said that Parliament could not make the King head of the Church, Rich said. On Rich’s word alone, St. Thomas More was charged with high treason.

The trial was held on July 1, 1535 AD in Westminster Hall. It was the great hall of the royal palace, and the Crown tried its biggest cases there. The charges were read out while St. Thomas More stood in front of the judges. He pleaded not guilty.

About his silence he told the court: “the faithful subject is more bound to his conscience and his soul than to anything else in the world… and I assure you that I have never discovered what is in my conscience to any person living.”

Then Rich swore an oath and gave his evidence. St. Thomas More told him to his face that he had never spoken those words. “And if this oath of yours, Master Rich, be true, then I pray that I never see God in the face,” he said, “which I would not say, were it otherwise, to win the whole world.”

The jury went out of the room. A quarter of an hour later they came back and said he was guilty.

Once the verdict was given he was free to speak at last. He broke in while the Lord Chancellor was still reading out his punishment. The charge rested on an act of Parliament that went straight against the law of God and of His holy Church, he said. No earthly ruler, he said, can be made head of the Church.

The court ordered that he be hanged at Tyburn. On July 5 the King changed the sentence to beheading instead. The next morning, July 6, 1535 AD, St. Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill. He told the people watching that he died the King’s good servant, but God’s servant first of all.

A Pope on the same floor

In 2000 AD Pope John Paul II made St. Thomas More the patron saint of politicians. Today Pope Benedict XVI stood in that hall. He spoke to the politicians, diplomats and business leaders of the United Kingdom. The questions the trial was about, he told them, are still being asked. He called St. Thomas More “the great English scholar and statesman, who is admired by believers and non-believers alike for the integrity with which he followed his conscience, even at the cost of displeasing the sovereign whose ‘good servant’ he was, because he chose to serve God first”.