St. Thomas More answered only half the King's question

HAMPTON COURT, England, September 1527 AD — King Henry VIII was walking in the gallery at Hampton Court this month. He stopped Saint Thomas More and asked him what he thought of the King’s own marriage. St. Thomas More had been away in France since August, on the King’s business. He had come straight from Amiens to Hampton Court. All of Queen Catherine of Aragon’s children except the Princess Mary had died as babies, and Henry had no son.

What Henry wanted was to be told that his marriage to Queen Catherine had never been a marriage at all. Catherine had been married first to Henry’s older brother, Prince Arthur. After Arthur died, Rome gave a dispensation so that she could marry Henry. Henry now argued that no Pope had the power to allow a marriage like that. The dispensation, he said, had never been worth anything.

He had already asked Pope Clement VII to rule that the marriage had never been valid, and to let him marry again. The woman he meant to marry was Anne Boleyn.

Henry was walking in the gallery, and with no warning he began to talk about his marriage. At court people called it his great matter. Then he sent for a Bible and had it laid open in front of St. Thomas More. He read out the passages of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Then he asked St. Thomas More what he made of them.

St. Thomas More gave his view of the two passages, because the King had ordered him to answer. About the marriage he said nothing.

That was good enough for Henry. He told St. Thomas More to read the book of arguments being written for the King’s side. After that St. Thomas More kept out of the case.

Four of the King’s own men

On October 25, 1529 AD, at Greenwich, the King put the great seal of England into his hands. He made him Lord Chancellor. Every Lord Chancellor of England before him had been a churchman.

Soon after, Henry asked him about the marriage a second time. He was to look at the whole question properly now, the King said. He was to make up his mind honestly about whatever he found in it. If the reading changed his mind, Henry would be glad to have him working with the councillors on the case.

But he wanted his Chancellor to say and do nothing except what his conscience told him was true. He was to put God before the King: “and that I should first look unto God and after God unto him”.

Then Henry gave him four men to argue it through with. They were four of the men who had worked hardest for the King’s side, and two of them were archbishops.

So St. Thomas More read. He got hold of every book he could find on the question, for the King’s side and against it. He went through the whole case with all four men. Then he went back to the King with his answer. He could not agree.

The King went on with the councillors who already agreed with him, and gave St. Thomas More other work. St. Thomas More thought he was out of the argument for good. He did not think he was safe, though. A disagreement he never spoke aloud could still be the end of him.

He found a book in his study that argued against the King’s case. It was borrowed from the Bishop of Bath, and he offered to give it back. The bishop had burned his own copy long before, and asked him to burn this one. He burned it.

On March 5, 1534 AD, at his house at Chelsea, he wrote to Thomas Cromwell, the King’s secretary. He set out everything he had ever said to the King about the marriage, starting with that gallery at Hampton Court. At the end of the letter he told Cromwell what the King’s good opinion was worth to him: “I nothing have of mine own in all this world, except only my soul, but that I will with better will forgo it than abide of his Highness one heavy displeasant look.”