Saint Thomas More

St. Thomas More was born in Milk Street, in the City of London, before dawn on February 7, 1478 AD. His father, John More, was a lawyer who later became a judge. At thirteen he was sent by his father to wait at table in the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury.

At Christmas, when actors put on plays in the household, the boy would step in among them and make up a part on the spot. Cardinal Morton told the nobles at his table that this boy would grow into a remarkable man. On the cardinal's advice he went to Oxford, and after two years his father brought him home to London to train as a lawyer.

At about twenty-one St. Thomas More went to live beside the London Charterhouse, a monastery of Carthusian monks, and joined in their daily prayers. He lived that way for about four years without taking vows. His friend the scholar Erasmus wrote that in the end he chose to be a chaste husband rather than an impure priest.

In 1505 AD he married Jane Colt, though he had preferred her younger sister, because he did not want the elder shamed by being passed over. On September 3, 1510 AD the City of London made him Under-Sheriff, a judge in the city's sheriff's court. Jane died in 1511 AD, leaving him four small children.

He soon married again, to Alice Middleton, a widow seven years older than he was, who looked after his young children. His book Utopia, about an imaginary island, was printed at Louvain in December 1516 AD. In 1518 AD Henry VIII took him into his service and his council, and charged him to put God first and the King second.

In 1523 AD St. Thomas More built a house by the Thames at Chelsea and lived there with his wife, his children and eleven grandchildren. His eldest daughter, Margaret, lived there with her husband, William Roper. Henry VIII came uninvited to dinner there and walked in the garden with his arm around St. Thomas More's neck.

In September 1527 AD Henry VIII first told him of his doubts that his marriage to Queen Catherine, his elder brother's widow, was lawful. At the King's command he said how he read the Scripture passages Henry VIII showed him, but he gave no opinion on the marriage. On October 25, 1529 AD the King made him Lord Chancellor, the first layman ever to hold the office.

Asked again as Chancellor, he told the King he could not agree with him about the marriage. In 1531 AD the King ordered the clergy to acknowledge him as supreme head of the Church. Three days after opposing the King in council over church payments to Rome, St. Thomas More resigned on May 16, 1532 AD, and his income fell to about a hundred pounds a year.

In March 1534 AD a new law, the Act of Succession, gave the crown to the children of the King's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Everyone called on had to swear an oath upholding it, and the King's commissioners added words rejecting the authority of any foreign ruler and made the clergy renounce the Pope. On April 13, 1534 AD St. Thomas More was summoned to Lambeth Palace to take it, the only layman called with the priests of London.

That morning he heard Mass and received communion, then shut the gate on his wife and children and took the boat to Lambeth with his son-in-law, William Roper. At Lambeth he said he would swear to the new line of succession, but could not swear the oath offered him without putting his soul in danger. The King's commissioners told him he was the very first man to refuse it.

St. Thomas More was sent to the Tower of London on April 17, 1534 AD, and remained a prisoner there until his death. Margaret won permission to visit, and each time they prayed the psalms together before talking of anything else. In November 1534 AD Parliament named the King Supreme Head of the Church and made it high treason to deny any of his titles maliciously.

In April, May and June 1535 AD the King's council came three times to demand his opinion of that law, and each time he would not give it. In June, Richard Rich, the King's Solicitor, came to take away his books and put questions to him while the others packed them. Rich later claimed St. Thomas More had told him that Parliament could not make the King head of the Church, and that report was used to charge St. Thomas More with treason.

St. Thomas More was tried in Westminster Hall on July 1, 1535 AD, so weak after fifteen months in prison that a chair was brought for him. He argued that no law punished a man for silence, and said he had never told anyone what his conscience held. He denied Rich's sworn evidence, saying that if it were true he prayed never to see the face of God.

The jury went out for a quarter of an hour and came back with a verdict of guilty. Only then did he speak his mind, saying no king could by law take over the government of the Church, and that he had been condemned for refusing to accept the King's second marriage. He told his judges he hoped they would all meet happily in heaven, as Saint Paul and Saint Stephen, whose death St. Paul had approved, were friends there now.

On July 5, 1535 AD he wrote his last letter to Margaret with a piece of coal, asking to die the next day, the eve of the feast of Saint Thomas of Canterbury. On the morning of July 6 he was brought out of the Tower, pale and thin, carrying a red cross in his hand. The scaffold on Tower Hill was so weak it seemed ready to fall, and as he climbed he asked the lieutenant to see him safely up and leave him to manage the way down himself.

He asked the people to pray for him and to witness that he died for the faith of the Catholic Church, and then said he died the King's good servant, and God's first. He knelt and prayed the psalm that begs God for mercy, kissed the executioner, and was beheaded with a single blow. About a month later, when his head was to be thrown from London Bridge into the river, Margaret bought it and kept it.