Sir Thomas More b 7 February 1478-6 July 1535

Sir Thomas More b 7 February 1478-6 July 1535

Taken from Wikipedia Oct 24 2013 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Thomas_More

Sir Thomas More (/ˈmɔr/; 7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), known to Roman Catholics as Saint Thomas More,[1][2] was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII and Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to 16 May 1532.[3] More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther and William Tyndale whose books he burned and whose followers he persecuted. More also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an ideal and imaginary island nation. More later opposed the King's separation from the Catholic Church and refused to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England because it disparaged papal authority and Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Tried for treason, More was convicted on perjured testimony and beheaded.

Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr of the schism that separated the Church of England from Rome; Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared More the "heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians".[4] Since 1980, the Church of England has remembered More liturgically as a Reformation martyr.[5]

Early life[edit]

Saint Thomas More, T.O.S.F.

Medallion of Thomas More

Martyr

Honored in Catholic Church; Anglican Communion

Beatified 29 December 1886, Florence, Kingdom of Italy, by Pope Leo XIII

Canonized 19 May 1935, Vatican City, by Pope Pius XI

Feast 22 June (Catholic Church)

6 July (Church of England)

9 July on the traditionalist Catholic (Latin Mass) calendar

Attributes dressed in the robe of the Chancellor and wearing the Collar of Esses; axe

Patronage Adopted children; civil servants; court clerks; difficult marriages; large families; lawyers, politicians, and statesmen; stepparents; widowers; Ateneo de Manila Law School; Diocese of Arlington; Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee; Kerala Catholic Youth Movement; University of Malta; University of Santo Tomas Faculty of Arts and Letters

Born in Milk Street in London, on 7 February 1478, Thomas More was the son of Sir John More,[6] a successful lawyer and later judge, and his wife Agnes (née Graunger). More was educated at St Anthony's School, then considered one of London's finest schools. From 1490 to 1492, More served John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England as a household page.[7]:xvi Morton enthusiastically supported the "New Learning" (now called the Renaissance), and thought highly of the young More. Believing that More had great potential, Morton nominated him for a place at Oxford University (either in St. Mary's Hall or Canterbury College).[8]:38 Both Canterbury College and St Mary’s Hall have since disappeared; Christ Church College grew over Canterbury's site, and Oriel College over the former St Mary’s.

More began his studies at Oxford in 1492, and received a classical education. Studying under Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, he became proficient in both Greek and Latin. More left Oxford after only two years – at his father's insistence - to begin legal training in London at New Inn, one of the Inns of Chancery.[7]:xvii[9] In 1496, More became a student at Lincoln’s Inn, one of the Inns of Court, where he remained until 1502, when he was called to the Bar.[7]:xvii

Spiritual life[edit]

According to his friend, theologian Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, More once seriously contemplated abandoning his legal career to become a monk.[10] Between 1503 and 1504 More lived near the Carthusian monastery outside the walls of London and joined in the monks' spiritual exercises. Although he deeply admired their piety, More ultimately decided to remain a layman, standing for election to Parliament in 1504 and marrying the following year.[7]:xxi

In spite of his choice to pursue a secular career, More continued ascetical practices for the rest of his life, such as wearing a hair shirt next to his skin and occasionally engaging in flagellation.[7]:xxi A tradition of the Third Order of St. Francis honors More as a member of that Order on their calendar of saints.[11]

Family life[edit]

More married Jane Colt in 1505.[8]:118 She was nearly ten years younger than her husband, quiet and good-natured.[8]:119 Erasmus reported that More wanted to give his young wife a better education than she had previously received at home, and tutored her in music and literature.[8]:119 The couple had four children before Jane died in 1511: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John.[8]:132

Going "against friends' advice and common custom" within thirty days More had married one of the many eligible women among his wide circle of friends.[12] He chose the rich widow Alice Middleton as his second wife, having met her while working with her late husband who had been a prosperous merchant. The speed of the marriage was so unusual that More had to get a dispensation of the banns, which due to his good public reputation he easily obtained.[12] Alice More lacked Jane's docility; More's friend Andrew Ammonius derided Alice as a "hook-nosed harpy."[13] Erasmus, however, called their marriage happy.[8]:144 More had no children from his second marriage, although he raised Alice's daughter from her previous marriage as his own. More also became the guardian of a young girl named Anne Cresacre, who would eventually marry his son, John More.[8]:146 An affectionate father, More wrote letters to his children whenever he was away on legal or government business, and encouraged them to write to him often.[8]:150[14]:xiv

More insisted upon giving his daughters the same classical education as his son, a highly unusual attitude at the time.[8]:146–47 His eldest daughter, Margaret, attracted much admiration for her erudition, especially her fluency in Greek and Latin.[8]:147 More told his daughter of his pride in her academic accomplishment in September 1522, after he showed the Bishop a letter she had written:

When he saw from the signature that it was the letter of a lady, his surprise led him to read it more eagerly... he said he would never have believed it to be your work unless I had assured him of the fact, and he began to praise it in the highest terms... for its pure Latinity, its correctness, its erudition, and its expressions of tender affection. He took out at once from his pocket a portague [A Portuguese gold coin]... to send to you as a pledge and token of his good will towards you.[14]:152

More's decision to educate his daughters set an example for other noble families. Even Erasmus became much more favourable once he witnessed their accomplishments.[8]:149

Early political career[edit]

Study for a portrait of Thomas More's family, c. 1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger

In 1504 More was elected to Parliament to represent Great Yarmouth, and in 1510 began representing London.[15]

From 1510, More served as one of the two undersheriffs of the City of London, a position of considerable responsibility in which he earned a reputation as an honest and effective public servant. More became Master of Requests in 1514,[16] the same year in which he was appointed as a Privy Councillor.[17] After undertaking a diplomatic mission to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, accompanying Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York, to Calais and Bruges, More was knighted and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer in 1521.[17]

As secretary and personal adviser to King Henry VIII, More became increasingly influential: welcoming foreign diplomats, drafting official documents, and serving as a liaison between the King and Lord Chancellor Wolsey. More later served as High Steward for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

In 1523 More was elected as knight of the shire (MP) for Middlesex and, on Wolsey's recommendation, the House of Commons elected More its Speaker.[17] In 1525 More became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with executive and judicial responsibilities over much of northern England.[17]

Chancellorship[edit]

After Wolsey fell, More succeeded to the office of Chancellor in 1529. He dispatched cases with unprecedented rapidity. Fully devoted to Henry and the royal prerogative, More initially co-operated with the King's new policy, denouncing Wolsey in Parliament and joining the opinion of the theologians at Oxford and Cambridge that the marriage of Henry to Catherine had been unlawful.[citation needed] But as Henry began to deny Papal Authority, More's qualms grew.

Campaign against the Reformation[edit]

More supported the Catholic Church and saw the Protestant Reformation as heresy, a threat to the unity of both church and society. Believing in the theology, polemics, and ecclesiastical laws of the church, More "heard Luther's call to destroy the Catholic Church as a call to war."[18]

His early actions against the Reformation included aiding Wolsey in preventing Lutheran books from being imported into England, spying on and investigating suspected Protestants, especially publishers, and arresting any one holding in his possession, transporting, or selling the books of the Protestant reformation. More vigorously suppressed the travelling country ministers who used Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament.[citation needed] It contained translations of certain words—for example Tyndale used "elder" rather than "priest" for the Greek "presbyteros"—and some footnotes which challenged Catholic doctrine.[19] It was during this time that most of his literary polemics appeared.

Sir Thomas More is commemorated with a sculpture at the late-19th-century Sir Thomas More House, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, Carey Street, London.

Rumours circulated during and after More's lifetime regarding ill-treatment of heretics during his time as Lord Chancellor. The popular anti-Catholic polemicist John Foxe, who "placed Protestant sufferings against the background of... the Antichrist"[20] was instrumental in publicising accusations of torture in his famous Book of Martyrs, claiming that More had often personally used violence or torture while interrogating heretics. Later authors, such as Brian Moynahan and Michael Farris, cite Foxe when repeating these allegations.[21] More himself denied these allegations:

Stories of a similar nature were current even in More's lifetime and he denied them forcefully. He admitted that he did imprison heretics in his house – 'theyr sure kepynge' – he called it – but he utterly rejected claims of torture and whipping... 'so helpe me God.'[8]:298

In total there were six burned at the stake for heresy during More's chancellorship: Thomas Hitton, Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbery, Thomas Dusgate, and James Bainham.[8]:299–306 More's influential role in the burning of Tyndale is reported by Moynahan.[22] Burning at the stake had long been a standard punishment for heresy—about thirty burnings had taken place in the century before More's elevation to Chancellor, and burning continued to be used by both Catholics and Protestants during the religious upheaval of the following decades.[23] Ackroyd notes that More explicitly "approved of Burning"[8]:298 R.W. Chambers is also noted as saying that "More, while denying indignantly the cruelties attributed to him, 'wills all the world to wit on the other side' that he believes that it is necessary to prohibit 'the sowing of seditious heresies', and to punish them, in extreme cases with death, those who defy such prohibition." And he goes on to say "It was the view, held by all parties alike, that open defiance of authority in spiritual matters, of such a kind as to lead to tumult and civil war, might be punished with death."[24]:274–275 After the case of John Tewkesbury, a London leather-seller found guilty by More of harbouring banned books and sentenced to burning for refusing to recant, More declared: he "burned as there was neuer wretche I wene better worthy."[25]

Historians have been long divided over More's religious actions as Chancellor. While biographers such as Peter Ackroyd, a Catholic English biographer, have taken a relatively tolerant view of More's campaign against Protestantism by placing his actions within the turbulent religious climate of the time, other equally eminent historians, such as Richard Marius, an American scholar of the Reformation, have been more critical, believing that persecutions—including what he perceives as the advocacy of extermination for Protestants—were a betrayal of More's earlier humanist convictions. As Marius writes in his biography of More: "To stand before a man at an inquisition, knowing that he will rejoice when we die, knowing that he will commit us to the stake and its horrors without a moment's hesitation or remorse if we do not satisfy him, is not an experience much less cruel because our inquisitor does not whip us or rack us or shout at us. . . More believed that they (Protestants) should be exterminated, and while he was in office he did everything in his power to bring that extermination to pass."[26] Many Protestants take a very different view from that of Marius – in 1980, despite being an opponent of the English Reformation that created the Church of England, More was added to the Church of England's calendar of Saints and Heroes of the Christian Church, jointly with John Fisher, to be commemorated every 6 July (the date of More's execution) as "Thomas More, Scholar, and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, Reformation Martyrs, 1535".[5]

The six executions for heresy should perhaps also be seen in the context of More trying to prevent a repetition in England of the up to 100,000 deaths in the German Peasants' Revolt of 1524–25. More and other conservatives (including Henry VIII at this time) openly blamed these deaths on the socially destabilising effects of Luther's heresy,[27] though clearly such conservatives were also trying to prevent other supposed ills less easily understood by our modern secular and ecumenical world, such as alleged eternal agony in Hell[28] for the souls of those allegedly misguided into heresy, as well as the suffering of souls in Purgatory supposedly caused by Luther's abolition of indulgences, as argued in More's 1529 work Supplication of Souls. It seems unlikely that modern Catholics, Protestants, and others, could ever easily agree on how many eventually died in Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere as an arguable result of the English Reformation that More was unsuccessfully trying to prevent, and whether or not this cost could be justified by arguable offsetting benefits. The modern Catholic attitude on the issue was probably best expressed by Pope John Paul II when honouring him by making him patron saint of statesmen and politicians in October 2000, when he stated "It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience ... even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time".[4]

Resignation[edit]

As the conflict over supremacy between the Papacy and the King reached its apogee, 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, and also quarrelled with Henry VIII over the heresy laws. In 1531, Henry had isolated More by purging most clergy who supported the papal stance from senior positions in the church. In addition, Henry had solidified his denial of the Papacy's control of England by passing the Statute of Praemunire which forbade appeals to the Roman Curia from England. Realizing his isolated position, More attempted to resign after being forced to take an oath declaring the King the Supreme Head of the English Church, pursuant to Parliament's Act of Supremacy of 1534. He tried to limit the oath "as far as the law of Christ allows." Furthermore, the Statute of Praemunire made it a crime to support in public or office the claims of the Papacy. Thus, he refused to take the oath in the form in which it would renounce all claims of jurisdiction over the Church except the sovereign's. Nonetheless, the reputation and influence of More as well as his long relationship with Henry, kept his life secure for the time being and consequently, he was not relieved of office. However, with his supporters in court quickly disappearing, in 1532 he asked the King again to relieve him of his office, claiming that he was ill and suffering from sharp chest pains. This time Henry granted his request.

Trial and execution[edit]

Rowland Lockey after Hans Holbein the Younger, The Family of Sir Thomas More, c. 1594

In 1533, More refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn as the Queen of England. Technically, this was not an act of treason, as More had written to Henry acknowledging Anne's queenship and expressing his desire for the King's happiness and the new Queen's health.[29] 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 of conspiring with the "Holy Maid of Kent," Elizabeth Barton, a nun who had prophesied against the king's annulment, but More was able to produce a letter in which he had instructed Barton not to interfere with state matters.[citation needed]

On 13 April 1534, More was asked to appear before a commission and swear his allegiance to the parliamentary Act of Succession. More accepted Parliament's right to declare Anne Boleyn the legitimate Queen of England, but he steadfastly refused to take the oath of supremacy of the Crown in the relationship between the kingdom and the church in England. Holding fast to the teaching of papal supremacy, More refused to take the oath and furthermore publicly refused to uphold Henry's annulment from Catherine. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, refused the oath along with More. The oath reads:

...By reason whereof the Bishop of Rome and See Apostolic, contrary to the great and inviolable grants of jurisdictions given by God immediately to emperors, kings and princes in succession to their heirs, hath presumed in times past to invest who should please them to inherit in other men's kingdoms and dominions, which thing we your most humble subjects, both spiritual and temporal, do most abhor and detest;[30]

With his refusal to support the King's annulment, More's enemies had enough evidence to have the King arrest him on treason. 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 More continued to refuse.

Site of scaffold at Tower Hill where More was executed by decapitation

Commemorative plaque at the site of the ancient scaffold at Tower Hill, with Sir Thomas More listed among other notables executed at the site.

On 1 July 1535, More was tried before a panel of judges that included the new Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas Audley, as well as Anne Boleyn's father, brother, and uncle. He was charged with high treason for denying the validity of the Act of Succession. More, relying on legal precedent and the maxim "qui tacet consentire videtur" (literally, who (is) silent is seen to consent), understood that he could not be convicted as long as he did not explicitly deny that the King was Supreme Head of the Church, and he therefore refused to answer all questions regarding his opinions on the subject. Thomas Cromwell, at the time the most powerful of the King's advisors, brought forth the 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 extremely dubious: witnesses Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer both denied having heard the details of the reported conversation, and as More himself pointed out:

Can it therefore seem likely to your Lordships, that I should in so weighty an Affair as this, act so unadvisedly, as to trust Mr. Rich, a Man I had always so mean an Opinion of, in reference to his Truth and Honesty, ...that I should only impart to Mr. Rich the Secrets of my Conscience in respect to the King's Supremacy, the particular Secrets, and only Point about which I have been so long pressed to explain my self? which I never did, nor never would reveal; when the Act was once made, either to the King himself, or any of his Privy Councillors, as is well known to your Honours, who have been sent upon no other account at several times by his Majesty to me in the Tower. I refer it to your Judgments, my Lords, whether this can seem credible to any of your Lordships.

However, the jury took only fifteen minutes to find More guilty.

More was tried, and found guilty, under the following section of the Treason Act 1534:

If any person or persons, after the first day of February next coming, do maliciously wish, will or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates...

That then every such person and persons so offending... shall have and suffer such pains of death and other penalties, as is limited and accustomed in cases of high treason.[31]

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 (the usual punishment for traitors who were not the nobility), but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation. The execution took place on 6 July 1535. When he came to mount the steps to the scaffold, he is widely quoted as saying (to the officials): "I pray you, I pray you, Mr Lieutenant, see me safe up and for my coming down, I can shift for myself"; while on the scaffold he declared that he died "the king's good servant, but God's first."[32]

Relics[edit]

Another comment he 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.[33] More asked that his foster/adopted daughter Margaret Clement (née Giggs) be given his headless corpse to bury.[34] 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. His daughter Margaret (Meg) Roper rescued it, possibly by bribery, before it could be thrown in the River Thames.

The skull is believed to rest in the Roper Vault of St Dunstan's Church, Canterbury, though some researchers have claimed it might be within the tomb he erected for More in Chelsea Old Church (see below). The evidence, however, seems to be in favour of its placement in St Dunstan's, with the remains of his daughter, Margaret Roper, and her husband's family, whose vault it was.

Among other surviving relics is his hair shirt, presented for safe keeping by Margaret Clement(1508–70), his adopted daughter.[35] 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 Syon Abbey, near South Brent.