Execution of Thomas More (1535): Death of a Lord Chancellor

Sir Thomas More, lawyer, scholar and former Lord Chancellor of England, was beheaded on Tower Hill in London on 6 July 1535. He had refused to swear the oath that went with Henry VIII’s break with Rome and would not accept the king as Supreme Head of the Church. His trial and death made him one of the most famous victims of the English Reformation and, in 1935, a Catholic saint.

Background: scholar and statesman

Thomas More was born in London in 1478, the son of a judge. He trained as a lawyer, became a leading figure among Europe’s humanist scholars and a close friend of Erasmus, and in 1516 published Utopia, a work of political imagination that gave the language a new word.

More entered royal service and rose steadily. In October 1529, after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, described in Fall of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII made him Lord Chancellor, the first layman to hold the office for many years. More was a committed Catholic who wrote fiercely against Protestant ideas, and during his chancellorship he took an active part in the pursuit of heretics, several of whom were burned.

Refusing the king

More opposed Henry’s attempt to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, though he tried to keep silent in public. When the clergy submitted to the king’s authority in May 1532, he resigned as Lord Chancellor, giving ill health as his reason. In June 1533 he did not attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn.

The break with Rome required more than silence. The Act of Succession of 1534 obliged subjects to swear an oath supporting the children of Henry and Anne. On 13 April 1534 More was summoned to Lambeth Palace. He was willing to accept Parliament’s right to settle the succession, but he refused the oath as written because it implied rejection of the pope’s authority. Four days later he was sent to the Tower of London.

Imprisonment in the Tower

More spent fifteen months in the Tower. He was allowed books and visits for much of the time, and he wrote devotional works, including A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. His daughter Margaret Roper visited him and urged him to take the oath; he would not.

In late 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy and a new Treasons Act, which made it treason “maliciously” to deny the king any of his titles. More’s defence was silence: he would neither affirm nor deny the supremacy, and under English law silence could not be treated as a denial.

In May 1535 several Carthusian monks were executed for refusing the supremacy, and on 22 June Bishop John Fisher of Rochester, whom the pope had just made a cardinal, was beheaded on Tower Hill.

The trial

More was tried at Westminster Hall on 1 July 1535. The crown’s case rested on a conversation of 12 June in the Tower between More and Richard Rich, the Solicitor General, who had come to remove his books. Rich claimed that More had said Parliament could not make the king head of the Church. More denied it and attacked Rich’s honesty; two other men who had been in the room said they had not heard the conversation.

The jury found him guilty after a short time. Only after the verdict did More speak openly, arguing that no temporal law could make a king head of the Church, which belonged to the whole of Christendom. The sentence for treason was hanging, drawing and quartering, but the king commuted it to beheading.

The execution

On the morning of 6 July 1535 More was led from the Tower to the scaffold on Tower Hill. Contemporary reports say he spoke briefly, asking the people to pray for him and declaring that he died the king’s good servant, but God’s first. Later biographers record jokes he made with the executioner, which fit his character but cannot all be checked.

His head was set on a pole on London Bridge, as was customary for traitors. According to family tradition Margaret Roper later recovered it, and it is believed to lie in the Roper vault at St Dunstan’s Church, Canterbury. His body was buried in the chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower.

Key people

• Thomas More (1478–1535): humanist author, Lord Chancellor 1529–1532, executed for refusing the royal supremacy.
• Henry VIII (1491–1547): the king who had been More’s friend and patron, and who allowed the prosecution.
• Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540): the minister who managed the enforcement of the oaths and the prosecutions of 1535.
• Richard Rich (c. 1496–1567): the Solicitor General whose testimony secured the conviction.
• John Fisher (1469–1535): Bishop of Rochester, executed two weeks before More for the same refusal.

Legacy

The execution of a man known throughout Europe shocked many abroad. The emperor Charles V is said to have remarked that he would rather have lost his best city than such a counsellor, though the story comes from a later source. In England, More’s death showed that the new religious order would be enforced against even the most eminent.

More’s son-in-law William Roper wrote a short, admiring life in the 1550s, which shaped all later portraits. The Catholic Church beatified More in 1886 and canonised him with John Fisher on 19 May 1935; their joint feast is 22 June. The Church of England also commemorates him on 6 July.

Modern views remain divided. Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons (1960) presents him as a hero of conscience, while Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009) portrays him as a harsh persecutor. Historians generally accept both sides: More was a man of great integrity and courage who also believed that heresy deserved severe punishment.

Myths and facts

• Myth: More was executed simply for refusing to approve the king’s divorce. Fact: he was convicted under the Treasons Act for denying the royal supremacy over the Church. The marriage question lay behind the crisis, but the charge was about Henry’s title as Supreme Head.
• Myth: More refused to recognise Anne Boleyn’s children as heirs. Fact: he said he was willing to swear to the succession itself, since Parliament could settle who inherited the crown. What he refused was the full oath, which carried an implied rejection of papal authority.
• Myth: More was beheaded inside the Tower of London. Fact: only a few prisoners, such as Anne Boleyn, were executed privately within the Tower. More died publicly on Tower Hill outside its walls, the usual place for executions of high-ranking traitors.
• Myth: More was a mild and tolerant humanist throughout his life. Fact: although Utopia imagined a society with some religious toleration, as Lord Chancellor More treated Protestant heresy as a crime deserving death and defended the burning of heretics in his writings.

Timeline

• 1478, 7 February: Thomas More born in London.
• 1516: publication of Utopia.
• 1529, October: More appointed Lord Chancellor.
• 1532, 16 May: More resigns the chancellorship.
• 1534, 13–17 April: More refuses the oath at Lambeth and is sent to the Tower.
• 1535, 22 June: John Fisher beheaded on Tower Hill.
• 1535, 1 July: More tried and convicted at Westminster Hall.
• 1535, 6 July: More beheaded on Tower Hill.
• 1935, 19 May: More and Fisher canonised.

Why it matters

Thomas More’s death became the defining story of conscience against state power in the English Reformation. It showed how far Henry VIII would go to enforce the royal supremacy, and it turned More into a lasting symbol, honoured by Catholics as a martyr and debated by historians as a complex figure of his age.