(Image credit - Luminarium: Anthology of English Literature)
“God’s grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God.”
The man who wrote this was Thomas More, in a letter to Margaret, one of his daughters. He was writing it from his dark cell in the Tower of London, where he’d been imprisoned by King Henry VIII after his refusal to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England.
His adventurous and virtuous life started on the 7th of February 1478 in London when he was welcomed earthside by his parents; Sir John More, lawyer and judge, and his wife Agnes Graunger, as the second of a total of six children. His successful father enrolled him in one of the best schools in London which led him to work for John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England. One can only assume how much this influenced his later role at Henry VIII’s court and how much he learned from Morton. We know that Morton said of More that he thought he would become a “marvelous man” and maybe that was the reason why he sent him to complete his studies at the University of Oxford where More spent two years, studying Latin and formal logic, which would prove to come in handy.
By 1494 his father brought him back home to study law. Thomas was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn and in 1501, he became an “utter barrister”.
In 1504 he was elected to Parliament representing Great Yarmouth, and, in 1510, began representing London, starting off his political service and even standing up to Henry VIII's demand for money, establishing his fame as a fair and brave person.
All through his secular life, he kept up his religious studies, being an avid reader of the scriptures and doubting if he was really meant to be a priest and not a lawyer as his father wished. To test himself, he lived a few years in the Carthusian monastery adjoining Lincoln’s Inn where he took habits like waking up early, praying and leading a frugal lifestyle. At the end of the day, though, he reached the conclusion that he’d be of more service to God and to people as a working Christian man with faith at the centre of everything.
As a lay man, then, he went on to marry Jane Colt in 1505, the eldest daughter of an Essex farmer, with whom he had four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. The year they wedded, More leased a portion of a house known as the Old Barge, later acquiring the rest of the property and living there for two decades. Thomas educated his new wife in literature and music, and surrounded her and himself with humanists such as Erasmus of Rotterdam. Sadly, Jane passed away in 1511. Shockingly, only a month later, he had married his second wife, Alice Middleton, whom he entrusted with his children and whose daughter was taken under his wing as one more of his offspring. The pair wouldn’t sire any kids but he did become guardian of two more girls: Margaret Giggs, who would have the unfortunate honour of being the only one to witness his execution, and Anne Cresacre, who would be his daughter in law by marrying John. He made sure to give all of his children the same education without differences of gender. Around this time, it’s believed he wrote History of King Richard III, which is unfinished but has had a great repercussion within historiography and literature.
He also published Utopia in 1516. Opposite to the other, this one is a work of fiction that describes an island governed only by reason where everything is fair and pretty much perfect. He proposed a life centred around community to fight against selfishness and individualism, saying things like: “Pride thinks its own happiness shines brighter by comparing it with the misfortunes of others.”
But his peaceful life was about to take a turn for the better before taking an ultimate fall. On the first of May 1517, Evil May Day took place and More’s ability to settle down the mob of Londoners as well as his success at negotiations with the French at Calais and Boulogne led him to serve the King. Sooner rather than later, he earned himself the position of Master of Requests, gaining the love from the people who said he was a magnificent public servant.
In 1521 he was knighted and helped Henry VIII compose Defence of the Seven Sacraments, which was a response to Lutheranism. Martin Luther did retaliate and More took one for the team and defended the King in Responsio ad Lutherum. All of this combined caused Henry to trust him and with hard work and sacred humility, Thomas had involuntarily climbed up the ladder and become the monarch’s intellectual courtier, a speaker of the House of Commons and treasurer of England's exchequer.
How then did the castles begin to crumble (as Taylor Swift would’ve said)?
By the end of 1520’s, the King was having second thoughts surrounding his marriage in a scandal that came to be known as the Great Matter. Catherine of Aragon, his wife, had failed to give him a son and heir to the Crown so he was looking for a way out. Then Anne Boleyn came around and… well, we all know the story. The fact is that Henry, in his mind, needed others to tell him he was right in order to not feel guilty of his misdoings, so he went to his trusted advisor and confidant, Thomas More (amongst many others), and showed him one verse on the Bible that he thought explained why God hadn’t bothered to give Catherine and him a healthy baby boy. In the book of Leviticus verse 20:21 can be read: “‘If a man marries his brother’s wife, it is an act of impurity; he has dishonoured his brother. They will be childless.” Good old Henry was implying that he hadn’t been blessed with a boy because his wife had been previously married to his brother Arthur and God was punishing them both for it, completely disregarding poor little Mary, his own daughter.
At first, More tried to be supportive of his monarch but he found it progressively more difficult with each of Henry’s moves. In 1532 he decided to leave the House of Commons excusing himself by citing health issues but it was his differences in politics and religion with the King that was probably behind it. Henry had repudiated Catherine of Aragon and paraded Anne Boleyn around court while feuding with Charles de V (Catherine’s nephew) and Rome. England was pivoting towards Protestantism so that Henry VIII could divorce and remarry and More wasn’t on board with it. Everything escalated when he refused to attend Anne Boleyn’s triumphal coronation in 1533. He also was accused of supposed complicity with Elizabeth Barton, who had prophesied about Henry’s divorce in negative terms, though that was dropped quickly after he brought out a letter he’d sent advising her to stop meddling with state affairs.
When the Act of Succession was put out and everyone was forced to take an oath, accepting Anne as Queen of England and Henry as Supreme Head of the Church, More couldn’t do it. This was what took him to the Tower of London on April 17, 1534, where he was found guilty of treason on 1st July 1535, by a jury made of Thomas Howard, Thomas Boleyn and George Boleyn (Anne’s uncle, dad and brother, respectively). He had been offered a royal pardon should he admit he was wrong which he didn’t, so the jury gave the verdict and Thomas More remarked that “no temporal man may be the head of the spirituality” and take the place of the Pope. With that, proceedings started and on 6th July 1535 at Tower Hill, More found his end. He’s reported to have told one of the officials: "I pray you, master Lieutenant, see me safe up and my coming down, let me shift for my self" and he declared himself to be a “king's good servant, and God's first” while on the scaffold. He recited the Miserere (Psalm 51) and then his executioner asked for his forgiveness as it was custom, which he granted before kissing him. As he had asked for his adoptive daughter Margaret to be given his body to receive a sacred burial, she was the only family member who witnessed his death. He would indeed be buried at the Tower of London under an unmarked grave, just like Anne Boleyn would be one day. His biological daughter Margaret got her hands on her father’s head later on and it is believed it rests at St Dunstan's Church in Canterbury with her.
Not too long before his demise, Thomas More had written to Erasmus of Rotterdam what he wanted his epitaph to be and it was this:
Within this tomb Jane, wife of More, reclines;
This More for Alice and himself designs.
The first, dear object of my youthful vow,
Gave me three daughters and a son to know;
The next—ah! virtue in a stepdame rare!—
Nursed my sweet infants with a mother's care.
With both my years so happily have past,
Which most my love, I know not—first or last.
Oh! had religion destiny allowed,
How smoothly mixed had our three fortunes flowed!
But, be we in the tomb, in heaven allied,
So kinder death shall grant what life denied.
Erasmus told Piotr Tomiczki, Bishop of Kraków, Poland, in August 31st 1535: “When More died I seem to have died myself: because we were a single soul as Pythagoras once said. But such is the flux of human affairs.”
Even though England abandoned Catholicism and embraced Henry’s new religion, Thomas More would be beatified in 1886 and later canonized by Pius XI in May 1935, four hundred years after his death.
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