In 1532, Thomas More surrendered the Great Seal of England to the King. He was not merely relinquishing an office: he was withdrawing from a power that Henry VIII sought to plunge into a contention wherein the Chancellor’s conscience could not follow. Two years later, More was confined within the Tower of London. The King demanded that he acknowledge royal supremacy over the Church of England; the former Chancellor strove to offer no reply. This silence, which More still believed he might keep without condemning any man, became the cornerstone of a charge of high treason.
The son of a London magistrate, More had known the honours of the Court and the confidence of his sovereign. He had sat in Parliament, represented the Crown abroad, and risen at last to become Lord High Chancellor. Yet royal favour proved no shield when the monarch resolved to dissolve his marriage with Catherine of Aragon and wed Anne Boleyn. More had surrendered the Great Seal and refrained from attending Anne’s coronation in 1533. He had likewise held converse with Elizabeth Barton, the “Holy Maid of Kent,” whose prognostications against the King would soon furnish material for an inquiry. At Court, every absence and every association might henceforth be construed as faction.
The rupture assumed a harsher form when Parliament required an oath acknowledging the succession ordained by Henry and his newly claimed ecclesiastical authority. More refused the oath. He delivered no public challenge; he explained that he could not render a consent that would compromise his conscience. In the eyes of the government, such reservation was far from harmless. The former Chancellor was conducted to the Tower in the spring of 1534, while inquisitors pressed him to speak plainly upon the King’s supremacy. More understood that a direct response would expose him to an indictment for treason. He resolved, therefore, to hold his tongue.
At the outset, this silence preserved a narrow margin between abstention and denial. More did not proclaim that the King was not supreme head of the Church; he merely refused to affirm that he was. He trusted that the law would not convert a thought harboured in secret into a capital crime. His interrogators, however, returned incessantly to the selfsame demand: that he declare openly whether the King possessed such authority. The aging statesman knew full well that his words might be severed from their context; he clung to his silence and was remanded to his cell.
Imprisonment severed him from his hearth, yet his books and his visitors preserved his connection with those he held dear. One day, the Solicitor General, Richard Rich, arrived with men charged to remove his volumes. Rich affirmed that he had not been sent to dispute the supremacy. The discourse nonetheless drifted into that channel. He inquired of More whether Parliament might enact that he, Rich, were King, and make it treason to deny it. More replied that Parliament had the power to make a king; he added, however, that the comparison did not hold for spiritual jurisdiction, for an earthly assembly could not transform a matter of faith into truth. The discussion, as later recounted by More, remained purely hypothetical. It ought to have bound no man.
Yet for the prosecution, this interchange became a confession of guilt. At the trial, Rich maintained that More had expressly denied the King’s supremacy. More stood up, enfeebled by more than a year of captivity, and contested the testimony. He recalled that Rich had pledged not to broach that matter; he asked why the other men present during the conversation had not been called to corroborate the version given. He could not prove what had been uttered within the walls of the Tower. He could only lay bare the promise he claimed had been made to him, and the vast gulf separating a hypothetical disputation from the treasonable accusation Rich drew from it.
The trial took place at Westminster on the first day of July, 1535, after some fourteen months of confinement. The indictment rested upon the Act of Supremacy, upon More’s reiterated refusals to take the oath, and, above all, upon the deposition of Rich. What had been silence was transformed before the jury into an imputed denial.
More conducted his defence as an accomplished jurist. He did not pretend to overturn the statutes of the realm; he distinguished civil obedience from the obligation to profess an article of spiritual authority. The court likewise heard the deposition of Rich, which More branded as perjury. In the view of the former Chancellor, the accusation harboured a singular weakness: Rich alone attested to those words, though two other men had been present in the chamber. Called to testify, neither of them confirmed the dialogue; they stated that they had been occupied with trussing the books and had given no heed to the talk. More recalled that Rich had promised not to examine him upon his conscience, and asked the judges whether it was credible that he should have confided in a man he had ever deemed unworthy of trust. The defence could not expunge Rich’s oath; yet it laid bare how entirely the indictment hung upon that single pledge.
The jury retired, and returned in less than a quarter of an hour with a verdict of guilty. The Chancellor was already proceeding to pass sentence when More reminded him that a prisoner at the bar must be suffered to speak before judgment was pronounced. He then directly attacked the statute itself, which he declared contrary to the laws of God and Holy Church, asserting that no temporal power might arrogate unto itself the government of that realm. More was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, the penalty prescribed for traitors. The King commuted the sentence to decapitation. The former Chancellor received this “clemency” with a grim jest, praying God to preserve his friends from any such royal pardon. The ultimate barbarities were spared him; yet there was no retreat from death.
His family was permitted to see him once more. As he was conducted back to the Tower, his son cast himself at his feet to crave his blessing; More raised him up and embraced him. At Tower Wharf, his daughter Margaret Roper pressed through the throng of halberdiers and threw her arms about his neck, unable to utter any word save “Father.” These farewells, recorded by Borrow, altered neither the judgment nor More’s resolve; they reveal the grievous personal cost of a fidelity that state papers are wont to reduce to a mere doctrinal dispute.
On the eve of his execution, a courtier fancied that More had relented. The prisoner had told him that he had “changed his mind”; he spoke, in truth, of his beard, which he was determined should not be shaved. The anecdote appears trivial, yet it carries a keen edge of irony: unto his final day, those around him sought to hear a recantation, while he diverted their words to their strictly literal sense. On the morning of July 6, Sir Thomas Pope came to announce that he was to die before nine of the clock. More thanked him for the tidings, and petitioned that Margaret might be present at his burial. Even on the eve, the Crown might have hoped that a visitation, an offer of pardon, or the terror of the scaffold would cause him to yield. He did not yield.
On July 6, More was led to Tower Hill, his countenance wasted by his long imprisonment. A woman offered him a cup of wine; he refused it, likening his march to that of Christ, who, he remarked, tasted only gall and vinegar. Another woman accosted him concerning papers entrusted to his custody when he was Chancellor. He bade her have patience for one hour, when the King would deliver him from all his cares. An hour later, the last anxieties of earthly life would trouble him no more; yet even then, ordinary duties and petty grievances pressed forward to demand an answer.
At the foot of the scaffold, he was so feeble that he requested the Lieutenant of the Tower to assist him in ascending, promising to look to his own coming down. He was forbidden to deliver a lengthy address. He besought the assembled multitude to pray for him and to bear witness that he died in the Catholic faith, a faithful servant to God and the King. Before laying his head upon the block, he put aside his beard, jesting that it had committed no treason. Then the headsman’s axe fell. His severed head was exposed upon London Bridge; after several weeks, his daughter Margaret redeemed it, lest it should be cast into the Thames.
The former Chancellor neither reversed the verdict nor recanted his refusal. He left behind a question that his judges had transmuted into an indictment: can a subject be condemned for words imputed to him by the state, after he has spent long months striving never to utter them? More had believed that silence would keep him beyond the reach of the tempest. In that tribunal, there was no sanctuary for such reserve.