Although he is now well known as a humanist author – especially of Utopia (1516), his vision of an ideal state founded entirely on reason – it was More's prowess as a lawyer that first brought him to the attention of Henry VIII. He was sent on several diplomatic missions, entered the sovereign's service in 1518 and, three years later, was knighted. In the same year, when Henry published his Assertio Septum Sacramentorum, his friend and counsellor More warned him about exaggerating the pope's powers.
In 1529, after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, More was made lord chancellor, despite his disapproval of Henry's efforts to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He resigned three years later, supposedly on the grounds of ill health, but probably because of his increasing disenchantment with Henry's policies.
However, he was unable to escape the conflict between the Church and the king. Refusing to swear his allegiance to the Act of Succession because it placed the authority of Parliament over that of the pope, More was tried for treason. When the solicitor general Richard Rich testified (falsely) that More had denied that Henry was head of the Church of England, the fate of the 'man for all seasons' was sealed. He was convicted and beheaded on 6 July 1535.
As a Catholic martyr, he was canonised in 1935, and in 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him patron saint of politicians.
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 Sir Thomas More (1478-1535)
www.luminarium.org/renlit/tmore.htm
Includes a detailed biography and links to More's works and other sources.
The Politician's Patron
www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsle
tter/2000/oct13.html
Good article written as John Paul II prepared to declare More patron saint of politicians.
William Roper: The life of Sir Thomas More
www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/16Croper-mor
e.html
The Modern History Sourcebook provides an intimate account of the life of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law William Roper.
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The Life of Thomas More by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage, 1999)
A portrait of the first English layman to be canonised as a martyr, and of the social and cultural world in which he lived.
Get this book
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 Tower of London
HM Tower of London
London EC3N 4AB
Information line: 0870 756 6060
Sir Thomas More was imprisoned in the lower chamber of the White Tower from 17 April 1534 until his beheading in July 1535. There he wrote the devotional Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. He was actually executed in public on Tower Hill, an elevated spot outside the Tower, in the borough of Tower Hamlets just beyond the limits of the City of London.
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