Thomas More

Thomas More an English lawyer, statesman and humanist (1478-1535), author of Utopia and chancellor to Henry VIII, who was executed for refusing to acknowledge the king's supremacy over the church and was later canonised as a saint. His life and death made him a symbol of conscience against the power of the state.

Life and Legal Career

Thomas More was born in London in 1478, the son of a judge of the King's Bench. He was educated at Saint Anthony's School and then in the household of Cardinal Morton, archbishop of Canterbury, who predicted his future eminence. He studied at Oxford and then trained in law at Lincoln's Inn, becoming a successful barrister and later an undersheriff of London.

For a time he considered a monastic vocation and lived near a Carthusian house, but he chose instead to marry and to pursue a public career. He married Jane Colt in 1505 and, after her death, Alice Middleton. He was twice a member of parliament and served as speaker of the House of Commons, gaining a reputation for integrity and for his command of law and language.

His learning and wit made him a leading figure of English humanism. He corresponded with Erasmus, who visited his household and became a lifelong friend, and he helped to establish the study of Greek and of the new learning at Oxford. His London house became a meeting place for scholars, and he educated his daughters as thoroughly as his son.

Utopia and the Humanist Vision

Utopia, published in Latin in 1516, describes an imaginary island whose institutions satirise the society of More's Europe. The book is narrated by a traveller, Raphael Hythloday, who reports the customs of the Utopians: community of property, a six-hour working day, religious toleration, universal education and a rational administration of justice. The description is at once a serious proposal and an ironic game.

The work criticises enclosure, the harshness of the penal code, the idleness of the aristocracy and the vanity of court life. Its ambiguity, whether Utopia is a model to be imitated or a satire on all schemes of perfection, has never been resolved, and that ambiguity has kept the book alive. It was translated into English in 1551 and gave the language the words utopia and utopian.

More wrote Utopia while serving on a royal embassy in the Low Countries, and it reflects his wide reading in classical and Christian sources. It combined the humanist interest in reform with a playfulness that is characteristic of the circle around Erasmus, and it made his international reputation as a thinker.

Religion, Philosophy and Polemic

More was a devout Catholic who practiced austerities, fasted and prayed, and who wrote extensively against the reformist theology of Luther and Tyndale. His polemical works, including the Dialogue Concerning Heresies, defended the unity of the church and the authority of tradition, and they attacked the translation of Scripture that Tyndale undertook on the continent.

His religious outlook combined the humanist study of Greek and Latin with traditional piety. He translated the life of Pico della Mirandola and wrote devotional treatises, and he valued learning as a means of knowing God and of ordering the soul. At the same time his polemics could be fierce, and the vehemence of his language against heretics reflects the intensity of the confessional struggles of the age.

He believed that faith and reason were compatible and that a good society required both justice and religious order. This synthesis of humanism and orthodoxy made him a representative figure of the northern Renaissance, standing between the medieval church and the emerging world of the Reformation.

Lord Chancellor and the Break with Rome

Henry VIII, impressed by More's abilities, brought him into royal service in 1518. More became a member of the privy council, was knighted, and in 1529 succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as lord chancellor, the highest office under the crown. He was the first layman to hold the post, and he served with integrity during a period of accelerating religious change.

When Henry repudiated Catherine of Aragon and declared himself supreme head of the church of England, More could not support the break with Rome. He resigned the chancellorship in 1532, hoping to end his days in private devotion. His refusal to take the oath required by the Act of Succession led to his arrest and imprisonment in the Tower of London.

He was tried for treason in 1535 and condemned on the testimony of a witness, Richard Rich, whose evidence was widely doubted. In his defence he insisted that a subject could be silent without thereby denying the law, and he argued that no parliament could make a man pope. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 6 July 1535 and buried in the Tower.

Conscience, Death and Legacy

The last months of More's life, spent in the Tower, produced a series of letters and devotional writings of remarkable serenity. He wrote A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation and meditations on the passion of Christ, and his letters to his daughter Margaret Roper record a mind at peace and a father's tenderness. These writings are among the most moving documents of English religious literature.

His death was interpreted differently by different parties. Catholics saw in him a martyr for the unity of the church and the freedom of conscience, and he was canonised in 1935. Others have read his stand as an early assertion that the individual conscience is answerable to God above the commands of the sovereign, a principle that shaped later arguments for toleration and for limited government.

He is remembered as a man of learning and wit who gave his life for his convictions, and as the author of a book that invented a genre and a word. His Utopia continues to provoke reflection on justice and property, while his refusal to submit showed that the claims of conscience could withstand even the most formidable of earthly powers.

See also

• Utopia
• Henry VIII
• Erasmus
• English Reformation