(C.D. Stampley Enterprises, Charlotte, NC 2001). Used with permission.

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For lawyers

St. Thomas More (1478-1535)

Feast day: June 22

St. Thomas More, the patron of lawyers, was himself a lawyer renowned in his day for his integrity. The transcript of his trial has come down to us and not only demonstrates More’s skill in oral argument but also reveals his conviction that a nation’s laws must be based on the law of God.

“A man of singular virtue and of a clear unspotted conscience.” That is how William Roper, husband of Thomas More’s favorite daughter Margaret, described his father-in-law. If More’s conscience, formed as it was by his Catholic faith, gave direction to his life it also set limits. Not that he seemed to mind. Without compromising his integrity he became the husband and father of a large, boisterous household, a successful and respected lawyer, an author with an international reputation, and finally Lord Chancellor of England—the first layman to hold that office in his nation’s history. Yet St. Thomas forfeited it all—office, fortune, family, life itself—when his king demanded that all his subjects trim their consciences to suit the royal whim.

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Thomas More was born on Milk Street in London on February 7, 1478. His mother Agnes was the daughter of Thomas Granger who became Sheriff of London. His father John was a lawyer who ended his career as a judge of the King’s Bench. Among the comfortable, conservative, solidly middle-class Mores Thomas was an anomaly. Even as a small boy he was quick-witted and could make the adults around him laugh. He excelled in school; when he went to Canterbury College, Oxford, he joined the circle of students and teachers who pursued “the new learning,” meaning they studied Greek and classical philosophy, particularly the works of Plato.

And More was devout. He had just become a lawyer when he moved to the guest house of London’s Carthusian monastery. Over the next four years he tried to discern his true vocation by participating in the religious life of the monks while also pursuing his law career. Erasmus, one of his closest friends, tells us that after this lengthy trial period More had to admit that given his libido he was better off finding a wife than taking vows as a Carthusian.

When he was 26 More married Jane Colt, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Sir John Colt who owned a small estate in Essex. Over the next six years Thomas and Jane had four children together. Then unexpectedly in 1511 Jane More died. A month later More married again—Alice Middleton, a wealthy widow eight years his senior. Dame Alice was a plain-spoken, down-to-earth, eminently practical woman who proved to be an ideal counterpart to More and an attentive mother to his children by Jane Colt.

Meanwhile More’s law practice prospered. Unlike other London lawyers who hung around St. Paul’s Cathedral to drum up business, new clients sought out More. His growing reputation as a lawyer and a scholar—particularly after the publication of his book Utopia—brought Thomas to the attention of Henry VIII and the king’s Lord Chancellor Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. In 1517 More was appointed to the King’s Council. His subtle mind, his learning, his wit made him a favorite with the King and won him one post after another—diplomat, judge, royal secretary. When Wolsey died in 1529, Henry named Thomas More Lord Chancellor of England saying he was delighted to have a friend as hi chancellor. On one occasion when Henry visited More at his home at Chelsea the king walked through the Thomas’ garden with his arm draped around his friend’s neck. More’s son-in-law William Roper was exhilarated by this sign of affection but More had no illusions about the king. “If my head could win him a castle in France,” he told Roper, “it should not fail to go.”

The crisis between More and the king was not over a castle in France, of course, but over Henry’s desire for a son. He and his wife Catherine of Aragon had only one living child, the Princess Mary, and Henry was convinced that no woman could rule England. In all of England’s history there had been only one female monarch, Queen Matilda, during whose reign the country had been torn apart by civil war—not an encouraging precedent. In 1527 Queen Catherine was 42 years old and unlikely to produce any more children. At the same time Henry had developed an intense passion for 23-year-old Anne Boleyn.

In order to marry Anne Henry would have to convince the {ln:Pope} to annul his marriage to Catherine. Henry took the position that by marrying the widow of his elder brother Arthur he had violated canon law. It is true that the Church forbade marriages between in-laws, but {ln:Pope} Julius II had granted Henry and Catherine a dispensation to marry. Now Henry was asking {ln:Pope} Clement VII to declare that his predecessor had no right to grant such a dispensation, that the marriage to Catherine was invalid from the beginning, and Henry was free to marry Anne Boleyn.

The case dragged on for four years, and with each passing year Henry became more determined to be free of Catherine. In 1531, no longer willing to wait for the {ln:Pope} ’s consent, Henry assumed the title “Protector and Supreme Head of the Church in England.” Initially Henry permitted a qualifying statement, “as far as the law of God allows,” to be added to the definition of his new authority, but the direction the king was taking was unmistakable. St. John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, stood up in the House of Lords to argue against granting this new title to the king. If the English “leap out of Peter’s ship” Fisher warned, the country would be “drowned in the waves of all heresies, sects, schisms, and divisions.”

As Lord Chancellor it was More’s duty to support the king’s new title. This he could not do, so he resigned his office and retired to Chelsea.

During the events after More’s resignation events moved very quickly. In February 1533 Henry married Anne Boleyn secretly (she was pregnant at the time). Immediately afterward the new Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, introduced an act to Parliament forbidding an English subject to appeal to Rome in any matter whatsoever—a piece of legislation which More said marked England’s break from the Catholic Church. In April Thomas Cranmer, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, pronounced Henry’s marriage to Catherine invalid. Anne was proclaimed Queen of England. At Anne’s coronation in May Thomas More was conspicuously absent.

To the world More appeared perfectly calm and collected amid these upheavals. But he confessed that at night he often laid awake in his bed troubled by “night fears” and “forecasting all such perils and painful deaths” he might suffer because he had opposed the king.

In 1534 Parliament passed the Act of Succession which annulled Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to Henry and decreed that the children of Anne Boleyn would be the heirs to the English throne. Then the Act went on to deny that the {ln:Pope} had any authority or jurisdiction in England. Finally all subjects of the king were required to take an oath supporting the Act.

On April 12, 1534, More was ordered to come to Lambeth Palace the next day to take the oath. He spent most of that night in prayer. Very early in the morning he attended Mass and received Holy Communion. Then he walked with his family in the garden where he said good-bye. He would not let any of them see him to the dock where some of his servants were waiting in a small boat to row him to London.

At Lambeth a panel of the king’s commissioners led by Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer asked More if was ready to swear to the Act of Succession. Like a good lawyer he asked to see the document first and the commissioners sat in impatient silence as he read through the legislation. When he finished More said he would not condemn any part of the Act nor any person who swore to it. Furthermore he would happily swear that he recognized the right of Queen Anne’s children to inherit the crown. Since there was more to the act than the succession, More said, “I cannot swear without the jeopardizing of my soul to perpetual damnation.” For this qualm of conscience More was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Initially More’s confinement was not harsh. He had a room high in one of the turrets, not in the dungeon; he was free to walk in the grounds, including its gardens; and he could go to Mass each day at one of the chapels within the Tower. As the months passed, however, and More showed no sign of giving in he was moved to worse quarters, forbidden to leave his cell, and his books and writing materials were taken from him. After fourteen months of confinement he was finally brought to trial for treason on July 1, 1535, at Westminster Hall.

The transcript of More’s trial survives and is the best source we have of his subtle mind and skill as a lawyer. He defended himself well until a false witness stepped forward. Sir Richard Rich testified that More had confided to him that he rejected the king’s title “Supreme Head of the Church in England.” When Rich was finished More said, “In good faith Master Rich, I am sorrier for your perjury than for my own peril.” Then he asked the court how they could trust the testimony of Rich, “a man... always reputed as one of so little truth.” And he asked his Judges if it was probable that he, Thomas More, would tell Rich “the secrets of my conscience touching the king’s supremacy?”

More’s appeal fell on deaf ears. The jury retired for fifteen minutes before returning a verdict of guilty. Now More stood and spoke his mind. He denounced Parliament’s Act of Succession as “directly repugnant to the laws of God.” Then he reminded the court that “as the blessed apostle St. Paul, as we read in The Acts of the Apostles, was present and consented to the death of St. Stephen and kept their clothes that stoned him to death, and yet be they now both twain holy saints in Heaven and shall continue there friends forever, so I verily trust and shall therefore heartily pray that though your Lordships have now here in the earth been Judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together.”

At the end of this speech the court sentenced Thomas More to the gruesome death of a traitor: hanging until he was half dead, then taken down alive, the intestines ripped out of his body and burned before his eyes, his genitals hacked off, and finally the mercy of beheading.

None of More’s family was in the courtroom, but his children were waiting for him at the Tower. John More knelt in the street to receive his father’s blessing. Margaret Roper elbowed her way through the guards and flung her arms around her father’s neck, weeping, kissing him, refusing to let him go.

During the six days between More’s condemnation and his execution Henry VIII commuted the sentence to simple beheading. On the morning of July 7 More dressed himself in his best clothes, took a small wooden cross in his hand, and walked the 200 yards from the Middle Gate of the Tower of London to Tower Hill. A large crowd had turned out to witness his execution. On the scaffold he asked them to bear witness that he was giving his life “for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church” and to remember that he died “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” Then he knelt down and recited Psalm 51, the Miserere. When he had finished praying More forgave, blessed, and kissed the headsman. When he had laid his neck on block and indicated that he was ready, the executioner beheaded Thomas More with a single blow of the ax.

Some of More’s family were present when his body was buried in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. His head was boiled, impaled on a stake, and displayed on London Bridge. More’s daughter Margaret retrieved the head and buried it in her husband’s family vault in the Church of St. Dunstan outside the walls of Canterbury where it still is today.

{tab=About Book}

Prayer to the saints is a powerful thing.

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“An excellent resource for home and classroom use.” – Publisher’s Weekly {/tabs}