King Henry VIII & Sir Thomas More

Almost Utopia

In 1516 Sir Thomas More was a successful lawyer and noted intellectual, a friend of the renowned humanist Erasmus. He was also a politician on the rise, a servant and adviser to King Henry VIII, then a young man in his 20s. While on a diplomatic mission for Henry More wrote a book, Utopia, which launched a new word and a new idea into the world.

We do not know what King Henry thought of Utopia. We don't even know if he read it, but Henry was something of an intellectual so we assume he did. He probably found a lot to like about it. Utopia was the nearest thing the 16th century had to science fiction, and the ideas in it must have fascinated him as they fascinated many people then and ever since.

Henry would also have liked the political attitudes and values that More expressed. Utopia had no king, but the Utopians were law-abiding and placed great emphasis on maintaining social order rather than disrupting it. Henry could only wish that his English subjects were more like that. But the one thing we know for sure about Henry VIII's reaction to Utopia is what he did not do: He didn't have More tossed into the Tower of London. Instead Henry gave him a more important job, and brought him into the circle of trusted royal friends.

A few years later Henry sought More's advice on a literary project of his own. The social order across Europe was being threatened in a new way, by Martin Luther's call for total reform of the Church. Both Henry and More were aghast at Luther's ideas, which they regarded as not only disruptive but heretical. Henry already had the usual tools for dealing with heresy: rack, thumbscrew, and stake; with More's full support and assistance, he used them.

But Henry also wanted to challenge Luther on the level of ideas. He set out to write a pamphlet rebutting Luther's arguments and asked More to help him with his term paper. There have been claims ever since that More was Henry's ghostwriter. But most historians believe that Henry wrote Defense of the Seven Sacraments himself, though More helped with research and editing.

More made one suggestion that Henry did not take. Where Henry defended the authority of the Pope, More urged him to tone that part down a bit. The Pope was a player in power politics, he reminded Henry, and they might one day find themselves at odds, as previous popes and English kings had. Better, suggested More, not to concede anything on that point.

Henry ignored More's rather Machiavellian advice. King Henry was a young man of almost boyish idealism; when he jousted he called himself Sir Faithful Heart and wore the colors of his queen, Catherine of Aragon. And at least in the short term Henry's youthful idealism paid off for him. The pope was so impressed by Henry's pamphlet that he gave Henry the title Defender of the Faith - a title still borne by English monarchs.

More was also busy writing a pamphlet of his own, a Reply to Luther. This was not like Henry's intellectual pamphlet. It was not argument but furious invective written in crude toilet language. More published it under a pseudonym, even forging legal documents with the supposed author's name in order to make him seem like a real person. No doubt More did not want anything so vulgar associated with his name, but – no utopian himself – he wrote to appeal to the masses, leaving his royal friend Henry to make the argument to intellectuals.

No Castle in France

After entering the lists alongside Henry against Martin Luther, More soon established himself as not only a royal advisor but one of Henry's circle of personal friends. Unlike many intellectuals, however, More was a political realist. He knew that if friendship ever got in the way of power, power would win. He once told his son-in-law, William Roper, that even though he was the king's personal friend, "if my head could win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go."

But when Sir Thomas More ran afoul of Henry VIII, it was not over castles in France. It was over an English girl, Anne Boleyn.

In the 1520s life was good for King Henry in nearly all ways but one. He had no son to carry on the Tudor dynasty and rule England after him. The only one of Queen Catherine's children to survive was a daughter, Mary, who hardly counted. Lack of a son weighed on Henry as the years passed and the days of wearing Catherine's colors as "Sir Faithful Heart" faded into the past. Then one day Anne Boleyn's flashing dark eyes caught his, and the political became personal. Henry VIII's desire for a new wife who could bear him a son was no longer abstract: He wanted Anne Boleyn in his royal bed.

Henry asked the Pope to grant him an annulment, not dissolving his marriage to Queen Catherine but declaring that they had never been properly married to begin with. (History's most famous divorce case was not technically a divorce.) Such rulings were not uncommon, and Henry was not the first king to seek one in order to have another shot at siring an heir. But prospective dumpee Catherine of Aragon had powerful friends - especially her nephew, Emperor Charles V, whose armies surrounded the Vatican.

Henry may have reflected on the advice More gave him years earlier not to concede too much authority to the papacy. More might also have reflected on the caution he gave his son-in-law about royal friendship, but there is no sign that he did. Instead he continued working closely with Henry, who made him Lord High Chancellor. Like Henry, More detested heretics and ordered half a dozen Protestants burned at the stake, while also trying to help Henry secure his annulment.

But the Pope, firmly under Charles V's thumb, was not forthcoming. Henry, who had once thundered his support for papal supremacy, was not about to let any pope keep Anne Boleyn out of his bed. He started moving toward a break from Rome. And while More had previously advised Henry to play down papal supremacy, More himself believed in it deeply. To him the Pope's authority was derived from God and essential to the social order of Christendom. Aghast at what Henry was doing, More resigned his office and sought to return to private life.

For Henry this was a serious political embarrassment. But More also made a mistake – he snubbed Anne Boleyn at her coronation. This was no matter of principle. More acknowledged her as queen; probably he simply did not like her, regarding her as the ultimate homewrecker. So did a lot of other people. But Henry was still madly in love with her, and once again the political was personal. More was his friend, but he had disrespected the woman Henry loved, so he had to go.

More was charged with corruption, but this did not pass the laugh test. Sir Thomas More was famously the most honest judge in England, and not even Tudor juries would convict on totally unbelievable charges. So instead he was ordered to join in swearing an oath acknowledging Henry, not the Pope, as head of the English church. For the most part only serving royal officials were called on to formally swear the oath, but More was too prominent and had been too close to Henry to be quietly ignored.

More refused to swear to the oath, and in 1535 he was charged with high treason for his refusal. More, an expert lawyer, argued that in refusing to swear the oath he was merely failing to make a public endorsement of Henry's new status. He had not denounced it, and so long as he said nothing at all his silence, in the eyes of the law, implied consent.

The prosecution called up Sir Richard Rich, a midlevel royal official who swore on the stand that More had disparaged Henry's claim to church supremacy in Rich's hearing. Since this is what More actually believed, perhaps in an unguarded moment he let it slip out. But Rich was such a slimy character that his testimony has generally been regarded as perjury, rewarded by getting the high royal office of Solicitor General.

The special jury that heard More's case included Anne Boleyn's father, brother, and uncle. It duly found Sir Thomas guilty, and he was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1535. On the scaffold he declared that "I am the King's loyal servant, but God's first."

Even as More's boiled head was put on a pike over London Bridge (his daughter Margaret later stole it for burial), Henry was falling out of love with Anne Boleyn. The son she'd promised him turned out to be merely another useless daughter, Elizabeth, while Anne herself, so exciting as an almost-mistress, turned out to be a nagging and temperamental wife.

A year after More was executed Anne Boleyn followed him to the scaffold, along with the brother who had been one of More's judges.