Thomas More was a very complex and contrasting personality. He's very important to history because he's gone down on record as the man who defied Henry VIII over the matter of the king's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. And because he refused to take the oath of supporting...
the king, he lost his head. Thomas More died for Christendom. He died for the Catholic faith. He died for mental reservation on grounds of conscience. He was one of the great figures of the European Renaissance.
In the 16th century, there were conventionally two ways you stood You stayed a layman, where you became a priest. But he thought there was a third way, and that third way was to be a very pious, honest, religious layman, but in the world, to make a difference in the world, not just simply to retreat to a monastery. This was what the Renaissance was about, bringing learning and character to serve the city.
He thought that he could actually go into politics and somehow make the world better, make society better, and for, you know, the best part of ten years, he did. He was the son of a London lawyer and judge. He was born around 1477-78 and he followed in his father's footsteps and went to a new inn and then Lincoln's Inn and trained in the law.
While he was a very young lawyer, he met people in London who were really plugged into the Italian Renaissance. People like Thomas Lineker, who'd studied in Italy and brought back Italian learning with him and they were reading these books. Moore wants to pursue philosophy, literature, theology, and all the humanities that he's convinced he needs.
So he studies this while he's also studying the law. When he started to read all that stuff, he was different to the conventional lawyers. Lawyers on the whole, at least English lawyers at that date, didn't think for themselves.
They followed, if like, the rules of the law. They did their practice. They were, you know, they were businessmen rather than thinkers.
But he's a realist. Everyone is born in a particular family and in a particular country, and you do the best with what you have. In fact, he has a poem on this. What is the best form of government is the title.
And it starts off weighing the advantages of kingship and the advantages of the Senate and Republic, and clearly... The Senate and the Republic wins every time, but at the end he says, but why are we discussing this? Where do we live? That's why he wrote this book, Utopia, this extraordinary book that he published in 1516, a classic of European literature.
I mean, it's a world classic. Describes an ideal society, one that probably will never be achieved, but one to which you aspire. Moore was led to write Utopia because he realised there was a conflict of interests. between the humanist beliefs that derive from the study of the classical world and the religious beliefs that he held as a devout Roman Catholic.
He envisages a society that reflected rational beliefs rather than religious beliefs, but ultimately he shows that society breaks down without religious faith. But one of you tapers the dialogue, and there are two characters. There's a character called Morris, or Thomas in Latin, Thomas Moore, and there's a character...
who's actually fictional, called Raphael Hythlodaeus. And Raphael Hythlodaeus is, if you like, the perfect, the supreme humanist character who says that if you go into politics, you'll have to make compromises. You know, you want to make a difference, but in fact, you'll end up getting your head chopped off. We have to think of the Henry VIII not as the bloated monster who later became this very fat man who scowls at us out of portraits by Hans Holbein. We've got to think of a younger Henry here who's slimmer, who's more enthusiastic about life, who hasn't been soured by the bitterness caused by the divorce and the break with Rome.
We've got to think of a Henry who is passionate about learning, who doesn't desire gold, riches or precious gems, I'm quoting here, but virtue and glory and immortality. And he wanted his court to be almost a university of culture. And he wanted to gather around him men of learning and men of distinction.
And Thomas More was one of them. It was natural that the king should want such a man at his court and as his friend. Thomas! Your majesty does my house more honour than I fear my household will bear. No ceremony, Thomas, no ceremony.
In 1527, Henry conceived the idea of having his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, annulled because he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn. He also had the problem on his house that he had no male heir to succeed him. Thomas, touching this matter of my divorce.
Have you thought of it since we last spoke? Of little else. Then do you see your way clear to me?
That you should put away Queen Catherine, sire. Oh, alas, as I think of it, I see so clearly that I cannot come with your grace that my endeavour is not to think of it at all. Then you haven't thought enough! This is a dynastic monarchy.
It is not a republic. It is not a modern constitutional monarchy. The test of success in a dynastic monarchy is passing on the throne to your son.
Not even to a daughter really. The problem was he had married Catherine who had been, first of all, the wife to his elder brother Arthur, who had died in 1502, and a dispensation was granted by the then Pope, allowing Henry to marry his sister-in-law Catherine. In my efforts to secure a divorce, have I your support or have I not?
The Pope gave a dispensation so that the King might marry his brother's widow for state reasons. Now we are to ask the Pope to dispense with his dispensation. In 1527 Henry wasn't so keen on dispensations and he was asking the Pope at that time, Clement VII, to reverse the decision of his predecessor and say that he hadn't had any right to grant that dispensation because a verse in Leviticus in the Bible forbade the marriage of a man to his brother's widow.
The church allowed annulments of marriage but only in specific circumstances and Henry's case didn't really meet those circumstances and this is really where the trouble starts for Thomas More. To me, it seems a matter for the Holy See. Oh, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, does a man need a pope to tell him where he's sinned?
It was a sin. God's punished me. I have no son. Thomas More. of course, took the strictly orthodox Catholic view that the marriage was valid and the Pope, being Christ's representative on earth, had originally had the power to issue the dispensation permitting it and that a The second pope should not be putting that dispensation aside.
He said, OK, to the king, look, I can't agree with this, I can't go on with it, I will continue to serve you in, as he put it, other things, and Henry said, OK. Fortunately, politics interfered. I am straightly charged by the king himself here openly to declare how much all England is beholden to this man. One of the things that has puzzled historians is why Henry did appoint him Lord Chancellor in the first place.
See, the thing is that they were both working under false premises. Henry thought more would come round. More thought that Henry would give up Anne Boleyn and return to his senses.
He spends a very uncomfortable couple of years in office until in 1531, the convocation of the church headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury was fined by the king and submitted and relinquished all rights over the Church of England into Henry's hands, Henry having just declared himself supreme head of the Church of England. Henry never considered that he broke with the church, but to break with Rome, that is with the authority of the Roman bishop. For Moore, that was one step too far.
And he resigned his office as Lord Chancellor. Should one person use all the power of the state for one's own descendants? This is an enormous issue that will explode in the decades that follow.
You know, what's really interesting is that, you know, 50 years later... When this starts to come up again in Elizabeth's reign, Elizabeth I, who was much more secure about her monarchy than Henry VIII, you know, she was under threat from Catholic powers, but in herself she was probably much more confident and secure. She says, I will not make windows into people's souls. If they give me outward conformity, if they seem to support me in political matters, in state matters, I will not inquire.
The king is made by active Parliament's supreme head of the church in England. This English church will first divorce him from the Queen, then marry him to Lady Anne. But on any of these matters, have you heard me make a statement? No.
And if I'm to lose my rank and fall to housekeeping, I want to know the reason. So make a statement now. No.
Alice, it's a point of law. Accept it from me, Alice, that in silence is my safety under the law. More centred.
Well, I'll just retire from the world. I'll go to Chelsea. I'll just live a quiet life. The trouble was that...
In fact, if you look to see what he was doing at Chelsea, he wasn't just keeping quiet, he was writing books. Unfortunately, Henry couldn't allow that, because Moore was actually writing tracts that were not directly condemning Henry's subsequent annulment of his marriage to Catherine and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, but were rather subversive. We've got the complete works in the back. There are 22 books in that set.
Nine of the books on the bottom were written in four and a half years, the last four and a half years of Moore's life before he was imprisoned. That's not silence. The point of view is crucial.
Henry probably thought that he was the father of his people. If you're looking at this as an historian, looking at the rise of the nation state, this is all actually very positive. The nation state in England and then later Britain was largely forged by, if you like, this centralizing policy of Henry VIII. Have you seen this document before?
Many times. It is the Act of Succession. These are the names of those who swore to it.
I have, as you say, seen it before. Will you swear to it? No. After they passed the Act of Succession and he refused to take the oath, they were able to commit him to the Tower of London.
This is where he writes perhaps his greatest masterpiece and one of his great contributions to world literature. We wouldn't have it if he weren't in the tower. It's a Socratic dialogue on suffering. The nature of suffering and how one bears up under suffering.
At Westminster Hall, at Lambeth, and again at Richmond, you stubbornly refused the oath. Was this no denial? No, this was silence. and for my silence I am punished with imprisonment. Why have I been called again?
Under charge of high treason, Sir Thomas. For which the punishment is not imprisonment. Death comes for us all, my lords.
Yes, even for kings he comes. In Moore's political poetry, he never uses the word subject. He uses the word citizen and he uses the word people.
He has a different understanding of freedom and of what makes a country great. But this is also, again, part of the Renaissance. He says that the purpose of kings, what kings are for, is actually for the good of the people.
It's to make the society better, it's to improve people's lives. It's not for kings simply to enjoy themselves. build fancy castles, you know, make war.
The oath was put to loyal subjects up and down the country and they all declared his gracious title to be just and good. But when it came to the prisoner, he refused. He calls this... Silence. Yet is there a man in this court, is there a man in this country who does not know Sir Thomas More's opinion of this title?
No. The rule which is based on old Roman law is, in Latin, it's quae tacit, concentere vidator, he who keeps silence seems to consent. And, in fact, More and some other clergy said, Look, By keeping silence, you know, the presumption is, the legal presumption, is that we have gone along with this.
In fact, they knew that they hadn't gone along with it, but they could say that this was, it was a debating point. Silence was not actually conveying assent. It was conveying, it was conveying dissent.
Because if you're refusing to swear an oath that everybody else is taking, it looks as very much as if you are, you disagree with that oath. Moore said, look, I want to keep silent because to answer is a two-edged sword. If I answer one way, it's death to my soul, I'll go to hell. If I answer the other way, it's death to my body, because, you know, the king's passed a law saying that if you don't support the royal supremacy, it's treason. Sir Thomas Moy, you have been found guilty of high treason.
The sentence of the court... My lords, when I was practising law, the manner was to ask the prisoner before pronouncing sentence if he had anything to say. Have you anything to say?
Yes. The part in the film where they start to pass sentence and he stands up and says, when I was practising law, you know, a prisoner was allowed to say his piece. That's actually a matter of historical record that he said that. Since the court has determined to condemn me, God knoweth how, I will now discharge my mind concerning the indictment and the king's title. The indictment is grounded in an act of Parliament which is directly repugnant to the law of God and His Holy Church, the supreme government of which no temporal person may by any law...
presumed to take upon him. This was granted by the mouth of our Savior Christ himself to Saint Peter and the bishops of Rome whilst he lived. And at this trial he says perfectly clearly that there's no authorization anywhere in the tradition, anywhere in the law. That a temporal man can be the head of a spiritual organization.
You know, that one person can be head of church and state. No temporal person could have that title. It was a title given to the Pope by Christ when he was on the earth. And no king, no temporal head, could usurp it.
Thomas More says in one moment in his trial, something that just reaches out across the centuries, he says that the problem with... The laws that Henry passed to make himself supreme head of the church was that they weren't valid because parliament didn't have authority to legislate on a matter of faith. The immunity of the church is promised both in Magna Carta and in the king's own coronation oath.
More quotes of the Magna Carta. The church shall be free. These were hundreds of years of tradition that were being broken and of laws. The most solemn laws of England that were being broken. Moore also quotes Henry's own coronation oath, where he takes an oath that he will protect the independence of the church.
I am commanded by the king to be brief, and since I am the king's obedient subject, brief I will be. I die his majesty's good servant, but God's first. Thomas Moore is one of the most famous Englishmen.
He's famous because he stood for mental reservation on grounds of conscience. He wouldn't do something if he thought it was wrong. And that's why he transcends British history, why he's a figure of international scope.
It's why the Pope made him a saint.