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Continuation Biography Saint Thomas More

In 1505, he married Jane Colt, she bore him four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Jane died in 1510 in childbirth. Soon after Jane’ s death, he married Alice Middleton.

In 1510, he was appointed Undersheriff of London. In this capacity, he gained a reputation of being impartial, and a patron of the poor.

He was realistic and wrote in Utopia in 1516, “philosophy had no place among kings …. it is not possible for all things to be well, unless all men were good, which I think will not be this good many years”

In 1518, he was Secretary of Henry VIII; 1521, he was knighted, and was made Speaker of The House of Commons in 1523 . As speaker, More helped establish the parliamentary privilege of free speech. Nevertheless, he continued to read, study, and write, and is known more as scholar than as a jurist.

In 1525 he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in succession to Cardinal Wolsey. Thomas as chancellor it was his duty to enforce the laws against heretics and, by doing so, he provoked the attacks of Protestant writers both in his own time and since. The rest of his life was spent in writing mostly in defense of the Church.
As Chancellor to Henry VIII he refused to sanction Henry's divorce of Queen Katherine of Aragón (1527). A few months later came the royal proclamation ordering the clergy to acknowledge Henry as "Supreme Head" of the Church "as far as the law of God will permit". More at once proffered his resignation of the chancellorship, which however was not accepted.

He refused to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn in June 1533, a matter which did not escape the King's notice. In 1534 he was one of the people accused of complicity with Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent who opposed Henry's break with Rome, but was not attainted due to protection from the Lords who refused to pass the bill until More' s name was off the list of names.. In April, 1534, More refused to swear to the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy, and was committed to the Tower of London on April 17.

On 1 July, 1535, More was indicted for high treason at Westminster Hall before a special commission of twenty. More denied the chief charges of the indictment, which was enormously long, and denounced Rich, the solicitor-general and chief witness against him as a perjuror. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn, but some days later this was changed by Henry to beheading on Tower Hill. The story of his last days on earth, is of the tenderest beauty and should be read in full; certainly no martyr ever surpassed him in fortitude. There was nothing in it new, forced or affected. He did not look upon the severing of his head from his body as a circumstance that ought to produce any change in the disposition of his mind". The execution took place on Tower Hill "before nine of the clock" on 6 July. His final words on the scaffold were: "The King's good servant, but God's First."

The body being buried in the Church of St. Peter ad vincula. The head, after being parboiled, was exposed on London Bridge for a month when his daughter, Margaret Roper, bribed the man, whose business it was to throw it into the river, to give it to her instead. The final fate of the relic is somewhat uncertain, but in 1824 a leaden box was found in the Roper vault at St. Dunstan' s, Canterbury, which on being opened was found to contain a head presumed to be More' s.

Thomas More was formally beatified by the Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII, in the Decree of 29 December, 1886 and canonized as a saint by Pope Pius XI in 1935.