The Renaissance

afoul of King Henry VIII’s break with the
Catholic Church, Thomas More paid for
his stand with his life. His father, Sir John
More, was persecuted by Henry VII, the
first Tudor king. He was Lord Chancellor
of England from 1529 to 1532. In 1510 he
became an undersheriff of London. He be-
came a counselor to the king in 1517 and
was sent as a diplomat to Emperor Charles
V. His success in this mission earned him
a knighthood, attaining the title of under-
treasurer in 1521. More served the king as
adviser and go-between with Cardinal
Thomas Wolsey, the leading representative
of the pope in England.

In 1516 More completed Utopia,a
book describing an ideal political and eco-
nomic system in which religious tolerance
and the common ownership of property
bring about a peaceful and orderly society.
More was inspired by ideal societies de-
scribed by classical Greek authors such as
Plato and Aristotle; his name of Utopia is
derived from the Greek phrase eutopos, or
“no place.”

In 1523 More was named speaker of
the House of Commons and in 1525 chan-
cellor of Lancaster, a key post in northern
England. In the meantime he wrote sev-
eral tracts against the Protestant reformers
who were gaining a following on the con-
tinent of Europe. HisDefence of the Seven
Sacraments, written for Henry VIII, earned
the king a commendation as “Defender of
the Faith” from Pope Leo X. At the same
time, however, Henry was growing strongly
disenchanted with his wife of twenty years,
Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to
provide him with a male heir. In 1527 he
asked Cardinal Wolsey to petition Pope
Clement VII to have his marriage annulled.
The pope refused to cooperate; Henry re-
acted by forcing Wolsey from his post and,
in 1529, replacing him with More. Henry’s
argument that the pope had no authority

in England was opposed by More, who saw

the Protestant movement as a deadly threat

to the survival of Christianity. He ordered

the imprisonment and execution of many

Protestants in England.

More did not support Henry’s efforts

to divorce Catherine of Aragon, however,

and to protest the king’s actions he asked

to resign his post. Although the king

granted this request in 1532, he was deeply

angered by More’s refusal to take an oath

acknowledging Henry as the head of the

Church of England. When Henry’s second

wife, Anne Boleyn, was crowned the new

queen of England in 1533, More avoided

the ceremony. This snub and his continu-

ing friendship with Catherine of Aragon

made him a marked man. In 1534 he was

arrested for refusing to take another oath,

one that would acknowledge an Act of

Succession denying the ultimate authority

of the pope in matters of religion. He was

brought to trial; unwilling to recant his

belief that a king could not replace a pope,

he was found guilty and sentenced to be

drawn and quartered—a severely cruel

punishment. Henry spared him this or-

deal, ordering him instead to be beheaded,

which took place on July 6, 1535. More

became a martyr for the Catholic Church

in its efforts to halt the spread of Protes-

tantism in Europe.

SEEALSO: Boleyn, Anne; Erasmus, Desid-

erius; Henry VIII

Mühlberg, Battle of ..........................

A battle between the forces of the Holy

Roman Emperor Charles V and the

Schmalkaldic League, a band of Protestant

German princes opposed to the emperor’s

authority in their domains. By the evening

of April 23, 1547, the Schmalkaldic com-

mander, John of Saxony, had gathered

about eight thousand foot soldiers and

Mühlberg, Battle of