St. Thomas More, Knight, Lord Chancellor of England, author and martyr. 1478-1535
Born London February 7, 1477 or 1478, executed on Tower Hill July 6, 1535
His parents were Sir John, barrister and judge, by first wife Agnes Graunger. Born on Milk St. London, he studied at Oxford, where he wrote comedies and studied Greek and Latin literature. He moved to London where he studied law, becoming a barrister in 1501. Determined instead to be a monk, he lived with the Carthusians, but instead felt it his duty to serve his country; he entered Parliament in 1504, and married for the first time. He was a lifelong friend of Erasmus.
Thomas' writings so angered Henry VII that More withdrew from public life until the death of the king in 1509; he then became undersherriff of London. When his wife died in childbirth he soon married Dame Alice.
He became active under Henry VIII, became a member of the Privy Council and was knighted in 1521. By helping Henry write "Defense of the Seven Sacraments" he was made Speaker of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1525. He helped establish the parliamentary privilege of free speech.
In spite of refusing to endorse Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he became Lord Chancellor in 1529.
This was the beginning of the end. He resigned in 1532 citing ill health, but really because of Henry's antagonism toward the Roman Church. When he refused to attend Ann Boleyn's coronation, he was accused of complicity in opposition to Henry's break with Rome. He also refused to sign the Act of Succession and the Oath of Supremacy, leading to his imprisonment in the Tower of London on the charge of treason, and his subsequent beheading on July 6, 1535. His final words on the scaffold: were "The King's good servant, but God's first." Thomas More was beatified in 1886, and cannonized by Pope Pius XI, in 1935.