Holbein's portrait of St. Thomas More (Credit: Art Resource, NY)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article by the English writer and critic Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) is adapted from one that appeared in the April 1928 edition of Columbia magazine. Belloc was a member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910, and wrote political commentary and essays on the Church’s economic and social teachings.

Pope Pius XI canonized Thomas More in 1935. In 2000, as part of the Church’s Jubilee Year celebration, Pope John Paul II named him the “Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians,” saying: “Thomas More’s life is truly an example for all who are called to serve humanity and society in the civic and political sphere. The eloquent testimony which he bore is as timely as ever at a historical moment which presents crucial challenges to the consciences of everyone involved in the field of governance.”

St. Thomas More’s feast day is June 22.

St. Thomas More's prison cell in the Tower of London. (Credit: Art Resource, NY)

This man was Sir Thomas More, one-time chancellor of England; that is, the first man in the realm, after the king.

His death aroused a prodigious storm of excitement throughout all Christendom. … Four hundred years hardly obliterated the effect of that violent shock. It is perhaps truer to say that after 400 years the sacrifice which Blessed Thomas More made of his life becomes larger and larger in men’s eyes with every passing decade. I can believe that a hundred years hence he will appear as one of the ten chief men of that great time. He already appears among the first hundred. He is beginning to be a symbol of such resistance as was offered to the breakup of Christian unity; and his singular character, vivacious, long hesitating but at last fixed (and, when fixed, unalterable in a decision) may well be the typical character of those who prevented the destruction of our civilization.

If all this may be said of Blessed Thomas More, why may it be said?

What was the meaning of that final act in which he sacrificed his life for the unity of the faith? If it had been that of a very simple man, acting on a clear issue, there would be less to be said. It was not so. It was the act of a most diverse man full of varied experience, at first himself uncertain, and undertaken in a most difficult and complicated world. It was the act of a man who saw what others did not see, and who himself did not see it until he had passed through many vagaries of his own.

Let us see what Thomas More was. He was from a well-to-do family. His father possessed a considerable income as a lawyer, knighted by the king and a substantial position. More was born in the heart of that liberal profession which was of such great power at the time. He had an astonishing success as a lawyer. He was earning what we would call today $80,000 a year before he was 40, and this, mind you, in a little England of only 5 million people. He was long before this at the summit of professional success, known throughout Europe as a great scholar, a great writer, a great diplomat.

By 1523, being then at the height of his powers (45 years of age), he was apponted Speaker to the House of Commons. This post did not then mean what it means today; it meant a high official appointed by the Crown to present the views of the House of Commons to the Crown in matters of taxation and to receive orders from the Crown to communicate them to the House of Commons. It was from 1523 to 1528 that Thomas More was at the height of his worldly fortunes. He was very rich, famous throughout the world, on the whole perhaps the most prominent man in England.

Just at that moment (it is usually the case with successful men who are destined by God to pass through an ordeal that the warning comes when they are most at their ease) began the first mutterings of the conflict in which he was to take so great a part.

By 1525, people were talking in whispers up and down the courts of Europe upon the English king’s idea of a divorce. Two years later, in 1527, it was public knowledge. Immediately after, the king began proceedings for the annulment of his marriage; and because Cardinal Wolsey, who was then chancellor, failed to produce the annulment, he fell.

The post of chancellor meant in those days a sort of vice-regent of the king. And the king meant in those days not only the whole power of the state but the whole being of the state.

In 1527, Henry VIII had spoken to More of his intention to divorce Catherine, and More advised him against it — since his advice was asked.

It was no violent matter. Men were discussing the thing on all sides. More’s instinct was against the policy but he was not excited in the matter. It was not yet public knowledge that the king was seeking an annulment of his marriage with his wife upon the ground that he was her brother-in-law and was proposing an infamous new marriage, nor had the case been tried.

Wolsey, the cardinal, for so long chancellor of England, was dismissed by the king because the king thought he bungled the negotiations with Rome over the matter of the divorce, or rather the annulment of his marriage. Henry offered the chancellorship, the supreme position in the realm, to his supreme social figure, Thomas More. More accepted it and for two and a half years conducted it with surprising vigor and success. It is fairly certain that the new chancellor had not divined Henry’s motive in naming him to such a post, but other people were beginning to divine it. Thomas More was the first lay chancellor to be appointed. That in itself was significant. He had privately told Henry that on the whole he was against the policy of divorce — though as yet he knew nothing of the Anne Boleyn affair.

There is little doubt that Henry said to himself that by making Thomas More chancellor he was killing two birds with one stone. He was bribing what might otherwise have been a formidable opponent, and he was posing before the world as one who in such a crisis respected and promoted to the highest office a man universally respected for his justice and inflexibility. “If such a man,” thought Henry, “is seen to be my chancellor, and will remain my chancellor throughout the affair, I shall have that strong moral backing which so far I have lacked.”

The king’s calculation was wrong. He had to deal with a greatness of character superior to anything he could conceive. At that time Anne Boleyn, knowing that More disapproved of her ambition to be queen, became his enemy. She continued, for some years more, to twist Henry around her little figure.

It was as chancellor that Thomas More opened, on the morrow of All Souls 1529, what is known as the “Reformation” Parliament. Neither he nor Henry himself for that matter had as yet the least idea of how far things would go. The Parliament was called to reform “certain abuses” — and heaven knows there were abuses enough in the organization of the Church at the time. Of revolt against the Church, of destruction of the unity of the Church, no man then dreamed.

But already there had come in another very powerful influence directing the weak and sensual character of the king. The influence of the odious Thomas Cromwell: a low money lender whose ability and industry had already promoted and was now suggesting everything to his master.

Cromwell began the policy of gradually threatening the pope in order to make him yield in the matter of the annulment of the king’s marriage with Catherine. The pope could not yield because Catherine strongly asserted her rights and because those rights were valid. There was no just ground for the annulment of the marriage. In February 1532 came the important proposal to bully the pope into giving way by stopping his revenue from England. More, as chief man in the council, opposed it. His position became impossible and on May 16 he resigned.

All that year 1532 was filled with Henry, or rather Cromwell, pushing the policy of bringing pressure upon the pope. There was as yet no idea in any man’s mind of breaking with the unity of Christendom, or at any rate no idea in the mind of those governing England. They thought it a piece of diplomacy and acted as diplomats do, to work their end by threats and pressure, with no real belief that war can break out. But superior minds, and minds imbued with principle, had scented the danger long before, and Thomas More’s was one of them.

By the end of 1532, Henry knew that Anne Boleyn was with child. Infatuated with her, ardently hoping for a male heir, he crossed the rubicon. He negotiated with the pope to appoint as archbishop a man called Cranmer, who had been the chaplain of the Boleyns. Cranmer broke his oath to the pope and set up a wholly illegal tribunal of his own which pronounced a divorce. On the first of June 1533, Anne Boleyn married the king.

Also that year, a woman called the Holy Maid of Kent had prophesied the downfall of Henry. More had seen her and told her to keep out of politics (she voiced the feeling of the nation, but it was the deliberate opinion of More that she hallucinated and we must respect the judgment of so good and wise a man). This was an opportunity of getting rid of More, and he was charged with treason. The duke of Norfolk, Anne Boleyn’s uncle, said to More, “The wrath of the king is death!” To which More answered quietly, “For me today, for you tomorrow” — which turned out to be true.

By the end of 1532, Henry knew that Anne Boleyn was with child. Infatuated with her, ardently hoping for a male heir, he crossed the rubicon. He negotiated with the pope to appoint as archbishop a man called Cranmer, who had been the chaplain of the Boleyns. Cranmer broke his oath to the pope and set up a wholly illegal tribunal of his own which pronounced a divorce. On the first of June 1533, Anne Boleyn married the king.

Also that year, a woman called the Holy Maid of Kent had prophesied the downfall of Henry. More had seen her and told her to keep out of politics (she voiced the feeling of the nation, but it was the deliberate opinion of More that she hallucinated and we must respect the judgment of so good and wise a man). This was an opportunity of getting rid of More, and he was charged with treason. The duke of Norfolk, Anne Boleyn’s uncle, said to More, “The wrath of the king is death!” To which More answered quietly, “For me today, for you tomorrow” — which turned out to be true.