On 17th April 1534, Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, was sent to the Tower of London. He had been summoned to Lambeth on 13th April 1534 to swear his allegiance to the “Act of Succession” but had refused to do so and “thereupon was he delivered to the abbot of Westminster to be kept as a prisoner.”
You can read more about what happened at Lambeth and how he ended up being sent to the Tower in the letter he wrote to his eldest daughter, Margaret, from the Tower. Click here to read that now.
Image: Sketch of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger.
A subject quite awkward to handle, I guess.
For Thomas More, in France, is rather known as a humanist in his own right.
Friend to Erasmus and sort of personal advisor for young KH on religious and philosophical matters.
The sternness of his private life was noticed by Erasmus (though this one detested Thomas’ second wife – himself never married and it is not unlikely to consider he would be afraid of any woman at all – and noted along with Andrew Ammonius, probably equally horrified that she was permitted to behave as her husband’s peer).
So he would be considered a saint – what he finallybecame in bis own right.
But I know that historians rather question the way he treated protestants .
However, he was betrayed by a certain Richard Rich, only one found to claim that Thomas More would have denied KH the title of Head of the English Church (but it was enough to have him executed).
And it seems – very likely, given the king’s fickleness – that KH would have shown deep regrets soon after his death.
The fact might have weakened Anne Boleyn’s situation – and KH, intimate with Thomas More, was well aware of the believableness of Thomas Rich’s statement
Oops I wrote Thomas instead of Richard (Rich)