Sir Thomas More was a London lawyer, the friend of Erasmus, and the author of Utopia (1516), the most celebrated English humanist of his day. He was also a relentless enemy of the Reformation. He helped Henry VIII with his book against Luther, answered Luther himself under a pen name in 1523, and in 1529 published his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, aimed chiefly at William Tyndale.

In October 1529 More succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor. While he held the office, the search for heretical books and their owners intensified. Thomas Bilney, Richard Bayfield, John Tewkesbury, and James Bainham went to the fire, and More defended such punishment in print.¹ With Bishop Tunstall he pressed for Tyndale’s arrest abroad. His Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (1532–1533) ran to nearly half a million words.

More resigned the chancellorship in May 1532 as Henry moved against the church’s independence. In the epitaph he composed for himself that year, he described his office with evident satisfaction:

Grievous to thieves, murderers, and heretics.⁴ Thomas Moreepitaph at Chelsea, 1532 (Latin: furibus, homicidis, haereticisque molestus)

Like Fisher, More refused the oath of 1534 that set aside the pope’s authority, and he was beheaded on Tower Hill on July 6, 1535. Rome canonized both men in 1935. Tyndale, whom More had pursued, was strangled and burned near Brussels the following year, praying, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.”

Catholic Opponents