‘Thomas More' Review: A Persecutor and a Martyr

Wall Street Journal

5 days ago

On July 6, 1535, Thomas More, former Lord chancellor of England, was executed. Five days prior, he had been convicted of denying Henry VIII's title as supreme head of the Church of England. This title was the cornerstone of the English Reformation and denial of it constituted treason. On his last morning More was escorted from the Tower of London, where he had been imprisoned for more than a year. Traditionally, traitors were half-hanged, disemboweled alive, then drawn and quartered. More, long the king's servant, was spared this gruesome fate in favor of beheading. The witnesses to his death were few, as the government feared riots. Ill and frail, More mounted the scaffold and asked for prayers. 'I die the King's good servant,' he said, 'and God's first.' Moments later resounded the thud of ax on block.
Renowned in his life as a man of letters, More has been revered as a Catholic martyr since his death. He was only canonized in 1935, however, and his popular fame has relied on dramatic depictions of his confrontation with Henry VIII. The most famous of these is the 1966 Oscar-winning film adaptation of Robert Bolt's play 'A Man for All Seasons,' which cast More as a noble, principled resister of tyranny. Provoked by this depiction, Hilary Mantel in 'Wolf Hall' (2009) portrayed More as a sadistic religious fanatic and a creepy domestic tyrant.
Behind these rival mythologies was an actual man, whose complex life defies facile moralizing. More, to be sure, has not lacked for biographers. Dozens have appeared across the centuries. Joanne Paul's 'Thomas More: A Life' is a worthy addition. Ms. Paul, a university lecturer in Britain, is also a broadcaster, popular writer and historical adviser. Her books on Tudor history achieve that increasingly rare balance between expertise and style. This book beautifully captures both the life of a fascinating man and the fading world that he died trying to preserve.
More's life had the arc of a Shakespearean tragedy. He was born in 1478 during the Wars of the Roses, which established the Tudor dynasty. His father served as a judge of the King's Bench, the very court that would eventually convict his son of treason. More himself was educated at Oxford and the Inns of Court.