Nothing is known of Sir Thomas More’s work in the chancery except his integrity and his despatch. “When More took the office there were causes that had remained undecided for twenty years. He presided so dexterously and successfully that once after taking his seat and deciding a case, when the next case was called, it was found that there was no second case for trial. Such a thing is said never to have happened before or since.” (Stapleton.)
For nearly two years More lived unmolested after his resignation of the chancellorship; but he had incurred the enmity of the king and the hatred of Anne Boleyn, and Henry was swiftly driving at certain changes in religion that were to bring Sir Thomas More to the Tower and the block, and many another honest Christian to the prison and the gallows of Tyburn.
In June, 1533, after Cranmer had duly pronounced Henry’s marriage with Catherine void, came the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas More declined an invitation from some of the bishops to be present at the celebration. He knew that his absence would be marked unfavourably by the king, and was ready to pay the penalty; but his care in avoiding the expression of any disapproval of Henry’s proceedings required an equal care that no approval should be expressed. To have been present at the coronation of Anne would have been, for More, to condone the divorce.
In the autumn came an attempt to include More, with Bishop Fisher and certain monks and friars, in the treason of the “Holy Maid of Kent,”—Elizabeth Barton, a Canterbury nun. The “treason” amounted to this, that the nun, who was given to prophesying, declared that God had revealed to her to speak against Henry’s divorce, and it was sufficient to bring her to Tyburn. But against Sir Thomas More no shred of evidence could be procured, for none existed. He had seen the nun, and talked with her, and “held her in great estimation,” but would neither commit himself to a belief in her visions, nor permit any discussion on the king’s doings; but wrote to the nun a letter which could not have been more prudent, as he exhorted her “to attend to devotion, and not meddle in the affairs of princes.”
The name of Sir Thomas More was struck out of the bill of attainder, but the days of his liberty were already numbered.
The Act of Succession, passed in March, 1534, made Mary, the daughter of Henry and Catherine, illegitimate, and Elizabeth, Anne’s child, the heir to the throne. The act also declared that “all the nobles of the realm, spiritual and temporal, and all other subjects arrived at full age, should be obliged to take corporal oath, in the presence of the king or his commissioners, to observe and maintain the whole effect and contents of the act,” under the penalties for treason for refusal. The words of the oath were not inserted in the act, and the commissioners drew up a formula, requiring all persons to affirm in addition that the marriage with Catherine was invalid, and the marriage with Anne valid, and further to recall and repudiate allegiance to any foreign authority, prince, or potentate. This was a much larger demand than parliament had authorised, for it contained a denial of the papal supremacy, while all that the act had required was an acknowledgment of the succession to the crown. The pope had only just given his final decision on Henry’s appeal for divorce (March, 1534), and the decision had been against the king and in favour of the marriage. The oath now administered was in direct opposition to the supremacy of Rome, and as such was impossible to the consciences of men like Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher, though the great bulk of the clergy took it without giving any trouble.
More was quite prepared to swear to the succession of Elizabeth. Parliament had, in his eyes, a plain right to decide who should wear the crown, and the doctrine of divine hereditary kingship does not come in till the Stuarts. But this mere willingness to comply with the letter of the law was not sufficient. More’s silent want of sympathy with the divorce, and with the breach it involved with Rome, was intolerable to Henry, who had counted More amongst his dearest friends; for friend or foe, in Henry’s power, could only live by abject agreement with the royal pleasure. No king had three more faithful servants than Henry VIII. had in Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell, and no king destroyed his ministers with such fierce caprice.
Sir Thomas More, unable to take the oath, was sent to the Tower in April, 1534, Bishop Fisher having already been lodged there. In November parliament met again, and passed the Act of Supremacy, making Henry VIII. “the supreme head of the Church of England,” and declaring that on and after the first of February, 1535, it was high treason “to deprive the king’s most royal person, the queen’s, or their heirs apparent of their dignity, title or name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously publish or pronounce, by express writing or words, that the king, our sovereign lord, should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, etc.” Under this act Sir Thomas More was to be assailed and to die. That the martyrdom was a “judicial murder” is plain—to Lord Campbell it was “the blackest crime that ever has been perpetrated in England under the form of law.”[90]
The indictment was for treason, and on July 1st, a week after Bishop Fisher’s execution, Sir Thomas More was brought before the judges. To the charge of having refused the king, “maliciously, falsely, and traitorously, his title of supreme head of the Church of England,” More answered that the statute had been passed while he was in prison, and that he was dead to the world, and had not cared about such things—“your statute cannot condemn me to death for such silence, for neither your statute nor any laws in the world punish people except for words and deeds—surely not for keeping silence.”
“To this the king’s proctor replied that such silence was a certain proof of malice intended against the statute, especially as every faithful subject, on being questioned about the statute, was obliged to answer categorically that the statute was good and wholesome.” “Surely,” replied More, “if common law is true, and he who is silent seems to consent, my silence should rather be taken as approval than contempt of your statute.”