Thomas More: God’s servant 

Benign he was and wondrous diligent,

And in adversity ful pacient.

Chaucer on the Parson in The Canterbury Tales

Joanne Paul’s scholarly biography Thomas More (Pegasus, 604pp, £12.99/$35) describes his complex character, friendship with Desiderius Erasmus, relations with King Henry VIII, Hans Holbein’s great portrait and the religious conflict leading to his execution.  More (1478-1535) is still paradoxically perceived by Catholics as a saintly martyr and by Protestants as a fanatical persecutor of religious enemies. Partly due to Hilary Mantel’s hostile portrayal in her popular novels and their screen adaptations, it is the latter view of More that now predominates.

More was educated at Oxford, trained as a lawyer, and in a meteoric legal and political career became undersheriff of London, judge in an important city court, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Lord Chancellor.  He was also the biographer of the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola.  He made frequent successful diplomatic journeys to the Low Countries, sometimes for as long as six months, to settle the commercial disputes of English merchants and protect their lucrative wool trade.  He expertly handled his roles as paterfamilias in a large household, scholar, writer, lawyer, diplomat, courtier and councillor to the “work-averse” Henry VIII, who rewarded him with a knighthood.

Joanne Paul precisely describes Holbein’s superb portrait of 1527.  More sits before “a fringed green curtain, pulled loosely to his right, and a golden collar around his neck, demonstrating his service to the royal house, signified by the letter ‘S’, portcullises and a single Tudor rose.  More also wears red velvet sleeves, and an engraved gold ring with a central oval-cut stone, possibly even a diamond.  In his hand a single piece of folded paper, a sign of his administrative responsibilities and scholarly outputs.”  One could add that his dark hair descends from his broad black velvet hat, touching his cheek and fur trimmed cloak.  His nose is strong, his lips thin, his chin cleft, his gaze intense and expression serious.  His features and dress look remarkably like those of his closest friend, Erasmus.

More’s speech was both exalted and cruel.  He observed that “success creeps on us slowly step by step; adversity descends all at once, and it rarely happens that any misfortune befalls us in isolation.”  (In Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises a character says that he went bankrupt “gradually and then suddenly.”)  Though the punishments for religious dissension from Catholic orthodoxy were unimaginably gruesome—one condemned man was “tied in chains and lifted in and out of boiling water three times, until at last, screaming, he died”—More believed that a heretic consumed by fire at the stake would “take his wretched soul with him straight from the short fire to the fire everlasting.”  When fiercely attacking Martin Luther’s loathsome heresies, More could descend to the filthy level of his adversary and blast his “shitty mouth, truly the shit-pool of all shit, all the muck and shit which your damnable rottenness has vomited up.”

Amusing moments occasionally erupt during Henry’s horrific monarchy.  Furs were taken from “unreasonable beasts” who objected to the theft of their pelt.  One fortunate courtier was made the undemanding keeper of a pet leopard at the unusually high salary of £12 a year.  A Florentine merchant, who had easily seduced an English woman, sued her cuckolded husband for the cost of supporting her.  More said his wife was pleased when he wished her a long life “so she can plague me all the longer.”  When his first wife died of the “sweating sickness”—which killed people “who’d been merry at dinner, and dead at supper”—More, always the family man, married again a month later.

The terrifying punishments in England were very different from the ideal community in More’s Utopia (1516).  Gold was used to make chamber pots to show that precious metals were worthless.  There was no private property, social hierarchy or monarchy.  People were “equal, distinguished only by their natural talents and inclinations.”

More’s closest friend was the equally brilliant Dutch scholar Erasmus.  He lived in More’s household during visits to England and dedicated In Praise of Folly (1511) to him.  Erasmus lavishly praised More’s mild, sweet and happy genius, said “he has an exceptionally charming disposition and a great deal of wit,” observed “there is no man so melancholy by nature that More does not enliven him” and declared that “nothing has brought me more pleasure in life than companionship like yours.”  He liked wrestling in a contest of wits with the “most congenial of all my friends, in whose company I enjoy combining jest and earnest,” and concluded, “it would be hard to find anyone who was more truly a man for all seasons and all men . . . and who combined so much real wisdom with such charm of character.”  The man Erasmus admired was very different from the rabid foe of Luther.

Henry VIII (reigned 1509-47), the antithesis of Erasmus, was tall, strong, “athletic, imposing and gem-studded, willing to manipulate justice and slaughter the innocent in order to maintain his sense of God-given authority.”  Emphasising More’s wisdom and intimacy with Henry, Erasmus noted, “If serious business is afoot no better counsellor than he.  If the king wishes to relax his mind with more cheerful topics, no man’s company more gay.”  More himself warily observed of his relations with Henry, “This is like having fun with tamed lions.  For he often roars in rage for no known reason, and suddenly the fun becomes fatal.”

Joanne Paul’s book picks up pace as events inevitably progress to the final stroke of the axe.  More came into conflict with Henry about the Oath of Succession.  It rejected papal power, affirmed that “the king, not the pope, was the final authority in all Church matters in England”, and declared that Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who had failed to provide a male heir, was invalid.

Though More’s whole family swore the Oath, he refused.  One daughter even “marvelled that my father is so obstinate in his own conceit . . . and that his conscience would not allow him to serve the king in his divorce and remarriage.”  Recalling Matthew 16:26 he asked, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain all the whole world, and lose his own soul?”  More believed “I could not swear with jeoparding of my soul to perpetual damnation” and preferred to submit to the destruction of his body.

A brilliant lawyer, he thought that “laws have constituted no penalty for silence,” and to avoid incrimination he also refused to declare why he would not swear. Remembering their former intimacy, “he had good hope that God shall never suffer so good and wise a prince as Henry to requite the long service of his true faithful servant with misery.”  But as Samuel Johnson later wrote, it is unwise to “think the doom of man reversed for thee.”

Henry felt that More’s refusal to swear and stubborn silence were also “inspiring resistance in others”.  His refusal provoked the anger and displeasure of the murderous monarch, who demanded compliance and threatened his life.  More well knew that even John the Baptist, who had criticised King Herod for divorcing his first wife, was beheaded.

Henry did not seek a divorce and had a persuasive argument based on Leviticus 20:21: “if a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing.”  He believed that his marriage to his late brother’s wife was not sanctioned and should be annulled so that he could marry Anne Boleyn.  It would surely have been better for More to give Henry what he most wanted, the burning personal matter of his marriage, instead of asserting the authority of the distant pope.  More could have done greater good at that time by staying alive and wisely advising Henry instead of sacrificing himself.

More’s pride—the sin that made the angels rebel against God—suggested that a subject’s conscientious beliefs were greater than a king’s absolute authority.  He bravely and famously declared, “I die the king’s good servant, and God’s first.”  He wanted to be a martyr, and would rather die a saint than continue to live as a man.

No one was safe in Henry’s cruel reign.  Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s Chief Minister; Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; and even Anne Boleyn were all executed after More.  (Other executed writers from the 16th to the 20th century in England, France and Russia include Henry Howard the Earl of Surrey, Edmund Campion, Robert Southwell, Sir Walter Raleigh, André Chénier and Isaac Babel.)

Joanne Paul includes many facts from her research that would not interest most readers and clogs the narrative with scholarly details.  She begins with 72 dull pages on the historical background during More’s childhood, and writes 10 pages on More’s overlong and tedious-to-read Dialogue Concerning Heresies, which concern very few readers.  She also adds 140 pages to the text listing the sources of her exhaustive research and impressive learning.

Many dull passages appear in the book: “More travelled to Tournai following his time in Antwerp, and heard there from Mountjoy and Sampson that Wolsey ‘had written to both of them that the benefice should be given to someone else.’”  And “More would now preside over the House of Lords in a similar fashion to the way he had as Speaker, and just as he had been a mouthpiece as Speaker (nominally for the Commons to the king, but just as often for the king to the Commons), so he would now be as Lord Chancellor.”  As the architect Mies van der Rohe affirmed, “Less is More.”

A Man for All Seasons (1966), the brilliant film about More written by Robert Bolt, has Paul Scofield as the saintly idealist More, Robert Shaw as the boisterous King Henry, Orson Welles as the dangerous Cardinal Wolsey and Susannah York as More’s intellectual daughter Margaret who exchanges Latin quotations with Henry.  Bolt doesn’t show More burning heretics, but dramatically reveals how his relations with Henry move from congenial to fatal.

When reading about the murderer Richard Southwell, who took More’s books and papers from his cell and helped incriminate him, I looked across the room to my contemporary copy of Holbein’s portrait of that villain, enclosed in a handsome Dutch frame.

Jeffrey Meyers published James Salter: Pilot, Screenwriter, Novelist and Parallel Lives: From Freud and Mann to Arbus and Plath in 2024.  Forty-Three Ways to Look at Hemingway appeared in November 2025.  The Biographer’s Quest will be out in April 2026.

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