Thomas More

Thomas More was born in London in 1478, the son of a judge. He studied the classics at Oxford, became a brilliant lawyer and was a close friend of Erasmus. Rising steadily under Henry VIII, he became Lord Chancellor in 1529, the first commoner in English history to hold the office. But when Henry broke with Rome to divorce and remarry, and made himself supreme head of the Church of England, More refused to swear the oath acknowledging it; he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and beheaded for treason in 1535. On the scaffold he said that he died 'the King's good servant, but God's first'. The Catholic Church declared him a saint in 1935.