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The process against Thomas More.21.4,24.

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The process against Thomas More

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Thomas More succeeded on October 25, 1529 as Henry VIII’s great chancellor to Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Wolsey was removed from his post, despite his many services to the monarch, for failing to get the annulment of the marriage between Henry and Catherine of Aragon and being despised by Anne Boleyn, her family and her supporters, who They now surrounded the king. On October 6, 1529, the cardinal was officially dismissed and later charged with the crime of praemunire[28]. He only escaped the sentence by dying on the way to his imprisonment in the Tower of London (29 November 1529).

 

More did not share the king’s opinion that his marriage to Catherine was void, but the king nevertheless chose him: he was a layman, an expert jurist, known to Henry since his childhood and an efficient and loyal public servant, for which reason he could give confidence to all sectors and lead the Parliament that Enrique convened on November 3, 1529. More accepted the position knowing that the times were not favorable to his ideas but he could not now go back on what he thought and had left written in his youthful work, the famous Utopia, regarding «not abandoning the ship in the middle of the storm»[29]. Later he would remember how the king promised him that he would not force him to act against his conscience in the matter of marriage[30], and in fact during his tenure as chancellor the «grand matter of the King», as it used to be called, was entrusted to other officials[31]. Moro dedicated himself to his parliamentary and judicial work in the two royal courts: the «Court of Chancery» and the «Court of Star Chambre».

 

He remained in office for two and a half years[32], seeing how the king’s policy to annul his marriage, marry Anne Boleyn Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, in a break with the pope and have male offspring who could inherit the throne, was He gradually converted, thanks to new royal advisors such as Thomas, not only as temporal sovereign but also as spiritual head of the Church in England. What was an issue limited to the king’s supposed awareness of living in concubinage (because the marriage with his brother Arturo’s widow was not valid), gradually expanded to the aspiration to have total power over the church, the bishops, the clergy and all the faithful of the Church and an expectation of increasing the wealth of the kingdom and its nobles through the confiscation of lands and properties currently in the hands of convents, religious orders and monasteries

 

He later demanded that the Convocation or synod of bishops of Canterbury declare him supreme head of the church, which he achieved but with the qualified expression that this was «as far as the law of Christ allows»: «as far as the law of Christ allows» (February 11, 1531).

 

The threat was direct and clear: either the prelates recognized him as the sole sovereign and renounced all obedience to the jurisdiction of the Holy Father, or they would be prosecuted. The bishops, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Willam Warham, already at the end of his life, signed the document called very aptly Submission of Clergy («Submission of the clergy»). In that document, the Convocation of Canterbury declared Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church in England without any limitation or qualification. It was May 15, 1532.

 

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The following day, May 16, Archbishop Warham forwarded the submission document to Henry VIII[33]. At 3:00 p.m. on the same day, in the garden of Whitehall Palace, Henry VIII together with the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, received Thomas More to accept his resignation as Chancellor of the Kingdom, and receive the white leather jacket that contained the great seal that symbolized its function and power[34].

 

Unlike Wolsey, More was not dismissed but had his resignation accepted, which in those days required the king’s assent. Moro says in his letters that he had been asking for his departure from the government since before because he had health problems that prevented him from continuing to carry out his position ñ

 

: Moro realized that with his presence he could no longer stop Enrique’s separatist policy and warned that if he remained in office, this would be understood as legitimizing the ruler’s conduct

 

Moro’s departure from office was thus apparently peaceful and satisfactory to both parties. More received high praise from Henry VIII[37] and in turn promised not to meddle in public affairs and to retire to a life of prayer and practice of personal and family piety[38]

 

[Four. Five]. The break with the reformist policy of Henry VIII became evident when More did not attend Queen Anne’s coronation ceremony. It was not an oversight or inadvertence, but rather a previously considered act.

 

3. The case of the «Kentish nun»: Moro included in an outlaw bill.

Four.
Among the messages revealed, special importance was given to those who indicated that if the king abandoned Catherine, he would seriously offend God, those who became increasingly somber, even announcing that the king would cease to be so if he married Anne Boleyn[66]. .

 

Rome did not remain idle either. Clement VII, after having censured the marriage of Enrique with Ana, having threatened him and finally condemned him with the penalty of excommunication[88],

 

The last and sixth part of the law contained something that Thomas More could sense beforehand as the worst of legalistic despotism: the obligation to swear assent to the content of the normative text. When More learned of the annulment of the marriage with Catherine and the declaration of validity of the contract with Anne Boleyn, he said to his son-in-law William Roper: «God willing, son, that these matters do not have to be confirmed with oaths
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Immediately after its approval, members of both Houses of Parliament were sworn in. There is no record of any, including the bishops, having rejected it. Only Bishop John Fisher did not take the oath since he was sick in Rochester, and therefore he would be summoned to Lambeth Palace before the Commission of authorities constituted to demand the oath

 

 

He was received by a Special Commission composed of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor; Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. The Commission asked him to take an oath to the text that had been prepared as an oath of adherence to the law. More asked for time to carefully read both the law of succession and the text of the oath. After the reading, he refused to take the oath according to said text and argued that it did not coincide with the content of the law [97]. At the insistence of the commissioners, he offered to swear on the legitimacy of the succession, but not on the rest of the content of the law. The commissioners, not knowing what to do, made him wait in the garden outside, where he watched as others were summoned and sworn in. Finally, he was taken into the custody of William Benson, the Abbot of Westminster, who took him to the Abbey where he stayed for four days.

 

Meanwhile, Cranmer, back at his country house in Croydon, wrote a note to Cromwell, suggesting that More and Fischer, exceptionally, be allowed to swear only by dynastic succession (April 17, 1534) [98 ]. Cromwell consulted the suggestion with the king but the king rejected the compromise absolutely, holding that if the partial oath were conceded it would cause all to refuse to swear to the full text and would entail the destruction of the entire cause and all laws made for its achievement. , since the omission of the rest of the oath could be understood as a confirmation, not only of the pope’s authority, but also as a disapproval of the king’s second marriage[99].

 

Given More’s renewed demand and refusal, he was officially arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where he was received by the lieutenant (lieutenant) of the prison, Sir Edmund Walsingham[100].

 

Fisher and More were found legally guilty of acting unfairly by refusing the oath of succession from May 1, 1534. More in particular was charged with having acted ungratefully against the king, his benefactor.[111]

 

lord the king»[119].
The accusation charges can be systematized in four allegations:

 

1º More’s malicious refusal to recognize the king as Supreme Head of the Church of England.

2nd Conspiracy with John Fisher declared and convicted of treason.

 

3º Description of the Law as a double-edged sword, coinciding in this expression with Fisher’s responses.

 

4º Declaration that Parliament should not be obeyed if it declares the King Supreme Head of the Church in a reply given to Richard Rich, on June 12[120]

 

. The verdict of the jury and the final defense: «I am not bound to conform my conscience to the Council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom»

 

The twelve members of the jury withdrew to deliberate, but in a short time: a quarter of an hour, they returned and informed the judges of their decision: guilty[182]; More was guilty of having spoken maliciously against the king’s title of supreme head of the Church.

 

Despite the weakness of the charges and Rich’s unique and implausible testimony, it was almost impossible for a jury to find not guilty in front of a commission chaired by the Lord Chancellor himself and made up of Anne’s father and brother. Boleyn, the king’s brother-in-law and even Thomas Cromwell himself[183]. It is unlikely that More thought that he could win this trial fairly, but he had to defend himself in the best possible way to expose the injustice of the accusation and maintain his criteria of not claiming to be a martyr.