No King can Rule our Conscience and our Heart

So believed Sir Thomas More

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There are books that stay with you long after you read them. Sometimes it’s the story itself that moves you. Sometimes it’s the voice of the author that resonates and the wisdom of her words. Sometimes it’s all of these things.

This is how I am feeling about Joanne Paul’s latest book, a biography of Sir Thomas More, which I wrote about briefly in my last post,“How to be Brave?” I finished the book several weeks ago, but I’m still thinking about it and will for quite some time.

If you are unfamiliar with Thomas More, he was a lawyer, a scholar, and Lord Chancellor of England under King Henry VIII. A Catholic, More refused to swear the Oath of Succession, which sealed King Henry’s break from the Roman Catholic Church in 1535. More believed himself to be a devoted subject, a true Englishman. But when Henry VIII changed the parameters of loyalty and demanded that his subjects pledge their allegiance to him above all other foreign powers – including, and especially, the pope in Rome – More found himself on the wrong side of the king’s will.

Thomas More knew he no longer had any influence over the king. He wasn’t a nobleman; he was a simple lawyer. He was no longer an official in Henry VIII’s government: years earlier, knowing he could not personally condone Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, More had made what he thought was the responsible choice and resigned his post as Lord Chancellor. More refused the Oath as a private citizen, no longer protected by his office or his standing at court. He was in his late fifties, and his health was beginning to suffer.

More was the bravest at the moment when he was at his most vulnerable.

More knew his death would make no difference. King Henry wasn’t going to change his mind. He wasn’t going to suffer a crisis of conscience and return to the Catholic Church. Henry had already changed so much: he had changed wives, he had changed the nature of marriage. He had changed the definition of loyalty, and now the man who the pope once named “Defender of the Faith” was determined to change religion in England. Henry VIII believed that this was his right as king.

But Thomas More climbed the steps of the scaffold knowing that the king had not changed him. And that made all the difference.

Joanne Paul grabbed me from the opening words of her biography. You don’t have to be Catholic or religious (I am neither) to appreciate the man who comes to life in her pages. Paul paints an exquisite portrait of More, whose legacy is at best complex.¹ But what got me from the first were Paul’s own words in her powerful “Note to the Reader.” She explains why we have every reason to look to history for guidance, to seek out figures like More and others like him – now, more than ever.

I’ll let Joanne Paul, herself, tell you why.²

“In a deeply dangerous time, Thomas More was one of the few who overtly opposed the growing tyranny of Henry VIII, and he did so with full knowledge of his own powerlessness and the deadly consequences. His willingness to stand firm and speak truth to an overwhelming power is as relevant in today’s world as it was to that of Henry VIII.

Tyrants, it will not surprise you to learn, still exist. Those who are willing to destroy anyone who stands in opposition to their will – a will driven by self-interest, pride and desperate paranoia – rule today as they did 500 years ago. In fact, this might be one of the most pertinent parallels between the Tudor world and the twenty-first century. The unconstrained power of petty, insecure men remains deeply dangerous.

Those, like Thomas More, who stand up to these men and remind them of higher principles, deeper truths, greater duties, must be remembered for their efforts, even when they come to nothing. Their effort to change history – and their failure – is just as important as those whose participation in the tides of their time makes them ‘great.’ They are the figures who inspire us when a great booming voice from above tells us we must obey, must submit, and a voice deep within us responds, no matter how quietly, ‘No.’

Whether you hold More to be a divinely inspired saint or a zealous prosecutor of the innocent…. we must not overlook him as a man who spoke truth to power, even while trembling with fear.” — Joanne Paul, Thomas More, 2025

1. As chancellor, More oversaw the prosecutions of Protestants as heretics, many of whom died at the stake. It is still unclear to historians how many people More may have prosecuted, but some scholars estimate that the number came to a few dozen. There is no getting around the atrocity of these prosecutions and executions for heresy. They are difficult truths about a difficult and violent time. The beauty of Paul’s biography is that she paints the man as he was, leaving us, the readers, with much to admire and to regret about More’s legacy.

2. Joanne Paul, Thomas More: A Life (Pegasus Books [US], 2025).