From the Library of Deacon Mike:
Thomas More wrote the following letter to his daughter Margaret with a charcoal stick. It was written from prison on July 5, 1535, the day before he was executed:
"Our Lord bless you, good daughter, and your good husband, and your little boy, and all yours, and all my children, and all my god-children and all our friends. Recommend me when ye may to my daughter Cecily, whom I beseech Our Lord to comfort; and I send her my blessing and to all her children, and pray her to pray for me. I send her a handkercher, and God comfort my good son, her husband. My good daughter Daunce hath the picture in parchment that you delivered me from my Lady Coniers, her name on the back. Show her that I heartily pray her that you may send it in my name to her again, for a token from me to pray for me.Over the past several months I have been studying the life of a person whom I heard much about but really knew little about - Saint Thomas More. And so, through the book written by James Monti: "The King's Good Servant but God's First: The Life and Writings of Saint Thomas More", I have come to appreciate the life of a true hero that lived in our world and in our church. Permit me to share with you a bit about his life.I like special well Dorothy Colly. I pray you be good unto her. I would wot whether this be she that you wrote me of. If not, yet I pray you be good to the other as you may in her affliction, and to my good daughter Jane Aleyn too. Give her, I pray you, some kind answer, for she sued hitherto me this day to pray you be good to her.
I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is St. Thomas's even, and the utas of St. Peter; and therefore, to-morrow long I to go to God. It were a day very meet and convenient for me.
I never liked your manner towards me better than when you kissed me last; for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell, my dear child, and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven. I thank you for your great cost. I send now my good daughter Clement her algorism stone, and I send her and my godson and all hers God's blessing and mine. I pray you at time convenient recommend me to my good son John More. I liked well his natural fashion. Our Lord bless him and his good wife, my loving daughter, to whom I pray him to be good, as he hath great cause; and that, if the land of mine come to his hands, he break not my will concerning his sister Daunce. And the Lord bless Thomas and Austin, and all that they shall have."
The great majority of Catholics in England did not follow Thomas More's example. True, many of the northern Catholic families who came to be known as Recusants were left alone if they remained silent and docile. Still, most took the Oath of Supremacy, often adding the reservation, "so long as it be not contrary to the law of God."
On April 13, 1534, More and Rochester's Bishop John Fisher were tendered the Oath, and both refused. More was placed in the custody of the Abbot of Westminster Abbey, and twice more refused. For this he was incarcerated in the Tower of London for 15 months. It was to be a time of prayer, meditation, spiritual writing and growth in holiness. During this time, his family tried - to no avail - to see if there was any way his conscience would allow him to take the Oath.
As time wore on, visits with family members became less and less frequent, then ceased altogether. One relationship that grew deeper was that with his daughter Meg, through initial visits and much correspondence.
On February 1, 1535, the Acts of Supremacy officially recognized Henry's eclesiastical headship in England, became law and made any denial of the same a treasonable offense. Thomas Cromwell, the King's personal secretary, paid a visit to Thomas and asked his opinion of the bill, but he would not give it.
The months passed quickly, and in May he and his daughter Meg were to have their final visit. During the visit, the two watched a memorable event from the cell window: Carthusians from the Charterhouse from the Charterhouse in London had joined More and John Fisher in their refusal to recognize Henry's claim, and on this particular day several of them went to their death in the Tower.
On June 19, 1535, three more Carthusians suffered martyrdom, and on the 22nd John Fisher was beheaded. It was the feast of St. Alban, Protomartyr of England, but in recent years More and Fisher have been assigned his feast. Nine days after Fisher's death. More was indicted and tried for treason in Westminster Hall. The television portrait of a sickly man seated is indeed accurate; he was found guilty, sentenced to death, and beheaded on July 6, 1535 - dying as "the king's good servant, but God's first."
In the end, More died for the principle of papal primacy, described by one of his biographers, Richard Marius: "To say that the Papacy was a human invention was to say that the papal office was designated by human minds for the convenience of the church, and that those same minds might design some other form of government that might serve just as well... if the papacy had endured as along as it had, God must have set the office in the church, and Christians could not change it on whim... "
At age 57, the Saint's life ended with one stroke, and his mortal remains were placed, along with many others, in the Church of St. Peter in Chains inside the Tower walls. His head remained atop a pole on Tower Bridge, but was finally retrieved by his daughter Meg, who had it placed in the Roper vault in the Church of St. Dunstan outside the west gate of the city of Canterbury, where devout Catholics still go in prayer.
More was beatified with other English martyrs in 1886 and canonized a saint of the church in 1935. He was once described by his fellow Englishman Msgr. Ronald Knox as one who "knew how to absorb all that was best in the restless culture of his day, yet knew at once, when the time came, that he must take a stand here; that he must give no quarter to the modern world... "
Monti's biography of Thomas More is nearly 500 pages in length. It does a bit of patience to study but I highly recommend it to your summer reading. Once completed, I am sure you will come to appreciate as I have, the knight, author and martyr whom the world has to come to know as Saint Thomas More.
Happy Reading
Mike
Select here to return to Mike's Book Nook