'This wretched and stormy world'

In 1534, Tudor England was rocked by a shocking new development in Henry VIII's court. Thomas More, one of the King’s most faithful and close friends, had been arrested and imprisoned in miserable conditions at the Tower of London.

More had objected to the King’s break from Rome and new marriage to Anne Boleyn; suddenly, it seemed even those closest to the King would not escape his wrath, should they defy his will.  

Here, Chief Historian Tracy Borman recounts one of the most dramatic falls from favour in the Tudor court. 

On 17 April 1534, Thomas More travelled from his luxurious home in Chelsea to a cold, damp and gloomy cell at the bottom of the Bell Tower at the Tower of London. 

One of the oldest parts of the fortress, the polygonal-shaped Bell Tower had been built at the south-west corner of the Tower during the reign of Richard the Lionheart in the late 1100s. 

More’s co-objector, the aged Bishop John Fisher, was imprisoned in slightly better rooms in the upper Bell Tower that afforded views across to the nearby execution site on Tower Hill. 

More had to pay 10 shillings a month for his miserable prison. He was allowed a servant (a man named John Wood) and paid an additional five shillings a month for his room and board. Wood received money for reporting on More’s activities to the Lieutenant of the Tower, but the fact that he was illiterate gave the prisoner freedom to write without fear of prying eyes.  

More hurried off a letter to his beloved daughter Margaret Roper, assuring her that he was ‘in good health of body, and in good quiet of mind’ and signing off: ‘Your tender loving father.’ Although he insisted ‘of worldly things I no more desire than I have’, the letter was written in charcoal on a small scrap of paper.  

In her reply, Margaret wrote back that despite the charcoal, it ‘is worthy in mine opinion to be written in letters of gold.’ 

John Wood might not have been able to read his master’s letters, but Thomas Cromwell could. Knowing that her father’s nemesis had started to intercept them, Margaret played a trick on him. Having petitioned for permission to visit More, Margaret made sure to fill her next letter to him with persuasions to take the oath. Cromwell was desperate for him to do so: for as long as More stood in opposition to the King, he might become a figurehead for all those who despised Henry’s religious reforms – and his new wife, Anne Boleyn.  

The ruse worked: Margaret was allowed to visit her father. In the account that her husband later wrote about More’s life, he seemed cheerfully resigned to his fate, which he described as ‘a riddle, a case in which a man may lose his head and have no harm’. In other words, the short-term pain of physical death was as nothing next to spiritual well-being. 

As well as visiting her father whenever she could, Margaret acted as a messenger for him to his friends. Soon, they were sending him letters along with little luxuries to alleviate the misery of his imprisonment, such as beer, wine, stewed meat – and something that More valued above all else: his books and papers. He passed many hours in his Tower prison writing long religious treatises, such as Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. 

Alongside these comforts, More was permitted daily walks in the Tower gardens. But as the months wore on and he continued to resist pressure from the King to conform, his privileges were gradually withdrawn and his spirits began to sag.  

More’s interrogation and trial 

While More languished in his prison, there were ominous developments beyond the walls of the Tower. In November 1534 Parliament reconvened. As well as confirming the Act of Supremacy, including the oath that More had refused to sign, it passed an explosive new Treasons Act. Now, any ‘malicious’ speech or writing against the king, his marriage or the supremacy were considered treason and punishable by death. For a man whose life had been defined by words, this spelt mortal danger.  

The new act came into force on 1 February 1535, a week before More’s 57th birthday. He was fully aware of its ramifications. In a book of psalms that he kept with him in the Tower, he wrote a note in the margin of a verse about the need to keep silent, even if passionate views burned within: ‘Maledictis abstinendum’ (‘evil words are not to be employed’).  

More took this very much to heart. ‘I do nobody harm’, he told Margaret. ‘I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.’  

But More soon discovered that silence was not enough. He had become a focus for all those who opposed the King’s reforms and the whole kingdom watched and waited to see if he would recant. 

In April 1535, Edmund Walsingham, Lieutenant of the Tower, informed him that a delegation from the king had arrived. It was headed by Cromwell and included Richard Rich, the Solicitor General, a ruthless, self-seeking member of Henry’s court. More refused to be cowed but calmly insisted that he was ‘the King’s true faithful subject’. He was interrogated again in June. Still, More held the same line. In a private letter to his old friend Antonio Bonvisi, he lamented ‘this wretched and stormy world’. 

As a punishment for his ongoing resistance, the prisoner was denied his books and papers. As they were being packed up, Richard Rich took More aside and invited him to have a friendly debate about the matter, implying it was off the record. The conversation would be More’s undoing. He made the unguarded remark that Parliament lacked the power to make Henry the Supreme Head of the Church, ‘that is to say, pope’. When Rich reported the conversation to Cromwell, he seized upon it as proof of treason. 

As More’s interrogations dragged on, his fellow prisoner Fisher was put on trial and condemned to die. Fisher had recently been made a cardinal by the Pope. Upon hearing this, Henry VIII darkly quipped that he could give Fisher a red hat of his own, or else see he had nowhere to put it.  

On 22 June, the new cardinal was executed on Tower Hill, the site he had looked out on from his prison in the Bell Tower.   

More’s trial followed on 1 July. He strenuously denied having spoken treason to Rich, whom he dismissed as being ‘always reputed light of his tongue, a great dicer and gamester, and not of any commendable fame.’ But the outcome was already assured: More was swiftly found guilty of treason and condemned to die.  

Only when the verdict had been delivered did More give vent to the opinions he had suppressed throughout his time in the Tower. With his enemies looking on, he blasted the King’s supremacy over the church as ‘directly repugnant to the laws of God and his holy Church.’ He then fired a warning about the backlash from Catholic Europe:  ‘I have, for every Bishop of yours, above one hundred… And for this one kingdom, I have all other Christian Realms.’ 

Among the crowd that had gathered to watch More being taken from his trial at Westminster back to the Tower was his daughter Margaret. As he passed, she broke through the guards and wrapped her arms around her father, weeping. He comforted her with the words ‘This is God’s will’ before being led into the Tower.