July 6th: Sir Thomas More was accused of high treason by Henry VIII who ordered his beheading for treason against the king of England in 1535.

Sir Thomas More: Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to May 1532.

Thomas More was a thinker, theologian, politician, humanist and English writer, who was also a poet, translator, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, a law professor, judge and attorney civil business.

Thomas More and Henry VIII

More´s most famous work is “Utopia” which seeks to relate the organization of an ideal society, seated in a nation shaped island of the same name. Moreover, Moro was a major critic of the Protestant Reformation and, especially, of Martin Luther and William Tyndale.

The Trial of Sir Thomas More

In 1535 he was tried by King Henry VIII, accused of high treason for not paying the anti-papal oath to the emergence of the Anglican Church, oppose the divorce from Queen Catherine of Aragon, and not accepting the Act of Supremacy, which declared the King as head of the new Church. He was convicted and received the death sentence.

Execution of Sir Thomas More. 

He remained in prison in the Tower of London to be beheaded on July 6, 1535.

Execution of Sir Thomas More. Detail from 1591 painting by Antoine Caron

Thomas More was beatified in 1886, and canonized in 1935, along with John Fisher, by the Roman Catholic Church, which considers him a saint and martyr.

Illustration for the 1516 first edition of Utopia.

The Anglican Church is considered a martyr of the Reformation, by including, in 1980, on its list of Christian saints and heroes.