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8 | <title>Primary Sources: The last letter of Sir Thomas More, 1535</title>
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30 | <td valign="top" width="48%" bgcolor="#FFFFE8"><p>
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31 | <font size="2">
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32 | <img border="0" src="citizens/moresketch1.jpg" alt="Holbein's sketch of Thomas More" align="left" width="175" height="236">Th</font><font size=-1>e
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33 | following letter was written to More's daughter Margaret on 5 July 1535, the
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34 | day before his execution. More wrote with a stick of charcoal on
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35 | cloth; King Henry VIII had ordered his books and writing materials to be
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36 | removed.</font><p>
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37 | <font size="-1">More had been appointed Lord Chancellor upon
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38 | <a href="priwols1.html">Wolsey's fall</a> in
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39 | 1529. He was already a respected philosopher and writer throughout
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40 | Europe. But to his English contemporaries, he was most famous as a
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41 | lawyer. He was a brilliant jurist; he served in parliament and on
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42 | diplomatic missions. Unlike most royal servants, he had unimpeachable
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43 | integrity. He could not be bribed. He believed, above all else,
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44 | in the impartial supremacy of the law. As Chancellor, he worked
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45 | industriously to promote justice and faith in the courts. However, he
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46 | resigned in 1532 when the king's determination to annul his marriage to
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47 | Katharine of Aragon caused Henry to reject papal authority in England.</font><p>
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48 | <font size="-1">More was deeply pious. He recognized the abuses of the
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49 | Catholic church, but he believed it could reform itself from within.
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50 | He could not accept spiritual reformation via secular power. As a
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51 | young man, he had been torn between a career in the church and a career in
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52 | law. Though he had chosen the latter, he never lost his passion for
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53 | theology.</font><p>
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54 | <font size="-1">After resigning the chancellorship, More retired to his
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55 | family home. He attempted to live modestly and quietly, hoping to be
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56 | left alone. But he was too famous and respected to be forgotten.
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57 | Henry VIII knew that his controversial reformation would be far more
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58 | credible if men such as More accepted it. As the premier intellectual
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59 | in England, More's opinion was too important to remain his own.</font><p>
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60 | <font size="-1">It should be noted that More accepted parliament's ability
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61 | to decide the succession in favor of the king's children with Anne Boleyn,
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62 | for it was a legal issue and parliament was within rights to decide it.
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63 | However, he would not take an oath recognizing Henry's position as Supreme
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64 | Head of a new English church. He simply could not repudiate the
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65 | spiritual authority of the papacy.</font><p>
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66 | <font size="-1">And so he was arrested in the spring of 1534. He was
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67 | kept in the Tower of London for over a year, under increasingly harsh
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68 | conditions. The king hoped that imprisonment would alter More's
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69 | disposition. It did not. More was finally charged with high
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70 | treason and tried at Westminster on 1 July 1533. Despite his brilliant
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71 | defense, he was found guilty and executed on 6 July. The news shocked
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72 | all of Europe. It remains the most famous example of judicial murder
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73 | during Henry's reign. More was later canonized by the Catholic church.</font></td>
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74 | <td width="4%"></td>
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75 | <td valign="top" width="48%">Our Lord bless you, good daughter, and your good husband, and
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76 | your little boy, and all yours, and all my children, and all my god-children
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77 | and all our friends. Recommend me when ye may to my good daughter Cecily,
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78 | whom I beseech Our Lord to comfort; and I send her my blessing and to all
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79 | her children, and pray her to pray for me. I send her a handkercher, and
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80 | God comfort my good son, her husband. My good daughter Daunce hath the
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81 | picture in parchment that you delivered me from my Lady Coniers, her name
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82 | on the back. Show her that I heartily pray her that you may send it in
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83 | my name to her again, for a token from me to pray for me.
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84 | <p>I like special well Dorothy Colly. I pray you be good unto her. I would
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85 | wot whether this be she that you wrote me of. If not, yet I pray you be
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86 | good to the other as you may in her affliction, and to my good daughter
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87 | Jane Aleyn too. Give her, I pray you, some kind answer, for she sued hitherto
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88 | me this day to pray you be good to her.
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89 | <p>I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry if it should
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90 | be any longer than to-morrow, for it is St. Thomas's even, and the utas
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91 | of St. Peter; and therefore, to-morrow long I to go to God. It were a day
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92 | very meet and convenient for me.
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93 | <p>I never liked your manner towards me better than when you kissed me
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94 | last; for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure
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95 | to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell, my dear child, and pray for me,
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96 | and I shall for you and all your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven.
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97 | I thank you for your great cost. I send now my good daughter Clement her
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98 | algorism stone, and I send her and my godson and all hers God's blessing
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99 | and mine. I pray you at time convenient recommend me to my good son John
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100 | More. I liked well his natural fashion. Our Lord bless him and his good
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101 | wife, my loving daughter, to whom I pray him to be good, as he hath great
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102 | cause; and that, if the land of mine come to his hands, he break not my
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103 | will concerning his sister Daunce. And the Lord bless Thomas and Austin,
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104 | and all that they shall have.<p align="center"> <p align="center">
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105 | <font size="2">
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106 | <a href="citizens/more.html">to the Thomas
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107 | More website</a></font><p align="center"><a href="primary.html">
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108 | <font size="2">to Primary Sources</font></a></td>
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