Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More (pronounced /ˈmɔr/; February 7, 1478[1] – July 6, 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important counsellor to Henry VIII of England and for three years toward the end of his life he was Lord Chancellor. He is recognised as a saint within the Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion.[2] He was an opponent of the Protestant Reformation and of Martin Luther, William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Cromwell and King Henry VIII.

More coined the word "utopia" - a name he gave to the ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in Utopia, published in 1516. He opposed the king's separation from the papal church and denied that the king was the Supreme Head of the Church of England, a status the king had been given by a compliant parliament through the Act of Supremacy of 1534. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534 for his refusal to take the oath required by the First Succession Act, because the act disparaged the power of the Pope and Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1535 he was tried and executed for treason by beheading. More was beatified by the Catholic Church in 1886 and canonised, with John Fisher, in 1935. In 1980, he was added to the Church of England's calendar of saints