The following text originally appears here.  Hyperlinks added by me.

ST. (SIR) THOMAS MORE (A Man for All Seasons)

     Thomas More was an extremely learned, successful, and wealthy lawyer (Barrister) who, during the reign of King Henry the VIII, rose to the enviable and powerful position of Lord High Chancellor of England.

     Unfortunately, however, after King Henry the VIII broke from the pope, appointed himself Head of the Church of England and then appointed himself a bishop who granted him a divorce from his first wife, More fell into disfavor with the King. This occurred partly as a result of Moore's refusal to swear an oath (The Supremacy Act) affirming the King of England as Supreme to all other authority and thus giving his implicit approval to the King's subsequent marriage to his second wife, Anne Boleyn. More could not bring himself to swear an oath to that which to his conscience was wrong - not even to save his position, career or life. As a result of his refusal to take the oath, he was tried for treason, convicted and then beheaded. More's conviction was based upon the perjured testimony of the King's Solicitor General, Sir Richard Rich. Years later, More was knighted, posthumously, by the English Government and canonized by the Catholic Church which also designated him one of the two patron saints of lawyers.

     Within a year of More's execution, King Henry the VIII had his second wife beheaded and then went on to marry four (4) additional times. As a reward for his perjured testimony, King Henry VIII made Sir Richard Rich a Duke and subsequently appointed him Lord High Chancellor of England. Rich went on to live a long and prosperous life.

     The following is an excerpt of a dialogue among More, his daughter and her suitor, William Roper, as set forth in Robert Bolt's two-act play, A Man For All Seasons. In this play, Bolt had hoped in part to contrast the seriousness which More in the 16th Century attached to the swearing of an oath as compared with the insignificance attached to such an event in modern times - then 1962.

More:    There is no law against that.

Roper:   There is! God's law!

More:    Then God can arrest him.

Roper:   Sophistication upon sophistication.

More:    No, sheer simplicity.  The law, Roper, the law.  I know what's legal not what's right.  And I'll stick to what's legal.

Roper:   Then you set man's law above God's!

More:    No, far below;  but let me draw your attention to a fact - I'm not God.  The currents and eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate.  I'm no voyager.  But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a forrester.  I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God....

Alice:    While you talk, he's gone!

More:    And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!

Roper:   So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!

More:    Yes.  What would you do?  Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper:   I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

More:    Oh?  And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes,  I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Roper:   I have long suspected this, this is the golden calf; the law's your god!

More:    Oh, Roper, you're a fool, God's my god....But I find him rather too subtle....I don't know where He is or what He wants.

Roper:   My God wants service, to the end and unremitting; nothing else!

More:    Are you sure that's God?  He sounds like Moloch.  But indeed it may be God - And whoever hunts for me, Roper, God or Devil, will find me hiding in the thickets of the law!  And I'll hide my daughter with me!  Not hoist her up the mainmast of your seagoing principles!  They put about too nimbly!