Integrity and St. Thomas More – A Man For All Seasons

After finishing an essay last night, I picked up a book my mom gave me to read. It was a play by Robert Bolt called “A Man For All Seasons” and tells the story of Sir/St. Thomas More, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor who remained a devout Catholic and refused to take the Act of Supremacy (http://www.britainexpress.com/History/tudor/supremacy-henry-text.htm). The oath means admitting that Henry’s marriage to Anne Bolynne is valid and that Henry is the Supreme Head of the Church in England. More refuses because the Pope and Christian law state the contrary (‘what God has brought together let no man separate’, etc).

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The whole theme of the play was “everyone has a price” and you gradually see every character get bought off into either submitting to the king and saying the oath, while not really believing it, or betraying their friends for money. In the end the story revolves around Thomas who refuses to say anything at all about the marriage or the Church of England and uses his silence as his legal defence.

It’s interesting that the play mentions how even though More is silent, his morality and firm conviction and refusal to sell out, actually bring pain to King Henry VIII and he orders him to be dragged to the tower until he officially committs treason. But More is a master of English law and gets out of it every time until finally with no evidence, they have a trial and sentence him to execution anyway. His own friends who he was helping out in the beginning of the play end up being those who witness against him and sentence him to death. It’s interesting in the end because Thomas was so committed to following his conscience that everyone thought he was a fool and should just give in. At one point, his friend the Duke of Norfolk, shows up and displays a list of all his friends and everyone in England who’ve all signed the Act of Supremacy and Norfolk urges him to sign it, and I love how More responds:

Norfolk: I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas look at those names… You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?

More (moved): And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?

Cranmer: So those of us whose names are there are damned, Sir Thomas?

More: I don’t know, Your Grace. I have no window to look into another man’s conscience. I condemn no one

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I like that More doesn’t even play the saintly moral high ground card here, he just says that he refuses to go against his conscience. He says later when his daughter asks why he stays in the Tower of London (jail) instead of just mindlessly signing the Act of Supremacy and coming home. She doesn’t understand why he must suffer to be a hero. More responds:

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“If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly, And we’d live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all…why then perhaps we must stand fast a little – even at the risk of being heroes” (p 84)

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In the end of his trial, once he knows it’s been rigged, Sir Thomas says:

“What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road” (p 95)

The movie V for Vendetta describes Integrity as that last inch which no one can take from you. Even though the play isn’t literally true, the events are and I hope that I might one day have the conscience and integrity that St. Thomas More had.

I wrote to a friend the other day “I would pray that God lets you know what’s right, in my case my conscience has always been clear, I’ve never had to pray to know right from wrong, I’ve only had to pray for the grace to do what is right, and rarely have I chosen it”. I think the conscience is an immense gift from God and I need to rule myself more by it than I do currently.