Where is the head of St Thomas More?
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535) was an English lawyer, judge, philospher, author, statesman, theologian and Renaissance humanist. He also served King Henry VIII as Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote the book Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.
More was a devout Roman Catholic. When he refused to acknowledge the claim of Henry to be head of the Church of England, he was executed. After his execution, his head was mounted on a pike on London Bridge and publicly displayed as a graphic testimony of his dissent.
More’s devoted daughter Margaret Roper arranged to have the head taken down and delivered to her. She placed it in a casket and had it buried in the family vault in St Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury. It remains there to this day.
This weekend, I visited the church and learned this story when I visited friends who live near to Canterbury.