http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 - 6 July
1535), also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an
English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and
noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor
to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end
of his life, Lord Chancellor. He is recognised as a saint
within the Catholic Church and is commemorated by the Church
of England as a "Reformation martyr".[2] He was an opponent
of the Protestant Reformation and in particular of Martin
Luther and William Tyndale.
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 Catholic Church and refused to accept
the king as 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 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 for treason, convicted on perjured testimony,
and beheaded.
Intellectuals and statesmen across Europe were stunned by
More's execution. Erasmus saluted him as one "whose soul was
more pure than any snow." Two centuries later Jonathan Swift
said he was "the person of the greatest virtue this kingdom
ever produced", a sentiment with which Samuel Johnson
agreed. Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said in 1977 that More
was "the first great Englishman whom we feel that we know,
the most saintly of humanists, the most human of saints, the
universal man of our cool northern renaissance."[3] The
Catholic Church proclaimed him a saint in 1935.