Thomas More was executed in England

On 1 July 1535, Sir Thomas More stood trial for treason at Westminster and was condemned to death for, in the words of the indictment, “maliciously denying the royal Supremacy.” His refusal was the heart of the matter: More would not swear that Henry VIII, not the Pope, was supreme head of the Church of England.

Five days later, on 6 July 1535, while the king hunted at Reading, More was beheaded on Tower Hill. Once Henry’s friend and his most senior minister, he had resigned the chancellorship and fallen silent rather than endorse the break with Rome. His sentence was commuted from the traitor’s death of hanging and quartering to a swifter beheading.

“the King’s good servant but God’s first”

Those were the words he is said to have spoken on the scaffold. The Catholic Church later canonised him as Saint Thomas More in 1935, four centuries after the axe fell.