Author of Utopia, a chancellor who died for conscience
An English statesman and humanist, Lord Chancellor to King Henry VIII. By imagining an island commonwealth of common property, universal equality, and no poverty or oppression, he wrote the book Utopia, giving a name to every later imagining of an "ideal society" — "Utopia" became a common word. And with his own life he acted out the conflict of power and conscience: when Henry VIII broke with Rome to divorce and made himself head of the church, More would rather die than swear against his faith, and was sent to the scaffold. He proved that before absolute power, a man can still keep his conscience by dying.
Henry VIII demanded that More acknowledge him as supreme head of the English church; More answered with silence, neither signing nor openly refusing, hoping to save his life by saying nothing. But the king would not allow it, and finally condemned him to death for treason. On the scaffold More said calmly that he was "the king’s good servant, but God’s first." A chancellor at the height of power chose to keep an inalienable conviction with his life.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.