re: #217 godfrey

What I object to is Charles’s insinuation that Thomas More is “known for” burning heretics.

Object all you like, but it’s true: Thomas More:

More supported the Catholic Church and saw heresy as a threat to the unity of both church and society. “He agreed with established English law, and with the lessons taught by the thousand-year experience of Christendom, that in order for peace to reign, heresy must be controlled. At the time, heresies were identified as seditious attempts to undermine existing authority …. More heard Luther’s call to destroy the heart of Christendom, the Catholic Church, as a call to war. He therefore followed traditional procedures to insure the safety of this legitimate and time-honored institution.”[7] However, More also sought radical clergy reform and more rational theology.

His early actions against the Protestants included aiding Wolsey in preventing Lutheran books from being imported into England. He also assisted in the production of a Star Chamber edict against heretical preaching, treating heretics mercilessly. During this time most of his literary polemics appeared. After becoming Lord Chancellor of England, More set himself the following task:

“Now seeing that the king’s gracious purpose in this point, I reckon that being his unworthy chancellor, it appertaineth … to help as much as in me is, that his people, abandoning the contagion of all such pestilent writing, may be far from infection.”

More is commemorated with a sculpture at the late 19th-century Sir Thomas More Chambers, opposite the Royal Courts of Justice, Carey Street, London.
In June 1530 it was decreed that offenders were to be brought before the King’s Council, rather than being examined by their bishops, the practice hitherto. Actions taken by the Council became ever more severe. In 1531, Richard Bayfield, a graduate of the University of Cambridge and former Benedictine monk, was burned at Smithfield for distributing copies of the New Testament.[8]

Further burnings followed at More’s instigation, including that of the priest and writer John Frith in 1533. In The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, yet another polemic, More took particular interest[citation needed] in the execution of Sir Thomas Hitton, describing him as “the devil’s stinking martyr”.[9]

Rumors circulated during and after More’s lifetime concerning his treatment of heretics; John Foxe (who “placed Protestant sufferings against the background of … the Antichrist”)[10] in his Book of Martyrs claimed that More had often used violence or torture while interrogating them. A more recent Evangelical author, Michael Farris[who?], also used Foxe’s book as a reference in writing that in April 1529 a heretic, John Tewkesbury, was taken by More to his house in Chelsea and so badly tortured on the rack that he was almost unable to walk. Tewkesbury was subsequently burned at the stake.