Saints John Fisher, Bishop, and Thomas More, Martyrs

John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and chancellor of Cambridge, and Thomas More, lawyer, author of Utopia and from 1529 to 1532 Lord Chancellor of England, both refused to swear the oaths King Henry VIII demanded after his break with Rome over his marriage, which recognized the children of Anne Boleyn as heirs and implied rejecting the authority of the pope. Both were imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534.

While he was there, the pope named Fisher a cardinal, and the king, enraged, had him tried. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 22 June 1535. More was beheaded there on 6 July. On the scaffold, it was reported, he said he died “the king’s good servant, but God’s first.” Both were canonized in 1935.