Edward Ward's Sir Thomas More's farewell to His Daughter.

St. Thomas More, Martyr

Mrs. More: Arrest him!
More: For what?
Mrs. More: He's dangerous!
Roper: For all we know he's a spy!
Margaret: Father, that man's bad!
More: There's no law against that!
Margaret: There is, God's law!
More: Then let God arrest him!
Mrs. More: While you talk he's gone!
More: And go he should, if he were the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

--A Man for All Seasons

Today is the feast of St. Thomas More, a figure of double importance to me as the patron saint of my home parish and of my parents, who are both lawyers and strong admirers of his principled stand and his ability to live in the world and at the same time not be of it, and still have a good laugh occasionally. Like Chesterton, he is one of those marvelous men of the Church that one can imagine easily having a grand time out if you had dinner with them, and all the time God being firmly the source of that divine hilarity. And, in the end, that hilarity revealed, not a frivolous heart, but one that was rock-solid in its defense of the rights of the See of Peter against a wicked King. And so he "merrily met" with his Redeemer in Heaven.

Some more More goodies: A Man for All Seasons on DVD. *** The parboiled relics of St. Thomas More, his missing tooth, and the burial place of William and Margaret Roper. *** Facsimile of the 1518 Basel edition of Utopia online. *** His last letter. *** Taylor Marshall provides an Anglican perspective on the saint, who is commemorated (perhaps ironically) on their calendar as well. Though I profess puzzlement at Taylor's rather pungent reference to the "wicked, Jesuitical, treacherous, Italianate, idolatrous, Romish mass-priests of the era." Hhhhhhmmmm...I had no idea that Fr. Guido Sarducci lived back then. *** Splendid neo-medieval image of More on the rood screen of St. Mary's, Kettlebarston, in England. In an effort to give Henry VIII a coronary, he is depicted in the company of Pope St. Felix and fellow papal supporter and martyr St. Thomas Becket. *** Dr. Johnson (another inhabitant of the Anglican sanctoral calendar, 13 December) on More: "He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced."