page_title: Thomas More
section_title: Crosby Hall
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas More / Historic sites / Crosby Hall
context_page_description: Sir Thomas More, venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary island state.
  More opposed the Protestant Reformation, directing polemics against the theology of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin and William Tyndale. More also opposed Henry VIII's separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and executed. On his execution, he was reported to have said: "I die the King's good servant, and God's first".
  Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the patron saint of statesmen and politicians. The Soviet Union in the early twentieth century honoured him for the purportedly communist attitude toward property rights in Utopia.
context_section_description: After his execution The Crown confiscated Crosby Hall, More's home in Bishopsgate in The City of London, and his estate along the Thames in Chelsea. Parts of the house survived until demolished in 1909 when some elements, including the hammer-beam roof of the Great Hall, part of a musicians' gallery, a postern doorway and some oriel windows, were placed in storage and eventually incorporated into a new building  erected at the site of More's estate in Chelsea. It is privately owned and closed to the public.
caption: Crosby Hall, former home of Thomas More
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