June–July 1535

June–July 1535 is marked by the executions of John Fisher and Thomas More, two men whose resistance exposed the growing conflict between conscience, church authority, and Henry VIII’s power. In Margaret Pole’s account, their deaths are not isolated punishments: they follow the king’s assumption of authority over the Church and the demand that his subjects affirm his version of the royal marriage and succession. The period’s defining counterpoint is the silence of those who witness the crisis and do not intervene.

The Authority Behind the Crisis

The conflict had developed through a succession of contests over who could determine religious and political truth. After the Church surrendered to the king, Henry VIII claimed that he would rule it himself and that the Pope’s authority in England should be disregarded. Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor, returned the great seal and resigned. Princess Mary understood the change as a seizure of the Church’s wealth, laws, and courts as well as its leadership.

By spring 1534, Thomas Cromwell was administering an oath of succession to the peers at Westminster Palace. The Pope had publicly ruled that Henry VIII’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon was valid and that the king should remain with his wife. The king’s position contradicted that ruling: he treated Katherine as no longer his wife, Anne Boleyn as queen, and Anne’s child as a princess. In Pole’s account, royal declaration itself is made to stand in for an independent judgment of what is true.

Fisher and the Court’s Silence

The Pope’s elevation of John Fisher to cardinal was a conspicuous assertion that the imprisoned bishop remained a senior figure in the universal Church and should be treated with respect. Henry VIII answered with a threat that Fisher would be unable to wear a cardinal’s hat because he would have no head. The courtiers heard the king; no one rebuked him or called for restraint.

In June, the court allowed the threat to become reality. Fisher was executed while imprisoned in the Tower of London. Pole remembers him as kind and loving, and recalls that he had offered her refuge when she was young and in need of a friend. She condemns not only the court’s failure to defend him but her own: she did not speak in his defense, and her sons were among those who let the king say what he pleased. The execution therefore becomes, in her telling, a measure of how completely fear had entered the political life of the court.

More’s Refusal and Death

Thomas More had also refused the oath, though he offered to sign a revised version that he could accept. He made clear that he did not condemn those who had composed or signed the existing oath; he could not sign it as written without violating his conscience. Pole remembers More’s gentleness and regrets that she did not stand beside him when he explained his refusal.

Henry VIII had promised his friend that he would never put him to this test, but the king broke that promise. In July, after writing, praying, and considering whether he could satisfy both God and the king, More concluded that he could not. He was executed at Tower Hill. His death, like Fisher’s, was a refusal to deny the Church; the account places the two executions within a single summer of escalating pressure on those who would not affirm the king’s authority.

The Meaning of the Period

Pole’s account makes the absence of public protest part of the story. After More’s execution, she emphasizes that no one in England objected and that nothing happened in response. This repeated stillness contrasts with the moral weight she assigns to the men who accepted death rather than yield their religious commitments. It also implicates the narrator: she recognizes the courage of Fisher and More while acknowledging that she herself remained silent.

The executions intensified the question of what Henry VIII might do next, particularly to the queen. In August, beyond the period covered here, Pole reports that Reginald Pole said the king was to be excommunicated. The later development underscores the wider stakes already visible in June and July: the struggle was no longer merely over an oath or the fate of two individuals, but over whether the king’s authority could stand above the Church and the consciences of his subjects.