Thomas More

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), was placed at number thirty-seven in the BBC's poll of the "100 Greatest Britons." An English statesman, lawyer, humanist, saint, poet, and author, he was one of the most versatile and talened men of his age. He held important government positions, including serving as lord chancellor. Though he had been a long-time friend of King Henry VIII, he was a staunch Catholic and could not accept the king's demand that all subjects acknowledge the king above the pope, resulting in his execution in 1535. With his writing of Utopia, he takes his place with the most eminent humanists of the Renaissance.