In considering Thomas More, few historians seem able to forget the end of the story. That More died a victim of Henry VIII, a martyr to his conscience and a defender of the papal supremacy, is, of course, perfectly true, but it is exceedingly rash to suppose that his whole life, or even the last few years of it, was simply a preparation for the tragic outcome.

From about the middle of 1532 More certainly lived in a retirement in which he meant to prepare himself for his death, though not necessarily for one by violence; and from April 1534 he was in the Tower and knew what the end must be. But before that he had spent two and a half years of his life as lord chancellor, the king's highest officer and a leading member of the royal Council, at a time when Henry was manifestly striving for purposes that More detested. How could he justify holding office at all? What line did he take over the politics of those years? This part of his life occupies amazingly little space in the standard accounts.

More's acceptance of the chancellorship has been a stumbling block to his biographers. On Wolsey's fall it was clear to all men in high places that the king's infatuation for Anne Boleyn was about to unleash drastic events, full of danger for the Church and likely to produce bitter clashes between the regnum and the sacerdotium.