Sir Thomas More, also known as Saint Thomas More (because of sanctification by the Catholic Church) is probably best known for his confrontation with King Henry VIII, for which he lost his life. He was a statesman as well as a political and social philosopher. His most famous work is his Utopia, a book in which he created his version of a perfect society and gave his name to such conceptions ever after as "utopias." The film A Man for All Seasons (1966, Fred Zinnemann) recounts the story of More's refusal to change the law to allow King Henry VIII to divorce. The essence of the film is true to history, but there are elements in the film which are not.
The law and the Church clashed under Henry VII, who had a sense of himself as absolute monarch, able to do whatever he wanted in order to accomplish what he desired. When the laws stood in his way, he changed the laws or destroyed those (like Sir Thomas More) who challenged his right to do so. Henry VIII was king of England from 1509 to 1547, and he instigated the Reformation of the English church in order to secure a divorce Catherine of Aragon. The new marriage seemed happy for a number of years, but Henry became concerned because Catherine had borne no male heir to continue the Tudor line. He decided that his marriage displeased God, and he found justification for this in a biblical text (Leviticus 20:21) which held that marriage to a dead brother's widow is forbidden. Having come to this belated decision, Henry ordered his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to approach the papacy for a decree that the marriage was invalid and that Henry was free to marry again. By this time the king had in fact fallen in love with Anne Boleyn. Catherine opposed the annulment, as did her nephew Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Charles dominated Italy during this period, and because of his influence Pope Clement VII could not grant Henry's request. A divorce trial was h...