My stalker Thomas More

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

(Stalker: a person who pursues someone stealthily- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/stalker)

I have come to believe it is possible to be stalked and shadowed by someone who has been dead for over 500 years. My stalker is Thomas More.

You know Thomas More, of course, not as a stalker but as the scholar, writer, lawyer, and statesman who so ably served King Henry VIII until 1532 when Henry broke from the Catholic Church to marry Anne Boleyn and established himself as head of the new Church of England. More was imprisoned in the Tower of London, convicted of treason, and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, but the King commuted this to execution by decapitation. The execution took place on July 6, 1535. The Catholic Church canonized More as a saint and martyr in 1935 and the Church of England recognized him as a martyr of the Reformation in 1980 (and celebrates his feast day on July 6).

I have always been fascinated by More and his shadow seems to regularly cross my path. In college, I studied Robert Bolt’s famous play about More. I wrote about More in my law school admission essay. During law school, my parish priest was named for More. As a young lawyer, the wife of a tragically-deceased colleague gifted me with my friend’s copy of More’s biography. My wife and I raised our family in St. Thomas More Catholic parish in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

As if all this was not enough evidence, More’s stalking became quite apparent on our recent trip to London. While there, we visited the infamous Tower of London. Our tour guide, one of the yeoman warders (beefeaters) whose predecessors were More’s prison guards, pointed to More’s cell and described More as the greatest man of his generation. We later prayed in the Tower’s chapel of  St. Peter ad Vincula after learning that More is buried in the chapel’s crypt. Ironically, More rests just steps from the grave of Anne Boleyn, another victim of Henry VIII and arguably the reason More was beheaded.

When I got back to our hotel on the day of this memorable visit to the Tower, I realized it was June 22, which is the day that the Catholic Church celebrates as the feast day of St. Thomas More. Coincidence? You decide.

Two days after our visit to the Tower of London, we met some friends for church. They chose the place─a small chapel in Chelsea, which is just southwest of London on the River Thames. It turned out the church is named in honor of More, who lived in Chelsea. During mass, we sat by his statue, within the colored light of a stained glass window honoring him, and listened to the choir sing hymns in Latin.

Walking to lunch afterwards, we passed Chelsea Old Church, now an Anglican house of worship, but whose southern chapel More commissioned and in which he sang with the parish choir. Another statue honoring More stands in the church courtyard. Just across the street stands a reconstructed Crosby Hall, part of More’s London home rebuilt on the exact site of his Chelsea home. Stalking, plain and simple.

After our London trip, I realized that these are only the more physical and tangible manifestations of the stalking. My many More connections have reminded me to try to: care and provide for my wife and family in a loving manner, ensure self-esteem in my daughters (More insisted on a full education for his son and daughters, unusual for his time), forgive others (More kissed and forgave his executioner just before the beheading), pray, think, write, seek to make my community a better place. My own efforts pale in comparison to those of my stalker, but nonetheless are inspired by him.

In 1520 the English poet Robert Whittington called More “a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.”

If you are going to have a stalker, you could do much, much worse.