The reputation of St Thomas More has for centuries survived the “shafts of falsehood and of folly”, to borrow a phrase of William Cobbett, the 19th-century polemicist. In spite of dying as a traitor, and his defence of the Catholic Church (not always a crowd-pleaser in these islands), the former Lord Chancellor of England retains a place in the popular imagination as a man of tremendous courage and integrity, the “man for all seasons” who was “always the King’s good servant, but God’s first”.
Even in secular Britain, it is not difficult to find roads, buildings and even housing estates named after him. He is held in equally high esteem abroad and more profoundly within the Catholic Church, which honours him as patron saint of politicians, statesmen and lawyers. In a poll conducted by this magazine in 2005,
St Thomas was voted the greatest of all English saints.
