The life of the brilliant and lovable More is another illustration of the mental confusions and inconsistencies of that age.  As an apostle of culture he favored the new learning, and yet he viewed the gathering momentum of reformatory principles with alarm, and cast in his lot with the ultra-conservatives.  Four years of his young manhood were spent in a monastery.  He devoted his splendid talents to a criticism of English society, and recommended freedom of conscience, yet he became an ardent foe of reform and even a persecutor of heretics, of whom he said:  “I do so detest that class of men that, unless they repent, I am the worst enemy they have.”  When a man, whom even Protestant historians hasten to pronounce “the glory of his age,” so magnificent were his talents and so blameless his character, was tainted with superstition, and sanctioned the persecution of liberal thinkers, is it remarkable that inferior intellects should have been swayed by the brutality and tyranny of the times?

The unparalleled claims of Henry and his attitude toward the pope made the breach between England and Rome complete, but many years of painful internal strife and bloodshed were to elapse before the whole nation submitted to the new order of things, and before that subjective freedom from fear and superstition without which formal freedom has little value, was secured.

The breach with Rome was essential to the attainment of that religious and political freedom that England now enjoys.  But the first step toward making that separation an accomplished fact, acquiesced in by the people as a whole, was to break the power of the monastic orders.  It may possibly be true that the same ends would have been eventually attained by trusting to the slower processes of social evolution, but the history of the Latin nations of Europe would seem to prove the contrary.  As the facts stand it would appear that peace and progress were impossible with thousands of monks sowing seeds of discord, and employing every measure, fair or foul, to win the country back to Rome.  Gairdner and others argue that Henry was far too powerful a king to have been successfully resisted by the pope, unless the pope was backed by a union of the Christian princes, which was then impracticable.  That fact may make the execution of More, Fisher and the Charterhouse monks inexcusable, but it by no means proves that Henry would have been strong enough to maintain his position if the monasteries had been permitted to exist as centers of organized opposition to his will.  Many of the monks, when pressed by the king’s agents, took the oath of allegiance.  Threats, bribes and violence were used to overcome the opposition of the unwilling.

The Monks and the Oath of Supremacy