Editing Thomas More (section)

=== Executions ===
Burning at the stake was the standard punishment by the English state for obstinate or relapsed, major seditious or proselytizing heresy, and continued to be used by both Catholics and Protestants during the religious upheaval of the following decades.<ref>Guy, John A. ''Tudor England'' Oxford, 1988. p 26</ref>  In England, following the [[Lollard]] uprisings, heresy had been linked to sedition (see {{lang|la|[[De heretico comburendo]]}} and [[Suppression of Heresy Act 1414]].)

Ackroyd and MacCulloch agree that More zealously approved of burning.<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|298}} [[Richard Marius]] maintained that in office More did everything in his power to bring about the extermination of heretics.<ref name="Marius406">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DdAYSzj20t0C&q=Thomas+More++burned+heretics+at+Smithfield&pg=PA406 |title=Thomas More: A Biography |author=Richard Marius |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1999 |isbn=0-674-88525-2 |page=406}}</ref>

During More's chancellorship, six people were burned at the stake for heresy, the same rate as under [[Wolsey]]: they were [[Thomas Hitton]], [[Thomas Bilney]], [[Richard Bayfield]], [[John Tewkesbury]], [[Thomas Dusgate]], and [[James Bainham]].<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|299–306}}  However, the court of the [[Star Chamber]], of which More as Lord Chancellor was the presiding judge, could not impose the death sentence: it was a kind of appellate [[supreme court]].<ref name=maitland>{{cite book|last=Maitland|first=Frederic William|title=The Constitutional History of England: A Course of Lectures|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=211LvgAACAAJ|year=1911|publisher=University Press|location=Cambridge}}</ref>{{rp|263}}

More took a personal interest in the  three London cases:<ref name=rex>{{cite journal |last1=Rex |first1=Richard |title=Thomas More and the heretics: statesman or fanatic? |journal=The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More |date=27 January 2011 |pages=93–115 |doi=10.1017/CCOL9780521888622.006|isbn=9780521888622 }}</ref>{{rp|105}}
* [[John Tewkesbury]] was a London leather seller found guilty by the [[Bishop of London]] [[John Stokesley]] of harbouring English translated New Testaments; he was sentenced to burning for refusing to recant.<ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Daniell |editor1-first=David |editor1-link=David Daniell (author) |title=Tyndale's New Testament |date=1995 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven, CT |isbn=0-300-06580-9 |page=xxix|quotation=[More]{{nbsp}}[...] with the new Bishop of London, burned John Tewkesbury, Richard Bayfield and James Bainham for the heresy of not renouncing what Tyndale had written.}}</ref> More declared: he "burned as there was neuer wretche I wene better worthy."<ref>{{cite book|publisher=Yale|series=Complete Works|first=Thomas|last=More | volume = 8|title=The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer|editor-last=Schuster|editor1-first=LA | editor2-last =Marius|editor2-first=RC|editor3-last= Lusardi|editor3-first= JP|editor4-last = Schoeck | editor4-first=RJ|year=1973|page= 20}}</ref>
* [[Richard Bayfield]] was found distributing Tyndale's Bibles, and examined by Bishop [[Cuthbert Tunstall]]. More commented that he was "well and worthely burned".<ref name="Ackroyd" />{{rp|305}}
* [[James Bainham]] was arrested on a warrant of Thomas More as Lord Chancellor and detained at his gatehouse. He was examined by Bishop John Stokesley, abjured, penalized and freed. He subsequently re-canted, and was re-arrested, tried and executed as a relapsed heretic.

Historian [[Brian Moynahan]] alleged that More influenced the eventual execution of [[William Tyndale]] in the Duchy of Brabant, as English agents had long pursued Tyndale. Historian [[Richard Rex]] argues that linking the execution to More was "bizarre".<ref name=rex/>{{rp|93}} Moynihan named Henry Phillips, a student at the [[Old University of Leuven|University of Louvain]] and follower of Bishop Stokesley, as the man More commissioned to befriend Tyndale and then betray him.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Moynahan |first1=Brian |author1-link=Brian Moynahan |title=If God spare my life: William Tyndale, the English Bible and Sir Thomas More—a story of martyrdom and betrayal |date=2002 |publisher=Little, Brown |location=London |isbn=0-316-86092-1 |pages=325–328, 340}}</ref> However, the execution took place on 6 October 1536, sixteen months after More himself had been executed, and in a different jurisdiction.