The Case for Preserving and Exposing the Head Relic of St Thomas More

The 1932 memorial plaque covering the vault housing the relic of St Thomas More’s head in the Anglican church of St Dunstan’s, Canterbury.

 

By Steven Brizek

When the head of Thomas More was placed in the niche of the Roper Vault of St Dunstan’s Church in Canterbury sometime after the death of his daughter Margaret, he was Sir Thomas More, Knyght, Sometyme Chancellor of Englande.

Not many years before he had been executed for treason and, but from 1553 to 1558, despite his reputation as a lawyer and statesman of great merit and a man of indisputable courage, his remains only barely survived their intended destruction. Their eventual preservation in the Roper Vault during the religious uncertainties of the ensuing years helped to keep them relatively safe for the next 300 years, at least up to 1835 when they appeared to be intact.

But then came the revelations of the 1978 excavation revealing that, subsequent to 1835, the remains had suffered greatly and had been likely vandalized. Then, nothing was done about it. In 1997 they were viewed again in the same condition. Still nothing was done about it.

The revelations of 1978 and the present state of the remains take on a new character and dimension. All must understand that we are not met with the challenge to preserve and properly respect the remains of a mere Knyght, sometyme Chancellor of Englande, just a meritorious lawyer and statesman or just another man of great courage. No. We are confronted now with the challenge of preserving and properly respecting the remains of a man who was raised to the Altar in 1935. A man of heroic virtue. A saint.

Simply put, what might have been expedient in the 1500s or necessary, useful, or deemed acceptable to preserve the remains for the next 400 years is clearly no longer an adequate, appropriate, or conscionable means for ensuring their preservation now. St Thomas More belongs not to the people of a single place, but to people everywhere. Everyone, all people everywhere, are responsible for their safety and for giving them the respect they are due.

 

Inaction Leading to Destruction

Over the last several years those vested with the power to meet that challenge head on have declined to use that power. Instead, inaction has been chosen as the preferred response to the crisis that faces the remains of St Thomas More.

Inaction, whether the result of wilful neglect or indifference, has served only to advance the likelihood of accelerated deterioration of the remains over the possibility of their much needed conservation.

That inaction has served only to ensure the eventual destruction and total loss forever of the remains instead of providing the means necessary to their perpetual preservation. That inaction cannot be justified as a respectful effort to “let the remains of St Thomas rest in peace” when in practical terms that means merely abandoning those remains to the peace and quiet of certain rot and decay.

Those who would embrace inaction in this matter must understand its folly. Those who truly understand the magnitude of the challenge here presented must rise to meet it through meaningful action that will give life to that understanding.

The problem that they are not going to address is how to keep his remains safe and secure and properly preserved for all time — remains that are now open to the effects of below-ground air in the vault and accessible to anyone who might wish to tamper further with them; remains negligently left to the mercy of the elements in a decrepit and already vandalized container. Nothing will be done to address that problem because I trust there is not the institutional appreciation of, and sensitivity to, the importance of human relics within their Tradition, particularly when those of a Saint are involved.

The powers that be at St Dunstan’s seek only to “enhance the profile of St Thomas More, along with Henry II, and our ancient bell.” That is a stunning and painful revelation. It is a shameful admission of the tragically limited value that St Thomas More and his remains hold in the minds of those in whose hands their fate now lies. By application of the Common Law principle of ejusdem generis that would have been well known to the lawyer Thomas More, one is impelled to conclude that the importance of St Thomas More and his remains is seen as no greater than that of an ancient bell, and that he holds for them no more significance than someone as relatively insignificant as Henry II.

The same spirit, wisdom and understanding that drove those dedicated to the discovery, salvaging and loving preservation of the Mary Rose and the reverent recovery and disposition of the remains of her crew must be sought out. Those in whom those attributes are found must be made to understand how much that spirit wisdom and understanding is needed now to salvage and lovingly preserve the remains of a man whose importance and significance to England and the World and whose continuing living influence as a Saint of the Church.

The solution is never going to come from within. It will come from pressure from people on the outside who matter and who can wield some powerful influence.

There is an urgent necessity to address and remedy the fact that whatever remains of St Thomas More in the niche of the Roper Vault in St Dunstan’s Church will surely vanish into nothingness and be lost forever if whatever little now remains is not gathered up, properly preserved and reverently encased in an appropriate reliquary before it is too late.

To rectify the situation the remains must be properly conserved, re-interred and made visible within the vault by means of a glass cover, and that the original lead casket that housed the remains for centuries be placed on secure display in the Roper Chapel.

In 1978 when the Roper Vault was excavated, it became apparent that vandalism had occurred sometime between the opening of the vault in the 1830s and later in the 19th century when an organ was installed, and other work was carried out. That vandalism reduced an identifiable skull to the few fragments that are there today.

 

Forensic Report on the Relic

This should not be the last word on the subject and left un-remedied.

From the drawing that we have of the niche as it appeared in 1835, showing a recognizable skull within the casket, and given the current state of the casket’s contents, it seems reasonable to suspect that sometime during one of the later 19th Century openings of the vault, or at the time of the installation of the organ, or when the vault was partially filled with rubble, the casket’s contents were vandalized and/or broken up and some of those contents were removed.

An available forensic report suggests that all that remains of St Thomas More’s head is a part of the hard palette, a piece of the maxilla showing one tooth socket and a fragment of skull, and dust. It must be understood that mere exposure to the air, while the skull remained isolated and undisturbed in its casket and niche, would not have reduced a recognizable skull as it appeared in 1835 to the dust and fragments that remain today.

In the May, 1837 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine there appeared an article written by a correspondent and admirer of St Thomas More. The article was accompanied by the drawing, (pictured), which illustrated what was then, but is no longer, visible of the substantial remains of his skull, and it contained a call to action that echoes here again, over 180 years later, but with a greater resonance than ever before.

The article reads, in part, as follows:

“In the chancel of… [St. Dunstan’s] church is a vault belonging to… [The Roper] family, which, in newly paving of the chancel, in the summer of 1835, was accidentally opened; and, wishing to ascertain whether Sir T. More’s scull was really there, I went down into the vault, and found it still remaining in the place where it was seen many years ago, in a niche in the wall, in a leaden box, something of the shape of a bee-hive, open in the front and with an iron grating before it…The wall in the vault, which is on the south side, and in which the scull was found, seems to have been built much later than the time of Sir T. More’s decapitation … In musing over these relics of days gone by, and connected as they are— both above and below ground—with that …pious martyr, I could not but feel that I was treading on religious classic ground, and hope that a similar good feeling might induce some, who venerate the great and the good of other times, to manifest the same laudable wish to save from ruin the sacred walls which contain the head… I enter con amore into restorations of this sort, I have been planning how it might be done with best effect…But the difficulty is, HOW is all this to be accomplished?… I see no other possible way, than some of the descendants of Sir Thomas paying this sacred debt (may I call it?) to the memory of their great and good ancestor, or by others not connected with the family, but who take a deep interest in matters of this sort; doing, in short, as your Magazine records they have lately been doing at Chelsea, and paying the same mark of respect to the head in St. Dunstan’s church, as they have there done to his empty tomb. I have known this church for nearly forty years, and feel a strong wish to see it put into complete order. There is a great capability about it for making it one of the best churches in Canterbury; and I cannot but hope and trust that such may be effected at no distant period; for evidently there seems to be a wish in the parish to improve this sacred edifice; but, alas! their means are inadequate…As I see, from your devoting many pages to accounts of churches and everything belonging to them worthy of attention, that you interest yourself much in matters of this sort, I hope you will be able to make room, in some early number, for this notice of St. Dunstan’s church; and should it be the means of calling the attention of any antiquary to this subject, it will afford much satisfaction to the writer, that he has been in some degree instrumental to the marking more particularly the place where rests the head of one who made no inconsiderable a figure in the history of the reign of the Eighth Henry, and who fell a victim to the jealousy of that tyrant, by so boldly refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of his rule over the Church of England. Yours, &c. V. S. D. “

The call to action in that article was never heeded.

Margaret More Roper courageously salvaged the head of her beloved father from certain destruction when she retrieved it from London Bridge, and she did all that she could to preserve it during her lifetime and beyond. It is not enough for us to recognize and admire what she did, and leave it at that. Instead, we who now, 500 years later, are at last witnessing the potential and irretrievable loss and destruction of what she struggled to preserve, have a duty to ensure that her efforts were not in vain.

It is now up to those with the spirit, wisdom and understanding to once again retrieve the head of St Thomas More from certain destruction and guarantee its preservation for all time and for all who will forever look to him as a model of courage, intellect and spiritual devotion.

Steven Brizek is an American Catholic lawyer based in New Jersey, USA

Read Steven Brizek’s detailed proposal to assess, conserve and re-inter the relic.