# More is committed to the Tower on 17 April 1534 after refusing the oath of succession

Date: 1534

## The fact

On 17 April 1534 More was committed to the Tower after refusing the oath attached to the Act of Succession.

It is one event.

## Context

TNA calendars and HRP’s Tower page independently date the April 1534 committal. The 1534 statutes widened the net; More did not draft them. Allegation of later ‘treasonous malice’ stays allegation until the July 1535 trial row.

[Thomas More](/people/thomas-more)’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Conventional years are 1478–1535. Surviving public files are later parliamentary biographies, TNA calendars, HRP Tower pages, the Yale More tradition, and encyclopedias. More did not typeset those later pages. 1935 canonisation is posthumous and is not a Fact.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

TNA’s catalogue heading and HRP’s More page independently describe the April 1534 Tower committal.

Official or archival record: The National Archives — Henrician catalogues (https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/; The National Archives (UK)).

## Significance

High confidence on the detention date.

## What is established and what is not

Established: More entered the Tower on 17 April 1534 after refusing the oath. Not established: that silence already was the July conviction’s full legal file.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Thomas More.

They are not a public rating.

Thomas More did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct. A committal is not a beheading. Keep 6 July as the killing. Keep the carrier date of later English distinct from the received historical year stored in the date field. Do not read a later English edition as a recovered autograph of Thomas More.

## People

- Thomas More: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-more

## Drivers

- Judicial independence erosion (court capture): https://factrail.ai/drivers/justice-judicial-independence-erosion

## Sources

- https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/sir-thomas-more/
- https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tm-oath-refusal-1534