# More is chosen Speaker of the House of Commons in the 1523 parliament

Date: 1523

## The fact

In 1523 [Thomas More](/people/thomas-more) was chosen Speaker of the [House of Commons](/organizations/house-of-commons). Later parliamentary heritage pages remember a request that members might speak freely. It is not the 1529 chancellorship.

It is one event.

## Context

History of Parliament Online and UK Parliament’s heritage pages independently date the 1523 Speakership. A Speaker under Wolsey is not a later Commons supremacy. Do not rebate 1535 with 1523.

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

History of Parliament Online and UK Parliament independently describe More as Speaker in 1523.

Official or archival record: History of Parliament — MORE, Thomas I (1477/78–1535) (https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/node/51193/; History of Parliament Trust).

## Significance

[Democratic-resilience](/drivers/democratic-resilience) path of medium weight inside a Tudor parliament. High confidence on the office.

## What is established and what is not

Established: More was Speaker in 1523. Not established: that 1523 already was a modern free-speech statute.

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.

The driver `democratic-resilience` is attached because the mechanism named in Significance follows from this instrument, not because a standing list of welfare headings needed another tick. 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 Speakership is not Utopia. Keep 1516 as the book. 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.
The driver `democratic-resilience` is attached because the mechanism named in Significance follows from this instrument, not because a standing list of welfare headings needed another tick. 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 Speakership is not Utopia. Keep 1516 as the book. 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

- Democratic Resilience: https://factrail.ai/drivers/democratic-resilience

## Sources

- https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/node/51193/
- https://www.parliament.uk/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/tm-speaker-1523