Maine’s Senate race
The final crisis came over the Act of Succession with its inescapable implications. While the supposed nullity of Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon was still being decided at Rome, Henry married Anne Boleyn, who was then crowned Queen. More refused to attend her coronation. In 1534 the Act of Succession required the king's subjects to recognize the offspring of the marriage of Henry and Anne as successors to the throne; also that the union with Catherine of Aragon was no true marriage, but that the union with Anne was a true marriage and that the authority of any foreign prince or potentate should be repudiated. To the first part of the oath More was ready to agree, but he could not accept the other propositions, especially as only a little while before Clement VII had at last pronounced the marriage of Henry and Catherine to have been valid. Opposing the Act had been declared high treason, so after a second refusal More and John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were committed to the Tower. This was on 13 April 1534. More was imprisoned for the remaining fifteen months of his life. Many efforts were made to induce him to conform but in vain; he forfeited all his lands and his family shared his poverty. In 1535 the Act of Supremacy which gave to the king the title ‘only supreme head of the Church in England’ came into force. John Houghton and the other London Carthusian monks were executed for ‘treason’ on 4 May and were watched by More on the way to their death. On 22 June, Fisher, More's friend and adviser, was beheaded on Tower Hill; on 1 July More, weak from illness and imprisonment, was tried in Westminster Hall. His defence was that his indictment was based directly on an Act of Parliament repugnant to the laws of God and the Church; that no temporal prince can presume by any law to take upon himself a spiritual pre‐eminence given by Christ to St. Peter and his successors in the See of Rome; that a particular country could no more make laws against the general law of the Church than the City of London could make a law against Parliament to bind the whole country; that the new title was contrary to the king's coronation oath. Further, although bishops and universities had agreed to this Act, More had not found in seven years' special study of the subject a single ancient writer or doctor that advocated the spiritual supremacy of any secular and temporal prince. In Christendom itself learned bishops and virtuous men still alive, not to mention the saints who were dead, agreed with More; therefore he was not obliged to prefer the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom or one Parliament (‘God knows what manner of one’) to all the Councils made these thousand years. Nevertheless, he was condemned to death. Characteristically he then expressed the hope that he and his judges may ‘hereafter in heaven all meet merrily together, to our everlasting salvation’. A last affectionate meeting with his daughter Margaret followed on his way back to the Tower; she and other members of his family had taken the oath which he refused. He was executed on Tower Hill on 6 July, his last words being that he died for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church and was ‘the king's good servant, but God's first’.
最後的危機，隨著繼承法的無可逃避的意含而來。雖然亨利與阿拉貢的凱瑟琳的婚姻之無效論仍在羅馬裁決時，亨利與安 博林結婚，並將她加冕為王后。摩爾拒絕出席她的加冕禮。1534年，繼承法要求國王的臣民應承認亨利和安的後代為王位的繼承者;而與西班牙阿拉貢的Catherine的婚姻並非真正的，與安的婚姻才是真正的，又任何外國公親或君主的權威應該不予承認。對於上述誓言的第一部分，摩爾準備同意，但他無法接受後者，特別是在克萊門特七世教宗接下來就會宣判亨利和凱瑟琳的婚姻已有效的時候。反對該法案最終會被宣判為犯了叛國罪，所以第二次拒絕宣誓之後，摩爾與羅切斯特主教約翰 費舍爾就被投入倫敦塔關起來。當時是1534年4月13日。摩爾生命的最後15個月一直都被囚禁在那兒。許多作了相當的努力來勸他依順法律來宣誓，可都沒成功；他的所有地產都被沒收，家人淪為窮人。在1535至高無上法案賦予國王“英格蘭教會的唯一最高負責人”的稱號生效了。5月4日，約翰 霍頓和其他倫敦嘉都西會(Carthusian)會員以“叛國罪”被處決，他們赴義途中特別安排給摩爾看到。6月22日，費舍爾，摩爾的朋友和顧問，被斬首於倫敦塔山坡。 7月1日，摩爾因監禁而體弱多病，在西敏寺的大廳受審。他的答辯是，他的起訴書乃是直接基於與上帝和教會的法律相抵觸的議會法案，沒有任何世俗王公或法律可以凌駕來自神基督和聖彼得繼任者羅馬給予他的精神力量，正如倫敦金融城不可通過法律來約束國會，所以國會無法可依來稱其臣民有違國王的的加冕誓言之罪。
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