Was Thomas More a Hypocrite?

Even so, wasn’t there something grossly disproportionate about his position? Was the wrongfulness of uttering a few words at variance with his belief really so weighty as to justify the loss of his life and the serious risks and deprivations he was imposing on his family? Was his refusal really a matter of conscience, we might ask? Or rather, as his family and friends hinted and more than hinted, was it more in the nature of a finicky, unmoored, perhaps even self-indulgent scrupulosity, which in Christian tradition has been regarded as a sin? What about hypocrisy? The question arises because in More’s case there is an additional and troubling complication—one that historians and novelists and interested spectators have debated endlessly in the centuries since.