Pilgrim Ways

Chapter Twelve - The Tower During parliamentary “term time” hardly a day has passed over the past twenty years without my passing the spot where Saint Thomas More stood trial. Westminster Hall is the oldest and grandest of the parliamentary buildings which make up the Westminster estate. Standing at the heart of the Palace of Westminster this is where, in 1265, Simon de Montfort and the barons first challenged the supremacy of the king and began the long tortuous process of creating a parliamentary democracy. The battles which followed were real enough, reaching their climax in the Civil War. It was in 1648 in Westminster Hall that Charles I stood trial and from here that he was taken away for execution. In 1649 the House of Lords and the Monarchy were abolished and for eleven years England experimented with republicanism.

The rupture in the relationship between the universal Church and the English State - and the beginning of the destruction of life-long marriage - was an even messier revolution with far more disastrous long term consequences. That revolution began when Thomas More stood trial at Westminster and was committed to the Tower of London, via the Traitors‟ Gate, on April 17th, 1534. He was executed on July 6th in the following year.

A Man For All Seasons Before embarking on their journey to discover More and his legacy modern pilgrims could do worse that watch Fred Zinnemann‟s celebrated movie of Robert Boult‟s play, made in 1966, A Man For All Seasons. Paul Scofield, as More, and Robert Shaw, as Henry VIII, graphically bring to life the high drama of More‟s dilemma and his trial. He wanted, in his own words, to be “the king‟s good servant, but God‟s first” - echoing, in this famous dictum, Our Lord‟s challenge to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar‟s but unto God the things that are God‟s.” More‟s stand for conscience also created a new standard for believers. In coming to terms with the implications of trying to be dutiful to both the king and God , More‟s struggle is at one with the struggle many people face today in reconciling their faith with the great contemporary battles of secular Britain. Thomas More stands at the head of the tradition of Catholic lay involvement in public and political life. Near to Westminster Hall is the St.Stephen‟s entrance. Most people passing through this long corridor which leads to the Central Lobby - where any citizen may seek out their MP - will be unaware that this is the historic church of St.Stephen, and that to this day the crypt chapel of Our Lady Undercroft (below St.Stephen‟s) is in regular use as a place of worship. On the wall of St.Stephen‟s, in close proximity to the brass studs which mark the place where the high altar stood and the place where the abbot‟s chair was situated, is a painting of More and Cardinal Wolsey. If More stands for everything the lay Catholic should be in public and political life, Wolsey stands for everything that the clerical church should not be.

Westminster Hall If these walls and those of Westminster Hall could speak they could tells us most things that we need to know about English history, and about the difficult relationship between faith and politics. A succession of Catholics were to stand here in More‟s place. Most notably, the Hall also saw the trial of St.Edmund Campion and the unravelling of the conspiracy to attack Parliament by force, documented so admirably be Antonia Fraser in The Gunpowder Plot.

Having survived pillage, plunder, arson, and the Luftwaffe, Westminster Hall has been the focus of surges of national emotion. It was here that the masses came to pay their respects to