Anglican church seeks to unearth St. Thomas More’s head

The Anglican church where St. Thomas More's daughter is buried along with her father's head seeks to exhume his remains and place them in a shrine ahead of the 500-year anniversary of his martyrdom, the pastor told the congregation last week.

The pastoral church council (PCC) at St. Dunstan's Church in Canterbury, England, issued a statement that was read at services.

"What the PCC has agreed, subject to all the right permissions being granted, is to exhume and conserve what remains of the relic, which will take several years to dry out and stabilize," said the statement.

The statement continued, "We could just put it back in the vault, maybe in a reliquary of some kind, or we could place the reliquary in some sort of shrine or carved stone pillar above ground in the Roper chapel, which is what many of our visitors have requested."

"We'd really appreciate your ideas and thoughts."

If approved, the church aims to have the shrine set up by 2035, the 500th anniversary of St. Thomas More's martyrdom.

St. Thomas More was martyred in 1535 by King Henry VIII, after refusing to accept the king as the head of a church.

His purported last words were “I am the king’s good servant, and God’s first.”

He was canonized and officially declared a martyr 400 years later, in 1935, by Pope Pius XI. In 2000, Pope St. John Paul II declared More to be the patron of statesmen and politicians.

After his martyrdom, his head was placed on a pike and displayed on London Bridge as a warning to others to remain faithful to the king. His daughter, Margaret Roper, bribed the bridge-keeper for her father's head, and smuggled it home. She then preserved her father's head with spices.

St. Thomas More's head was eventually buried alongside his daughter in the Roper family vault at St. Dunstan's Church. It was on display briefly in the 19th century, and his relics were last observed in 1997, reported British media.