Henry VIII beheaded Thomas More and took the family's property, and his daughter bribed a man for his head, which a Canterbury parish voted in 2025 to dig up

Thomas More, Henry VIII's former Lord Chancellor, refused the oaths required by the Acts of Succession and Supremacy of 1534. He was convicted of treason and beheaded on 6 July 1535. His head was set on a pike on London Bridge for about a month. His daughter Margaret Roper paid the man charged with throwing it into the Thames to give it to her, and kept it pickled in spices. The family's property was confiscated. The Crown voided a trust More had set up late for his wife, Alice. In 1537 Henry VIII allowed her an annuity of £20, and she died poor, most likely in 1551. Margaret hired More's former secretary, John Harris, to collect his writings. She died in 1544. Her husband, William Roper, kept the head, and it went into the Roper vault at St Dunstan's church, Canterbury. The vault was enlarged and the skull moved to a niche behind a grille. Workmen saw it in 1835 when the vault roof broke, and it was viewed in 1978 and 1997. A 1980 forensic report found only part of the hard palate, a piece of jaw with one tooth socket, a skull fragment and dust. In 2022 the parish council refused an American lawyer's offer to pay for conserving it. In July 2025 the council voted to seek exhumation and conservation, subject to permissions, and aims for a shrine by 2035, the 500th anniversary. More was canonised in 1935.