The Tudors Season 2, Episode 5, “His Majesty’s Pleasure,” is one of the show’s most emotionally charged installments, featuring the downfall of Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher’s execution, Anne Boleyn’s second miscarriage, and Henry VIII’s descent into tyranny and lust. But how accurate is this episode to real Tudor history? In this detailed analysis, we’ll explore what The Tudors gets right about More’s martyrdom, what it invents for drama, and how the series handles the Boleyns, Mary’s scandalous marriage, and even a shocking rumor about the king’s “rights” over a commoner’s bride.

Inside This Post:

• A Man for All Seasons & Contradictions
• Margaret More and the Last Temptation
• On the Scaffold: Faith, Law & Irony
• Anne Boleyn’s Miscarriage & a Court in Peril
• Henry VIII & the Wench: Truth or Scandal?
• The Pope, Michaelangelo, and Historical Confusion

Episode 5: His Majesty’s Pleasure

Sir Thomas More refuses to sign the Oath and winds up on the executioner’s block, a short time after Bishop John Fisher succumbs to the same fate, and despite his family’s appeals for him to change his mind and save his own life. Henry takes a random mistress he finds in the woods, Anne Boleyn miscarries her second child, and her sister, Mary, drops a bombshell on the court when she turns up pregnant and married to a lowly commoner.

A Man for All Seasons… and All Contradictions

Before we dive into the details of Sir Thomas More’s last episode, I want to say that The Tudors is probably the most honest account of the famous martyr, author, and “saint” that has ever been depicted. A Man for All Seasons ignores a lot of More’s flaws and makes him, well, saintly, and Wolf Hall takes the opposite tack and makes him deeply unpleasant. But Michael Hirst understands More, the way he thinks, what his faith means to him, and that a human being can be complex and self-contradicting, and presented us with a likable, humorous, intelligent, yet rigid man who is a loving husband and father and yet advocates for burning heretics alive. It’s hard to comprehend that a humanist and a fire-setter can coexist in one human mind, but it does.

I have some nitpicks here and there, but overall, the presentation of More is fair, and a lot less mean-spirited than he treats… say, the Boleyn family. I am curious to know the writers’ background, but there doesn’t seem to be any sources out there. He is more sympathetic in The Tudors to the Catholics than to the Reformists, but in his series Vikings, depicts Catholics as repugnant barbarians who are even meaner and worse than the pagans, so… who knows?

On to Thomas More’s imprisonment, trial, and execution!

More is accused of visiting Catherine of Aragon (on the show, he did, but in real life, he did not; he avoided any public remarks or favoritism on her side, to avoid entangling himself in her affairs). They accuse him also of conspiring against the king and speaking ill of the Act of Succession. This… More both did and did not do; he never wrote or said anything in particular against Henry being the head of the Church, but he wrote many essays, pamphlets, and letters, even from prison, viciously tearing apart Reformist propaganda. Which… also subtly cast shade on the King, because while he didn’t argue against the King directly, he argued forcefully for the Catholic Church and Papal Authority.

Margaret More & the Last Temptation

He had almost daily visits from his family during his imprisonment, but usually only one at a time. Margaret More-Roper, his daughter, convinced the king to let him see More by writing him impassioned appeals to sign the Act. Whether she meant it, or used this as subterfuge to get into his presence is unclear, because she then smuggled out his impassioned writings to support the Church, sending off his letters and getting his words printed. The show implies that they are on the brink of poverty, and that he is the cause in his refusal to save his life.

Truthfully, their lands, titles, and influence diminished based on royal disfavor, but his wife, Alice, had a great deal of property and income from her first marriage, which the king could not seize from her. Knowing that More might soon be arrested, they moved a lot of their furniture and possessions out of their house on the Thames to her first husband’s estate, to be out of the king’s clutches. More was a lawyer and knew how to work the system in his family’s defense, so he would only abandon them in the flesh, not condemn them to poverty.

On her final allowed visit (once they realized she was smuggling out his papers), Margaret pleaded with her father to sign the oath and save his life. This turns into a profoundly moving moment, as she insists that none of them believe his signing the Oath would condemn him to hell. You can see it on More’s face, as he realizes he has lost their support; in a sense, he faces his “last temptation,” which is to know that his family does not believe in what he is martyring himself for. Yet, he still holds firm and finds acceptance and peace in knowing he will die.

On the Scaffold: Faith, Law, and Irony

The script pays nice tribute to some real historical moments between characters, such as More’s poignant dart at Cromwell (“There is no more difference between your grace and me, but that I shall die today and you tomorrow”). But… it also goes the route of making More guilty of what he’s accused of, by falling into the legal trap Richard Rich sets for him, in which he argues Parliament cannot declare the king as the Head of the Church.

I don’t like this, because it makes him incautious in a time when he was not, and gives him no legal recourse on trial when Richie testifies against him. More would not assume a hypothetical conversation could not be used against him; he was a lawyer, after all.

At the trial, More hears his own words cast back at him with self-recrimination, and knows his trial is over; his life will end. In real life, More accused Richard Rich of perjury and of being a liar, of poor moral character. He asked if anyone at court would trust Richard Rich with his secrets, implying that he was a known snake who made up that statement to incriminate More. His testimony was so passionate, the attorney general called two more witnesses, who were tidying away his books, to testify. Both of them denied hearing anything said between the two, probably to risk perjuring themselves or displeasing the king.

As happened on screen, once More knew he was destined for the scaffold, he told them all what he had been thinking for months. He said Parliament lacked the authority to enact any law inconsistent with the teaching of Christ’s universal Catholic Church, and the recently enacted laws violated the Magna Carta and the King’s Coronation oath. He went to his death in good humor, and even made a joke or two on the scaffold (in real life, telling the axeman to be careful of his beard, for it had “committed no offense” against the king).

While moving, his death drives me to fewer tears than Bishop Fisher’s, because More dies with the total conviction of his principles and no remorse. Fisher has a far more human response to his impending death; he shows fear and asks the crowd to pray for him, that he has the strength to die well. In real life, Fisher was so ill from his prolonged confinement, they had to carry him to the block. And sadly, he committed treason by inviting Emperor Charles to invade England, return Catherine of Aragon to the throne, and restore the Catholic Church.

Anne Boleyn’s Miscarriage and a Court in Peril

Anne Boleyn miscarries her second child. Her father blames her for it and asks what she “did” to ruin their chances. This is unfortunately accurate, and up through the 1960s, any miscarriage or deformity of the child got blamed on the mother. I won’t go into depth about the theories on why so few of Henry’s children lived, but here is an interesting article on the subject, which proposes the idea of Kell incompatibility. (The one thing that doesn’t fit is that if this were the case, his first son would not have lived as long as he did. But I digress. It’s a good theory.)

Anne becomes obsessed with the idea of Henry restoring Mary to the throne, and George wonders why, which makes him look like a dumb-ass. Why would a royal princess descended from the dynastic lineage of Isabella and Ferdinand have more of a claim to the English throne than her nobody little sister, Elizabeth? Mary very much was a threat to the Boleyns, because of her mother’s tremendous popularity, public sentiment being on her side (seeing her removal from the succession as unfair), and that she was old enough to rule if her father dropped dead.

Henry VIII & the Forest Wench: Truth or Scandal?

In a creepy scene, Henry is out riding with Charles when he meets a young man, William Webb, and his fiancé, Bess. She is beautiful, so Henry kisses her in front of William, then loads her up on his horse and takes her away for lovemaking. This is based on a historical accusation from the late 1530s, in which Cromwell looked into an accusation against the king for just such an offense. Cromwell heard of this ‘slander’ and had Webb and all of his friends imprisoned for it, but a commissioner suggested that Robert Sharpe invented the story out of malice, coveting Webb’s position at court and invented the story hoping it would force Webb out of his job.

There’s no record of the outcome of the inquiry, which either means they could prove nothing or something along these lines happened and it was hushed up, to maintain the king’s “dignity.” Either way, it’s a subtle allusion to droit du seigneur, French for “right of the lord” to the first night, which supposedly allowed a lord to have sex with a newly married woman on her first night. This is a popular theme in fiction and folklore, but there’s no solid evidence this ever happened. (It was popularized by anti-aristocracy writers, who used it to criticize their abuses.)

The Pope, Michelangelo, and Historical Confusion

The Pope hears of Cardinal Fisher’s death and the royal miscarriage, and muses that celibacy is an immense relief. This is ironic, since both he and Campeggio have mistresses and 4-5 children (or rather, had, since he had to give up his mistress when he became a Bishop). Fun fact: his sister was the mistress of Pope Alexander, Rodrigo Borgia! We also see him meeting Michelangelo and musing on his genius a year ahead of the actual timeline of when the artist worked on the Cystine Chapel.

Much as I enjoy Peter O’Toole in the series, I’m not sure why his presence is necessary. He has few scenes, most of them with no historical or cultural relevance, which could be eliminated without it changing the plot. It’s like Showtime said, “We need an actor with gravitas,” and forced Hirst to write a storyline to support a succession of brief cameos.