Sir Thomas More —lawyer, humanist, man of letters, Lord Chancellor of England, martyr and saint —is referred to obliquely at the end of Letter 6. He was born in 1478 — not in 1480, as Ruskin goes on to say —and was executed for high treason in 1535. His treason was his refusal to assent to the Act of Supremacy, which made Henry VIII supreme head of the Church of England.