Margaret Roper

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Portrait of Margaret Roper, from a 1593 reproduction of a now-lost Hans Holbein portrait of all of the women of Thomas More's family.

Margaret Roper, née More (1505–1544) was an English writer and translator. She was the daughter of Thomas More and wife of William Roper. During More's imprisonment in the Tower of London, she was a frequent visitor to his cell, along with her husband. After More was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to bless the Reformation of Henry VIII of England and swear to Henry as head of the English Church, his head ,after being parboiled, was displayed on a pike at London Bridge for a month afterwards. At the end of that period, Margaret bribed the man, whose business it was to throw the head into the river, to give it to her instead. She preserved it by pickling it in spices until her own death at the age of 39 in 1544. After her death her husband William Roper took charge of the head, and it is buried with him.

William Roper ("son Roper," as he is referred to by Thomas More) produced the first biography of the statesman/martyr, but his homage to his father-in-law is not remembered as well as Margaret's efforts at comforting and honoring More. In Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, he invokes Margaret Roper ("who clasped in her last trance/ Her murdered father's head") as a paragon of loyalty and familial love.

She published a translation of a work by Erasmus, A Devout Treatise upon the Paternoster. In a letter her father mentions her poems, but none is extant.

In Robert Bolt's famous play A Man for All Seasons, Margaret and Roper were major characters. In the 1966 film, she was portrayed by Susannah York.

[edit] Ancestry

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sir John More
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Saint Thomas More
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thomas Granger (or Grainger)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Agnes Granger (or Grainger)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Margaret More
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Jane Colt
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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