“You'll forfeit all you've got—which includes the respect of your country—for a theory?” More responds that, indeed, apostolic succession is a theory of sorts, for “you can't see it; can't touch it,” and then he continues, “But what matters to me is not whether it's true or not but that I believe it to be true, or rather not that Ibelieve it, but that I believe it.” He ends with, “I trust I make myself obscure?” (53).

What is More doing here? Also, what is he not doing here? To truly understand More's words, we must examine both questions in the larger context of the play and More's attempts to keep himself and his family out of danger.

First, let's look at what More is not doing. He is not claiming that truth is relative, that something can be true for one person and not another. Clearly, More does not believe that. Look at what he says to William Roper earlier in the play when Roper asserts that he is Lutheran. More calls him a “heretic” and refuses to consent to any marriage between Roper and Meg (17). More clearly believes that the Catholic Church holds the truth and that Roper has fallen into error, and he is firm in his position. Further, More is not proposing that the truth is not important. In fact, the truth is so important to him that he goes to his death rather than swear an oath that the King is the Supreme Head of the Church of England. More knows the difference between truth and falsehood, and he accepts truth and denies lies.

So what is More doing when he speaks such obscure words to Norfolk? First, he is deliberately trying to be obscure, as he does several times during the play. More is in a dangerous position. His conscience tells him that King Henry cannot divorce the queen and marry another woman without the dispensation of the Pope, and therefore, he cannot support either the divorce or the new marriage. Yet to deliberately oppose the king is perilous, even deadly. So More does his best to either remain silent or to say as little as possible about the issue; he agrees to what he can accept and firmly holds his peace about what he cannot. He can accept, for instance, the language about succession, for Parliament has a right to determine who becomes heir to the throne. He can even accept that the king may be the head of the Church of English with the qualification “so far as the law of God allows” (48). At least he can remain silent and not actively oppose such declarations.

More's words above are another example of this kind of fine distinction that More is using to try to save his life. If he presents his opinion in terms of his personal belief, of his own conscience, rather than in terms of what the king can and should do (or not do), he feels he might be safe. He recognizes that human beings have freedom of conscience. They must follow their conscience, and if they firmly hold something to be true, they cannot deviate from that without breaking faith with their conscience and with God. The important thing for More is that he firmly believes apostolic succession to be true and valid, and because of freedom of conscience, he must not deviate from it. He can try to remain obscure and silent, but he will not support England's break with the Catholic Church of Rome.

Unfortunately for More, the king does not recognize this freedom of conscience in public matters. He seems to at first. When Henry visits the More home, he tells his host, “No opposition, I say! No opposition! Your conscience is your own affair; but you are my Chancellor! There, you have my word—I'll leave you out of it. But I don't take it kindly, Thomas, and I'll have no opposition!” (32). He seems to agree to More's course of silence, but in the end, with his own conscience pricking him strongly, the king demands More's approval and his oath. When More holds to his conscience instead, he also accepts the consequences: death as a traitor. He proclaims, “In matters of conscience, the loyal subject is more bounden to be loyal to his conscience than to any other thing” (89). He asks, “Can I help my King by giving him lies when he asks for truth? Will you help England by populating her with liars?” (89). And in the end he declares exactly what his conscience has told him all along, “The indictment is grounded in an Act of Parliament which is directly repugnant to the Law of God. The King in Parliament cannot bestow the Supremacy of the Church because it is a Spiritual Supremacy!” (92). More knows this to be the truth; he holds it firmly because his conscience tells him he must (just as he expects other men to do as well); and he remains true to himself and free in his mind, heart, and soul even as he goes to his execution.

In Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More's conscience requires that he not sign Henry VIII's Oath of Supremacy. For Bolt, a self-declared agnostic, the point of the play is not to serve as a Catholic apologist but to investigate the role of conscience and integrity in modern humanity. More becomes a figure of a person who maintains absolute integrity of conscience despite the lost of power, money, safety, and family comfort. Losing all things material that have defined his very comfortable life, More remains steadfast in his allegiance to the idea of the Apostolic Succession, the sticking point between the Pope and Henry in the matter of Henry's divorce and break with Rome.

In a heated argument with his good friend Norfolk, More expresses his conviction that the important point is not that one can know with certainty what God intends regarding religion but that one must form a conviction as best one can given one's intellect and experience. To waver from that due to social pressure is to lose part of one's self, and this More refused to do for anyone:

Well, as a spaniel is to water so is a man to his own self. I will not give in because I oppose it—I do- not my pride, not my spleen, nor any of my appetites, but I do– I!

According to More, what matters is not that he believes it but that he believes it—or that in the freedom of his conscience, his very sense of his self compels him to remain faithful to Rome. Rome and Catholicism may be incorrect, but More does not think they are. To swear otherwise is to give up the integrity that makes his life respectable. Thus, while he does not fault Norfolk for siding with the King—assuming he does so in good conscience, he cannot follow "for fellowship's" sake.

For Bolt, writing in 1960, the passion with which the humanists debated Anglican theology was less pressing than the question whether one could still have an "adamantine" sense of self, such as More exhibited. For this reason, the Common Man, whose multiple identities are as easily changed as a set of clothes, is More's antagonist—for he is a man who stands for nothing, has no sense of a core self, and is easily persuaded to do anything.