From the time of the accession of Henry VIII (1509), More held a series of public offices, but was forced to resign as Lord Chancellor when he opposed the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. He was imprisoned in 1534 after refusing to take the oath on the Act of Succession, sanctioning Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn. After opposing the Act of Supremacy in the same year, More was beheaded. Regarded as one of the leading humanists of the Renaissance, he owed his reputation largely to his Utopia (1516), describing an ideal city-state.