Thomas More Research

Walk 6: Shrine of Our Lady of Willesden, the last pilgrimage of Thomas More, 1534-1535, Easter Sunday, 5 April 1534

Figure 1: Statue of Our Lady of Willesden

The Shrine of Our Lady at the nearby village of Willesden was well known to Londoners. 

The church was built about 1170, the year of the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. After 1170, the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury became a great centre of pilgrimage, comparable to Rome, the Holy Land, and Santiago de Compostela, “but whereas many Londoners were unable to spare either the time or the money to visit the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket, they found the journey to Willesden a pleasant one, and very much shorter”, The Story of Our Lady of Willesden, 1954.

Thomas More knew the shrine well. In the first week of April 1534 he went there on pilgrimage. A few days later, on Low Sunday 12 April, after attending Mass in St. Paul’s, he was summoned to appear in front of the King’s Commissioners in Lambeth to take the Oath of Succession. That night (12 April) he returned to his house in Chelsea, and the following day he went to Lambeth, where he was detained and taken to Westminster Abbey. After four days, on 17 April, he was sent by river from Westminster to the Tower of London, where he remained until his execution on 6 July of the following year, 1535. 

During that last pilgrimage to Our Lady of Willesden, “he stayed at the house of Sir Giles Alington, husband to his stepdaughter, and from there wrote to his secretary concerning changes to A Treatise on the Passion. He was concerned at this time to put his [affairs] in order and, a week before, he had arranged ‘a conveyance for the disposition of all his lands’ on his decease; two days after the first conveyance, he bequeathed to the Ropers a portion of his estate. Evidently, he was trying to protect the interests of his family, and no less clearly was he preparing for his own death” (Ackroyd).

“Along with others, the statue of Our Lady of Willesden was burnt at Chelsea … in 1538 – ‘as [were] the images of Walsingham, Ipswich, Worcester, the Layde of Wilson, with many others’…,” (The Story of Our Lady of Willesden, 1954, page 9).  The same year the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury was destroyed. The present statue was made of wood from the original shrine.

Address: Nicoll Road, Harlesden, Willesden, NW10 9AX, at junction of Acton Lane.