More, born in 1478, is best known for two things: the coining of the word Utopia, the title of his 1516 book on an imaginary perfect land; and his execution by Henry for refusing to recognise his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and split from the Catholic Church.

More was among many things a diplomat, and that brought him to the Low Countries on several occasions, when he visited Mechelen, Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp. It was on his visit to Antwerp that he met, through a letter of introduction from his friend the philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, Pieter Gillis, a printer, town clerk, humanist and admirer of Erasmus. The two men became close friends – so close that More prefaced Utopia with letters to and from Gillis, who also plays the character in the book who introduces More to Raphael Hythlodaeus, a traveller who tells the two friends the tale of the fabled land of Utopia.

Erasmus supervised the printing of the first edition of Utopia in Leuven by the printer Dirk Martens, after which both he and Gillis arranged to have a double portrait painted in Antwerp by Quentin Metsys, one of the leading painters of his day, as a gift for More. More’s own portrait (pictured) was done by Hans Holbein the Younger.

More was canonised in 1935 for his work in opposition to the Protestant Reformation, including a polemic against William Tyndale, who was burned outside Vilvoorde the year after More’s execution in 1535, for the crime of heresy. Since then he has lent his name (as Saint Thomas More) to many educational establishments, though not yet one in Belgium.

The honour for More, however, is a blow for Lenaert Leys, more usually known as Leonardus Lessius, the Jesuit priest best known as a principal advisor to Archduke Albert VII of Austria, installed with his wife Isabella as the Habsburg governor-general of the Netherlands (including Belgium) in 1559.