Peter Ackroyd, a Catholic English biographer, have taken a relatively tolerant view of More’s campaign against Protestantism by placing his actions within the turbulent religious climate of the time, other equally eminent historians, such as Richard Marius, an American scholar of the Reformation, have been more critical, believing that persecutions—including what he perceives as the advocacy of extermination for Protestants—were a betrayal of More’s earlier humanist convictions. As Marius writes in his biography of More: “To stand before a man at an inquisition, knowing that he will rejoice when we die, knowing that he will commit us to the stake and its horrors without a moment’s hesitation or remorse if we do not satisfy him, is not an experience much less cruel because our inquisitor does not whip us or rack us or shout at us. . . More believed that they (Protestants) should be exterminated, and while he was in office he did everything in his power to bring that extermination to pass
Note More’s position as Chancellor was a civil position, but he enforced religious orthodoxy, showing the established nature of the Catholic Church.
Judging the mores and attitudes of the 116th Century by 21st century standards won’t wash. More’s attitudes were no different from other Catholics, who were treated the same way by Protestants. Only, with Protestants, it involved not just the desire for extermination, but also theft and destruction.