William Roper (1493/94–1578)

Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill in July 1535 for refusing to swear that Henry VIII stood at the head of the church in England. The Metropolitan dates this miniature and its companion to 1535 and 1536. The companion is More's eldest daughter Margaret. The man here is her husband William Roper, a Kentish landowner and lawyer who had married into that household in 1521.

Holbein was by then in the king's service, painting Henry and his court. The pair of portraits came out of the family of the man the king had just executed, and each is the size of a large coin, under five centimetres across, in watercolour on vellum laid on card.

Roper sat in Parliament four times and lived until 1578. Late in life he wrote a short account of his father-in-law, one of the earliest biographies written in English.