Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age Read online

  No man entered the royal service more unwillingly than Thomas More. He knew well the dangers of court life under the Tudors and spoke with feeling of the ‘bondage unto kings’. He had no appetite for money, power or high position. More had already taken part in a foreign embassy at the request of the city merchants. In May 1517, with courage and good sense he helped to compose a riot that broke out among the apprentices in London, and then pleaded their forgiveness to the King. Later, he was retained by the Pope in a court case over a forfeited papal ship at Southampton which the King claimed. More argued so well that he won the case and impressed the King so much that Henry was determined to employ him: ‘for no entreaty’, Roper wrote, ‘would the King from thenceforth be induced any longer to forbear his service.’ More could do nothing but obey and was made a member of the Privy Council.

  More advanced steadily in the King’s service. Henry was pleased with his work and delighted with his company, summoning him on holidays to his private chamber to talk endlessly of astronomy, geometry, divinity and politics, or calling him out suddenly at night and taking him on the roof to look at the stars. After the Council had met, the King would insist that More stayed to entertain him and the Queen at supper and kept him so much from his family that ‘he could not once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and children (whose company he most desired)’. He began to dissemble, wearing a long look and refraining from witty replies so that the King would release him. And he had more than his own inconvenience to worry about at court. He could not approve of the pride and greed of Wolsey, nor did he like the policies of Wolsey and Henry which imbroiled England in European wars. A desire for peace was his constant preoccupation. He stated his wish most clearly in Utopia, and ever after decried the wasteful horror of any war: ‘the world once ruffled and fallen in a wilderness,’ he wrote, ‘how long would it be, and what heaps of heavy mischief would there fall, ere the way was founden to set the world in order and peace again.’ Erasmus, having left England for the last time in 1517, wrote fulsome letters to Henry and Wolsey in which he saw ‘an Age truly Golden arising’ under these two princes of State and Church who were so wise, learned and kind to the arts. The Cardinal was indeed a great patron of learning, founding six new professorships at Oxford. He was also, despite his own corrupt life, an advocate of Church reform and a keen champion of impartial justice. But it was not enough to make a golden age. The sickness of society, diagnosed so clearly in Utopia, was well advanced, and king and cardinal had not the medicines to remedy it.

  So Thomas More served Henry as best he could, but he was never the King’s man. He became Master of the Court of Requests—known generally as the Court of Poor Men’s Causes; he attended Henry when the kings of England and France met at the Field of Cloth of Gold in June 1520; he became Under Treasurer of the Exchequer in May 1521 and was knighted; he went on embassies to the continent where his knowledge of London commerce and merchants was very useful. In April 1523 he was chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. Six years later he reached the pinnacle of his worldly career, following Wolsey as Lord Chancellor.

  The years were not restful. The execution of the Duke of Buckingham in 1521, for no other reason than that he was of the royal blood, warned More and the kingdom of Henry’s desperation over the succession, and showed the brutality of the King’s nature which was soon to be a notorious mark of his reign. In the wake of Luther’s action, angry religious controversy had risen up. In 1521 Henry had composed his Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Luther for which he received the title ‘Defender of the Faith’ from a grateful Pope Leo. Luther replied with his usual blunt language, and since the King could not stoop to a slanging match with this lowly German, More took up the quarrel on Henry’s behalf trading violence for violence, acrimony for acrimony, in Latin under the pseudonym of ‘Gulielmus Rosseus’. Henry’s faithful subservience to papal ambition also worried More. He warned the King that the Pope, in his temporal role, was only ‘a prince as you are’, and that England should not be tangled by the temporal affairs of this Italian ruler. Perhaps he anticipated the King’s disappointment if the papacy should alter its alliance, as Leo later did from England to Spain. He could hardly have foreseen Henry’s intense anger when the Pope refused to give him an annulment of his marriage after all the years that England had supported the papacy.

  More, therefore, was a critical observer rather than a wholehearted participant in Henry’s policies. The actions of a king are especially worrying when he is (as the French ambassador said of Henry) ‘a statue for idolatry’. ‘From the prince as from a perpetual wellspring’, More wrote, ‘cometh among the people the flood of all that is good or evil.’ Aware of the appalling power of the monarchy, More thought that the royal prerogative should not be exercised without the best advice. In April 1523, on the one occasion when Parliament met during Wolsey’s fourteen years in office, More, the Speaker of the Commons, pleaded with Henry to allow freedom of debate and license to speak the mind. Permission was graciously given, but amounted to little; in the King’s view the only purpose of Parliament was to vote funds for his war, and Wolsey bullied the Commons with his usual arrogance until they partly complied. The gloominess of the times, with England slipping without sense into expensive war, with the kingdom at home perplexed by social and economic problems, and with the noise of religious argument always growing, was reflected in More’s Four Last Things, grim thoughts on man’s end, full of medieval pessimism and contemptus mundi.

  The higher More rose, the worse was the view. In 1527 Henry, now contemplating the divorce of Catherine, asked More for his opinion on the matter. He managed to satisfy the King with some careful answers, but knew that delaying tactics would not work forever. In the same year the sack of Rome by the troops of the Emperor Charles altered the alliances of Europe with disastrous consequences for Wolsey’s foreign policy. Hoping to salvage something for England, More accompanied two embassies to the continent, the first with Wolsey to Amiens in 1527 to induce the French to make war on Charles; the second hurriedly to Cambrai in 1529 with Bishop Tunstall to keep the peace with Charles when it appeared that France and Spain were about to unite against England. At this time, walking by the river in Chelsea near his new house, More unburdened his mind to his son-in-law Roper, wishing himself put in a sack and thrown in the Thames if only three things could be established in Christendom. ‘The first is,’ he said, ‘that where the most part of Christian princes be at mortal war, they were all at a universal peace. The second, that where the Church of Christ is at this present sore afflicted with many errors and heresies, it were settled in a perfect uniformity of religion. The third, that where the King’s matter of his marriage is now come in question, it were to the glory of God and quietness of all parties brought to a good conclusion.’ The achievement of these things had been beyond the cunning of Cardinal Wolsey. He was dismissed and disgraced. On 23rd October 1529 Thomas More took his place as Lord Chancellor.

  Now it appeared he had it all—the Great Seal of the Chancellor, the good opinion of the King, the admiration of all humanists, the best regards of the people who remembered his justice in the courts, the love of his numerous family and retainers grouped about him in his new house at Chelsea. But the matter of the divorce, which had tripped Wolsey, was still unsettled, and More had already made his opposition known to the King. The Reform Parliament was about to meet and it was common knowledge, wrote the French ambassador, that the lords and the property owners intended to plunder the possessions of the Church. More hated the rapacity of these greedy men. Why was he chosen? Henry was always patient, and thought in time he could bend the new chancellor to his will; and for the present More was the best man in the kingdom for the position. Erasmus wrote that even Wolsey, who did not like More but ‘was assuredly no fool’, stated that ‘in the whole island there was no one who was equal to the duty of Chancellor except More alone’. Why did he accept? His nephew William Rastell says that he wanted to refuse. But it was too
late; twelve years before he had entered the King’s service and now he was bound to obey. Also, More was never a man to shirk the responsibilities of his conscience. Queen Catherine had been his friend for many years and he would stand by her now; nor would he desert the faith he believed in.

  The Parliament which met in 1529 for the re-ordering of the English faith was one on which the King could rely. The members were the burgesses, landlords, property owners of the country, and they were united only in their lust for possessions and wealth. They scented the downfall of the proud and mighty Church, and they rushed to dismember the vast body. The talk in the Commons was nothing but ‘Down with the Church’, said Bishop Fisher, and added that this attack was ‘me seemeth for lack of faith only’. But the attack was licensed and encouraged by the King. The sins of Wolsey, who died in 1530, were visited on the clergy generally. In February 1531 the Convocation of Canterbury was compelled to pay the King £100,000 and recognize him as ‘Supreme Lord, and, as far as the Law of Christ allows, even Supreme Head’. The anti-clerical movement overwhelmed More. He had hoped by his presence to temper the royal irritation with Rome, to prevent Henry, who was no supporter of Lutheran theology, from taking a desperate step against the Church. But the forces behind the Reform Parliament were too strong and various—a real desire to put right a corrupt clergy, the gross venal ambition of the wealthy expressed through Parliament, and finally the King’s determination to have his divorce and secure the succession. The work of Parliament was done despite the opposition of the chancellor: ‘against this one parliament of yours (God knoweth what manner of one)’, he said at his trial, ‘I have all the councils of Christendom made these thousand years.’ His power was gone by February 1531. In May 1532, the day after the final submission of the clergy to Henry’s supremacy, he resigned his office.

  More was no enemy to reform. The sombre first part of Utopia contained as severe a picture of the corrupt clergy as any written. Like his fellow humanists Erasmus and Colet, he called for a new life in the Church. And he vigorously defended Erasmus from conservative criticism by Catholics. Nor was More a blind follower of the papacy. He knew that the Renaissance popes, as men, were more evil than good, and he opposed Henry’s support for these wretched men. But he distinguished carefully between the pope its a man, and the pope as a priest and Christ’s vicar. It seemed to More—and to Erasmus—that the spiritual supremacy of the pope was demanded first by scripture, and then by the necessities of Christendom. The humanists, having the ideal of a universal Christian brotherhood, hated the biting partiality of nationalism. They saw that the religious controversy of the Reformation ineviably flowed into nationalism, making sects, destroying the body of Christ’s Church, and increasing the distance between people. More would never agree that a national parliament or assembly could legislate on matters of faith. He brought this point home with the greatest force when Rich, the King’s solicitor, bated him before his trial. ‘I put the case further’, said Rich, ‘that there were an Act of Parliament that all the Realm should take me for the pope; would then not you, Master More, take me for the pope?’ ‘For answer’, quoth Sir Thomas More, ‘to your first case, the Parliament may well meddle with the state of temporal princes: but to make answer to your second case, I will put you this case. Suppose the Parliament would make a law that God should not be God, would then you, Master Rich, say God were not God?’

  The authority of the Church was required because the State was not competent to speak on matters of faith. And without authority the universal Church would break apart and disappear. To the Reformers’ cry of scriptura sola—‘the Scriptures alone’—More answered, in his Apology of 1533, that ‘the Church was gathered and the faith believed before ever any part of the new testament was put in writing. And which writing was or is the true scripture, neither Luther nor Tyndale knoweth but by the credence that they give to the Church’. More thought that Protestant doctrine disordered the individual by giving him a false hope of salvation: ‘I could for my part’, he wrote in his Confutation of 1532, ‘be very well content that sin and pain all were as shortly gone as Tyndale telleth us.’ And it disordered the State by breaking apart the Christian commonwealth. He therefore wrote many vehement pieces against the Protestants. Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament,1 which began to appear in England in 1526, spurred on the controversial authors. Two years later Bishop Tunstall licensed More to read all Lutheran works so that they might be refuted. In the next five years More set to with energy and wrote several works of great length beginning with a Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1528) against Tyndale and Luther, and ending with an Apology (1533) for the clergy. They are tedious works. Religious controversy then was carried on with violence and rancour, and More was no gentler than the rest. He did his part out of duty but regretted the labour, the heat and the ill-feeling of it all. He hoped there would be a time, he wrote in the Confutation, when all these books, including his own, would be burnt up and ‘utterly put in oblivion’. And he would have consigned his own Utopia and Erasmus’s Praise of Folly to the flames as well, as too playful and too open to misconstruction in a frantic, fanatic time. In gratitude for his defence of the Church, the bishops offered him the large sum of £4,000, but he refused even though the resignation of the chancellorship had left him poor.

  Later writers such as Foxe, the propagandist of the faith More opposed, and the chronicler Hall, the propagandist of the State that put him to death, claimed that Chancellor More was a fierce persecutor of heretics. He took a severe view of what he thought to be heresy, and perhaps his opinions hardened as the religious strife grew. But he never tried to compel the conscience of an individual by persecution. If a person held Protestant views quietly More left him alone; when the distinguished Lutheran Simon Grinaeus came to consult manuscripts at Oxford while More was chancellor, he was entertained and allowed to go about his business. When heretical views, however, led to sedition no government of whatever faith would tolerate it. Religious persecution began in the late twenties and three men were burnt at Smithfield in the last six months of More’s office. But heresy was the business of the ecclesiastical, not the chancellor’s, court. Neither did More force the hand of the clergy; when the men died, after February 1531, he had lost all influence and was only waiting a fit occasion to resign. The men died in London, which was always the home of Protestant feeling.2 Londoners, who would not have forgot or forgiven, reverenced More. After forty-odd years of propaganda to the contrary, the popular play Sir Thomas More, written in Elizabeth’s reign, still spoke of More with affection as London’s hero and the friend of all the poor.

  The legal side of the chancellor’s office was handled by More with notable speed and integrity. After his fall and at his trial he was accused of corruption, but this was only a ritual attempt to blacken a good name. Wolsey had used the chancellor’s court to soften the rigour of the common law. More continued this function, but also, by good humour and diplomacy, managed to soothe the angry common law judges. The cases which had built up alarmingly, because of Wolsey’s many interests elsewhere, were cleared off in good time by More. And at a time when even the chancellor’s doorkeeper ‘got great gains’, More would not be bribed. When a rich widow sent him gloves and money as a New Year’s gift, he kept the gloves out of courtesy and sent the money back. Another petitioner who sent a gilt cup received in return a cup worth more than the one sent. The Elizabethan, Sir John Harington, remembered More as ‘that worthy and uncorrupt magistrate’, and the common people commemorated his justice:

  When More some time had Chancellor been,

  No more suits did remain.

  The like will never more be seen

  Till More be there again.

  The state of More’s health—he complained to Cromwell of pains caused by crouching over a writing desk—enabled him to retire gracefully without offending the King. He had not lined his pocket as chancellor and he now lost his official income. He could not go back to the bar; he was too old an
d weary, and he had been away from his city practice too long. Henry allowed him £100 a year until his arrest, and he had besides about £50 a year of his own. But he had a large household and many dependants. He placed his retainers as best he could with other great men and cheerfully advised his family to accept poverty, saying he had come up the scale of prosperity from Oxford to the King’s court and would now slide down again. His wife, Dame Alice, whom he had once called ‘neither a pearl nor a girl’, was inclined to nag and fret, but More was his usual equable self. For about a year after his resignation More was left alone, to work on his controversial writings against the Protestants. But he would not appear at the coronation of Anne Boleyn, on 1st June 1533, and perhaps from that moment was marked down. Henry, advised by his new confidant Thomas Cromwell, was determined to bring the English Church irrevocably under the monarchy, and his subjects would have to acquiesce or suffer the consequences of disobedience. More’s policy was to keep as quiet as possible, never offering an opinion and answering questions as carefully as he knew how. The campaign against him began with an attempt to implicate him with the Maid of Kent, a nun who made wild prophecies against the King. More barely escaped from this danger. The King was outraged at More, and demanded that his name appear on the Bill of Attainder; but the Lords, knowing there was no evidence, begged on their knees for him and Henry relented. The hunt was close now, and Norfolk came to give him a friendly warning. ‘I would wish you’, he said, ‘somewhat to incline to the King’s pleasure; for by God’s body, Master More, Indignatio principis mors est.’ More knew the danger and was resolved to meet it. ‘Is that all, my lord?’ he replied. ‘Then in good faith there is no more difference between your grace and me, but that I shall die today and you tomorrow.’