Tudor Lives: Success & Failure of an Age (7 page)

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 and 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.’

In March 1534 the Act of Succession was passed, and the time arrived that he dreaded, when he must take the oath before the commissioners at Lambeth. On the evening of 12th April he pulled the wicket gate shut at Chelsea and sadly took the river to Lambeth. He could not take the oath in the form in which it was tendered, as it contained a denial of the papal supremacy and an admission of the invalidity of the marriage of Catherine. He was committed to the Tower for misprision of treason. For the rest of the year he remained in prison while his friends and even his favourite daughter, Margaret, tried to make him change his mind. He refused and the example of his intransigence—and that of Bishop Fisher, his fellow prisoner—was an embarrassment to the government. At the end of the year an Act of Supremacy was passed; non-compliance was high treason for which death was the penalty. A commission came to sound out More on the new Act, but he would give no opinion. ‘I do nobody no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm’, he told Cromwell, ‘but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.’ In June 1535 Fisher was condemned and executed. On 1st July More was brought to trial in Westminster Hall. The indictment was long, but though More was ill and weak from his time in the Tower he defended himself with all the agility of his long legal experience. He was finally convicted on the perjury of Richard Rich, the King’s solicitor; the jury returned the verdict of guilty in under fifteen minutes. The verdict was no surprise. In his youthful
Book of Fortune
More had written:

The head that late lay easily and full soft,

Instead of pillows, lieth after on the block.

On 6th July he was led out to die, and he went firmly with a ready answer for those he met on the path. At the foot of the scaffold he had a jest with the lieutenant of the Tower; he spoke pleasant words to the executioner and, as he had promised, made only a short speech to the crowd. He tucked his beard out of the way, laid his head on the block and died, as he protested, ‘the King’s good servant but God’s first’.

History has dressed Thomas More in numerous, different resplendent robes, none of which quite seems to fit. He was so obviously an extraordinary being that all parties are eager to claim
him as their own, and censure him when he lapses from their ideal. Was he liberal or reactionary? Wise or foolish? Humble or proud? A benefactor or a persecutor? More was not inconsistent. He was always an orthodox Catholic, a robust, humorous Londoner, conventional in the best sense. A plain, honest man, he was caught in a break in history; he might have reconciled the best of the old with the best of the new, but new passions in religion and politics overthrew him. It was the age that was inconsistent. When he was young the ideal of Christendom still had some force, the Christian commonwealth that united all people under God; when he died each country frankly admitted its nationalism, living for itself alone.

He was born in the dying light of the Middle Ages, his education was medieval, and medieval ways stamped his life and work. His writings, especially his English writings, have all the marks of the Middle Ages: the wordiness, the lack of form, the coarseness, and most of all the irrepressible humour. More can never resist a ‘merry tale’; even in his noble
Dialogue of Comfort,
written in the Tower under the shadow of the axe, comedy is always at his elbow, waiting to slide boisterously on to the page. And his life was equally bound to the past as he showed in his devotion to the Church, his ascetic self-discipline, and most of all his care for the community. He had none of the ruthless self-interest of the new age; he was implacably against the new reign of money which sought to enrich the individual at the expense of the poor and the unfortunate. The anonymous playwrights of
Sir Thomas More
saluted his memory as ‘the best friend that the poor e’er had’, and that tribute from his fellow Londoners would have pleased him as well as any.

But More also became, by his own efforts, a humanist. He was a scholar, a critic, a teacher, a supporter of reform. No work illustrates Renaissance wit and intelligence better than
Utopia
, so deftly handled, so imaginative, so penetrating in its critical view of society, so entertaining in the airy fantasy of Nowhere. The humanist More turned his children’s schoolroom into a ‘Christian academy’, defended Erasmus against Catholic criticism, detested the ambitious and warlike actions of the papacy, and spoke out against the corruption of the English clergy. He hoped to make the new critical temper of the Renaissance enliven the old ideals of the Middle Ages; he wished to reform, not change, to renew, not destroy.

When the triumph of new religion and new policy came, he found he could not live in the new secular world. More was a patriot; in the early days of Henry’s reign he vigorously defended the honour of the English navy against the attacks of the French scholar Brixius. But everything he believed, and everything he lived for, was a denial of Tudor nationalism. Since he was a resolute man, he chose to fight for faith and principles. He put aside the urbanity of the humanist and battled his opponents in the old uncompromising, abusive manner. He did not expect to win. In the Tower he wrote with a coal:

Eye-flattering fortune, look you never so fair,

Nor never so pleasantly begin to smile,

As though thou wouldst my ruin all repair,