i

YALE
UNrVERSITY LIBRARY

LIFE OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE

IILKSSKI) THOMAS MOKi;
l-'iiiiii Hoi hi i n's ,'ikeLcli iiiailr in ifte
.'jtlUi i/rtii- (if Ike Atarli/rx oqi'.

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

SIR THOMAS MORE

LORD CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND

MARTYR UNDER HENRY VIII.

BY THE
R E V. T. E. BRIDGETT
OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER

LONDON : BURNS & OATES, Limited
NEW YORK : CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO.
1891

PREFACE.
In More's dedicatorj^ letter to Thomas Ruthal of his
translation into Latin of three of Lucian's dialogues,
he complained that writers of the lives of saints some
times indulge in falsehoods : " They have scarcely left
a life of martyr or of virgin without foisting into it some
thing untrue — piously, no doubt ! for of course there
was a danger lest truth, left to itself, should not be able
to stand upright ; so that it was necessary to prop it up
with lies!"*
I may say that my first anxiety in composing this
Life of the illustrious writer, chancellor and martyr, has
been not to merit this reproach ; to state nothing that
I did not believe, and to accept nothing for which I had
not historical evidence. My first care was to collate the
biographies of Moi;e already in existence.
In giving some account of the principal of these, I
shall be able at the same time to state the sources from
which a correct and complete life of More can be drawn.
* Itaque nullam fere martyris, nullam virginis vitam praetermiserunt.
in quam non aliquid hujusmodi mendaciorum inseruerint; pie scilicet, alio
quin periculum erat ne Veritas non posset sibi ipsa sufficere, nisi fulciretur
mendaciis. This epistle is ascribed to Erasmus in the Leyden edition of
his works ; but wrongly. It is More's, and bears his name both in the
original edition and in his collected works.

VI PREFACE.
My own conclusion was, that such a Life still remained
to be written ; and I have made a serious attempt to
supply the want. My readers and critics must judge
how far I have succeeded.
I. Erasmus. In the letters of Erasmus there are
descriptions of More so minute and full, though written
during his lifetime, that Erasmus may almost be called
his first biographer. There is also a large correspon
dence between the two friends. This source had already
been well used by Stapleton ; but I have taken nothing
at second-hand. It will be seen that the writings oi
Erasmus have supplied me with some of my best
materials.* 2. Roper. More's son-in-law, William Rop6r, resided
with 'him for sixteen years. In the time of Queen Mary
he wrote down his reminiscences, as well as details
learnt from his wife, Margaret More. These remini
scences were not intended as a complete Life. They
were notes supplied to Dr. Nicholas Harpsfield, Arch
deacon of Canterbury, by whom they were worked up
into a Life to be mentioned immediately. Roper, writ
ing from memory twenty years after the death of More,!
makes a few mistakes in dates, but his narrative bears;
intrinsic evidence of the simple uprightness of the
narrator and of his substantial accuracy, which is con
firmed by historical documents. This Life, or rathe^
these notes, were in circulation in MS. and were used
by compilers of lives long before they were printed.|
They were first printed in Paris in 1626; then by
* I have used throughout the Leyden edition of Erasmus.

PREFACE.

Hearne in 1716 ; and by Lewis in 1729, 1731, 1765,
who added a valuable appendix of documents. The
best edition is that of Singer in 1817, of which only 150
copies were printed. Roper's Life of More is also an
nexed to Mr. Lumley's edition of the Utopia.
3. Harpsfield. A Life of More was composed by
Nicholas Harpsfield, Archdeacon of Canterbury, in the
time of Queen Maiy. In his dedication of it to William
Roper, he says that he has used the materials supplied
to him by Roper, but has been able to add something of
his own. I have carefully collated the two, and I find
that Harpsfield is far more diffuse than his original, but
without much gain to the narrative. What he has
added to the history is derived principally from the
writings of More. This Life has not been printed.
Several MS. copies exist.* I have used a careful
transcript from Harpsfield's MS. in the British Museum,
Harl. 6253, lent to me by the Rev. John Morris, S.J.,
F.S.A. 4. George Lilly, son of William Lilly, More's
fellow-student, wrote some " Elogia virorum aliquot qui
nostro saeculo eruditione et doctrina clari,memorabilesque
fuerunt ". These were Colet, (William) Lilly, Grocyn,
Linacre, Lupset, Pace, Fisher, More, and (William)
Latimer. He gives about two pages to each, rather of
general eulogy than facts. There is nothing of value
for the Life of More.
* The copy in the Bodleian was seized by Tppclif, the informer and
priest-catcher, on 13th April, rjSa, among the books of Thomas More,
the martyr's grandson (Bodley Rawlinson's letters, 23). There is i
copy, in Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and two at Lambeth.

PREFACE.

5. Maurice Chauncy's Historia aliquot nostri sceculi
martyrum (1550). This also is merely a short sketch.
6. Lodiocius Pacasus, a Spanish Dominican (ap
parently of English origin), a learned and eloquent
man, took much pains in gathering materials for a
Life of More. Death cut short the work (Stapleton).
7. Rastell's Life of More;- William Rastell, the
son of John Rastell and Elizabeth, sister of Sir Thomas
More, was born in London in 1508. He first followed
his father's business as printer, and then studied the
law at Lincoln's Inn. In the time of Edward VI. he
went into exile, but returning in the reign of Mary,
became serjeant-at-law and judge. He collected and
edited the English works of his uncle and also wrote
his Life, as Sander informs us. The latter fact has
been denied by Burnet, but it does not rest merely on
the assertion of Sander, though that would be sufficient
evidence. In vol. 152 of the Arundel Collection in the
British Museum are some " Notes from Rastell's Life
of More}' and in the same volume a fragment of a large
work that had been divided into books and chapters.
This fragment bears no title or name of author, but the
careful reader will find that the " Notes " are taken
from it, thus showing that it is a part of Rastell's Life
of More. The extracts, however, only regard Fisher,
having been copied for the description of the bishop's
martyrdom, of which Rastell was an eye-witness.
Unfortunately the rest of this work is not known to
exist, nor do any of the writers of More's life appear to
have used it. In the time of Elizabeth, Rastell again
went into exile at Louvain. He died in 1565. As he

PREFACE. ix
had married Winifred, daughter of John Clements and
Margaret Gigs, More's adopted child, he had every
means of obtaining authentic information. It is there
fore greatly to be hoped that this Life may be yet found
in some continental library.
8. Stapleton's Tres Thom^. By far the best
Life of More is that of Thomas Stapleton, published at
Douai in 1588. Stapleton was born in Sussex, in July,
1535, the year and month of the martyrdom of Blessed
Thomas More. He was educated at Winchester and
New College, Oxford, and was prebendary of Chichester
in the reign of Mary. He left England at the accession
of Elizabeth, and lived forty-two years in exile. He was
regius professor of Holy Scripture in the University of
Louvain and canon of St. Peter's in that city. No name
probably stands higher than his as a controversialist.
His book, Tres Thomce, contains the lives of St. Thomas
the Apostle, of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and of
Thomas More. In his introduction he tells us that he
had the help derived from long intimacy with Dr. John
Clements, More's favourite scholar, and his wife,
Margaret Gigs ; as also with John Harris, More's
secretary, and Dorothy Colly, his wife, who had been
servant to Margaret Roper and had helped to bury Sir
Thomas ; with John Haywood, the epigrammatist, who
was very intimate with William Rastell. During
several years Stapleton gathered from all these their
reminiscences and anecdotes, and committed them to
paper at the time, with a view of one day writing a Life.
This, happily, he lived to accomplish. He also studied
carefully the Latin and English writings of More, and

PREFACE.

the letters of Erasmus and other learned contemporaries.
Living in exile, he had, of course, no help from English
documents, but his friends and fellow-exiles, especially
John Harris, at the death of More had secured some of
his unpublished MSS., the knowledge of which we owe
to Stapleton. It is certain, also, that he had a copy of
William Roper's notes.
Stapleton's Life of More has been frequently printed
in Latin ; it has been translated into French. I am
not aware of any English translation.
g. In the Lambeth Library, together with a copy of
Harpsfield, there is a MS. Life of More (in the same
vol., 179), which has been printed by Dr. Wordsworth in
his Ecclesiastical Biography (vol. ii.). An introductory
letter bears the date 1599. The Preface is signed " Ro-
Ba ". The author was a Catholic, and the Life is made
up from the Lives by Roper, Harpsfield, and especially
from Stapleton. The compiler does not seem to have
added anything from other sources.
10. Cresacre More's Life. Between 1615-1620
another English Life of More was composed. It was
printed in 1627, and bore the initials " M. T. M." The
editor, M. C. M. E., attributes it to Thomas More, a
priest, and great-grandson of Sir Thomas. Yet there was
abundant internal evidence that it was written by a
layman. Hence the editor of the second edition of
1726 attributed it to Thomas More, Esquire. A third
edition appeared in 1828, with a Preface by the Rev.,;
Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., clearing up the matter and
assigning the work to its real author, Cresacre More, of
More Place, Co. Herts, and Bamborough, in Yorkshire,

PREF.\CE.

Esquire. This gentleman was the great-grandson of
Sir Thomas, and the youngest of thirteen children ;
but the inheritance had devolved on him by the death of
his elder brothers or by their entering religious orders.
This Life of Sir Thomas is much esteemed and often
quoted ; but after collating it carefully with Stapleton,
Roper and Harpsfield, I find that it contains very
little original matter. I have preferred, therefore, to
quote directly from the sources from which Cresacre
More drew.
_ii. Varia. Of other Lives I need not saj' much.
The Mirror of Virtue (1626), The History of the Life
and Death of More, by J. H. (John Hoddesden),
are mere abridgments of Stapleton. Memoirs and
Lives, by Dr. Warner, Dibdin, Miss Taylor, and
articles in Cyclopaedias do not profess to do more
than select and rearrange. The two volumes of the
Memoir of Sir T. More, by Sii^ A. Cayley (1808), are
principally taken up with an account of some of his
writings, particularly his poems, and contain some
interesting poetical translations by Archdeacon Wrang-
ham. A book called Philomorus, of which the second
edition appeared in 1878, is almost exclusively given
to More's epigrams, as they illustrate his life and
character. In 1807 appeared Lives of British Statesmen,
by John Macdiarmid. These are More, Cecil, Went
worth, and Hyde. The Right Hon. Sir James Mackin
tosh supplied a very interesting sketch of More's life
to the Cabinet Cyclopedia; this was printed separately
in 1844. Mr. Foss, in his Lives of the Judges, and Lord
Campbell, in his Lives of the Chancellors, have con-

PREFACE.

sidered Sir Thomas principally as a lawyer. Among
Catholics, the Rev. W. J. Walter produced a good Life
in two small volumes, for Dolman's Catholic Library
(2nded., 1840), and the accomplished authoress oi Chris
tian Schools and Scholars gave us a charming sketch in
her Three Chancellors, Wykeham, Waynfleet, and More
(Burns & Oates). Miss Stewart's Life of More is trivial
and inaccurate.
12. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, ofwhich the 3rd
edition appeared in 1887. By " Oxford Reformers" Mr.
Seebohm means, not reformers of Oxford, but three Oxford
scholars, Colet, More, and Erasmus, who were working
together at a deep reformation of the Church when
Luther's reformation came to hinder or divert their
work. I have read this work more than once on
account of the praise given to it, and I have taken
great pains to weigh and verify its statements. In
the course of the following Life I am obliged to contest
many of Mr. Seebohm's conclusions. I will merely say
here that I consider the whole book to be fantastic and
misleading, built up from conjectures and misunder
standings, and by false deductions. As the story
breaks off with Dean Colet's death in 1519, More's
part is quite secondary as well as fragmentary. Mr.
Seebohm has given great care to questions of date,
especially as regards the early life and correspondence
of Erasmus.
13. More's Own Works have been my principal study.
Of these I shall give an account in the proper place.
There will be grounds for reproach to the Catholics of
England if, in the course of a few years, there is not a

PREFACE. xiii
complete and careful edition of all his works, both in
Latin and English. With the exception of the Dialogue
of Comfort in Tribulation, reprinted by Dolman, and the
translations of the Utopia and the History of Richard
III., More's English writings are almost inac
cessible.* Even in the British Museum there is but
one copy of the great black letter collection by William
Rastell of 1456 pages in double column. I gratefully
acknowledge the loan of a copy of this rare book from
C. T. Gatty, Esq., F.S.A., which has much facilitated
my labours. I have used the Francfort edition of
More's Latin works of 1689. There are some opus
cula and many letters not contained in any (so-called)
Opera Omnia. I trust none of these has escaped my
attention. Here let me say that were I writing the Life of one
whose works might be supposed to be in the hands of
my readers, or easily accessible to them, I should not
feel myself justified in quoting as I have done. I have
translated long passages from More's Latin works and
transcribed pages from his English writings, as freely as
if I were printing from unique MSS. in my own posses
sion. For the same reason I have generally given his
letters and those addressed to him in full, instead of
incorporating the substance in my own narrative. My
readers will have to take nothing from me on trust.
They will have the very text of my " evidences " on
every point. I am aware that this method interferes
* More's translation ofthe Life of Pico della Mirandula has been re-
edited since the above was written (see infra, p. 78).

XIV PREFACE.

somewhat with the easy flow of the narrative, and per
haps doubles its length. The compensating advantages '
are that the reader can form his own judgment, and has
only to rely on the biographer for the accuracy and the
completeness of the record. He gains also some know
ledge of More as a writer.
One singular result is inevitable from this method of
presenting my materials. More wrote both in Latin
and in English. The English in the early part of the
sixteenth century has become antiquated, and thus pre
sents a great contrast with the translations from Latin
into modern English. More will, therefore, be found
speaking, as it were, two languages, or two very different
dialects of the same language — that of the first years of
the sixteenth centuiy, and that of the last years of the
nineteenth. If this is anomalous, it may serve to bring home to us
an important fact. What we call the quaint words and
turns of old English make us regard the writers or
speakers of that language as themselves quaint, strange,
uncouth, rude, simple, or in some way unlike men and
women of the same class of society, the same talents
and education at the present day. But if they wrote in
Latin, the delusion — for such it is — is dissipated. Latin
is to us what it was to them. It has not become anti
quated or changed its form. We find that they wrote
just as we should write, if we were as well versed in the
language as they were. They thought just as we think.
We turn their words into our modern English, and all
quaintness has disappeared. There is nothing odd or
unusual in their way of reasoning or in their modes of

PREFACE. XV
feeling. As soon as they speak our own language in
our own form or dialect, we judge of them for good or
evil as we judge of our contemporaries ; and we cease to
patronise them, as if they were only clever boys or pro
mising savages.
I have modernised the spelling, but I have been
scrupulous not to alter a word in making extracts. My
reason is that More was very precise in his choice of
words and in their arrangement, whereas I can discover
no rule in the spelling. Besides this, the spelling is not
that of the author, but of the printer. By a comparison
between the first and second editions of More's English
works, it is clear that the type-setter was free to vary the
spelling according to the exigence of the line, adding
a final e or doubling a consonant where the modern
type-setter would use a space. The following passage,
amusing in itself, will explain what I mean by More's
choice of exact words : —
No AND Nay.
" I woulde not here note, by the way, that Tyndal here
translateth ' no ' for ' nay,' for it is but a trifle and mis
taking of the Englishe worde : saving that ye shoulde
see that he whych in two so plain Englishe wordes,
and so common as is naye and no, can not tell when he
should take the tone and when the tother, is not, for
translating into Englishe, a man very mete.
" For the use of those two wordes in answerring to a
question is this :, Naye * answereth the question framed
* Rastell has here put no, by an evident misprint.

XVI PREFACE.
by the affirmative. As, for example, if a manne should
aske Tindall hymselfe : Ys an heretike mete to translate
Holy Scripture into Englishe ? Lo, to thys question.
if he will aunswere trew Englishe, he must aunswere
' nay ' and not ' no '. But and if the question be asked hym
thus, lo : Is not an heretyque mete to translate Holy
Scripture into English ? To this question, lo, if he will
aunswer true English, he must aunswer ' no ' and not
' nay '.
" And a lyke difference is there bet wene these two
adverbes ' ye ' and ' yes '. For if the questeion bee framed
unto Tindall by thaffirmative in thys fashion : If an
heretique falsely translate the Newe Testament intO;;
Englishe, to make hys false heresyes seeme the Worde
of Godde, be hys bookes worthy to be burned ? To
this question, asked in thys wyse, yf he will aunswere !
true Englishe, he must aunswere 'ye' and not 'yes'. But
nowe if the question be asked hym thus, lo, by the
negative : If an heretike falsely translate the Newe
Testament in to Englishe, to make hys false heresyes
seme the Word of God, be not his bokes well worthy to
be burned ? To thys question, in thys fashion framed,^!
ifhe wyll aunswere trew Englyshe, he maye not aunswere
• ye,' but he must aunswere ' yes,' and say : ' Yes, mary '^
be they, bothe the translation and the translatour, and
al that wyll holde wyth them '
" And thys thing, lo, though it be no great matter,
yet I have thought good to give Tindall warning of,
because I would have him write true one way or other,
that, though I can not make him by no meane to write ^

PREFACE. xvii
true matter, I would havp him yet at the lestwise write
true Englishe." *
In this passage we have "God" and "Godde,"
"Tyndal" and "Tindall," "heretike" and "heretyque,"
"true" and "trew," "aunswer," "aunswere," "an
swereth," " answerring," and i interchanged with y, ad
libitum. What would be gained by reproducing this
medley, to the confusion of the modern reader ? — not
even More's own spelling, if my theory of the type
setter's discretion or licence is correct. Yet the passage
shows that More's words may not be tampered with.
He wrote the purest English of his day, notwithstanding
" the tone and the tother," which was no vulgarism.
14. State Papers. I now come to my principal
reason for composing a new Life of the great chancellor,
rather than translating or annotating Stapleton. It is,
that we have access to many important documents un
known to him or to any former biographer. The Calen
dars of Letters and Papers, illustrating the reign of
Henry VIIL, have been carried through and beyond
the life of Sir Thomas. The diligence of the accom
plished editors. Dr. Brewer and Mr. James Gairdner,
has left almost nothing unprinted, or at least unindicated,
that concerns either Henry or those brought into rela
tions with him. With these great volumes as my help
and guide, I had already become pretty familiar with
all that bears on the life of More when composing my
Life of his fellow-martyr. Blessed John Fisher; but I
* English Works, p. 448. This passage is followed by very interesting
remarks on the force of the Greek article, and how its force may be
rendered in English. b

PREFACE.

have gone through all the volumes a second time, and
sought out the originals in the Record Office or British'
Museum, wherever there seemed to remain anything to
be cleared up.
Such, then, are the materials of this Memoir. Of the
use made of them the writer is no competent judge.
His self-love suggests to him no higher merits than that
he has been industrious, and has worked with a sym
pathy for his subject. Sympathy, however, does not
mean either blindness or partiality. I could have no
real sympathy with such a man as Sir Thomas More if
I did not appreciate the freedom of his judgment, and
freely use my own with due proportion. Mr. Gairdner,
in a very kind notice of my Life of Blessed John Fisher
in the Academy, remarks that, "for the great majority
of Christians, the recent ' Beatification ' of Fisher,
More, and others, has raised them beyond the reach of
criticism by a distinct act of authority. Rome has de
clared her judgment ; and- no fine, discriminating
touches, no delicate lights and shades, can be permitted
to interfere with the uniform brightness of one of her
saintly martyrs." Mr. Gairdner somewhat guards these
words by adding : " This, we suspect, is what an ordi
nary Protestant will think, and an ordinary Romanist
will really think the same, with this difference merely,
that the latter is submissive and humble before an
authority that the former does not feel himself in any
way bound to respect ".* Mr. Gairdner is, however,
here not quite accurate. Though he seems to allow
that a few exceptional " Romanists " will exercise a
* Academy, August 4, 1888, p. 64.

PREFACE.

freer judgment, he is not authorised to suppose that
even the most solemn judgment of canonisation places
the object of it beyond a fair, candid, and intelligent
criticism, even for the most docile and ordinary
Catholics. But the life, character, and writings of
Sir Thomas More have been subjected to no authori
tative scrutiny by the Holy See, and no judgment
whatever has been passed upon them. It is only as
martyrs of the faith that he and those included in the
decree of the 29th December, 1886, are declared Blessed.
But neither by this first decree, permitting their public
cultus, nor by any further and more precise judgment,,
will the Church wish to convert the biographer into a
writer of legend or a mere panegyrist. Canonisation
surrounds the saintly head with a halo, but does not
transform the features so that we cannot steadily fix
our gaze upon them. If I have been sparing in criti
cism, it is because the longer and more minutely I
have studied those features, the more I have admired
and loved them.
A word in conclusion regarding the frontispiece.
Several beautiful engravings of More's portrait hive
been published, which I might have reproduced. The
portrait that I have chosen is somewhat worn and
blurred, but then it is absolutely authentic. It has been
photographed from the original crayon sketch by Holbein
in the Windsor Collection. The copies have been made,
with Her Majesty's gracious permission, by Messrs.
Braun & Co., of Paris, and the Autotype Co., London.

Translation.
DECREE
[OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES]
CONFIRMING THE HONOUR GIVEN TO THE
BLESSED MARTYRS,
JOHN CARDINAL FISHER, THOMAS MORE,
AND OTHERS,
PUT TO DEATH IN ENGLAND FOR THE FAITH
FROM THE YEAR I535 TO I583.

England, once called the Island of Saints and the Dowry ofthe Virgin
Mother of God, as even from the first ages of the Church it had been
renowned for the sufferings of many Martyrs, so also, when it was torn
by the fearful schism of the sixteenth century from the obedience and-
communion of the Roman See, was not without the testimony of those-
vfhOtfor the dignity of this Sec, and for the truth of the orthodox Faith,
did not hesitate to lay down their lives by the shedding of their blood.*
In this most noble band of Martyrs nothing whatever is wanting ta
its completeness or its honour : neither the grandeur ofthe Roman purple,
nor the venerable dignity of Bishops, nor the fortitude ofthe Clergy both
secular and regular, nor the invincible firmness of the weaker sex. Emi
nent amongst them is John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal
ofthe Holy Roman Church, whom Paul III. speaks of in his Letters as.
conspicuous for sanctity, celebrated for learning, venerable by age, an
honour and an ornament to the kingdom, and to the Clergy of the-
whole world. With him must be named the layman Thomas More,
Chancellor of England, whom the same Pontiff deservedly extols, as-
excelling iti sacred learning, and courageous in the defence of truth..
* Gregory Xlll. Constimtion, Quoniam divinae tonitati, ist May, 1579.

xxii DECREE OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES.
The most authoritative ecclesiastical historians, therefore, are unani
mously of opinion that they all shed their blood for the defence,
restoration, and preservation of the Catholic Faith. Gregory XIII.
even granted in their honour several privileges appertaining to public
and ecclesiastical worship; and chiefly that of using their relics in
the consecration of altars, when relics of ancient Holy Martyrs could
not be had. Moreover, after he had caused the sufferings of the
Christian Martyrs to be painted in firesco by Nicholas Circiniana in
the Church of St. Stephen on the Coelian Hill, he permitted also the
Martyrs of the Church in England, both of ancient and of more recent
times, to be represented in like manner by the same artist in the English
Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Rome, including those who, from
the year 1535 to 1583, had died under King Henry VIII. and Queen
Elizabeth, for the Catholic Faith and for the Primacy of the Roman
Pontiff. The representations of these martyrdoms painted in the said
Church remained, with the knowledge and approbation of the Roman
Pontiffs who succeeded Gregory XIIL, for two centuries, until, about the
end of the last century, they were destroyed by wicked men. But copies
of them still remained ; for in the year 1584, by privilege of the said
Gregory XIIL, they had been engraved at Rome on copper-plate with
the title : Sufferings of the Holy Martyrs who, in ancient and more recent
times of persecution, have been put to death in England for Christ, and
for professing the truih of the Catholic Faith. From this record, either
by inscriptions placed beneath them, or by other sure indications, many
of these Martyrs are known by name ; that is to say, fifty-four. They
are : —
Those who suffered death under King Henry VIII. : John Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Thomas
More, Chancellor of England ; Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury,
mother of Cardinal Pole; Richard Reynolds, of the Order of St.
Bridget ; John Haile, Priest ; eighteen Carthusians — namely, yohn
Houghton, Augustine Webster, Robert Laurence, William Exmcw,
Humphrey Middlemore, Sebastian Newdigate, fohn Rochester, yames
Walworth, WiUiam Greenwood, yohn Davy, Robert Salt, Walter
Pierson, Thomas Green, Thomas Scryven, Thomas Redyng, Thomas
yohnson, Richard Bere, and William Horne ; yohn Forest, Priest
ofthe Order of St. Francis; yohn Stone, of the Order of St. Augustine;
four Secular Priests — Thomas Abel, Edward Powel, Richard Fetherston,
yohn Larke ; and German Gardiner, a layman.
Those who suffered under Elizabeth : Priests — Cuthbert Mayne, yohn
Nelson, Everard Hanse, Rodolph Sherwin, yohn Payne, Thomas Ford,
yohn Shert, Robert yohnson, William Fylby, Luke Kirby, Laurence

DECREE OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES. Xxiii
Richardson, Williani Lacy, Richard Kirkman, yames Hudson or Tomp
son, William Hart, Richard Thirkcld, Thomas Woodhouse, and 
Plumtree. Also three Priests of the Society of Jesus— £rfmH«d Campion,
Alexander Briant, and Thomas Cottam. Lastly, yohn Storey, Doctor of
Laws ; yohn Felton and Thomas Sherwood, laymen.
Until lately, the Cause of these Martyrs had never been officially
treated. Some time ago, in the year i860, Cardinal Nicholas Wise
man, of illustrious memory, Archbishop of Westminster, and the
other Bishops of England, petitioned the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX.,
of sacred memory, to institute for the whole of England a Festival in
honour of all Holy Martyrs, that is to say, even of those who, though not
yet declared to bc such, have in latter times, for their defence of the Catholic
Religion, and especially for asserting the authority of tlie Apostolic See,
fallen by the liands of wicked men and resisted unto blood. But as, ac
cording to the prevailing practice of the Congregation of Sacred Rites,
a Festival can be instituted in regard only to those Servants of God to
whom ecclesiastical honour [cultus) has been already given and rightly
sanctioned by the Apostolic See, the said petition was not granted.
Wherefore, in these last years, a new petition was presented to Our Holy
Father the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII., by His Eminence Cardinal
Henry Edward Manning, the present Archbishop of Westminster, and
the other Bishops of England, together with the Ordinary Process which
had been there completed, and other authentic documents, in which were
contained the proofs of Martyrdom as to those who suffered from the year
1535 to 1583, and also the aforesaid concessions of the Roman Pontiffs in
regard to those above-mentioned.
Our Holy Father was pleased to commit the examination ofthe whole
matter to a Special Congregation, consisting of several Cardinals of the
Holy Roman Church and of Officials of the Congregation of Sacred
Rites — the examination to be preceded by a Disquisition, to be drawn up
by the Right Reverend Augustine Caprara, Promoter of the Holy Faith.
In this Special Congregation, assembled at the Vatican on the 4th day
of December of the present year, the undersigned Cardinal Dominic
Bartolini, Prefect of the said Sacred Congregation, who had charge of
the Cause, proposed the following question : " Whether, by reason of the
special concessions of the Roman Pontiffs, in regard to the earlier Martyrs
of England— who, from the year 1535 to 1583, suffered death for the
Catholic Faith, and for the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff in the Church,
and whose Martyrdoms were formerly painted, by authority of the
Sovereign Pontiff Gregory XIII., in the English Church of the Most
Holy Trinity in Rome, and in the year 1584 were engraved at Rome on
copper-plate by privilege of the same Pontiff— there is evidence of the con-

XXIV DECREE OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES.
.cession of puhlic ecclesiastical honour, or of this being a case excepted
by the Decrees of Pope Urban VIII., of Sacred Memory, in the matter
and to the effect under consideration " The Most Eminent and Most
Reverend Fathers, and the Official Prelates, after hearing the written
and oral report of the aforesaid Promoter of the Holy Faith, and after the
matter in regard to the fifty-four Martyrs above-named had been fully
¦discussed, were of opinion that the answer to be given was : "Affirmatively, •'
or That it is proved to be a case excepted ".
The undersigned Secretary having raade a faithful report of all that
precedes to Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIIL, His Holiness vouchsafed
to approve the decision of the Sacred Special Congregation, on the gth
day of December, 1886.
The present Decree was issued on this 2gth day of December, sacred
to the Martyr Thoraas Archbishop of Canterbury, whose faith and con
stancy these Blessed Martyrs so strenuously iraitated.
D. CARDINAL BARTOLINI,
Prefect of the Congregation of Sacred Rites.
Laurence Salvati, Secretary.
L. 4- S.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE V

PREFACE, .
chapter I. Childhood, j
II. Youth, n
III. Choice of a State of Life, io
IV. Early Manhood, 07
V. Personal, . -2
VI. Professional, . 5-
VII. Literary, , -g
VIII. Domestic, 112
IX. Secretary and Privy Councillor, , 153
X. Diplomatist and Statesman, . igo
XI. The German Reformation, 207
XII. Chancellor, . 223
XIII. After the Resignation, 242
XIV. Treatment of Heretics, . . 253
XV. English Controversy, . . 273
XVI. First Troubles, 314
XVII. The Holy Maid of Kent, 321
XVIII. Before the Council, 338
XIX. Refusal of the Oath, 349
XX. The Tower, ... 363
XXI. Ascetic Writings, . 385
XXII. Examinations in Prison, . 398
XXIII. The Trial, . ... 415
XXIV. The Martyrdom, ; . . 430
APPENDIX A. Relics, . 441
„ B. Monuments, . . 445
„ C. Pedigrees and Arms, 446
„ D. Astronomical System, . 448
„ E. Some Descendants of the Martyr, . 451
Chronological Table of Life, .... 453
„ „ OF Writings . . . 456

SIR THOMAS MORE

LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE.

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD.
BLESSED Thomas More, hitherto known as Sir Thoraas
More, Lord Chancellor of England, was the eldest son
of John More, Gentleman, afterwards Sir John More,
Knight, puisne judge of the King's Bench in the time of
Henry VIII.
The early lives of Sir Thomas More place his birth in the
year 1480, thus making him about fifty-five years old at the
time of his martyrdom.* A recent discovery has proved that
* His son-in-law. Roper, says nothing of his age, nor does Harpsfield.
Cresacre More says he was born in 1480. He seems to have taken this
date from the family picture, commonly called the Burford Picture, painted
in 1593. On this picture is an inscription stating that in 1505 Sir Thomas
was in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and that he was in his fifty-fifth
year at his death— 6th July, 1535. The error arose from supposing that
the more famous Holbein family picture, on which the ages are noted,
was painted in 1530 ; for on this Sir Thomas is declared to be in his
fiftieth year. The picture, however, was painted not later than January,
1528. This will be shown later on. Stapleton errs still more widely.
In Chapter IV. he says that More wrote the Utopia in 15 16, being then
in his thirty-fourth year, and died in 1535, in his fifty-second year. This
would place his birth in the latter part of 1482. Again, in Chapter VI.,
he says that at his death he was not yet fully fifty-two years old. The
same mistake occurs in Chapter I. Though Stapleton was intimate
vidth merabers of More's household, they apparently only guessed at his
age, and it would seem from their raistake that he looked younger than
he really was. Blessed John Fisher's looks, on the contrary, caused his
age to be greatly exaggerated.

2 SIR THOMAS MORE.
he was in reality two years older. The same document makes
known to us the maiden name of his mother, and the correct
number of his brothers and sisters. Stapleton could not dis
cover the mother's name. Cresacre More gives it as Hand-
comb of Holiwell, in Bedfordshire. This, however, was possi
bly the name— not of Sir Thomas's mother, but of his father's
second wife.* The ignorance and mistakes are easily accounted
for by the seizure of all faniily papers by the king at the at
tainder of Sir Thomas.
In 1868, Mr. AVilliam Aldis Wright discovered, on the last
leaves of a MS. in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge,
a series of family records, which supply names and dates till
then unknown.! From these it appears that John More
married on 24th April, 1474, Agnes, daughter of Thomas
Graunger, in the parish of St. Giles in Cripplegate Without,
London. They had issue, three sons and three daughters.
The eldest child, Jane, was born on nth March, 1475. The
second child was Thomas, the future chancellor and martyr.
The entry says : " On the Friday next after the Feast of the
Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, viz., the seventh day
of February, between the second and third hours of the morn
ing, was born Thomas More, son of John More, Gentleman,
in the 17th year of the reign of Edward IV." J In the year
1478, 7th February was Saturday ; but by a natural confusion
it has been set down as Friday, since the birth took place soon
after midnight.
* According, however, to Mr. Foss, John More's second wife was
Mrs. Bowes, a widow, whose maiden name was Barton {Lives o/yudges,
vi. 198). The third wife's name was More.
( t See Notes and Queries, 17th October, 1868 ; also 31st October and
\ 5th November ; republished also in Mr. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers,
2nd edition (i86g). App. C.
J Md quod die veneris proximo post Festum purificacionis beate Marie
virginis videlicet septimo die Februarii inter horam secundam et horam
tertiam in mane natus fuit Thoraas More filius Joannis More Gent, anno
regni Regis Edwardi quarti post conquestum Anglise decirao septimo.

CHILDHOOD. 3
Agatha, a third child, was born 31st January, 1479 > John, the
fourth, on 6th June, 1480 ; Edward, the fifth, on 3rd September,
1481 : and Elizabeth, the sixth and last, on 22nd September,
1482. Stapleton says Thomas had no brothers, and only two
sisters, Jane and Elizabeth. This is repeated by Cresacre
More, who adds another error in making Elizabeth older than
Thomas. It is probable that John, Edward, and Agatha all
died in their infancy.
In the epitaph which Sir Thomas prepared for himself, he
says that he was born of " a family, not illustrious, yet honour
able ".* He was not noble, says his great-grandson, "as we
here in England take nobility ; for none under a baron (except
he he of the Privy Council) doth challenge it ; but as the word
is taken in other countries for gentry, it was otherwise. For
Judge More, " (the father of Sir Thomas), bare arms from his
birth, having his coat quartered, which doth argue that he
came to his inheritance by descent, and therefore, although
by reason of King Henry's seizure of all our evidences, we
cannot certainly tell who were Sir John's ancestors, yet must
they needs be gentlemen ; and, as I have heard, they either
came out of the Mores of Ireland, or they of Ireland came
out of us ".t
Mr. Edward Foss, who has gone into the question of More's
origin with much detail, differs entirely in his view as to the
nobility of his family. His researches have led him to discover
three men of the name of John More, connected with the Inns
of Court. There was one in the Middle Temple who was
reader in that society in 1505, and again in 1512. Mr. Foss
gives convincing reasons that this gentleman cannot have been
the future judge, who belonged to Lincoln's Inn, not to the
Temple. Now, two John Mores were members of the society
* Familia non celebri sed honesta natus.
+ Life of More, chap. i.

4 SIR THOMAS MORE.
of Lincoln's Inn. One had been butler* and steward, and was
admitted a student in 1470. He was subsequently called to the
bar and became a bencher, and was appointed reader in 1489.
As he had been already a long time (diu) butler in 1470, we
must suppose him to have been forty, or at least thirty-five,
years old when he became a student. He cannot then have
been the John More who was appointed judge in 15 17, and
who died in 1530, aged seventy-eight.
There is, however, a second John More in that society, who,
in 1482, is called Junior. He also was butler, and Mr. Foss
takes him to have been a. son of the one just mentioned, and
the father of Sir Thomas ; and he thinks he was raised from
the position he occupied to become a member of the society
by his father's' influence. Whatever may be the truth with
regard to this matter, the father of the future chancellor
received the coif of sergeant-at-law in November, 1503. He
became a judge in the Court of Common Pleas in November,
1517, and was transferred to the King's Bench probably in
April, 1 5 20.+
A few years before his death. Sir Thomas composed his
own epitaph, in which he thus speaks of his father, who was
lately deceased : " His father, John More, Knight, appointed
by his king to the order of judges called the King's Bench,
was a man courteous, affable, innocent, gentle, merciful, just,
and uncorrupted ''. The crayon sketch made by Holbein of
this venerable man in 1527, when he was in his seventy-sixth
year, is still in existence in the Windsor collection. It is a
charming face, full of life and kindly mirth. He seems to be
uttering one of the pleasant sayings for which he is said to
have been famous, though eclipsed by his more brilliant son.
Two of these, which Sir Thomas has preserved for us, are
* We need not think of this office as a mere menial function. We find
noblemen bearing the title, and receiving a salary as "butler" to a
corporation. t On the pedigree and arms of Sir Thoraas, see Appendix C.

CHILDHOOD. r
somewhat satirical upon women, although the son quotes them
only as amusing illustrations for other purposes: "I would
that we were all in the case with our own faults, as my
father saith that we be with our wives. For when he heareth
folk blame wives, and say that there be so many of them
shrews, he saith that they defame them falsely. For he saith
plainly that there is but one shrew-wife in the world, but he
saith indeed that every man weeneth he hath her, and that
that one is his own. So would I fain that every man would
ween there were but one man naught [good-for-nothing] in
all the whole world, and that that one were himself."* And
in another place, speaking about a man's choosing his religion
among the various sects : " But now, if ye were in the case that
I have heard my father merrily say every man is at the choice
of his wife, that ye should put your hand into a blind bag full
of snakes and eels together, seven snakes for one eel, ye would,
I ween, reckon it a perilous choice to take up one at adventure,
though ye had made your special prayer to speed well ".f As
Sir John More was three times married, it would be interesting
to know the date of these sayings, and whether they embody
the fruits of his experience, or were a kind of humorous
philosophy, which formed no guide of his life. One of his
son's epigrams alludes to this class of sharp sayings about
wives : — Hoc quisque dicit ; dicit, at ducit tamen,
Quin sex sepultis septimara ducit tamen.
John Clements heard Sir Thomas repeat what he had heard
from his father, Sir John : that his first wife in a dream saw
engraved on her marriage ring, as in a series of cameos, the
names and likenesses of the children she should bear. One of
these was so obscure that she could not recognise it, and
this referred to a child of untimely birth ; another shone far
brighter than the rest. It is to be supposed that it was after
* English Works, p. 233. + lb., p. 165.

6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
his son's elevation to the chancellorship, which the old man
lived to witness, that he remembered and related this story of
his young wife's dream.*
A tradition was handed down in the family that when
Thomas was an infant, his nurse was carrying him in her arms
as she forded a river on horseback. The horse stumbled in
ascending the bank ; the nurse, in fear of falling into the water,
threw the child over the neighbouring hedge. When she got
safe to land she found the babe lying unhurt, and laughing as
she stooped to pick him up.f
John More, at the time of his son's birth and long after,
lived in Milk Street, in the city of London. Thomas was born
in the heat of the civil wars of the Roses, and, being five years
old at the death of Edward IV., overheard a neighbour relate
to his father a prediction made by one of the followers of the
Duke of York, afterwards Richard IIL, that his master would
be king. This prediction, so soon followed by its fulfilment,
made so deep an impression on the child that he never forgot
it.i Roper, and after him Harpsfield and Stapleton, mention that
the school in which young Thomas learned the rudiments of
Latin was St. Anthony's, a free school belonging to the Hos
pital of St. Anthony in Threadneedle Street, London, at that
time taught by an excellent master, Nicolas Holt. § It had
* When a dream passes through five mouths — the raother. Sir John,
Sir Thoraas, Clements, Stapleton — and is at last viritten down loo years
after its occurrence, we cannot be sure of its original form. At all events
it was not Sander's invention, as Burnet affirms. Stapleton says : Thomam
Morum ex patre suo referentem audivit Joannes Clemens {Vita Mori,
cap. i).
+ Stapleton may have learnt this from Mrs. Clements or from Dorothy
Harris. J Quem ego sermonem ab eo meraini patri meo renuntiatum. The
words are not in the English version ofthe History of Richard III.
§ Holt was author of a Latin gramraar called Lac Puerorum (Foss,
vi. 203).

CHILDHOOD. 7
been founded by Henry VI. in 1445. Thence he was trans
ferred to the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of
Canterbury. The households of great ecclesiastics were schools
both of learning and good breeding for the sons of the gentry,
and even of the higher nobility. Many years later, and long
after the Cardinal's death, More put the following description
of his patron in the mouth of Hythloday, the supposed traveller
to Utopia : —
"The Cardinal was of a middle stature, retaining his strength
even in advanced age ; his looks begot reverence rather than
fear ; his conversation was easy, but serious and grave ; he
sometimes took pleasure to try the force of those that came
as suitors to him upon business by speaking sharply, though
decently, to them, and by that he discovered their spirit and
presence of mind ; with which he was much delighted when it
did not grow up to impudence, as bearing a great resemblance
to his own temper, and he looked on such persons as the
fittest men for afiairs. He spoke both gracefully and weightily ;
he was eminently skilled in the law, had a vast understanding,
and a prodigious memory ; and those excellent taletits with
which nature had fumished him were improved by study and
experience. When I was in England the king depended
much on his counsels, and the Government seemed to be
chiefly supported by him ; for from his youth he had been
all along practised in affairs ; and, having passed through
many traverses of fortune, he had, with great cost, acquired a
vast stock of wisdom, which is not soon lost when it is pur
chased so dear." *
It must certainly be counted among the special graces of
More that his mind, so shrewd and inclined to satire, formed
its first impressions of the Church from the frequentation of so
excellent a prelate as Morton, rather than in the household
of a Bainbridge or a Wolsey ; for, though .the Church of
* Utopia (Burnet's translation).

8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Jesus Christ, as a Divine institution, is independent of its earthly
representatives, yet a mind early prejudiced acquires with
difficulty that well-balanced judgment that is able to consider
calmly good and evil, and to assign each to its proper source.*
It was also very fortunate for More that Cardinal Morton
formed a favourable opinion of the youth who had been com
mitted to him. Roper writes as follows : " Though More
were young of years, yet would he at Christmas suddenly
sometimes step in among the players, and, never studying for
the matter, make a part of his own there presently among them,
which made the lookers-on inore sport than the players beside.f
In whose wit and towardness the Cardinal much delighting,
would often say of him to the nobles that divers times dined
with him . ' This child here waiting at the table, whoever
shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man ' Whereupon,
for his better furtherance in learning, he placed him at Oxford."
* A Catholic writer, in the Dublin Review for June, 1858, says that
*' a tone of cold and sneering disrespect towards the Holy See pervades
More's Utopia ; and that it is irapossible not to see that More had ira-
1 bibed these ideas frora Cardinal Morton's conversation ". As I can find
) no such tone in More's Utopia, it is impossible for me to attribute it to
_ Morton's influence.
t These Christraas plays were, no doubt, in English ; Sir Thomas,
however, in his Utopia, alludes to the plays of Plautus as if they were
not unknown to the English stage, probably in the schools or universities,
or inns of court.

CHAPTER II.
YOUTH.
IT was probably in the year 1492, when he was fourteen
years old, that More was sent to the university. Of his
Oxford career our information is very scanty. Roper
merely says that Cardinal Morton "placed him at Oxford,
where, when he was in the Greek and Latin tongues sufficiently
instructed, he was then for the study of the law put to an Inn
of Chancery ". Harpsfield, an Oxford man, was able to add
the length of his stay at the university : " For the short time
of his abode,'' he writes, "being not fully two years, and for
his age, he wonderfully profited in the Latin and Greek
tongues ; where if he had settled and fixed himself, and run
his full race in the study of the liberal sciences and divinity,
I trow he would have been the singular and only spectacle
of this our time for learning " Cresacre adds that he was
placed at Canterbury Hall.* This hall had been founded by
Archbishop Islip in 1363, and was intended principally for the
study of the canon and civil law. At the suppression it was .
transferred by Henry to his (or rather Wolsey's) great founda
tion of Christ Church. Its site is now occupied by Canter
bury Quadrangle of that college.
It was easy for the Cardinal to find him an entrance in this
hall. We are not told how far he contributed to his main
tenance there. The life of a scholar, as provided by the
foundation, was a hard one. More placed it at the lowest
* St. Mary's Hall has been mentioned by others as his residence.

IO SIR THOMAS MORE.
degree of his experiences. In his address to his family after
resigning the chancellorship, he said : " I have been brought
up at Oxford, at an Inn of the Chancery, at Lincoln's Inn, and
also in the King's Court, and so from the least degree to the
highest " If it is true that More's father was the quondam
butler of Lincoln's Inn, he would be only a young and struggling
barrister, burdened with a large family, at the period of his
son's Oxford residence.
Certain it is that More's allowance from his father did not
in any way mitigate the penury of his life, which is thus
described by Stapleton : " Grocyn had recently returned from
Italy, and was the first who brought Greek letters into England,
and publicly taught them at Oxford. From his companion,
Thomas Linacre, More learnt Greek at Oxford, as he himself
mentions in his epistle to Dorpius.* His father, howevet,
while desirous to give his son a liberal education, wished that
he should learn from his earliest years to be frugal and sober,
and to love nothing but his studies and literature. For this
reason he gave him the bare necessaries, and would not allow
him a farthing to spend freely. This he carried out so strictly
that he had not money to mend his worn-out shoes, without
asking it from his father. More used often to relate this con
duct of his father, and greatly extolled it. ' It was thus ' (he
would say) ' that I indulged in no vice or pleasure, and spent
my time in no vain or hurtful amusements ; I did not know
what luxury meant, and never learnt to use money badly ; in a
word, I loved and thought of nothing but my studies.'" These
words are the more remarkable that More was not defending
his treatment of his own children by the example of his father,
for we shall see that he could be very generous.
Erasmus declares that Morels father, both while his son was
at Oxford and afterwards, treated him thus severely because he
* Quum ipse jara olim Aristotelis opus audirem Grasce, perlegente
raihi atque interpretante Linacro.

VOUTH. I I
saw him too much addicted to literature,* and feared that he
might neglect his le^al studies. Such a testimony cannot be
lightly set aside, since Erasmus becaine intimate with More in
his early manhood ; but it is pushing the words of Erasmus
beyond their necessary reach to suppose, as some have done,
that John More was unwilling that his son should learn Greek,
or that Thomas gave himself to this study in distinct opposition
to his father's will. For, according to his biographers, his filial
piety and deference to his father's wishes knew no bounds, and
he seems to have complied with them fully by vigorously pro
secuting his legal studies, and giving to literature those hours
only which he could save from sleep or recreation.
Stapleton on this head writes : " Throughout his whole life
he was most reverent towards his father, so that he neither
offended him in anything, nor took offence at anything said or
done by him. When he was chancellor he did not hesitate,
publicly in the palace of Westminster, to kneel down and ask
his father's blessing, according to the excellent custom of our
country. For with us children are wont both morning and
evening to kneel and ask the blessing of both parents, though,
when grown up and married, especially in the higher classes,
they discontinue the practice, whereas More continued it."
Besides Greek and Latin, he learned, in his youth, French,
music, arithmetic, and geometry, and read every book of history
he could procure. He was fond of music, and learned to play
on the viol,t as well as on the flute.
If More's study of Greek was for the sake of the treasures of
hterature and philosophy embodied in that language, he studied
Latin no less for its practical utihty. Latin was still in a sense a
* Bonas literas a prirais statim annis hauserat. Juvenis ad Graecas
literas ac philosophic studium siese applicuit, adeo non opitulante patre,
viro alioqui prudenti proboque, ut ea conantem omni subsidio destitueret
ac pene pro abdicato haberet, quod a patriis studiis desciscere videretur
(Epist. 605, to be given in full later on).
t Stapleton, cap. 2.

12 SIR THOMAS MORE.
living language. It was the means of communication not only in
the Church, but between statesmen, ambassadors, and the learned
and cultured of every country. It was necessary to write and
to speak it with facility and elegance as well as to read it.
Probably not many days passed in More's life in which he was
not called on to converse in Latin. His style was greatly
admired by his critical contemporaries. It was not formted
without much labour. Erasmus, in saying that More strove long
to render it easy and harmonious,* seems to imply that at first
it was somewhat involved or harsh. It has been called
Erasmian, yet no one who has a moderate acquaintance with
the two writers could mistake one for the other, any more than
an Englishman at all familiar with our literature could attribute
a page Of Johnson to Addison.
Richard Pace, secretary of Latin letters to Henry VIII. and
Dean of St. Paul's, himself an elegant scholar, and a very inti
mate friend of More's, published in 1 5 1 7 a short Latin treatise
on "The Fruit to be derived from Learning" In it he has some
interesting remarks on More's genius and scholarship. I trans
late a few passages : " Here I will remark that no one ever lived
who did not first ascertain the meaning of words, and from
them gather the meaning of the sentences which they compose —
no one, I say, with one single exception, and that is our own
Thomas More. For he is wont to gather the force of the words
from the sentences in which they occur, especially in his study
and translation of Greek. This is not contrary to grammar,
but above it, and an instinct of genius. Indeed, his genius is
more than human, and his learning not only eminent, but so
various, that there is nothing of which he seems to be ignorant.
His eloquence is incomparable and twofold, for he speaks with
the same facility in Latin as in his own language. His sense
of fun is joined with perfect refinement — you may call humour

* Diu luctatus est ut prosam orationera redderet raolliorem, per omne
script! genus stylum exercens {Ep. 447).

YOUTH.

13

his father, and wit his mother.* When the inatter requires it,
he can imitate a good cook, and serve up the meat in sharp
sauce. He has declared open war against such as give
utterance to things that are neither true nor probable, and
beyond the capacity or knowledge of the speaker. Thus he
once heard two Scotist theologians, men of a certain importance,
and preachers, seriously affirm that King Arthur — whom some
deny ever to have been born, and others ever to have died —
had made himself a cloak of the beards of the giants whom he
had killed in battle. When More asked them how that could
be, the elder of the two, putting on a grave countenance, re
pUed : ' The reason, my youth, is clear, for the skin of a dead
man is elastic ' The other, hearing this, not only assented, but
admired the answer as subtle and Scotistic. More was but a
boy, but he answered : ' What you say was hitherto quite as
unknown to me as it was perfectly well knowii that one of you
milks a he-goat while the other holds a sieve '.t When he saw
that they did not understand his meaning, he laughed to him
self, and went his way.
"I regret to say that More has frequently the ill-luck that when
ever he says something very learned or acute among such digni
fied i fathers in reference to their science, which is also quite as
much his own, they always oppose him, and call his words
puerile. It is not that they really think him wrong, or that he
says anything puerile, but that they are jealous of his mar
vellous talent, and of his knowledge of so many other things of
which they are ignorant." §
* Iam adeo non vulgariter facetus et urbanus, ut leporem ipsum ei
patrem et facetiara matrem fuisse judices. Perhaps Pace had in his mind
the words of Job : " I have said to rottenness : Thou art my father ; to
worms, my mother and my sister " (yob xvii. 14).
t An allusion to an epigram of Martial.
t Leucomitiatos — "white-mitred," or more probably "white-girdled,"
in allusion to the white cord ofthe Minorites ; for there does not seem to
be any reference to bishops. Perhaps raerely " white-haired "
§ De Fructu qui ex doctrina percipitur, p, 82 (ed. 1517).

14 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Of More's Latin writings much will be said later on. This
may be a fit place to mention some of his first efforts in English
literature. William Rastell, in the time of Queen Mary,
gathered together and reprinted whatever he could find of his
Uncle More's boyish essays ; amongst them are some English
verses that More would gladly have let pass into oblivion. "A
merry tale how a serjeant would learn to play the frere." I
cannot say that there is rauch merriment in this piece. A line
or two will be enough as a specimen of his rhyming powers : —
A man of law that never saw
The ways to buy and sell.
Weening to rise by merchandise —
1 pray God' speed him well.
A merchant eke that will go seek.
By all the means he raay,
To fall in suit, till he dispute
His living clean away,
Pleading the law for every straw,
Shall prove a thrifty man,
With hate and strife ; but, by my life,
I cannot tell you when.*
He printed at the beginning of a " Book of Fortune " a large
number of verses in the seven-line stanzas then so popular.
Though they are only the commonplaces of a clever boy's
theme, yet they curiously represent the philosophy of his life,
and the " Dialogue " which he wrote in the Tower when prepar
ing for death is in many points only a development of this essay
of his youth. He never at any time of his life lost sight of
what he had written as a boy about Fortune's Wheel : —
Alas ! the foolish people cannot cease
Ne void her train, till they the harm do feel —
About her always busily they press ;
But, Lord ! how he doth think himself full well
That may set once his hand upon her wheel ;
He holdeth fast, but upward as he fiieth.
She whippeth her wheel about, and there he lieth.
• Always written by More "whan," and doubtless so pronounced.

YOUTH. 15
The following stanza is very striking and harmonious, and
might have been written by Spenser or by Gray : —
Fast by her side doth weary Labour stand,
Pale Fear also, and Sorrow all bewept.
Disdain and Hatred on that other hand
Eke restless watch, from sleep with travail kept,
His eyes drowsy, and looking as he slept.
Before her standeth Danger and Envy,
Flattery, Deceit, Mischief and Tyranny.
Among the freaks of Fortune was one with which the pre
ceding reigns had made the minds of men in England but too
familiar : — She suddenly enhanceth them aloft.
And suddenly mischieveth all the flock ;
The head that late lay easily and full soft,
Instead of pillows lieth after on the block.
The Block ! It is a popular superstition that when a cold
shiver goes suddenly over a man, without any apparent cause,
it is because someone has stepped over his future grave. Did
any shadow pass over the bright and handsome face of young
More when he wrote that terrible word — the Block ? Or was it
rather a halo that played for a moment around his brow ?
There is another effort of his English Muse which gives
greater promise than the preceding that he might, had he given
himself to this species of composition, have anticipated some
thing of the beauties of the Elizabethan poets. It is "A Rueful
Lamentation" on the death of Queen Elizabeth — commonly
called the Good — the wife of Henry VII. She died on nth
February, 1503. More was just twenty-five years old. On
such occasions it was customary for scholars to make an offer
ing of verse at Court. The poet represents the queen on her
death-bed, takmg her last farewell. Each stanza ends with the
words, "and lo ! now here I he ". The following lines remind
us that .the name of Shene had lately been exchanged for that

1 6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
of Richmond, in honour of the king's mother — Lady Margaret,
Countess of Richmond — and that the king was building the
beautiful chapel in Westminster Abbey that still bears his
name : — Where are ourxastles, now where are our towers ?
Goodly Richmond, soon art thou gone from me ;
At Westrainster that costl}' work of yours.
Mine own dear lord, now shall I never see.
Almighty God vouchsafe to grant that ye
For you and your children well may edify.
My palace builded is, and lo ! now here I lie.
After taking leave of her husband, she thus addresses her chil
dren. To understand the allusions, it must be remembered
that Arthur, the eldest son, had been dead nearly a year ; Mar
garet, the eldest daughter, had been lately married by proxy to
the King of Scotland, but had not yet left England : —
Farewell, my daughter. Lady Margaret,
God wot full oft it grieved hath my mind
That ye should go where we should seldom raeet ;
Now am I gone, and have left you behind.
O mortal folk, that we be very blind !
That we least fear, full oft it is most nigh.
From you depart 1 first, and lo ! now here I lie.
Adieu, Lord Henry, my loving son, adieu !
Our Lord increase your honour and estate.
Adieu, my daughter Mary, bright of hue !
God make you virtuous wife and fortunate."
Adieu, sweetheart, my little daughter Kate !
Thou shalt, sweet babe — such is thy destiny —
Thy mother never know, for lo ! now here I lie. +
She then addresses her sisters, the youngest of whom, Bridget,
was a Dominican nun at Dartford : —
* She was married to Louis XIL, King of France and afterwards to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk.
t This princess died in her infancy.

VOUTH. 1 7
Lady Cecily, Anne and Katharine,
Farewell, my well-beloved sisters three ;
O Lady Bridget ! other sister mine,
Lo ! here the end of worldly vanity ;
Now well are ye that earthly folly flee,
.\nd heavenly thinges love and magnify.
Farewell, and pray for me, for lo ! now here I lie.
But ?kIore was neither destined to rival Skelton as poet-
laureate nor to become illustrious among our English poets.
His fame in literature rests rather on his Latin epigrams, and,
still more, on his Utopia, which must be treated of when we
come to the time of their publication. But gifts and qualities
far higher than learning, wit or polished style have made the
name of More illustrious ; and we must now consider how the
foundations of his noble life were laid in early manhood. When
More was a youth in his father's house he conceived a plan for
nine pageants to be executed in painting or tapestry, to repre
sent the history ,of a human soul, and for these pageants he
wrote appropriate mottoes. These have been printed, but there
is a harshness in some of the lines that suggests the thought that
they may have been inaccurately worked on the tapestry or in
accurately copied. They are full of interest, as bearing on the
history of the young writer. Long before Shakspere wrote
his Seven Ages of Man the same line of thought had been pur
sued both in verse and dehneation.* More does not confine
himself to this world. His pageants comprise both the present
life and the next. They are Childhood, Manhood, Love (or
Venus and Cupid), Age, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity,
and, lastly, the Poet summing up the whole and drawing the
moral. In the first pageant Childhood says : —
In play is all my mind :
To cast a coit, a cokstele and a ball ;
* See a treatise on the division of man's life into ages, by J. W. JonesJ
in The Archieologia, xxxv. 167, with illustrations. J

1 8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
A top can I set, and drive it in its kind.
But would to God these hateful books all
Were in a fire brent to powder small.
If these words do not well represent More's boyhood, still less
do the next give a picture of his youth : —
To hunt and hawk, to nourish up and feed
The greyhound to the course, the hawk to the flight,
And to bestride a good and lusty steed —
These things become a very raan indeed.
It is easy to guess what Love and Age and Death have to say
for themselves. In the sixth pageant Fame rebukes Death's
proud boast : —
O cruel Death ! thy power I confound ;
When thou a noble man hast brought to ground,
Maugre thy teeth to live cause him shall I,
Of people in perpetual meraory.
In the seventh, Time scoffs at this promise, since in his pro
gress he will destroy the world itself, and then Fame will be
mute. But Eternity rebukes Time, which is but the revolution
of sun and moon. In the last pageant the poet writes in Latin.
Evidently God only is the everlasting Good ; let us distrust
what is fleeting and love God alone : —
Qui dabit sternam nobis pro munere vitam
In permansuro ponite vota Deo.
In these verses the youth expressed what proved to be the
philosophy of his whole hfe.

CHAPTER III.
CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE.
ON leaving Oxford, More was placed by his father at New
Inn, an Inn of Chancery dependent on Lincoln's Inn.
Here he w^as to acquire the learning of writs and pro
cedure before studying the more abstruse branches of legal
science at Lincoln's Inn.*
In the universities of Oxford and Cambridge Canon Law
as well as Roman Civil Law were studied, while little atten
tion was given to EngUsh (or Municipal) Law. This is divided
into Common Law and Equity, the former of which guides
and governs the Common Law Courts, and the latter the Court
of Chancery. Hence, since the Law Courts sat principally at
^\''estminster, the lawyers who there pleaded set up at an early
period hostels or inns (kospitia) in London, not only as cham
bers and residences, but as places of study and training. In
the middle of the fourteenth century, after the suppression of
the Knights Templars, a more convenient site was procured,
nearer to Westminster, and away from the noise of the city of
London. This is still the lawyers' quarter. In the time of Sir
Thomas Morethere were four Inns of Court — the Inner Temple,
Middle Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn, and ten Inns
of Chancery dependent on the Inns of Court.f
The reader may be interested to know that the great hall of
* Lord Campbell.
t The Inns of Chancery are now only used as chambers, and are princi
pally inhabited by solicitors and attorney9>^

20 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Lincoln's Inn was built in 1506. Over the gateway in Chancery
Lane is the date 15x8. These, therefore, were seen by More,
though built when he had ceased to reside. Lord Campbell
writes : " With us a sufficient knowledge of jurisprudence is
supposed to be gained by eating a certain number of dinners in
the hall of one of the Inns of Court, whereby men are often
called to the bar wholly ignorant of their profession ; and being
pushed on by favour or accident, or native vigour of mind, they
are sometimes placed in high judicial situations, having no
acquaintance with law beyond what they may have picked up
as practitioners at the bar.* Then, the Inns of Court and
Chancery presented the discipline of a well constituted uni
versity ; and, through professors, under the natne of ' readers,'
and exercises under the name of ' mootings,' law was syste
matically taught, and efficient tests of proficiency were applied
before the degree of barrister was conferred, entitling the
aspirant to practise as an advocate. "+
These inns were not endowed like the colleges of the
universities. The students in the Inns of Chancery, called
apprenticii simply, virere often poor enough, but those of the
Inns of Courts, called apprenticii nobiliores, were expected to
be able to spend 20 marks a year (about jQi'^, a considerable
sum in those days. Roper (himself a lawyer) tells us that his
uncle "was admitted to Lincoln's Inn with very small allowance,
continuing there his study until he was made and accounted
a worthy 'utter barrister'" He was admitted into the Society
of Lincoln's Inn as a student on the 12 th February, 1496,
being then just eighteen years old, and received certain dispen
sations at the instance of his father. J The constitution and
mode of procedure of the Inns in former times is thus described
* Examinations have been instituted since Lord Campbell wrote.
t Life of More.
t Thomas More admissus est in Societ. 12 die Feb. a° supra dicto
[1496] et pardonat. est quatuor vacaciones ad instantiam Johis More
patris sui (Entry in the Register copied by Mr. Foss).

CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE. 21
by our legal antiquarians : " In England it is said that the word
" barrister " arose from the arrangement of the halls of the
different Inns of Court.* The benchers and readers, being
the superiors of each house, occupied on public occasions of
assembly the upper end of the hall, which was raised on a dais,
and separated from the rest of the building by a bar. The next
in degree were the utteL barristers, who, after they had attained
a certain standing, were called from the body of the hall to the
bar (i.e., to the first place outside the bar), for the purpose of
taking a principal part in the mootings or exercises of the house.
The other members of the inn took their places nearer to the
centre of the hall, and from this manner of distribution appear
to have been called inner barristers .+ The degree of utter
barrister did not originally communicate any authority to plead
in courts of justice.
"The benchers annually chose from their own body two
readers, whose duty it was to read openly to the Society in their
public hall, at least twice in the year. On these occasions,
which were observed with great solemnity, the reader selected
some statute, which he made the subject of formal examination
and discussion. Questions were then debated by the utter
barristers with the reader, after which the judges and serjeants,
several of whom were usually present, pronounced their opinions
separately upon the point that had been raised. The process
of mooting in the Inns of Courts differed considerably from
reading. On these occasions the reader of the inn for the
time being, with two or more benchers, presided in the open
hall. On each side of the bench table were two inner
barristers, who declared in law French some kind of action,
previously devised by them, and which always contained some
* In France the word " barreau " has a different origin. The pleader in
the court of justice was protected by a bar of wood or iron from the press
of the crowd ; so also we speak of our " prisoner at the bar "
t The distinction no longer exists.

2 2 SIR THOMAS MORE.
nice and doubtful points of law, the one stating the case for the
plaintiff and the other the case for the defendant. The points
of law arising in this fictitious case were then argued by two
utter barristers, after which the reader and the benchers closed
the proceedings by declaring their opinions separately." *
It seemed necessary to transcribe thus much for the intelli
gence of what is said about More's legal career by his biographers.
We do not know the date of his call to the outer bar, nor when
he was made a bencher. His legal education, however, lasted
several years. Harpsfield says: "Utter barristers were not
commonly made then but after many years' study. But this
man's^ speedy and yet substantial profiting was such, that he
enjoyed some prerogative of time."
He acquired so great a reputation, that the governors of the
Society of Lincoln's Inn appointed him "reader "or lecturer
on the science of law at Furnivall's Inn, one of the Inns of
Chancery dependent on their house ; and his lectures were so
highly esteemed that his appointment was renewed three
successive years, t
Another course of lectures mentioned by his biographers
seems to have had no connection with his profession. He
gave lectures (no doubt in Latin) on the great work of St.
Augustine called The City of God. These lectures were delivered
in the Church of St. Lawrence, in the Old Jewry in London,
and they were attended by the most learned men, among whom-
is especially mentioned his old Greek preceptor Grocyn. J It
* Bohn's Standard Library Cyclopcedia of PoUtical Knowledge, Art.
Barrister. In one of his latest works. The Debellacion of Salem v.
Bysance, written in 1533, More writes: " 1 was waxen with the reading
of his answer very merry, and waxen methought a young man again,
and seemed set at a vacation raote with him in some Inn of Chancery,
because ofhis proper cases of law" (English Works, p. 945).
t Roper says, " Three years and more "-
J Grocyn had been lecturing about that time in St. Paul's (see
Seebohm, p. go). But Roper specially mentions him among More's
auditors and admirers. Had Stapleton authority for saying that Grocyn's
lectures were alraost deserted for those of More ?

CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE. 23
is probable, indeed, that they were delivered at his desire, as
he was then the rector of that church. Though there are many
examples of lay-preaching in the history of the Church, More's
lectures had in no sense the character of sermons, nor were
they lectures in theology, but in history and the Divine philo
sophy of history. They must have been elaborated with great
care to be read before such an audience. Alas ! a beautiful
and almost unique work has utterly perished. Not a fragment
of these lectures has come down to us.
The subject he had chosen confirms what Erasmus says : that
More's legal studies did not prevent him from following his
bent for hterature; nor did either law or letters turn his
thoughts from heavenly things. He read the fathers and
ecclesiastical writers carefully, and they made so deep an im
pression on him, that he hesitated for a considerable time about
pursuing the career on which he had entered, and debated
whether he should not rather become a priest or a religious.
No part of More's life has been so much misunderstood as
this. It will be necessary to disentangle modern comments
from the original statements of those who had means of know
ing the truth. The words of Erasmus, his intimate friend and
confidant, are these : " Meanwhile he applied his whole
mind to exercises of piety, looking to and pondering on the
priesthood in vigils, fasts, and prayers, and similar austerities.
In which matter he proved himself far more prudent than most
candidates, who thrust themselves rashly into that arduous pro
fession, without any previous trial of their powers. The one
thing that prevented him from giving himself to that kind of
life was that he could not shake off the desire of the married
state. He chose, therefore, to be a chaste husband rather than
an impure priest. " *
Mr. Seebohm's commentary on this last phrase is as follows ..
" That he did turn in disgust from the impurity of the cloister
* Erasm., Ep. 447.

24 ' SIR THOMAS MORE.
to the better chances which he thought the world offered of
living a chaste and useful life, we know from Erasmus".*
Where does Erasmus say or hint any .such thing? His words
do not imply that in those days most priests were impure, any
more than that most husbands were chaste. He merely says
that Thomas More feared for himself, lest, perhaps, he might
become an impure priest, not having the gift of perfect chastity,
whereas he had good hope of living as a chaste husband. Eras
mus has not a word of More's turning with disgust from anything,
j but, on the contrary, he implies that he turned with regret from
¦a state which he loved and^reverenced, but to which he feared
Iito aspire.
Among the Jews " the fearful and faint-hearted " were ex
empt from military service. t Suppose, then, that someone,
after due deliberation, had claimed this exemption ; and- that
his biographer, wishing to extol his prudence, in contrast with
the vainglorious rashness of others, had recorded that " he
preferred to remain a respectable citizen rather than to become
a cowardly soldier " What should we think of some modern
Jew-hating writer, who should interpret this to mean, that " he
turned with disgust from the cowardice of the army to the
better chance presented to him of living an honourable life
under his own vine and fig-tree," and on such grounds should
go on to declaim against the poltroonery of the army of the
Hebrews ?
Further on Mr. Seebohm says : " More married . . and
gave up for ever all longings for monastic life ". J This is, of
course, true as regards effectual longings, or injudicious and un
seasonable longings ; but, taken in what is apparently Mr. See
bohm's meaning — that More looked on himself as having
escaped from a delusion and chosen the nobler part — the words
are in curious contradiction with More's own words to his
* Oxford Reformers, p. 151. t Deut. xx. 8.
J Oxford Reformers, p. 160.

CHOICE OF A Sr.\TE OF LIFE. 25
daughter, from which we find that, to the end of his life, he
never lost his longing for that state which he had sorrowfully
renounced in youth. When Margaret visited him in the
Tower, he said to her : " I believe, Meg, that they that have
put me here ween they have done me a high displeasure, but I
assure thee on my faith, mine own good daughter, if it had not
been for my wife and ye that be my children, I would not have
failed long ere this to have closed myself in as strait a room,
and straiter, too.* Methinketh God maketh me a wanton,
and setteth me on His lap, and dandleth me ; " so delighted
was he to realise in his prison his old ideal of an austere and
contemplative life.f
Mr. Seebohm, recurring to the same idea elsewhere, says :
" What would have happened to More had he been left alone
with misadvising friends — whether the cloister would have re
ceived him, as it did his friend, Whitford, afterwards, to be
another ' wretch of Sion ' — none can tell. Happily for him, it
was at this critical moment that Colet came up to London." J
These words seem to imply that Whitford, a Brigittine monk
of Sion, near Isleworth, who, in his many ascetical books,
called himself " The ^^'retch," implied thereby that he was
disappointed and wretched in the modern sense of the word.
Nothing can be farther from fact. His religious life was most
happy: he was one of the few faithful against all Henry's
menaces, and after the suppression, he persevered for many
years, and till the end, in a mortified, prayerful, and sohtary,
but cheerful life.§ If, then, we are to conjecture what would
* I may mention it, as among the curiosities of literature, that Dr.
Warner thinks More is here speaking of the grave, and that he meant
that he would have committed suicide but for his wife and children !
t Margaret related this conversation to her husband, Roper, who has
recorded it.
X Oxford Reformers, p. 147.
§ See his biography in Dom Raynal's ed. of Whitford's translation
of the Following of Christ.

26 SIR THOMAS MORE.
have been the fate of More had he entered the cloister, it is
not rash to think that he might have become a worthy colleague
of his friend, Whitford, as a defender of the faith by his pen,
and a confessor of it by his holy life ; or he might have been
associated in martyrdom with another nionk of the same house,
Blessed Reginald or Reynolds, a man of the deepest learning
and of incomparable sanctity, who was also one of his friends,
and whose glorious death More looked'on as the crown of his
monastic virtues.* And, had he joined the Carthusians, we
should probably be now honouring his name with the glorious
band of Carthusians, victims of Henry's tyranny. With the
Franciscans he would have stood with Peto and Elstow, or
died with Forest. His name, however, was to stand aparf in
a glory quite distinct.
Another of More's modern biographers, Lord Campbell,
after relating his penances and deliberations as to becoming a
Franciscan or Carthusian, says : " He found these (the pen
ances) after a time not edifying to his piety, and he, a rigid
Roman Catholic, doubted the advantages supposed to be con
ferred on religion by the monastic orders, which a certain sec
tion of professing Protestants are now so eager to re-establish ''
It was unworthy of Lord Chancellor Campbell, in writing
the life of another Lord Chancellor, to pen a sentence, with a
controversial purpose, for which there is not, either in the
works of More or in any of his early biographers, the very
slightest authority, and which may be refuted by innumerable
passages in his printed books. The very first published by
* Blessed Reynolds of St. John's College, Cambridge, was distinguished
as a scholar in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He shed his blood for the
faith with the Carthusians on 4th May, 1535, at Tyburn. Erasmus, who
knew him, says he was vir angelico vultu ct angelico spiritu, sanique
judicii (Letter on deaths of More and Fisher). Cardinal Pole learnt
frora an eye-witness that such was the joy of his countenance when he
placed his head in the fatal noose, that you would think it was the golden
chain of knighthood (De Unit. EccL).

CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE. 27
him after his marriage was the Life of Pico, Count of Mir andola.
In many respects, More took this extraordinary man as his
model, and reproduced his virtues as well as his talents. Of
Pico's austerities he writes : " ^^'e know many men which (as
St. Jerome saith) put forth their hand to poor folk, but with
the pleasures of the flesh they be overcome ; but he many
days, and, namely, those days which represent unto us the
passion and death that Christ suffered for our sake, beat and
scourged his own flesh in the contemplation of that great bene
fit, and for cleansing of his old offences. He was of cheer
always merry, of so benign a nature that he was never troubled
with anger," etc. Surely the man who wrote this, and imitated
it to the letter, had not discovered that austerity was super
fluous. Of Pico's love of God More wrote : " Of outward observances
he gave no very great force. We speak not of those obser
vances which the Church commandeth, for in those he was
diligent ; but we speak of those ceremonies which folk bring
up, setting the very service of God aside, who is (as Christ
saith) to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. But in the in
ward affections of the mind he cleaved to God with very fervent
love and devotion. ' Nephew,' said he (on one occasion),
' this will I show thee ; I warn thee keep it secret. The sub
stance that I have left,. after certain books of mine finished, I
intend to give out to poor people, and fencing myself with the
crucifix, barefoot walking about the worid, in every town and
castle I purpose to preach of Christ.' Afterwards, as I under
stand, by the special commandment of God, he changed that
purpose and appointed to profess himself in the Order of Friars
Preachers." Could More have written thus or chosen these
words for translation, had he himself turned in disgust from the
impurity of the cloister, as Mr. Seebohm assures us; or come to
doubt the advantages conferred on religion by the monastic
orders, as Lord Campbell affirms ?
It would be easy to quote much stronger testimonies to

28 SIR THOMAS MORE.
More's esteem and love of religious orders from his later
writings. But as it is thought by some that there was a re
action in his soul in favour of the Church on account of the
violence of the Lutherans, I have preferred the above passages,
taken from a work published by More in 1510, and prob'ably
composed or translated by him several years before. In the
same book More gives an account of Savonarola's sermon at
the death of Pico. More speaks of Jerome Savonarola as " a
Friar-Preacher of Ferrara, a man as well in cunning [i.e., learning]
as holiness of hving most famous" This Friar Jerome, after
great eulogy of Pico, had told the people that it had been
revealed to him that his friend was in purgatory for his delay
in entering a religious order. " Howbeit, not being kind [i.e.,
grateful], enough for so great benefices of God, or called, back
by the tenderness of his flesh (as he was a man of delicate
complexion), he shrank from the labour ; or, thinking, happily,
that the religion had no need of him,* deferred it for a time.
Howbeit this I speak only by conjecture. But for this delay I
threatened him two years together that he would be punished
if he forslothed that purpose which Our Lord had put in his
mind." It is almost incredible that Mr. Seebohm could, after reading
the above, have written the following lines : " Pico's Works in
More's translation present to the mind a type of Christianity so
opposite to the ceremonial and external religion of the monks,
that one may well cease to wonder that More, having caught
the spirit of Pico's religion, could no longer entertain any notion
of becoming a Carthusian brother " f With the writings of
Dionysius, the Carthusian, accessible to him, of. Thomas
a Kempis, or even of Whitford, the wretch of Sion, Mr. See-
* The Latin has arbitratus ejus opera religionem indigere — " that re
ligion required his services," i.e., the welfare of religion in the world.
More puts in a negative, and takes the word religion technically, i.e.,
the state of religion, or the Dorainican Order.
t Oxford Reformers, p. 153.

CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE. 29
bohm must be indeed mastered by prejudice to sneer at the
external religion of the monks, and contrast it with solid piety.
In any case, according to More's views of the Gospel, the
worship of God in spirit and in truth was drawing on Pico to
the religious state when he died.
How was it, then, it will be asked, that, with all More's
admiration for the religious state, and attraction towards it, he
still resolved finally not to embrace it ? It was because he had
not that indication of God's vocation which he supposes Pico
to have received. Erasmus told the truth somewhat bluntly,
as he heard it from More himself: he feared to become an im
pure priest, and determined to become a chaste husband.
This was a matter for More himself and his confessor, and is
one that scarcely admits of our discussion. It would seem
however, from Stapleton's words, that More would often say in
later life that he had exaggerated the difficulties of a life of
celibacy. His decision was at least guided by perfect humility,
and not by the insane pride and contempt of others with which
some of his modern biographers would burden him.*
Even Sir James Mackintosh, whose biography of More is
distinguished both by candour and insight, has not disentangled
himself from Protestant prejudices in writing on this episode of
* Those who wish to weigh this matter may find the materials in the
following passages : Cum setas ferret non abhorruit (Morus) a puellarum
amoribus, sed citra infamiam, et sic ut oblatis magis frueretur quam
¦captatis, et animo mutuo caperetur potius quam coitu {Erasmus ad
Ulrichum.) Meditaijatur adolescens sacerdotium cum suo Lilio. Religionis etiam
propositum ardenter desiderans, Minoritarum institutum arripere cogita-
bat. Sed quura exercitiis illis prffidictis adhibitis, raotus carnis qui in
juventutis flore et ardore accidere soient, evincere non posse sibi videre
tur, uxorem ducere instituit. Solebat hsec ille postea narrare non sine
magna animi tristitia et mcerore ; dicebatque multo esse facilius legem
carnis in coelibatu vincere quam in matrimonio. Quod sane Apostolicis
illis verbis conforme est: Tribulationem tamen carnis habebunt hujus
modi (Stapleton, T. Mori Vita, cap. 2).

30 SIR THOMjVS MORE.
his life. "The same affectionate disposition," he says,
"which had driven More towards the visions and, strange
as it may seem, to the austerities of the monks, now sought a
more natural element." What word of More's, what word of
any of his biographers, can have suggested that More was
either driven or drawn towards visions ? There are doubtless
visions sent by God, as every reader of the Old or the New
Testament must know — St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost,
explained that a new era had begun, one of the characteris
tics of which should be that ' ' young men should see visions ".*
Yet the desire to see visions has never been counted among
the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and Sir Thomas More was the
last to covet them. His passion for austerities, on the other
hand, was a real one, and survived his marriage, though it was
controlled by discretion.
Sir James also writes : " He soon learnt, by self-examina
tion, his unfitness for the priesthood, and relinquished his
project of taking orders, in words which should have warned
his church against the imposition of unnatural self-denial on
vast multitudes and successive generations of men " The
words alluded to are no doubt those of Erasmus, but even if
they express More's view, that certainly involved no condemna
tion of the discipline of celibacy, which More has warmly
defended in more than one treatise. His prudent conduct is
a warning to bishops " not to impose hands lightly,'' and to
candidates " to consider again and again the work they
undertake and the burden laid upon them " f
Perhaps on the subject of More's austerities and vocation,
some will be better disposed to listen to the words of a
married man. I will, therefore, let his great-grandson, Cresacre
More, relate with his own reflections the facts that he had
gathered from Stapleton : " When he was about eighteen or
twenty years old, finding his body, by reason of his years, most
* Acts ii. 17. t Words ofthe Pontifical.

CHOICE OF A STATE OF LIFE. 3 1
rebellious, he sought diligently to tame his unbridled con
cupiscence by wonderful works of mortification. He used
oftentimes to wear a sharp shirt of hair next his skin, which
he never left off wholly — no, not when he was Lord Chancellor
of England. He used also much fasting and watching,
lying often either upon the bare ground or upon some bench,
or laying some log under his head, allotting himself but four or
five hours in a night at the most for his sleep, imagining, with
the holy saints of Christ's Church, that his body was to be
used like an ass, with strokes and hard fare, lest provender
might prick it, and so bring his soul like a headlong jade into
the bottomless pit of hell. For chastity, especially in youth,
is a lingering martyrdom, and these are the best means to
preserve her from the dangerous gulf of evil custom. But he
is the best soldier in this fight that can run fastest away from
himself, this victory being hardly gotten with striving.
" He had inured himself to straightness that he might the
better enter the narrow gate of heaven, which is not got with
ease ; sed violenti rapiunt illud— that is to say, they that are
boisterous against themselves bear it away by force. For
this cause he lived for four years amongst the Carthusians,
dwelling near the Charterhouse, frequenting daily their spiritual
exercises, but without any vow. He had an earnest desire
also to be a Franciscan friar, that he might serve God in a
state of perfection ; but, finding that at that time religious men
in England had somewhat degenerated from their ancient
strictness and fervour of spirit, he altered his mind. *
* The relaxation, not the immorality, of the religious orders is here
assigned by Cresacre as the reason of his ancestor's decision ; but
Erasmus says that his one and only obstacle was in himself. In fact,
there was no such paucity of fervent religious among the Carthusians
and the Observant Franciscans — the two orders to which he had been
attracted — as to give rise to any difficulty on that score. Cresacre has
put down as a fact what Stapleton merely advanced as a conjecture. In
this he has been imitated by Mr. Walter. But Mr. Seebohm is not justified

32 SIR THOMAS MORE.
" He had also after that, together with his faithful companion,
Lilly, a purpose to be a priest, yet God had allotted him for
another estate, not to live solitary, but that he might be a
pattern to married men : how they should carefully bring up
their children, how deariy they should love their wives, how
they should employ their endeavour wholly for the good of
their country, yet excellently perform the virtues of religious men,
as piety, charity, humility, obedience and conjugal chastity.''
The subject that has been under discussion in this chapter
makes it opportune to ask what was the attitude of More to
wards the priesthood during the rest of his life. One who has
been disenchanted in his ideal, or disappointed in his aspira
tions, often looks with disgust on his shattered idol, and with
anger on his wasted enthusiasm. We find nothing whatever of
this in More. He forms a perfectly calm and equable judgment.
" As for any partial favour that I bear to the clergy," writes
More, " I never said that they were all faultless, nor I never
excused their faults. As I loved and honoured the good, so
was I not slack in providing for the correction of those that were
bad and slanderous to their own order. Which sort had at my
hand so little favour, that there was no man into whose hands
they were more loth to come." *
In another place he writes on the subject as follows : " I wot
well, the whole world is so wretched that spiritual and temporal
everywhere all be bad enough ; God make us all better 1 But
yet, for that I haye myself seen, and by credible folk have
heard, like as ye say by our temporality (i.e., of the laity) that
we be as good and honest as anywhere else, so dare I boldly
in saying that " More's Catholic biographers have acknowledged that
he turned in disgust from the impurity of the cloister to the better
chances which he thought the world offered of living a chaste and
useful life ". Neither Erasmus nor Stapleton, nor Cresacre More, nor
Walter, nor any other Catholic writer, has acknowledged or suggested
any such thing.
* English Works, p. 868 {Apology, chap. x.).

CHOICE OF A ST.VI'E OF LIFE. 33
say that the spirituality of England, and specially that jiart in
which ye find most fault— that is, to wit, that part which we
commonly call the secular clergy — is, in learning and honest
living, well able to match, and (saving the comparisons be
odious) I would say further, far able to overmatch, number for
number, the spirituality of any nation Christian. I wot well
there be therein many very lewd and naught ; and surely,
wheresoever there is a multitude, it is not without miracle well
possible to be otherwise. But now, if the bishops would once
take unto priesthood better laymen and fewer, for of us be they
made, all the matter were more than half amended.
" Now, where ye say that ye see more vice in them than in
ourselves, truth it is that everything in them is greater, because
they be more bounden to be better. But else the things that
they missdo be the selfsame that we sin in ourselves, which
vices that, as ye say, we see more in them than in ourselves, the
cause is (I suppose), for we look more upon theirs than on
our own, and fare, as .^sop saith in a fable, that every man
carrieth a double wallet on his shoulder, and into the one that
hangeth at his breast he putteth other folk's faults, and therein
he looketh and poreth often. In the other he layeth up all his
own and swingeth it at his back, which himself never listeth to
look in, but other that come after him cast an eye into it among
(i.e., sometimes).
" Would God we were all of the mind that every man
thought no man so bad as himself, for that were the way to
mend both them and us. Now they blame us and we blame
them, and both blameworthy, and either part more ready to
find other's faults than to mend their own. For in reproach of
them we be so studious that neither good nor bad passeth
unreproved. If they be familiar we call them light ; if they be
solitary we call them fantastic ; if they be sad [i.e., serious) we
call them solemn ; if they be merry we call them mad ; if they
be holy we call them hypocrites ; If they keep few servants we
call them niggards ; if they keep many we call them pompous ;
3

34 SIR THOMAS MORE.
if a lewd priest do a lewd deed, then we say : ' Lo, see what
example the clergy giveth us ! ' as though that priest were the
clergy. But then forget we to look what good men be therein,
and what good counsel they give us, and what good ensample
they show us. But we fare as do the ravens and the carrion
crows, that never meddle with any quick (i.e., live) flesh ; but
where they may find a dead dog in a ditch thereto they flee,
and thereon they feed apace."
" Undoubtedly," he concludes, " if the clergy be nought, we
must needs be worse, as I heard once Master Colet, the good
dean of Paul's, preach. For he said that it can be none other,
but that we [i.e., the laity) must ever be one degree under
them. For surely (as he said) it can be no lie that Our Saviour
saith Himself, which saith of them that they be the salt of the
earth ; and if the salt once appall, the world must need wax
unsavoury. And He saith that they be the light of the world ;
and then if the light, saith He, be darked, how dark will then
the darkness be — that is, to wit, all the world beside, whereof He
called the clergy only the light ? " *
More, however, spoke out very strongly on that which was
the principal abuse of the Church in England in those days —
indiscriminate ordination. His friend and director, Colet, had
made this the main subject of his concio ad clerum before the
Convocation in 1512. In Barclay's poetical translation of the
" Ship of Fools," which appeared about the same time, the
matter was thus sturdily handled : —
The cause why so many priestis lacketh wit
Is in you bishops, if I durst truth express,
Which not consider what men that ye adrait
Of living, cunning, person, and godliness.
But who so ever himself thereto will dress
If an angel t be his broker to the scribe.
He is admitted, howbeit he be witless ;
Thus sold is priesthood for an unhappy bribe. $
* English Works, p. 225. {Dialogue, Bk. iii. ch. 11.)
+ A coin worth los. bearing the effigy of an angel.
t Of the abusion of the Spirituality.

CHOICE OF A STjVTE OF LIFE. 35
Following in the track of these authors. Sir Thomas wrote In
his Dialogue, pubhshed in 1528 : " 'Verily, were all the bishops
of my mind, as I know some that be, ye should not of priests
have the plenty that ye have. . Gold would we not set by if
It were as common as chalk or clay. And whereof is there now
such plenty as of priests ? The time was when few men
durst presume to take upon them the high office of priest, not
even when they were chosen and called there unto. Now
runneth every rascal and boldly offereth himself for able.
And where the dignity passeth all princes, and they that lewd
be desire it for worldly winning, yet cometh that sort thereto
with such a mad mind that they reckon almost God much
bounden to them that they vouchsafe to take it. But vs-ere I
Pope  ' ' By my soul,' quoth he, ' I would ye were, and my
lady, your wife, Popess too ! ' ' Well,' quoth I, ' then should
she devise for nuns. And as for me, touching the choice of
priests, I could not well devise better provisions than are by
the laws of the Church provided already, if they were as well
kept as they be well made J
" ' But for the number, I would surely see such a way therein
that we should not have such a rabble ; that every mean man
must have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife, which
no man almost lacketh now, to the contempt of priesthood in
as vile office as his horse keeper!'* 'That is,' quoth he,
' truth indeed, and worse too, for they keep+ hawks and dogs,
and yet me seemeth surely a more honest service to wait on a
horse than on a dog.' ' And yet I suppose,' quoth I, ' if the
laws of the Church, which Luther and Tindall would have all
broken, were all well observed and kept, this gear should not
be thus, but the number of priests would be much minished,
and the remnant much the better. For it is by the laws of the
Church provided, to the intent no priest should (unto the
slander of priesthood) be driven to live in such lewd manner
' i.e., till he looks on the priest's office as no better than an ostler's.
1* i.e., tend, take care of.

36 SIR THOMAS MORE.
or worse, there should none be admitted unto priesthood
until he have a titie of a sufficient yeariy living, either of his
own patrimony or otherwise. Nor at this day they be none
otherwise accepted.' ' Why,' quoth he, ' wherefore go there
then so many of them a-begging ? ' ' Marry,' quoth I, ' for
they delude the law and themselves also. For they never
have grant of a living that may serve them in sight for that
purpose, but they secretly discharge it ere they have it, or else
they could not get it. And thus the bishop is blinded by the
sight of the writing, and the priest goeth a-begging, for all his
grant of a good living and the law is deluded, and the order is
rebuked, by the priest's begging and lewd living, which either is
fain to walk at rovers and live upon trentals * or worse, or else
to serve in a secular man's house, which should not need if
this gap were stopped.' "f
After these serious words we may, after More's own fashion,
sum up the raatter with one of his own jests : " ^sop telleth a
fable of a poor old man, which, bearing up a hill a burden of.
bushes in his neck, panting for weariness, in the midway laid
down his burden and sat him down and sighed, and waxed so
weary of his life that he wished and called for death. Where
upon Death came anon readily toward him and asked him,
' What wilt thou with me ? ' But when the poor fellow saw
that lean whoreson there so ready, ' I called you, sir,' quoth
he, ' to pray you do so much for me as help me up again with
this bitched burden ' So ween I that, for all our words, if
that easy life and wealthy that is in religion were offered us, as
weary as we be of wedding, we would rather abide all our old
pain abroad than in a cloister take a religious man's life for
ease."i

* To become a tramp, and to get a trental (or 30 days' masses) here
and there.
t English Works, 227, 8.
J lb., p. 884 (Apology, ch. xxii.).

CHAPTER IV.
EARLY MANHOOD.
THE question of vocation appears to have been debated by
More during several years, before it was finally closed
by his marriage. Before speaking of that event, I must
go back and try to arrange what has been recorded of his early
manhood. Unfortunately his first biographers give us very few
dates ; and while we are able to determine some events from
known history, there are a few of which the exact time must
be left to conjecture. He must, then, have left Oxford at the early
age of sixteen.* After having spent some time, probably two
years, at New Inn, he was entered as a student at Lincoln's
Inn in February, 1496, being just eighteen. We know that in
the spring of 1504, when he was twenty-six, he became a mem
ber of Parhament, and he married some time in the year 1505.
His biographers tell us that he resided for four years near the
Charter-House. These were almost certainly the years that
immediately preceded his marriage. A letter of Erasmus,
dated 12th April, mentions that More is in Lincoln's Inn.
The year to which this letter belongs is fixed by a reference
to his work called the Adagia being then in the press and to
appear after Easter. The work came out in isoi.t
* He did not remain to take any degree, and it was no very unusual
thing for youths of fourteen or fifteen to proceed to the universities. I
cannot see any likelihood, however, that a youth of that age would have
been admitted to the society of Colet or of Grocyn, as Mr. Seebohm has
tonjectured. + Letter 29. The Leyden editor has affixed the year 1498 erro
neously.

38 SIR THOMAS MORE.
So much will have to be said of Erasmus in connection with
More, that it is worth while tojnvestigate here the beginnings
of their acquaintance. A'r^iculous talejias got into circulation,
which places the eariiest interview between More and Erasmus
when the forraer was chancellor.* It is enough to say that
they had been the dearest of friends for more than thirty years.
Erasmus first came to England in 149V on a visit to William
Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who had b^^^^is pupil in Paris. It
was probably at his house that he met young More. After a
short stay in London he went to Oxford. From a letter written
by Erasmus from Oxford on 28th October, 1499 (or 1498), we
find that they were already corresponding as dear friends. " I
have poured curses on the letter-carrier, by whose laziness or
treachery I fancy it must be that I have been disappointed of
the raost eagerly expected letters of my dear More [Mori mei).
* A Book of Pleasant Tales and Stories relates the matter as
follows : " Sir T. More being at my Lord Mayor's table, word was
brought him that a foreigner inquired for his Lordship (he being then
Lord Chancellor). They having well-nigh dined, the Lord Mayor
ordered one of his officers to take the gent into his care and give him
what he best liked. The officer took Erasmus into the Lord Mayor's
cellar, where he chose to eat oysters, and drank wine drawn into a
leathern jack and poured into a silver cup. As soon as Erasmus had
well refreshed himself he was introduced to Sir T. More. At his first
coming in he saluted Sir Thomas in Latin. Sir Thoraas, having never
seen him before, asked him, Unde venis ? (Whence do you come ?). Eras
mus answered, Ex inferis (from the lower regions), which has three
meanings — the Netherlands, the cellar, and hell. Sir Thomas : Quid
ibi agitur ? (What is done there ?). Erasmus : Vivis vescuntur et bibunt
ex ocreis (They feed on the living and drink out of boots). Sir Thomas :
An me noscis ? (Do you know me?). Erasmus: Aut tu es Morus aut
nullus (You are More or no one). Sir Thomas : Et tu es aut Deus
aut demon aut mens Erasmus (You are either God or the devil or
my own Erasmus). In another story they first met at table without
introduction and got into debate about the Real Presence. Erasmus put
forward sceptical arguments, and More defended the Catholic Faith. At
last Erasmus exclairaed : Aut tu es Morus aut nullus ; and More retorted:
Aut tu cs Erasmus aut diabolus.

EARLY MANHOOD. 39
For that you have failed on your part I neither want nor ought to
suspect, though I expostulated with you most vehemently in my
last letter. Adieu, my most delightful More [Vale, jucun-
dissime More)." More was then twenty-one, Erasmus about ten
years older. In a letter (to be quoted later) Erasmus describes
the beauty, or rather the charm, of his person, only surpassed
by the grace of his manners and disposition. Jacobus Battus
tells how Erasmus, returning to the Continent in January, 1500,
from his first visit to England, spoke with enthusiasm of the
kindness of Prior Richard Charnock, the erudition of Colet,
and the sweetness of More [suavitatem).* In another letter
Erasmus says : Thomce Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura
vel mollius vel dulcius vel felicius ? (Ep. 14). "Did Nature
ever frame a sweeter, happier character than that of More ? " t
It speaks much for both More and Erasmus that these terras
of admiration and endearment continue to the end. In the
interests of truth, I must declare at the outset that I cannot
find the very slightest foundation for the assertion of Stapleton,
copied by Cresacre More and many others, that in the course
of time their friendship cooled. Abundant proofs of the con
trary will appear as we proceed.
In giving an account of his various writings, Erasmus has
related an event that illustrates the life of More at this epoch :
" I composed a heroic poem on the praise of Henry VII. and
ofhis children, and of Britain. It was only a three days' task,
yet it was a task, for it was some years since I had written or
even read a poem. It was partly shame and pairtly pain that
drew this from me. Thomas More, who, while I was staying in
the country house of Mountjoy, had paid me a visit, took me out
for a walk, to a neighbouring village. There all the king's
children, except Arthur, the eldest, were being educated. When
we reached the Hall the attendants (iota pompd) both of that
house and of Lord Monntjoy's were assembled. In the midst
" Ep. 62. t Ep. 14. Dec. 5, 1497 (or rather 1498).

40 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Stood Henry, then nine years old, yet already with a royal
bearing, betokening a certain loftiness of mind joined with
singular condescension. At his right was Margaret, about
eleven years old. She afterwards married James, King of the
Scots. At his left in play was Mary, four years old. Edmund,
an infant, was carried by the nurse. More with his friend
Arnold,* after saluting Prince Henry, presented him with I
know not what writing. As I was entirely taken by surprise I
had nothing to offer, and I was obliged to make a promise that
I would write soraething to show my respect. I was somewhat
vexed with More for not warning me, and especially so since
the prince while we were dining sent me a note asking some
fruit of my pen. I went home and in spite of the Muses, from
whom I had long been separated, I finished my poem within
three days." t
The date of this incident is fixed by the mention of Prince
Edmund, who was born on Feb. 21, 1499. Erasmus, therefore,
previous tp leaving England in January, 1500, had gone to take
leave of his former pupil, Lord Mountjoy. That nobleman
had studied under the direction of the Dutch scholar in Paris ;
he was now beginning his political career and had lately married.
Erasmus relates that at the desire of Mountjoy he had under
taken to write a "declamation" for and against the desirability of
taking a wife. When he had finished the first part he showed
it to his young patron, who read it carefully. " How do you
like it?" said the author. "So much that you have
thoroughly persuaded me to marry,'' replied Mountjoy.
"Stay," said Erasmus, "till you see what I have to say on
the other side." " No," replied the young man, " that part will
do for you ; what you have written suits me exactly." When
Erasmus wrote this in 1524, Mountjoy had buried his third
wife, and is sure, says Erasmus, to take a fourth if he lives. J
" Another young lawyer.
i Epist. ad Botzhemurn, written in Feb. 1524, 5. + lb.

EARLY MANHOOD. 41
When Erasmus heard that the merciless tyrant Henry had
placed on a pole on London Bridge the parboiled head of
his "most sweet," "most delightful,'' his "dariing" More,
how must the horror as well as the pathos of the thought have
been increased by the memory of that pretty scene in the Royal
nursery, where he had the first glimpse of Henry and took note
of his princely affability ! (humanitas). Whether this was
More's first acquaintance with Prince Henry we are not told.
It may have been such, and it seems likely that the httle plot
was arranged by Lord Mountjoy, not to get Erasmus into a
scrape, but to bring about an introduction that might be useful
to him in later years, when Henry should have become a prince
of the Church, which before his brother's death was considered
his probable destiny. As it was, the young prince, by having
seen Erasmus, came to take a natural Interest in his writings,
by the aid of which he tried, not altogether unsuccessfully, to
form for himself a good Latin style. At a later period Henry
sought to attach him to his court and bestowed some not very
royal largesse.
At that court More was to spend the best part of his life,
but, as we have already seen, he was as yet undecided, and was
by no means eager to lay hold of the wheel of fortune. Indeed
his first step in public life was more calculated to ruin himself
and others, than to lead to wealth or honour. The matter
is thus related by Roper : " In the time of King Henry the
Seventh, More was made a burgess of the Parliament wherein
was demanded by the king (as I have heard reported) about
three-fifteenths, for the marriage of his eldest daughter, that
then should be Scottish Queen ; at the last debating whereof
he made such arguments and reasons against, that the king's
demands were thereby overthrown. So that one of the king's
privy chamber, named M. Tyler, being present thereat, brought
word to the king out of the Parliament house that a beardless
boy had disappointed all his purpose. Whereupon the king,
conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied

42 SIR THOMAS MORE.
until he had some way revenged it. And forasmuch as he,
nothing having, nothing could lose, his Grace devised a cause
less quarrel against his father, keeping him in the Tower till he
had made him pay a hundred pounds' fine.
" Shortly hereupon it fortuned that this Sir Thomas More,*
coming in a suit to Dr. Fox, Bishop of Winchester, one of the
king's privy council, the bishop called him aside, and pre
tended great favour towards him, and promised that if he would
be ruled by him he would not fail but bring him into the king's
favour again, meaning, as it afterwards appeared, to cause
him thereby to confess his offence against the king, whereby
his Highness might with the better colour have occasion to
revenge his displeasure against him. But when he came from
the bishop, he fell in communication with one Mr. Whitford,
his familiar friend, then chaplain to that bishop, and afterwards
a father of Sion, and showed him what the bishop had said
to him, desiring to hear his advice therein ; who, for ' the
Passion of God, prayed him in no wise to fohow his counsel :
'for my lord,' quoth he, 'to serve the king's turn, will not
stick to agree to his own father's death ' So Sir Thomas
More returned to the bishop no raore ; and had not the king
soon after died, he was determined to have gone over sea,
thinking that being in the king's indignation, he could not
live in England without great danger."
The Parliament in which the events thus related occurred
was that called in the spring of 1504. No returns can now
be found to tell us what borough More represented,t nor has
any of his biographers supplied the name. There was nothing
* Called Sir by anticipation.
+ There were seven parliaments in the reign of Henry VIL, but fot
none of them have returns been found (see Parliamentary Blue Book,
called " Parliaments of England," 1879, being a Return to Order of
House of Lords of 1877). Bishop Stubbs, in his Lectures on Medieval
and Modern History, discusses the financial matters of the reign of
Henry VII. p. 356, sqq.

EARLY MANHOOD.

43

factious or unreasonable In More's character, and he must have
felt strongly on the subject of the king's avarice, to lead the
opposition as he did. It will be remembered that under
the advice of Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley,
Barons of the Exchequer, the king was at that time rousing
the whole nation to so great a pitch of exasperation by his
exactions and the unjust expedients to which he resorted,
that his advisers both suffered the penalty of death at the
beginning of the next reign. Several of the citizens of
London had suffered in their goods or liberty ; and it is
probable that More was their parliamentary representative.
The treatment of John More is a specimen of what was
happening to hundreds. There was never wanting a pre
text to throw into prison, at the accusation of an informer, any
official or prominent person ; and, as the accused felt sure of
condemnation by a packed jury if he came to trial, he was glad
to purchase freedom by payment of a fine. The very preachers
in the" pulpits were admonishing Henry, and protesting against
what was going on.* As More could not remedy these evils,
he thought it at least his duty to make a stand against exces
sive generosity to such a king. By his influence the grant was
reduced from ;^i 13,000, which would have been the product
of the three-fifteenths demanded, to ;£'3o,ooo.t Dudley had
been Speaker in this Parliaraent. Stapleton relates that, when
some years later he was condemned to death, More visited
him in prison, and asked him whether he had not acted well
in resisting the exaction. " Yes ! " replied Dudley, " and God
was with you that you confessed no fault against the king.
Had you done so, you would have paid the penalty with your
head." * Hall's Chronicle.
+ See Seebohm, p. 145, and Lingard's account of the last years of
Henry VII. Lingard, however, only mentions this parliamentary grant
in a note, and has no reference to More, or to the demand of the three-
fifteenths.

44

SIR THOMAS MORE.

Roper has mentioned More's project of seeking security on
the Continent. We know from his own statement that he did
in fact cross the sea, whether to make a tour, as was the custom
with young gentlemen, as Stapleton supposes, or to choose a
place of retirement, is uncertain. In 1515 he wrote a letter to
Martin Dorpius, in which he thus raentions this visit : —
" What esteem you have for our English universities I do
not know. You seem to set so much by Louvain and Paris,
that, as regards dialectics at least, you think they are banished
from the rest of the world. Now, seven years ago I was in both
those universities, and though not for a very long time, yet I took
pains to ascertain what was taught there and what methods
were followed. Though I respect both of them, yet neither
from what I then saw, nor from what I have since heard, have I
found any reason why, even in dialectics, I should wish any
sons of mine (for whom I desire the very best education) to be
taught there rather than at Oxford or Cambridge.''
This letter is dated October, 15 15. The visit, therefore, to
France and Flanders must have been in 1508, before the death
of Henry VIL, but subsequent to his own marriage.
Before we come to that turning-point of his life something
must be said of a few of his other friends. One of these was
William Lilly, a young man who, after his course at Oxford,
had gone to Rhodes, and resided there some years for the study
of Greek.* Similarity of taste drew him and More closely to
gether. More perfected himself in Greek by Lilly's deeper
knowledge, and in his turn imparted to Lilly some of his
own ardent piety. They exercised and amused themselves by
translating into Latin verse epigrams from the Greek .Antho
logia. Their respective translations were printed in juxtaposi
tion in the Progymnastica Thomce Mori et Gulielmi Lilii
Sodaliiim.\ A few years later Lilly became head master of St.
* Rhodes was then in the possession of the Knights of St. John.
t They will be noticed in Chapter VII.

E.\RLY MANHOOD. 45
Paul's School, and his name was long known to every educated
youth in England by the Latin grammar which he composed.
In the last chapter mention was twice made of Dr. Colet,
Dean of St. Paul's— by Mr. Seebohm, as of one who appeared
opportunely to rescue More from the fate into which his ill-
advised enthusiasm for the priesthood was hurrying him, and
by More himself, as of one who inspired him with the veneration
for the priesthood which he had just explained and defended.
Colet, hke More, was a Londoner by birth, and an Oxford
student. He was a man of considerable learning, of great
zeal, especially as a preacher, but he was pre-eminently a man
of character fitted to influence others. His determination may
sometimes have been pushed into obstinacy and contentious
ness. More, who loved and admired him greatly, notes this
foible in a letter to Erasmus : " Colet is busy at Greek, using
the occasional help of my Clements. I believe he will persevere
and succeed, especially if you urge him from Louvain. Yet,
perhaps you had better leave him to his own impulse. You
know how, out of a certain disputatiousness, he resists those
who urge him, even though they are only persuading him to
that on which he was already bent." *
It is possible, though not certain, that Colet had made the
acquaintance of More when they were both at Oxford, though
Colet was ten or eleven years older, and a lecturer in Holy
Scripture when More was merely a student in arts. At a later
period Colet used to say that More was the one genius of whom
Britain could then boast, and Erasmus, who quotes the words,
remarks that Colet was a man of keen and accurate
judgment. This eminent man More had chosen as hi; con
fessor. At what period he placed himself under his spiritual
guidance we are not told. Erasmus, who knew Colet'; life and
opinions thoroughly, mentions his sentiments regarding the
confessional : " He had the utmost esteem for secret confession,
and used to say that from no practice did he derive so much
* Inter Epist. Erasm. App. 25 (25th Feb., 1516).

46 SIR THOMAS MORE.
consolation and spiritual profit ; but he was equally opposed to
scriipulous confessions and constant repetitions ".*
If he loved a delicate but disliked a timid and feeble
conscience, in More he would find one after his own heart,
and from" their spiritual intercourse there grew up an intimate
and lasting friendship.
Stapleton has preserved a letter written by More to Dr. Colet.
The Latin is evidently the original work of More, and not due
to Stapleton. It is probable that a rough copy came into the
hands of one of More's secretaries, who communicajed it to
More's biographer : —
" I was walking up and down the law courts when your ser
vant met me. I was delighted at seeing him, both because I
have always been fond of him, and still more because I thought
he had not come [to London] without you. But when I learnt,
not only that you had not returned, but were not to return for
a considerable time, I was as greatiy dejected. What can be
more distressing to me than to be deprived of your most dear
society, after being guided by your wise counsels, cheered by
your charming familiarity, assured by your earnest sermons,
and helped forward by your example, so that I used to obey
your very look or nod ? With these helps I felt myself
strengthened, but without them I seem to languish. Follow
ing your guidance, I had escaped almost from the jaws of hell ;
now, like Euridice, I know not by what force I am being drawn
back into darkness. Euridice, however, suffered this violence
because of the presence of Orpheus; I, because of your absence.
What is there in the city to incite to virtue ? On the contrary,
when one wishes to live well, by a thousand devices and seduc
tions the life of a city drags one down. False love and flattery
* Ut confessionera secretam vehementer probabat, negans se ulla ex re
capere tantumdera consolationis ac boni spiritus, ita anxiam ac subinde
repetitam vehementer damnabat (Epist. 435). Though Erasmus in this
is probably speaking of Colet's principles as a penitent, they would of
course guide him also as a confessor.

EARLV MANHOOD.

47

on the one side ; on the other, hatreds and quarrels and legal
wranglings. One sees nothing but butchers, fishmongers, cooks,
confectioners, fishermen, fowlers, ministering to the appetites of
the body, and to the world and its prince, the devil. Why, the
very houses intercept a great part of the light, and prevent one
from seeing the heavens. It is not the horizon * that bounds
the prospects, but the roofs of the houses. So I do not blame
you that you are not yet tired of the country, where you see the
simple country folk, ignorant of city tricks ; and, wherever you
turn your eyes, the beautiful landscape refreshes, the fresh air
exhilarates, and the sight of heaven delights you. You see
nothing but the kind gifts of nature, and the holy impressions
of innocence. Still, I would not have you so captivated by
these charms as not to hasten back to us as soon as possible.
For if you dislike the town, yet your country parish of Stepney,
for which also you must be solicitous, will afford you as many
attractions as the place where you now are ; and from thence
you can now and then pass into the city, where you will find a
great field of merit. In the country, men are, of their own
nature, harmless — or, at least, not involved in such enormous
crimes — so that the hand of an ordinary physician will sufiice
for them ; whereas, in the city, both on account of the multi
tude of the diseases and their inveteracy, no physician but the
most skilled can do any good.
" There come sometimes into the pulpit of St. Paul's some
who promise health ; yet, when they seem to have preached
beautifully, their life is so contrary to their words that they
irritate our wounds rather than cure them. For they cannot
persuade us to believe them fit to have the cure of other men's
diseases entrusted to them when they are themselves more sick
than any. No ; we get angry, and refuse to allow our wounds
to be touched by those whose own wounds are ulcers. But if,
as naturalists affirm, the physician in whom the patient has
* dpiCuvos ille circulus.

48 SIR THOMAS MORE.
perfect confidence is the one likely to cure, there is no doubt
that there is no one more fit than yourself to undertake the
cure of this whole city. How ready aU are to put themselves
in your hands — to trust and obey you — you have already found
by experience, and at the present time their longing and eager
desire proves.
"Come, then, my dear Colet, even for the sake of your
Stepney, which laments your long absence as an infant does
its mother's ; come for the sake of [London] your native place,
which merits your care no less than do your parents. Lastly,
though this is but a feeble motive, let your regard for me move
you, since I have given myself entirely to you, and am awaiting
your return full of solicitude. Meanwhile I shall pass my time
with Grocyn, Linacre and our friend Lilly : the first of whom
is, as you know, the only director of my life in your absence ;
the second, the master of my studies ; the third, my most dear-
companion. Farewell, and continue to love me as you do. —
From London, the loth November."
As Colet resigned the cure of Stepney on 21st September,
1505, this letter could not have been written later than 1504,
nor can it have an earlier date, since only in that year had he
begun to preach in St. Paul's. More, therefore, was twenty-six
years old. If the letter has a httle of the tone of a boy's
theme, it must be remembered that it was written in Latin, which
suggested a literary exercise with its classical allusions, rather
than the familiar language of the heart. This was a natural
reaction after the vernacular barbarisms of the last century, as
seen in the Paston letters. At a more advanced age More did
not disdain to write in English when addressing an Englishman,
though he wrote occasionally in Latin to his own daughters as
an exercise or encouragement to them.
The rhetorical styleof the letter just quoted seems to justify
a suspicion of exaggeration in the picture of the great preachers
who had the coveted honour of appearing in the pulpit of St.
Paul's. They can scarcely have been all mere sounding brass

EARLY MANHOOD. 49
or tinkling cymbals. In any case too much has been sometimes
made of More's expressions, which imply pride and ostentation
rather than immorality.*
Having seen in this letter More's practice of frequent con
fession, a practice to which he was faithful to the end of his life,
it will help us to estimate a peculiarity of More's character if I
place here a specimen of his epigrams, probably composed
about this time. The following translation is very literal : — f
A squall arose ; the vessel's tossed ;
The sailors fear their lives are lost.
" Our sins, our sins," dismayed they cry,
" Have wrought this fatal destiny ! "
A monk, it chanced, was of the crew.
And round him to confess they drew.
Yet still the restless ship is tossed.
And still they fear their lives are lost.
One sailor, keener than the rest.
Cries, " With our sins she's still oppressed ;
Heave out that raonk who bears thera all.
And then full well she'll ride the squall ".
So said, so done ; with one accord
They threw the caitiff overboard ;
And now the bark before the gale
Scuds with light hull and easy sail.
Learn hence the weight of sin to know.
With which a ship could scarcely go.
These good-humoured and innocent lines Mr. Seebohm gives
as "a sample of the epigrams in which the pent-up bitter
thoughts of the past year or two were making their escape.
* The criticism strikes one as not too charitable, and exeraplifies what
More hiraself says about readiness to find fauh (see supra, p. 33). Men
openly immoral could hardly be invited to occupy that pulpit, and to accuse
them of secret immoralities would be grave slander. Perhaps, after all,
this letter may be simply a first draft from which Stapleton printed.
+ It is by Archdeacon Wrangham, and was printed in Cayley's Life
of More. 4

50 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Some were on priests and monks— sharp biting satires on their
evil side, and by no means showing abject faith in monkhood."*
Another writer, with equally portentous gravity, observes:
"Among the Epigramraata we find one upon the subject of
auricular confession which no strict adherent to the Church of
Rome would have ventured to circulate among his friends, and
much less to print ".t
No doubt these writers are sincere in their criticisra. The
anonymous author of Philomorus, though very friendly to More,
perhaps I should rather say, because very friendly, thinks he was
at least half sceptical as regards certain Catholic doctrines and
practices, and that if he had lived till now he would have been
a good Anglican. Mr. Seebohm first Imagines More a disgusted
and disappointed man, and then takes a bit of simple fun for
" biting satire on the monks" But surely, if there is any biting
satire here, it is on the sailors, not on the monk. The monki
in presence of death, calmly and courageously perforras a
difficult duty, and shows his entire conviction of what he had
always taught. There is no more satire on the monks than in
the old lines : —
When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be,
When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he.
I draw attention, however, to this epigram and the. comments of
modern Protestant writers, not to defend or explain these lines,
Ibut because More so frequently indulged in such jokes and
1 tales that to some he appears sceptical, and to others supersti-
'tious. " It Is indeed most wonderful,'' exclaims one biographer,
" that at no period of his life did a ray ofthat light that was now
breaking upon the world penetrate his mind. With talentsi
learning, and wit far beyond his contemporaries, he was also
far beyond them in religious bigotry and superstition.''^: Yet
this blind bigot is claimed by others as a forerunner of the
* Oxford Reformers, p. i8i. \ Philomorus, p. 127.
J Writer in Chalmer's Dictionary of Biography.

EARLV MANHOOD.

51

Reformation, or the teacher of a deeper and more fundamental
Reformation than that which has usurped the name.* Neither
party seems to understand that a man can believe earnestly,
even so as to be willing to die for his faith, and yet talk and
write easily and merrily about it. "Protestants,'' says Cardinal
Newman, " keep the exhibition of their faith for high days and
great occasions, when it comes forth with sufficient pomp and
gravity of language, and ceremonial of manner. Truths slowly
totter out with Scripture texts at their elbow, as unable to walk
alone. Protestants condemn Catholics, because, however
religious they may be, they are natural, unaffected, easy and
cheerful in their mention of sacred things ; and they think
themselves never so real as when they are especially solemn." t
It will be necessary to say more on this subject when we
consider how the Encomium Morice was written by Erasraus in
More's house, and with his approbation and encouragement,
and when we consider More's style of controversy. Enough
has been said for my present purpose, which is not to defend
More, who needs no defence, much less to defend anything
Catholic, but to utter a protest against the sincere but most
groundless and unreasonable deductions made from More's acts
or words at this crisis of his life. We may now study him as a
married man and a lawyer.
* This is Mr. Seebohra's thesis.
t Lectures on Difficulties felt by Anglicans {Led. ix. n. 7).

CHAPTER V.

PERSONAL.

MORE had sought earnestly to discover the will of God re
garding the disposition of his life. He had a thorough
determination to serve God with his whole heart,
whatever might be his state. He had felt himself drawn in
two opposite directions : to the married life, which involved the
profession of the law to which his father had dedicated him,
but for which he felt no attraction ; and to the life of a priest,
or, perhaps, of a monk. His literary education and his taste
for letters fitted him for either life. Learning was no longer
confined to ecclesiastics, though they still formed by far the
majority of studious and cultured men. He had a profound
piety; but piety befits the laity no less than the clergy.
At length, after many counsels and much prayer, his
decision was taken. Having seen that he was called to
the married state, it remained for him to seek for a lady
who should be a suitable partner of his life, for no previous
inclination of the heart had led him to set aside the state
of celibacy.
It seems probable, indeed, that there had been some
transient attachment in early youth, but it was altogether past
and could never have been very serious. In a Latin poem
among his Epigrams he tells us his little romance : —
Scarce had I bid ray sixteenth summer hail.
And two in thine were wanting to the tale.

PERSONAL. 53
When thy soft mien— ah, mien for ever fled ! —
On my tranced heart its guiltless influence shed.
The premature passion caused some amusement among his
companions and indignation in the young lady's relatives, for
More at that time was but a poor law student at New Inn.
Then the duenna and the guarded door
Baffled the stars, and bade us meet no more.
They did not meet again until five-and-twenty years had
past, ilore was then married for the second time, and the
lady's charms had passed away ; but the poet elegantly described
the impression made by the meeting : —
Crimeless, ray heart you stole in life's soft prime,
And still possess that heart without a crime ;
Pure was the love which in my youth prevailed,
And age would keep it pure if honour failed.*
There was very little romance connected with either his first
or second marriage. Both wives were rather short in stature,
and when More was asked why he had not selected taller'
women he replied, rather in the spirit of his father : " Of two
evils you should choose the less ".+ This, of course, was a
mere joke, and Roper has given the true history of his first
courtship, as he heard it from More's own lips, after the death
of the lady : " He resorted to the house of one Mr. Colt, a
gentleman of Essex,J that had often invited him thither, having
three daughters, whose honest conversation and virtuous educa
tion provoked him there specially to set his affection. And,
albeit his mind most served him to the second daughter, for
* Wrangham's translation. The poera is not in the first edition of
the Epigrams of 1518, but in the second of 1520. It was written in 1519,
when twenty-five years {quinque lustra) had passed since he was sixteen ;
another proof that he was born in 1478.
t Stapleton, ch. xiii.
} Cresacre says, of NewhaU in Essex.

54 SIR THOMAS MORE.
that he thought her the fairest and best favoured, yet when he
considered that it would be both great grief and some shame
to the eldest to see her younger sister, preferred before her in
marriage, he then of a certain pity* framed his fancy to her,
and soon after married her." The young lady's Christian
name was Joan or Jane.
" She was very young,'' says Erasmus, " of good faniily, with
a mind soraewhat uncultivated, having always resided in the
country with her parents and sisters; but she was all the raore
apt to be raoulded according to his habits. He took care to
have her instructed in learning, and especially in all musical
accomplishments, and had made her such that he could have
willingly passed his whole life with her, but a premature death
separated them." His affection is shown by one little word in
his own epitaph, composed more than twenty years after her
death. He calls her More's dear little wife [uxorcula Mori).
It is curious that love of books and love of music, on the part
of a wife, are two of the components of conjugal happiness
mentioned by More in his poem to Candidus, of which the
title is, " What sort of wife to choose ". She raust neither be
too talkative nor too taciturn, but she must sing and she must
read. Far frora her lips' soft door
Be noise, be silence stern,
And her's be learning's store,
Or her's the power to learn ;
While still thy raptured gaze
Is on her features hung.
As words of honied grace
Steal frora her honied tongue.

* Sir James Mackintosh defends the use of the word "pity" from the
charge of being ungallant. It signifies, he says, " the natural refineraent,
which shrinks from humbling the harmless self-complacency of an
innocent girl".

PERSONAL. 55
Such Orpheus' wife, whose fate
With tears old fables tell,
Or never would her raate
Have fetched her back frora hell.*
After his marriage J^Iore went to live In Bucklesbury, in the
parish of St. Stephen, Wallbrook.t From this marriage sprang
four children: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Mar
garet, the eldest, was born towards the end of 1505 or early in
1506 ; John, the youngest, in 1509. J After about six years of
happy married life his wife died, seemingly in childbirth. §
Within two or three years, according to Cresacre, or as
Erasmus, better informed, says : " within a few months of the
death of his wife " he married again.
Of this second marriage and of the education of his family I
shall speak later on. This seems the place to give sorae
account ofthe man himself: his appearance, his habits, and his
general character. Fortunately his portrait has been drawn by
a master hand, and by one who drew from the life and not
from the report of others. It is in a letter of Erasraus to Von
• Proculque stulta sit Talem olim ego putera
Parvis labellulis Et vatis Orphei
Semper loquacitas ; Fuisse conjugem ;
Proculque rusticura Nec unquara ab inferis
Semper silentium. Curasset improbo
Sit ilia vel modo Labore foeminam
Instructa literis Referre rusticara.
Vel talis ut modo
Sit apta literis
? * « *
t " In the paryshe of St. Stephen's, Wallbroke, in London, where I
dwelled before I corae to Chelsith" {English Works, p. 131). Bucklesbury
is just south of the Poultry, Cheapside.
J The precise dates are unknown, but the calculation is made from
their ages marked on the Basle picture.
§ Erasmus hints at a dead child : " liberos aliquot, quorum adhuc super-
sunt puellse tres, puer unus "

56 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Hutten. Erasmus, as we have seen, had known and loved
More as a youth. After about six years' absence from England
he returned to find More married. They renewed their friend
ship and pursued their Greek studies together. The letter that
I am about to translate was not written until 1519, by which
time, from several years' residence in England, and much inter
course with More, Erasmus had ample opportunity to strengthen
or to correct his first impressions. Of these visits and this
intercourse much wih be said. The picture which we are about
to contemplate does not belong to one year more than another,
but is that of More's manhood before he had risen to high
dignity at court.
Ulrich von Hutten, a German noble, who subsequentiy
proved himself to have little resemblance with More,* had
been so charmed by his Epigrams, his translations from Lucian,
and his Utopia, that he wrote to their common friend Erasmus,
begging him to tell him all he knew concerning the brilliant
EngUshraan. I will give his answer without modifying a
syllable, but omitting a few sentences that are unimportant or
quoted by me elsewhere : —
" You ask me to paint you a full-length portrait of More as
in a picture. Would that I could do it as perfectly as you
eagerly desire it. At least I will try to give a sketch of the
man, as well as from my long familiarity with him I have either
observed or can now recall. To begin, then, with what is least
known to you, in stature he is not tall, though not reraarkably
short. His limbs are formed with such perfect symmetry as to
leave nothing to be desired. His complexion is white, his face
fair rather than pale, and though by no means ruddy, a faint
flush of pink appears beneath the whiteness of his skin. His
hair is dark brown, or brownish black. The eyes are grayish
* In quadam epistola confero ilium (Huttenum) cum Thoma Moro,
quo viro multis jam saeculis nihil vidit sol integrius, candidius, araicius,
cordatius. Hujus se vehementer dissimilem probavit Huf.enus, meque
vanum prasconem fecit (Erasm. Ep. ad Botzhemurn).

PERSONAL. 57
blue, with some spots, a kind which betokens singular talent,
and among the English is considered attractive, whereas
Germans generally prefer black. It is said that none are so
free from vice.
" His countenance Is in harmony with his character, being
always expressive of an amiable joyousness, and even an
incipient laughter, and, to speak candidly, it Is better framed
for gladness than for gravity and dignity, though without any
approach to folly or buffoonery. The right shoulder is a little
higher than the left, especially when he walks. This is not a
defect of birth, but the result of habit, such as we often con
tract,* In the rest of his person there is nothing to offend.
His hands are the least refined part of his body.
" He was from his boyhood always most careless about what
ever concerned his body. His youthful beauty may be guessed
from what still remains, though I knew him when he was not
more than three-and-twenty .t Even now he is not much over
forty. He has good health, though not robust ; able to
endure all honourable toil, and subject to very few diseases.
He seems to promise a long life, as his father still survives in a
wonderfully green old age.
" I never saw anyone so Indifferent about food. Until he ;
was a young man he delighted in drinking water, but that was
natural to him (id illi patrium fuit). Yet not to seem singular
or morose, he would hide his temperance from his guests by
drinking out of a pewter vessel beer almost as light as water, or
often pure water. It is the custom in England to pledge each
other in drinking wine. In doing so he will merely touch it
* " Such men be even like followers of Chaucer and Petrarch as one
here in England did follow Sir Thomas More ; who, being most unlike
unto him in wit and learning, nevertheless in wearing his gown awry
upon the one shoulder, as Sir Thomas was wont to do, would needs be
counted like unto him " (Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster, p. 216 ;
ed. 1884).
+ More was not yet twenty when Erasmus first made his acquaintance.

58 SIR THOMAS MORE.
with his lips, not to seem to dislike it, or to fall in with the
custom. He likes to eat corned beef and coarse bread much
leavened, rather than what most people count delicacies.
Otherwise he has no aversion to what gives harmless pleasure
to the body. He prefers milk diet and fruits, and is especially
fond of eggs.
" His voice is neither loud nor very weak, but penetrating ;
not resounding or soft, but that of a clear speaker. Though
he delights in every kind of music he has no vocal talents.*
He speaks with great clearness and perfect articulation, without
rapidity or hesitation. He likes a simple dress, using neither
silk nor purple nor gold chain, except when it may not be
omitted. It is wonderful how negligent he is as regards all the
ceremonious forms in which most men make politeness to con
sist. He does not require them from others, nor is he anxious
to use them himself, at interviews or banquets, though he is
not unacquainted with them when necessary. But he thinks
it unmanly to spend much time in such trifles. Formerly he
was most averse to the frequentation of the court, for he has
a great hatred of constraint (tyrannis) and loves equality. Not
without much trouble he was drawn into the court of Henry
VIIL, though nothing more gentle and modest than that
prince can be desired. By nature More is chary of his liberty
and of ease, yet, though he enjoys ease, no one is more alert
or patient when duty requires it.
" He seems born and framed for friendship, and is a most
faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all ; but
if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices admit no
correction, he manages to loosen and let go the intimacy rather
than to break it off suddenly. *When he finds any sincere and
according to his heart, he so delights in their society and con
versation as to place in it the principal charm of life. He
abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which
.*" I * He could, however, sing with the choir in the church.

PERSONAL. 59
most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent
of his own interests, no one is more diligent In those of his
friends.* In a word, if you want a perfect model of friendship,^
you will find It in no one better than in More. In society he
is so polite, so sweet-mannered, that no one is of so melancholy
a disposition as not to be cheered by him, and there is no mis
fortune that he does not alleviate. Since his boyhood he has
so delighted in merriment, that it seems to be part of his nature ;
yet he does not carry It to buffoonery, nor did he ever like
biting pleasantries. When a youth he both wrote and acted
some small comedies. If a retort is made against himself, even
without ground, he likes it from the pleasure he finds in witty
repartees. Hence he amused himself with composing epigrams
when a young man, and enjoyed Lucian above all writers. In
deed, it was he who pushed me to write the " Praise of Folly,''
that is to say, he made a camel frisk.
" In human affairs there is nothing from which he does not
extract enjoyment, even from things that are most serious. If
he converses with the learned and judicious, he delights in
their talent; if with the ignorant and foolish, he enjoys their
stupidity. He is not even offended by professional jesters.
With a wonderful dexterity he accommodates himself to every
disposition. As a rule, in talking with women, even with his
own wife, he is full of jokes and banter.
" No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one
departs less from common sense. One of his great delights is
to consider the forms, the habits, and the instincts of different
kinds of animals. There is hardly a species of bird that he
does not keep in his house, and rare animals such as monkeys,
foxes, ferrets, weasels and the hke. If he meets with anything
foreign, or in any way remarkable, he eagerly buys it, so that
his house is full of such things, and at every turn they attract
* Several of the letters of Erasmus show that More acted as his banker
and postraaster.

6o SIR THOMAS MORE.
the eye of visitors, and his own pleasure is renewed whenever
he sees others pleased."
The letter goes on to describe More's literary pursuits and
his care and education of his family. For these passages a
more convenient place will be found. To complete what
Erasmus has said of his personal habits, I will add some ex
tracts from Stapleton, whose testimony in these matters is
alraost as authentic as that of Erasmus, being derived from
members of More's family. He enters into details concerning
More's practices of piety, which it would have been an im
pertinence in Erasmus to relate during his friend's hfetime,
especially in writing to a man like Ulrich von Hutten, who
had little sympathy with such things.
But let us first hear More himself describe the division of
his day, and his view of the duties of a man ofthe world. His
words in the Preface to his Utopia are as follows : "While I do
daily bestow my time about law raatters — sorae to plead, some
to hear, some as an arbitrator with mine award to determine,
some as an umpire or a judge with my sentence finally to dis
cuss ; while I go one way to see and visit my friend ; another
way about mine own private affairs; while I spend almost all
the day abroad amongst other, and the residue at home amongst
my own ; I leave to myself, I mean to my book, no time. For
¦^when I am come home I must commune with my wife, chat
with my children, and talk with my servants. All the which
things I reckon and account among business, forasmuch as they
must of necessity be done ; and done must they needs be, un
less a man will be a stranger in his own house. And in any
wise a man must so fashion and order his conditions, and so
appoint and dispose himself, that he be merry, jocund, and
pleasant among them, whom either nature has provided, or
chance hath made, or he himself hath chosen to be the fellows
and companions of his life. When do I write, then ? and
all this while have I spoken no word of sleep, neither yet of
raeat, which among a great number doth waste no less time

PERSONAL. 6 1
than doth sleep — wherein almost half the lifetime of man creepeth
away. I, therefore, do win and get only that time which I steal
from sleep and meat" *
From this we might conjecture that Thomas More kept late
hours, that he remained studying when others had retired to
rest. He adopted a much wiser course. Those were indeed
days of early rising and early sleeping according to our notions.
But More's hours were extraordinary even then. Stapleton says :
" His custom was not to give more than four, or at most five,
hours to sleep. He used to rise at two o'clock in the morning,
and until seven to give himself to study and devotion, t
" Every day before any other business — his very early studies
alone excepted — he used to hear Mass. This duty he so
strictly observed, that when summoned once by the king at a
time when he was assisting at Mass, and sent for a second and
third time, he would not go until the whole Mass was ended ;
and to those who called him and urged him to go at once to
the king and leave the Mass, he replied that he was paying his
court to a greater and better Lord, and must first perform that
duty. Henry was then pious and God-fearing, and did not
take in bad part this piety of More.
"He used," continues Stapleton, "daily to recite morning
and evening prayers, to which he would add the seven peni
tential psalms and the litanies. J He would often add to these
the gradual psalms and the psalm Beati Immaculati.% He
had also a collection of private prayers, some in Latin, some in
* Letter to Peter Giles (translation of Ralph Robinson).
+ Vita, cap. 4.
J The litanies referred to by Stapleton are tbose now called the Litany
of the Saints. As found in the Sarura Breviaries of the tirae of More,
they varied for each day ofthe week, though with some features in com
mon. The number of saints explicitly named was much greater
than at present.
§ There are fifteen psalms called Gradual, formerly recited by all priests
on the Wednesdays in Lent, now only by monks. The psalm Beati is
the very long ii8th psalm, which is daily recited in the morning hours.

62 SIR THOMAS MORE.
English, as may be seen in his English works. He had made
up also, imitating in this St. Jerome and others, a small
psaltery consisting of selected psalms, which he often used-
He would also make pilgrimages to holy places, sometimes
seven miles from his house, and always on foot, which even the
common people scarcely do in England."* Among these
holy places near London would be, no doubt, Our Lady of the
Pew, at Westminster ; Our Lady of Barking, near the Tower ;
Our Lady of WiUesden, then much frequented ; and Our Lady
of Grace, near the Tower.f Besides Our Lady's shrines there
were many others then rauch venerated in London — as the
Rood at the north door of St. Paul's, the Rood called St. Saviour
in Southwark, St. Dominick at the Black Friars, St. Francis at
the Grey Friars, etc. At a later period Sir Thomas earnestly
defended the practice of making pilgrimages.
" Whenever he entered on a new office, or undertook a
difficult business, he strengthened himself by the Holy Com
munion.'' So far Stapleton. J
Some other details will be given of his private devotion when
we come to his life at Chelsea, to which period may be reserved
what has been handed down regarding his family devotions and
his co-operation in the public worship in his parish church, as
well as his alms-giving.
As I began this chapter with an account of More's earthly
love, and have corae now to speak of his heavenly love, I may
conclude by a few words from his translation of the works of
Pico, Count of Mirandula, which was made just before, or at
an early period of, his married life, in which these two kinds of
love are compared. I would beg the reader who wishes seriously
to study the life of one of the world's best and greatest men
not to skip the following passage as if it were a bit of laborious
* Vita, cap. 6.
t The abbey near the Tower called Eastminster was destroyed by
Henry. J Vita, cap. 6.

PERSONAL.

63

trifling of clever men, hke the " conceits " of Donne or
Cowley. We have More's ideal of human and Christian life —
an ideal which he never changed, and which he strove hard,
and not unsuccessfull)-, to realise. " The twelve properties or
conditions of a lover '' given by Pico are these : — ¦
I. To love one alone.
2. To think him unhappy that is not with his love.
3. To adorn himself for the pleasure of his love.
4. To suffer all things, even death, to be with his love.
5. To desire to suffer shame and harm for his love.
6. To be ever with his love, at least in thought.
7. To love all things that pertain to his love.
8. To covet the praise of his love.
9. To believe of his love all things excellent.
10. To weep often with his love for joy or sorrow.
IT. To languish and burn in the desire of his love.
12. To serve his love, nothing thinking of reward.
Each of these properties is developed by More in verse, or, as
he calls it, in ballad — the lover of God taking lessons for
himself from the conduct, and even fantasies, of earthly lovers.
I must be content here with one specimen. In the following
stanzas are developed the second " property " of the twelve : —
Of his love, lo ! the sight and corapany
To the lover so glad and pleasant is,
That whoso hath the grace to come thereby
He judgeth him in perfect joy and bliss ;
And whoso of that company doth raiss,
Live he in never so prosperous estate,
He thinketh him wretched — unfortunate.
So should the lover of God esteera, that he
Which all the pleasure hath, mirth and disport
That in this world is possible to be,
Yet till the tirae that he may once resort
Unto that blessed, joyfiil, heavenly port.
Where he of God may have the glorious sight,
Is void of perfect joy and sure delight.

64 SIR THOMAS MORE.
We have seen how joyous was the character of More ; we
shall see that his whole Ufe, until the last great catastrophe (in
a worldly sense), was continuous happiness and prosperity.
Yet It is no exaggeration to say that a man more detached
from this world never lived, for the reason that his mind was
entirely set upon the joy that can never fail. In the letter to
Ulrich, Erasmus gives the following emphatic testimony:
" Although in so many respects he is one of the happiest of
men (and vainglory generally accompanies happiness), I never
yet met mortal man so perfectly free from this vice.
Without the least taint of superstition, he is earnest in all true
piety. He has his hours set apart for prayer — prayer not of
routine, but from the heart. With his friends he so converses
on the Ufe that will follow this, that you cannot doubt that he
speaks from the heart with a most earnest hope." *
* Cum araicis sic fabulatur de vita futuri saeculi ut agnoscas ilium ex
animo loqui, neque sine optima spe.

CHAPTER VI.
PROFESSIONAL.
WE have seen More promoted to the rank of utter
barrister, and chosen for the honourable office of
reader in an Inn of Chancery. This is not to be
confounded with reader at an Inn of Court. The latter office
demanded much higher learning and ability, and was reserved
for the benchers. The Chancery reader had for his audience
young students, clerks, and attornies : the reader at the Inn
of Court, his brother barristers, and even the judges. After
his marriage, says Roper, More applied himself diligently to
the study of the law, "until he was called to the bench,*
and had read ther? twice, which is as often as any judge of the
law doth ordinarily read " " This office of reader," adds
Stapleton, writing for the information of foreigners, "is most
illustrious in England, and only given to seniors, and never
exercised except by the most skilful, the rest who feel them
selves unfit purchasing their liberty at a great expense." t
It was not until after the accession of Henry VIII. that
More became a bencher. His first reading took place in the
autumn of 1511, his second in Lent, 1516. J On 3rd Sep
tember, 1 5 1 o, he was made under-sheriff of London. This office
was in many respects different from that which is now known
by the same name. He was the sheriff's judicial representa
tive, and a great number of cases came under his jurisdiction.
Hence it was the custom for the Common Council to select
* Made bencher, not judge. t Vita, cap. i:. t Foss.
5

66 SIR THOMAS MORE.
for the office some learned lawyer, who continued to hold it
year after year by renomination. "I conjecture," writes
Lord Campbell, "that the under-sheriff, besides his other
duties, sat in the court of the Lord Mayor and the sheriffs,
in which causes of importance were then determined, and the
jurisdiction of which, by the process of foreign attachment,
was very extensive.'' * Erasraus, who resided with More
while he was under-sheriff, gives the following account :
" In London he has held for some years the office of judge
in civil causes. The office is noways onerous, for the judge
sits only on Thursdays, and during the forenoon, but it is
considered very honourable. No one ever concluded more
cases, or decided them with greater integrity. He often
remits the fees which it is customary for the suitors to pay.
Before the opening of the case each party pays in three
groats, t nor is it allowed to demand anything further. By
his way of acting he has become very popular with the citizens
of London." %
By his private practice as barrister, and by his official position,
he made, as Roper learnt from himself, an income of about
j[,i,oo a year, equal to about ;^5ooo in our own time. Yet
Erasmus says : " No one was ever more free from avarice.
He would set aside from his income for his children what he
thought sufficient, and the remainder he used bountifully.
While he was still dependent on his fees, he gave to all true
and friendly counsel, considering their interests rather than
his own ; he persuaded raany to settle with their opponents as
the cheaper course. If he could not induce them to act in
that manner — for some men delight in litigation — he would
Still indicate the method that was least expensive." § Stapletoh
* Lives of Chancellors (More).
\ Tres drachmas — Harpsfield translated groats! A groat = 4d. *
J Letter to Ulrich. The office of under-sheriff had been held by
Dudley, Henry VII.'s evil adviser (Seebohm, p. 192).

PROFESSIONAL. 67
adds details that he may easily have gathered from Harris,
who had been More's clerk : " He would never defend a
cause until he had thoroughly examined it, and discovered
the whole truth. He used to advise his clients, whether they
were relations, friends, or strangers— for he made no distinction
—that above all things they should not misrepresent in the
very least the facts of the case. After he had listened to
them, he would say : ' If the case is as you report, I think you
will gain your suit '. But if their cause was unjust, he told them
so plainly, and exhorted them to desist. If they would not
listen to him, he told them to seek their advocate elsewhere." *
He became the most popular barrister of the day, according
to both Erasmus and Roper, and the king, who liked to have
clever men in his service, instructed Wolsey to do his best to
attract him. His efforts were at first unsuccessful, for More
loved his liberty, and was perfectly contented with his position.
By degrees, however, circumstances forced hira to yield. The
London merchants had controversies with those of the Still-
yard, or the foreign merchants resident in London, and as
these claimed treaties in their favour, it was necessary to send
an embassy to Flanders to the Archduke Charles (afterwards
emperor), to settle the questions amicably. The Londoners
had so much trust in More that they asked the king to allow
him to represent their interests. "Young More," as he is called
by Wolsey,t no doubt in distinction from his father, was
put in the commission with Cuthbert Tunstall (then arch
deacon of Chester), Richard Sampson (another ecclesiastic),
Sir Thomas Spinelly arid John Clyfford. | He left England
on 12th May, i5is,§ and was absent for more than six months,
* Vita, cap. 3.
¦f Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ii. n. 534.
+ Rymer, xiii. 497.
§ Sirjames Mackintosh says that "an entry in the city records states that
on Sth May, 15 14, it was agreed by the Common Council that Thoraas
More, gentleraan, one of the under-sheriffs of London, should occupy

68 SIR THOMAS MORE.
residing principally in Bruges, Brussels, and Antwerp. The
diets of the ambassadors were twenty shillings a day, those of
More (as the junior member), only 13s. 4d.* Payment was
made in advance for two months, but as the embassy was
prolonged, Tunstall wrote to Wolsey in July : " Master More,
as being at a low ebb, desires by Your Grace to be set on float
again " t For us, the interest of this embassy is not in the
questions debated, but in the friendships made by More on
the Continent, and his famous Utopia, which was begun during
his stay in Flanders. Postponing for a time the consideration
of this book, let us first follow More a little further in his
external life.
Soon after his return he wrote to Erasmus a long letter, of
which I omit only some business matters which regarded his
friend : —
" Since you left us J I have received in all three letters from
you. If I were to say that I had written to you as often,
however hard I should lie, you would probably not believe me,
since you know how indolent I am in letter-writing, and that I
am not so superstitious about truth as to hate a fib in all re
spects Uke murder. Our friend. Pace, is engaged on an em
bassy in your parts ; at least, if he is not exactly with you, he
is away from here. I seem to have lost half myself by his
absence, and the other half by yours.
"The Archbishop of Canterbury [Warham] has at last got
free from his office of chancellor. You know how many years
his office and chamber by a sufficient deputy, during his absence as the
king's ambassador in Flanders " If so, the embassy was postponed to
1515. I can find no mention in the State Papers of any embassy in the
preceding year, whereas More did leave England early in May, 15 15.
Sir James, however, says that both years are raentioned in the City
Records (Life, p. 68).
* Letters and Papers, ii. part ii, p. 1467, p. 1468-1470, also n. 678.
t Ib. n. 679.
X Erasmus had made one ofhis short visits to England early in 1515.

PROFESSIONAL. 69
he sought this freedom. The king has appointed the Cardinal
of York [Wolsey] as his successor, who is conducting himself
so as to surpass even the great hopes that his virtues had
excited.* " You will be glad to hear that our legation was pretty suc
cessful, except that it dragged on much longer than I expected
or wished. When I left home I thought I should be away for
a couple of months, whereas I spent more than six in the lega
tion. However, if the delay was long, the result was satisfac
tory. So when I saw the business for which I had come con
cluded, and that other affairs were likely to arise, I wrote to
the cardinal and obtained leave to return home. I managed
this by the help of my friends, and especially of Pace, who had
not then left England. While I was returning I met him un
expectedly at GraveUnes, but he was hurrying on so fast
that we had barely time to salute each other. Tunstall has
lately returned to England, but after scarcely ten days' interval,
not spent in rest, but most tediously and anxiously, in giving
a report of his legation, he is now forced upon another embassy
to his great regret. But he might not decline it. The office
of ambassador never rauch pleased me. It does not seem so
suitable to us laymen as to you priests, who have no wives
and children to leave at home, or who find them wherever
you go. When we have been a short time away, our hearts
are drawn back by the longing for our families. Besides, when
a priest is sent out, he can take his whole household with him,
and maintain them at the king's expense, though, when at
home, he had to provide for them at his own ; but, when I am
away, I must provide for a double household, one at home, the
other abroad. A liberal allowance was granted me by the king
for the servants I took with me, but no account was taken of
those whom I was obliged to leave at home. And yet, though
* He became chancellor on December 22, 1515. He had been made
cardinal on September 10.

70 SIR THOMAS MORE. ,
you know what a fond husband I am, what an indulgent father,
and gentle master, I was unable to prevail on them for my
sake to remain fasting even during the short time till my return
home. Lastly, it is an easy matter for princes to reward priests
for their labours and expenses by ecclesiastical promotions,
without any cost to themselves. There is no such rich or easy
provision for us. On my return, an annual pension was, in
deed, apppointed for me by the king, and one by no means
contemptible, either as regards the honour or the fruits, yet
hitherto I have refused it, and I think I shall continue to do
so, because, if I accepted it, my present office in the city, which
I prefer even to a better one, would either have to be resigned,
or else retained not without some offence to the citizens ; which
I should be most loth to give. For, should any question arise
between them and the king about their privileges (as sometimes
happens), they might look on me as less sincere and trust
worthy, being bound to the king by an annual pension.*
" However, in my legation, some things greatly delighted me.
First, the living so long and continually with Tunstall, a man
who, while he is surpassed by none in culture, nor in strictness
of life, is also unequalled in sweetness of manners. Next I ac
quired the friendship of Busleyden,t v^rho received me with a
magnificence in proportion to his great riches, and a cordiality
in harmony with his goodness of soul. He showed me his
house so marvellously built and splendidly furnished, and so
many antiquities in which you know my curiosity and delight, J
* It seems, however, that he accepted the pension (see infra, p. 76).
t Jerome Busleyden (Buslidius), a native of Luxembourg, was canon
of Liege, Cambrai, Malines, and Brussels, provost of St. Peter at Aire,
maitre des requites and counsellor, ambassador to Julius II. , Francis I.,
and Henry VIII. He died in 1517. He was founder of the College of
the Three Languages at Louvain. A letter of his is prefixed to the
Utopia. X Ad haec tot vetustatis monumenta, quorura me scis esse percupidum.
Among More's epigrams are verses on Busleyden's coins, and on his
house at Mechlin.

PROFESSIONAL.

71

and, above all, his library so well filled, and his breast more
richly stocked than any library, so that he fairiy bewildered me.
I hear that he is about to undertake an embassy to our king.
" But in all my travels nothing was more to my wishes than
my intercourse with your host, Peter CEgldius [Giles] of Ant
werp, a man so learned, witty, modest, and so true a friend,
that I would willingly purchase my intimacy with him at the
cost of a great part of my fortune. He sent to me your
Apology, and your commentary on the Psalm Beatus Vir.
Dorpius has had your letter printed and prefixed to your
Apology. I should have liked to meet him, but as I could
not, I sent him a short letter ; for I could not leave without
some salutation a man who is dear to me, both for his singular
erudition, and for many other reasons, and not least, that by
his criticisms of your Moria, he gave you the occasion to write
your Apology. I rejoice that your St. Jerome and your New
Testament are advancing so well; they are most eagerly ex
pected by all. Linacre has the greatest esteem for you, and
everywhere talks of you. This I have heard from some who
were present, when, at supper with the king, he spoke of you
most profusely and affectionately ; and the king answered in
such a way that myinformers were of opinion that some emi
nent fortune would soon be bestowed on you. I pray God it
may be so. Farewell, my dear Erasmus. My wife salutes
you,* and Clements, who makes such daily progress In Latin
and Greek literature, that I entertain no slight hope that he
will be an ornament to his country and to letters. Farewell
again, and be contented with this one letter for many months ;
for in It I have imitated misers, who rarely give entertainments,
and if they do chance to give a dinner, make it a long one, so
as to avoid the expense of frequent invitations. London,
iSi6."t * This is his second wife.
+ There is no date of the month, but the letter must have been writtert
very early in the year 15 16.

72 SIR THOMAS MORE.
More remained in England throughout the year 1516. He
was busy in the preparation of his Utopia for the press, and in
other literary work, which will be mentioned in the next
chapter. In this Lent he was giving his second course of legal
lectures in Lincoln's Inn. Wolsey was endeavouring to bring
hira to court. His friend Aramonio writes, on 17th February,
15 16, to Erasraus: "More, having honourably accoraplished
his embassy in Flanders has returned horae, and frequents the
court with us. No one is earlier in the chancellor's ante
chamber."* And Erasmus replies, loth March; "I am
vexed that your occupations prevent the Muses having full
possession of you. I see that More, till now unconquered, is
being carried away into the same whirlwinds." t And in a
letter to More himself: "I foresee that the favourable wind
will carry you away from us ; but I resign myself, since It will
be for your happiness ".J In his letter to Hutten, Erasmus
reiterates that More was altogether unwilling to have honours
thrust upon him. " The king,'' he says, " really dragged him
to his court. No one ever strove more eagerly to gain ad
mission there than More did to avoid it."
The favour with which he was regarded both by the king
and the citizens of London is proved by his having been
appointed by the Privy Council to appease the mob, in the
great riot which gained for the ist May, 1517, the name of
Evil May Day. The jealousy with which the foreign merchants
were regarded by the English merchants and apprentices in
London, led to a very serious outbreak during the night of the
30th April. The aldermen and their guards had fled for their
lives ; prisons were being broken open and houses plundered.
In the midst of the tumult, however, when More addressed
* Nemo temperius eo matutinura Eboracensi portat Ave (Inter Epist.
Erasra. 236).
t Letter 21. Erasmus writes from Antwerp. I am not sure that he had
returned so soon from Basle. Perhaps the letter should be dated 1517.
X Letter 17, in App. dated ist January, 1515 (probably 1517).

PROFESSIONAL. 73
the rioters near St. Martin's Gate, he was listened to with
respect, and had almost persuaded them to disperse, when
stones thrown from a neighbouring house injured some who
were with him and provoked retaliations, which caused the
angry fires to blaze more fiercely than before. The result of
this riot belongs to general history. More's name only occurs
in it as a peacemaker.*
There is, however, a very interesting allusion to this riot in
one of his latest works. He is showing how much mischief
might arise from spreading about the rumour that heretics were
very numerous in the country : " I remember that here in
London, after the great business that was there on a May-day
in the morning, by a rising made against strangers, for which
divers of the 'prentices and journeymen suffered execution of
treason, by an old statute made long before, against all such
as would violate the king's safe-conduct. I was appointed,
among others, to inquire by diligent examination, in what wise,
and by what persons, that fiery conspiracy began. And in
good faith, after much diligence used therein, we perfectiy
tried out at last, that all that business began only by the con
spiracy of two young lads that were 'prentices in Cheap.
Which, after the thing devised first between them twain,
perused prior by the journeymen first, and after the 'prentices
of many of the mean crafts in the city, bearing the first that
they spake with in hand, that they had secretiy spoken with
many other occupations already, and that they were all agreed
thereunto : and that, besides them, there were two or three
hundred of serving men of divers lords' houses, and some of
the king's too, which would not be named or known, that
would yet in the night be at hand, and when they were once
up, would not fail to fall in with them and take their part.
And with this ungracious invention of those two lewd lads,
* See Hall and Stow ; also Brewer's Introduction to Letters and
Papers, ii. 214.

74 SIR THOMAS MORE.
which yet in the business fled away themselves," the riot and
disaster had their origin.* Sir Thomas goes on to show that
he did not forget this his first lesson as to the mischief of
secret societies.
The summer of 1517 brought a greater calamity to London
than a riot. A deadly disease called " the Sweating Sickness "
spread its ravages far and wide. As we shall meet this several
tiraes In the life of More, it may be well to form some general
notion of what it was. Dr. Caius, a contemporary physician,
gives the following account of the origin and nature of this
dreadful sickness : " In the year of our Lord God 1485,
shortly after the 7th day of August, at which time King Henry
VII. arrived at Milford in Wales out of France, and in the
first year of his reign, there chanced a disease araong the
people, lasting the rest of that month and all September, which
for the sudden sharpness and unwont cruellness passed the
pestilence. For this [the. pestilence] commonly giveth in four,
often seven, sometime nine, sometime eleven, and sometime
fourteen days' respite to whom it vexeth. But that [the
Sweating Sickness] immediately killed some in opening their
windows, some in playing with children in their street doors,
some in one hour, many in two, it destroyed ; and at the
longest to thera who merrily dined it gave a sorrowful suppen
As it found them, so it took thera : some in sleep, some in
wake, sorae in mirth, some in care, some busy, and some idle ;
and in one house sometime three, sometime five, sometime
more, sometime all ; of the which, if the half in every town
escaped, it was thought great favour. This disease, because it
most did stand in sweating from the beginning until the ending,
was called here ' the Sweating Sickness ' ; and because it first
began in England, it was named in other countries 'the
EngUsh Sweat '."t
* Apology, ch. xlvii. English Works, p. 920.
t Quoted by Mr. Brewer. Introduction to Letters and Papers, ii. 207.

PROFESSIONAL. 75
More thus writes to Erasmus In August, 1517 : "We are in
the greatest sorrow and danger. Multitudes are dying all round
us : almost everyone in Oxford, Cambridge and London has
been ill lately, and we have lost many of our best and most
honoured friends ; among them — I grieve at the grief I shall
cause you in relating it — our dear Andrew Ammonio, in whose
death both letters and all good men suffer a great loss. He
thought himself well fortified against the contagion by his
moderation in diet. He attributed it to this, that, whereas
he met hardly anyone whose whole faraily had not been at
tacked, the evil had touched none of his household. He was
boasting of this to me and many others not many hours before
his death, for in this ' Sweating Sickness ' no one dies except on
the first day of attack. I myself and my wife and children are
as yet untouched, and the rest of my household have recovered.
I assure you there is less danger on the battlefield than in the
city. Now, as I hear, the plague has begun to rage in Calais,
just when we are being forced to land there on our embassy, as
if it was not enough to have lived in the midst of the contagion,
but we must follow it also. But what would you have ! We
must bear our lot. I have prepared myself for any event.
Farewell, in haste. London, 19th August."*
In this letter More refers to an erabassy to Calais. During
the wars with France, wrongs had been perpetrated on both
sides, and It was resolved to settle the disputes in conference.
The commissioners were to meet at Calais, then English terri
tory. After long delays, a commission was issued to Sir Richard
Wingfield, the deputy of Calais, to Dr. Knight and Thomas
More, on 26th August.t The negotiations were still further
delayed because it was found that the French commissioners'
* Inter Epist. Erasm. 522. The Leyden editor has dated this 1520.
As Ammonio died in the summer of 1517, it must have been written
that year.
t Letters and Papers, ii. 3624.

76 SIR THOMAS MORE.
faculties were not sufficiently extended. Thus the negotiations
dragged on into November.* On the 15th of that month
Erasmus wrote to Peter Giles from Louvain : " More is still at
Calais, utterly wearied and at great expense, and engaged in
hateful negotiations. Thus it is that kings beatify their friends.
This it is to be beloved of cardinals.'' t This was an echo of
More's letter of 25th October to Erasmus : "I quite approve of
your resolution not to meddle with the laborious triflings of
princes ; and you show your love for me in wishing that I may
extricate myself from them. You can scarcely believe how
unwillingly I am engaged in them. Nothing can be more
odious than this legation. I am relegated to this Uttle mari
time town, X of which both the surroundings and the climate
are unpleasant ; and if litigation even at home, where it brings
gain, is so abhorrent to my nature, how tedious must it be here,
where it only brings loss !" § The allowance or diets made to
ambassadors in those days were scanty enough, and it must
have been indeed a serious loss to More to forego his profes
sional income. A successful embassy was, however, generally
rewarded by some ecclesiastical promotion to a clergyman, or
by an annuity to a layman. Il Thus, among the fees and gratui
ties paid by the king in 1516 is mentioned, "Thomas More,
councillor, for Ufe ;^ioo".^ On 21st June, 1518, when this
payment recurs, it is recorded as paid out of the little customs
of London. **
Roper relates an event which caused the king to draw More
* li>; 3750, 3766, 3772.
f Epist. 344. Wrongly dated by the editor 15 18.
X His only relaxation seems to have been a two days' visit to the Abbot
of St. Berlin's, an old friend of Erasmus. Letter of 7th October (Inter
Ep. Erasm. 192, in App.).
§ Misdated by editor 1520.
II In the king's book of payments is an entry of £26 13s. 4d. each to
Knight and More for this erabassy.
II Letters and Papers, ii. part i. 2736, or p. 875.
** lb., part ii. 4247.

PROFESSIONAL. 77
entirely from his profession and place him at court. A great
ship belonging to the Pope had been obliged to put in at
Southampton, and was claimed by the king as a forfeiture.
The papal nuncio asked that the matter should be publicly
discussed before the king or his commissioners. More not
only acted as interpreter, explaining to the ambassador, in
Latin, the arguments made use of on either side, but argued
so learnedly himself on the Pope's side that the matter was
decided in his favour. The king, hearing how greatly he had
distinguished himself, called him to his service. But, before
we follow his career at court, we must go back to consider him
in his literary and in his domestic life.

CHAPTER VII.
LITERARY.
I. Life of John Picus.
IN 1 510, More published his "Life of John Picus, Earl of
Mirandula, a great Lord of Italy, an excellent cunning
raan in all sciences, and virtuous of living, with divers
Epistles and other works of the said John Picus ". He had
probably made this translation some years before, during the
time of his retirement from the displeasure of Henry VII.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Count of Concordia, had died
in 1494, at the age of thirty-two, leaving a name famous for his
great talents and erudition, his first vainglorious appearance
pbefore the world and then his thorough conversion to God.*
His complete works had been printed in Bologna in 1496, and
again in Venice in 1498. The latter edition, which is much
'^perior to the forraer, was the one used by More. Out of it
he selected the life prefixed by Pico's nephew, four letters, and
a commentary on the sixteenth psalm.
Pico had appended to one of his letters twelve rules of
spiritual warfare, twelve weapons, and twelve properties or
conditions of a lover. Taking these for his theme, More
* His epitaph is felicitous : —
" Joannes jacet hic Mirandula ; castera norunt]
Et Tagus et Ganges, forsan et Antipodes ". 1
This was written before Vasco de Gama had rounded theS^Cape of Good
Hope.

LITERARY.

79

developed them in his favourite seven-line stanzas. The
poetry is entirely his own, there are no corresponding Latin
verses in the works of Pico. But Pico wrote a beautiful prayer
in Latin elegiac verse, of which More has given a translation or
rather paraphrase in the same stanzas as the rest. More's
Verses cannot be called poetical. They served, however, to put
spiritual maxims in a form that would arrest the attention and
cUng to the memory. A specimen was given in Chapter V.
The translation of Pico's Life and Letters was dedicated by
More to " his right entirely beloved sister in Christ, Joyeuse
Leigh," as a new year's present. This lady seems to have been
a nun.* In the year 15 13, while More was under-sheriff, he managed
to find time to compose his History of Richard III., both in
English and Latin. It was, however, never completed, nor
was it published during More's life. It appeared, " corrupted "
by omissions and additions, in Harding's and Hall's Chronicles ;
but was reprinted correctly by Rastell from a copy in More's
handwriting. Some have doubted whether this work is by
More or merely translated by him. The intrinsic evidence is
in favour of its being his composition. The English is
beautiful, and More paid no less attention to his English prose
than to his Latin style. The book is full of pithy sayings. The
speeches introduced (though not to be taken as really spoken)
are the work of an orator like More, who had carefully trained
himself on ancient models. A most competent critic has said :
"As if it had been the lot of More to open all the paths
through the wilds of our old EngUsh speech, he is to be con
sidered as our earliest prose writer, and as the first Englishman
who wrote the history of his country in its presen|t language.
The composition has an ease and rotundity which gratify
* Since the above was written More's translation has been republished
with notes and a very interesting Introduction on the writings of Pico,
by J. M. Rigg, Esq. (Nutt, 1890).

8o SIR THOMAS MORE.
the ear without awakening the suspicion of art, of which there
was no model in any preceding writer of English prose." *
II. Translation of Lucian.
We have seen the friendship that sprang up between More
and Erasmus during the visit raade by the latter to England in
1498 and 1499. Erasraus did not return to England until the
erid of 1505, when More was married and had taken up In
earnest his profession of the law. He found the young
barrister surrounded by Uterary friends ; Colet, vicar of
Stepney, and then or soon after dean of St. Paul's ; Grocyn,
formerly professor of Greek at Oxford, and then rector of St.
Lawrence, in the Jewry ; Linacre, a most learned priest, and
physician to Henry VII. (as he was afterwards to Henry VIII.) ;
Lilly, a younger man than the others, yet not less cultivated.
In fact, from a Still earlier date and to the end of his life,.
More's company was eagerly sought by every man of the new
culture, whether English or foreign, who came to London.
Erasraus was invited to stay with More, and the two scholars
found a most congenial occupation in the translation from
Greek into Latin of several of Lucian's dialogues. More
selected three of these for his own share — the Cynrcus,
Menippus or Necromantia, and Philopseudes, as the most
witty. In his dedication of these to Thomas Ruthal, secretary
to Henry VIIL, and afterwards Bishop of Durham, More
extols the truth and wisdom, as well as the wit, of these
dialogues. That Lucian was incredulous even of man's im
mortality does not much trouble him. "What do I care for
the opinions of a heathen on such matters?" Lucian may
* Sir James Mackintosh (Life of Sir T. More (1844), p. 41). The
objection made by Sir H. Ellis that the writer reraerabered something
said to his father at the death of Edward IV. in 1483, and that More was
then only three years old, is of no force, since he was really five ; and it
is not unusual to remember isolated facts which made an impression at
the age of four or five.

LITERARY. 8 1
help US to laugh at superstition without touching our religious
faith, which has no foundation in human dreams and fictions,
but rests on solid historical proofs, which are only contaminated
and weakened when mixed up with fables.*
In addition to these translations More composed a Declama
tion in imitation of Lucian. Mr. Seebohm says : " At More's
suggestion both (he and Erasmus) wrote a full answer to
Lucian's arguments in favour of tyrannicide ".t This account
might lead those unacquainted with More's writings to think
that, while Lucian defended the slaying of tyrants. More
rejected and reprobated it. What may have been More's
serious judgment on such a subject we can only gather in
directly, from his submission to the Church's teaching both in
faith and morals. In his Life of Pico he had said that Pico
" committed (like a good Christian man) both his defence and
all other things that he should write to the most holy judgment
of our mother Holy Church ".J But on the subject of tyranni
cide in general More has written nothing. Like Lucian, he
presupposes the lawfulness and excellent merit of slaying a
tyrant ; yet if he does this, it is merely in a literary exercise.
Lucian had supposed a Greek city, of a republican constitution,
of which one of the chief magistrates had made himself the
oppressor and tyrant. There was a constitutional law in the
republic authorising any citizen to take the hfe of such a usurper,
and entitling him to a great reward in case of success. A man,
intent on freeing his city from the tyrant, manages to get
secretly into his citadel, in order to assassinate him. He does
not find the tyrant, but kills his son and leaves his sword in the
* After the above he continues : Quas scriptura nobis historias
divinitus inspirita commendat, eis indubitata fides habenda est. Caeteras
vero ad Christi doctrinam, tanquam ad Critolai regulam, applicantes
caute et cum judicio , aut recipiamus aut respuamus si carere volumus et
inani fiducia et superstitiosa formidine (Epist. Dedic).
t Oxford Reformers, p. 182.
X English Works, p. 4. 6

82 SIR THOMAS MORE.
body. The tyrant, finding his son slain, kills himself with the
sword. The assassin then claims the reward of tyrannicide
from his fellow-citizens. The supposed pleading of this man is
Lucian's Declamation, and the Declamation of More is an
answer to the assassin's pleadings. He supposes himself to be
a citizen In this Greek republic, and he proves that, though
accidentally the city has been freed, the assassin can claim no
merit or reward, but rather deserves punishment, since his ill-
planned attempt and the murder of the son were more likely
to have enraged the tyrant, and to have confirmed his tyranny,
than to have overthrown it More's imaginary speech is well
worthy to be both read and studied. It is a masterpiece of
oratory, and gives us a specimen of that skill in arranging argu
ment, and expressing it in powerful and dignified language,
which placed More the first (in order of time) on the list of
great English orators.
Erasmus also pubUshed his Declamation on the same sub
ject. In the dedication to Richard Whitford, chaplain to the
Bishop of Winchester,* he says that he has written this essay in
oratory at the instigation of More, whose eloquence is so great
that he could obtain anything even from an enemy, and whom
Erasmus loves so dearly that if he asked him to dance on the
tight-rope he would obey without a murmur. " Unless my ardent
love blinds me, nature never made any one so ready of wit, so
keen sighted, so shrewd. His intellect is equalled by his
power of speech ; and his suavity is so great, his humour so
keen yet so innocuous, that he has every quality of a perfect
advocate." f
(Elsewhere he says : " The style of his oratory approaches
more the structure and dialectic subtiety of Isocrates than the
limpid stream of Cicero, although in urbanity he is in no way
inferior to Tully. He paid so much attention in his youth to
* The same Whitford, afteiwards naraed The Wretch of Sion, and the
author of the well-known Psalter of yesus.
t Eras. Opera, t. i. 266.

LITERARY. 83
writing poetry, that you may now discern the poet in his prose
compositions." III. The Moria of Erasmus.
In 1508 Erasmus was again in England, and again the guest
of More. In his house, and with his encouragement, he com
posed his famous Praise of Folly, Encomium Morice, so called
with a little intentional joke on the name More. It does not
belong to my subject to notice in any detail the writings of
Erasmus, but More is so closely connected with this work that
I must enter into some explanations. We have, then, two facts
to consider — that More is honoured by the Church, and that
this book, written under his roof and with his applause, was
placed on the index of prohibited books. To say that More is
honoured merely as a martyr, i.e., for his heroic death, and that
this implies no approval of the details of his previous life, may
be a sufficient vindication of the consistency of the Holy
Church, but It does not clear the character of More. To ad
mire and extol that character it is not indeed necessary to clear
it from every stain. No one insisted on this raore frequently
than More himself, when speaking of our veneration for the
fathers and saints of the Church. Shah it then be said, in aU
candour, that as Erasmus was led astray by his satirical spirit
in this work, so More too was somewhat blinded by his par
tiality for Erasmus and his own love of fun ? Some raay be
inclined to take this view. Stapleton says that the friendship
which existed between these two eminent men was honourable
to Erasmus rather than useful to More ; that in later life More
exhorted Erasmus to Imitate St. Augustine in publishing a book
of Retractations, but that Erasmus was so far from this humility
that in his collection of letters he even suppressed this request
of More's.* Candour, however, compels me to take a different
* Vita, cap. 4. Is not Stapleton mistaken ? In a letter to Edward Lee
in 15 19 More writes : Neque enim unquam me pro tanto viro gessi a quo
vel in aliquo literarum genere, vel in rerum perpensione communium
Erasmus adraonendus esse videretur (Apud Jortin, ii. 652).

84 SIR THOMAS MORE.
view, for I do not find that More ever repented his share in the
Praise of Folly. This book is satirical on all classes, from
popes' and kings to pilgrims and beggars ; yet its satire is
moderate corapared with that of many previous writers whose
faith and loyalty to the Church have never been called in ques
tion. Satire on ecclesiastical persons — whatever opinion we
may form of it — must not be confounded with the ridicule cast
by heretics on Divine dogmas, or institutions, or practices ap-
•proved by the Church. There was never one day in his life .
when More would have applauded or tolerated an attack or a
sneer at anything which he knew the Church to have coun
tenanced. A work, however, like that of Erasmus, written in
Latin, and intended merely for the learned, might easily seem to
hira quite inoffensive.* Some years earUer a German named
Sebastian Brant had written in German verse a book called the
Ship of Fools. There had been no outcry against it. It had
been at once translated into Latin, Dutch, French, and Eng-
(llsh. A recent Scotch editor of this book, Mr. Jamieson,
'writes: "Brant can scarcely be classed in the great army of
j Protestant reformers. He was a reformer from within, a
biting and unsparing exposer of every priestly abuse, but a
I loyal son of the Church." Of the English translator, or rather
adapter, of this book, Alexander Barclay, a priest, Mr. Jamieson
also says : " Barclay applies the cudgel as vigorously to the
priest's pate as to the Lollard's back. But he disliked modern
innovation as much as ancient abuses, in this also faithfully re
fiecting the mind of the people. "t This seems to me a perfectly
just estiraate, and explains why More saw no harm or danger in
* Erasmus in his letter to Bozthem says that the book was received
with great applause — praesertim apud raagnates — those who were most
caustically attacked. It began to give offence especially when Lystrius
(while defending it) added commentaries to explain its allusions. It was
thus brought to the level of men for whora it had not been intended.
•\Ship of Fools, translated in verse by Alex. Barclay. Ed. by F. H.
Jamieson (Edinburgh : Paterson, 1874, 2 vols.).

LITERARY. 85
the somewhat similar book of Erasmus when it first appeared.
The Ship qf Fools had been received with applause throughout
Europe. It had even been taken as a text-book for sermons in
Germany.,* In England it was translated into both prose and
verse, without reclamation or protest.t Why should a deeper
book, written in Latin for more learned men, be pernicious or
perilous ? That it was judged and declared to be so by the
Church more than fifty years later, proves what it had become,
not what it was at its first appearance. Circumstances had
totally changed, and it is often the circumstances in vvhich a
book is read that determine its weight. There was a time
when the Pagan classics were dangerous reading, not only from
a moral, but a dogmatic point of view. That time is long since
past for those who are brought up Christians. There was a
time when the speculations of the Manichees could entangle a
clever rationalising youth like Augustine. At the present day,
not only could a clever youth read them without danger, but
he would read them with wonder that they could ever have had
attractions for a reasonable man. And as a book may cease to
be dangerous, so also it may become dangerous by change of
times. When Erasmus wrote his Praise of Folly, the whole of Europe
was Catholic ; Luther's name was yet unknown except in Wit-
tenburg, where he bore the character of a good Catholic. There
was no prospect of heresy on any large scale, but among all
good men there were hopes of Catholic Reformation. Whether
the satire of Erasmus was likely to hasten it might well be
doubted. More thought it would, and welcomed the book.
In later years, long before it was officially condemned, he
regretted its appearance, not because he had changed his
opinion of the book itself, but because he saw that it had
been inopportune, and was abused by heretics and injurious to
* Navicula sive speculum fatuorum of Dr. John Geiler, printed in
1510. Each sermon has for text : " The number of fools is infinite ".
t By Henry Watson, in 1509. It was printed by Wynkyn de Worde.

86 SIR THOMAS MORE.
feeble-minded Catholics. It will be better, however, to hear
his own words on the subject.
In 1532, he wrote thus to Erasmus: "Your adversaries
cannot be ignorant how candidly you confess that, before
these pestilent heresies arose, which have since spread every
where and upset everything, you treated certain matters in a
way you would not have treated them had you been able to
guess that such enemies of religion and such traitors would
ever arise. You would then have put what you had to say
more raildly and with more limitations.* You wrote strongly
then because you were indignant at seeing how some cherished
their vices as if they were virtues."t
Again, writing against Tindale in 1532, More says that
Erasmus in his Moria had in a dramatic spirit put the
objections against certain matters in a caustic and whimsical
way, just as he had himself done in his Dialogue, " Quoth he
and Quoth I," where he makes the "messenger" speak strongly
and sarcastically against many things, which More then, in his
own person, either allows to be abuses, or defends with a
distinction, or explains and altogether approves. " But,'' con
tinues More, " in these days in which Tindale hath with the
* Mitius ac dilutius.
t Inter Epist. Erasm. 1123. Among the words of Erasmus referred
to by More I may mention these : Moriam scripsi tranquillis rebus,
quum mundus altum indormiret casremoniis ac praescriptis hominum,
haudquaquam scripturus, si horum tempestatem exorituram praescissem
(ad Boizhem). " Si prsscissem hujusmodi saeculum exoriturum, aut non
scripsissera quaedam, quae scripsi, aut aliter scripsissem " (Ep. 572 anno
1521). In another letter of 1524 he says in general that what he was
accused of having written about the origin of the Pope's supremacy,
about confession, marriage, etc., he wrote when there was no thought as
yet of Luther's errors ; that he merely wrote doubting, not asserting ;
and that he was always ready to submit to the Church ; lastly, that he
had modified what might give offence or handle to the new errors
(Ep. 667). This is but a poor apology for sowing doubts in matters of
faith ; but as regards the form of his satire in things not of faith (and in
such only is the character of More concerned), the excuse is a valid one.

LITERARY. 87
Infection of his contagious heresies so sore poisoned malicious
and new-fangled folk . . in these days In which men, by their
own default, misconstrue and take harm out of the very Scrip
ture of God, until men better amend, if any man would now
translate Moria Into EngUsh, or some works either that I have
myself written ere this, albeit there be none harm therein, folk
yet being given to take harm of that which is good, I would not
only 'my darling's' [i.e., Erasmus's*] books, but mine own also,
help to burn them both with mine own hands, rather than folk
should (though through their own fault) take any harm ofthem,
seeing that I see them likely in these days so to do." +
IV. Private Letters.
More speaks here of works of his own, in which there was no
harm, yet which might be made hurtful. In spite of a recent
attempt by Mr. Seebohm to draw from the writings of Blessed
Thomas More, and from those of his friends, Colet and
Erasmus, those very conclusions which More protests should
not be drawn from them, I do not think there is much danger
at the present day that the fun, or the satire, or the serious
reproofs of any of these writers can do any injury to any
Catholic doctrine, practice, or sentiment. I speak, indeed,
with great reserve of the works of Erasmus, which require a
prudent reader. But I have been unable to find in the writings
of More any pages that I could wish unwritten or burnt for fear of
scandal to the weak or simple ; nor do I fear his blame if I
now print in English what he would certainly not then have
written in English, or what he never intended for publication
in any way, but wrote for the eye of Erasmus only.
In 15 16, Erasmus had published his translation and notes on
the New Testament, which, though dedicated to the Pope, and
honoured with a letter from him, and cordially approved by men
like Warham and Fisher, had caused a commotion among
* Tindale had thus named him. t English Works, p. 422.

as sir THOMAS MORE.
certain theologians and in certain religious orders. On 31st
October, 1516, More writes to Erasmus that there is a great
conspiracy brewing against him. " Who are the conspirators ?
I fear to tell you lest you should quail before such terrible and
powerful enemies. Well, if I must, say it, one is that renowned
Franciscan theologian whom you know, and of whom you make
honourable mention in your edition of St. Jerome. He has
entered into a plot with other chosen men of the same order
and the same kidney, to write against your errors. To do this
more easily and efficaciously, they have conspired to divide
your works among them, to scrutinise everything and understand
nothing. Do you see the danger impending over you ? The
resolution was raade in a nocturnal assembly, when they were
well soaked. Next day, as I hear, when they had slept off the
dregs, having forgotten their resolution and cancelled their
decree, since it had been written in wine, they relinquished the
undertaking, and from reading betook themselves again to
begging, which long experience had taught them to be more
useful. *
" It is worth while to see how the Epistolce Obscurorum
Virorum pleases all, the learned as a joke, the unlearned
seriously, t When we laugh, these latter think we are only
amused by the style, which they don't defend ; but they say it
is compensated by the gravity of the matter, and that a most
beautiful sword is hidden in a rude scabbard. What a pity a
better title was not found ! But for that in a hundred years
they would never have discovered that the author was making a
nose at them longer than the horn of a rhinoceros. "|
It is clear that, when More wrote this, he was a little infected
with the spirit of the book he had been just reading, which is
* Notwithstanding this passage. More writes : Ordo Minoritarum, quo,
nisi me fallit opinio, nullus est ordo sanctior (Letter to a monk, in Jortin
ii. 695).
t The first volurae of this satirical book had just appeared.
X Inter Epist. Erasm. 87.

LITERARY. 89
a merciless parody on the writings and ways of the monks and
friars. Let it however be remembered that he did not write
this letter for publication, and that it was first pubUshed without
his leave. Of such letters, Erasmus himself says : " I was try
ing my hand, killing time, amusing myself with intimate friends,
getting rid of my bile, jesting at most, and expecting nothing
less than that my friends would copy out and preserve such
absurdities".* At first MS. collections of such private letters were made
and sold by booksellers, then unauthorised editions published,
until the author was obliged in self-defence to print an accurate
edition. Erasmus complains that in this way everything was
perverted and misunderstood, " no attention being paid to the
time in which a man wrote, but what was written at first most
appropriately is afterwards applied most inopportunely. Besides
this, men sometimes write their letters after their wine, or when
sleepy, or tired, or half-sick, or when pre-occupied with other
affairs, or against their will — and very often they accommodate
their style to the capacity or the tact of their correspondent."
What mischief will arise when such letters get into the hands
of those for whom they were never intended !
V. Letter to Dorpius.
No such explanation or apology is applicable to letters
written in order to be spread about or pubUshed. There are
two such pamphlets, as we should call them, written by More
in defence of Erasmus, and of the critical studies in which
Erasmus was engaged on the New Testament and on the
Fathers, between the years 1516 and 1520. Of these I shah
now speak.
A theologian of Louvain, named Martin Dorpius, a man of
'Letter 507, to Beatus Rhenanus, prefixed to an edition of his Epistles
in 1520, which he was obliged to reprint because the letters had been
already printed surreptitiously.

90 SIR THOMAS MORE.
much reputation in polite letters and a personal friend of
Erasmus, had written to him some rather sharp expostulations,
both on his Encomium Morice, and on his pretension to set
aside the authority of the Vulgate by a new Latin version.
When More was in Flanders in the autumn of 1515, he saw
copies of these letters. He had wished to make the personal
acquaintance of Dorpius, but not having the opportunity of
meeting hira, he wrote to him a long Latin letter in defence of
Erasraus. He complains especially that Dorpius treats Eras
mus as if he were a mere grammarian, a master of words and
form, without theological learning, and also that Erasmus is
accused of attacking theologians in general, whereas he had
merely satirised the excesses or follies of a few. More then
goes on to assert that there are theologians who neither study
the Holy Scriptures nor esteein the Fathers, but give themselves
entirely to scholastic subtleties and trifling — men as far removed
from true theology as frora comraon sense. Here More's
humour makes him Illustrate his subject by a racy anecdote :
"I was dining," he says, "with an Italian merchant as learned
as he was rich.* There was present at table a monk who was
a theologian and a notable disputant, lately arrived from the
Continent, for the very purpose of ventilating some questions
that he had got up, to see what kind of debaters he could find
in England, and to make his name as famous in England as in
his own country. At the dinner nothing was said by anyone,
however well weighed and guarded, that this man did not, before
it was well uttered, seek to refute with a syUogism, though the
matter belonged neither to theology nor philosophy and was
altogether foreign to his profession. I am wrong. His pro
fession was to dispute. He had stated at the beginning of
dinner that he was ready to take either side on any question.
By degrees our host, the Italian merchant, turned the conversa
tion to theological topics, such as usury, tithes, or confession
* Probably Antonio Bonvisi, a great friend of More's and a learned
man.

LITERARY. 9 1
to friars outside the penitent's parish, and the like. Whatever
was said the theologian took at once the opposite view. .
The merchant soon perceived that the monk was not so well
up In his Bible as he was ready with his syllogisms; so he
began to draw his arguments from authority rather than from
reason. He invented, e.v tempore, certain quotations in favour
of his own side of the question, taking one from a supposed
Epistle of St. Paul, another from St. Peter, a third from the
Gospel, and affecting to do this with the greatest exactness,
naming the chapter, but in such a way that, if a book was
divided into sixteen chapters, he would quote from the
twentieth. What did our theologian do now? Hitherto he
had rolled himself up in his spikes like a hedgehog. Now he
has to dodge from side to side to escape these supposed texts.
He managed it, however. He had no notion that the passages
quoted were spurious, while, of course, he could not refuse the
authority of Scripture ; but, as, on the other hand, it would be
a base thing to own himself beaten, he had his answer ready at
once. ' Yes, sir,' he said, ' your quotation is good, but I
understand the text in this way,' and then made a distinction
of senses, one of which might be in favour of his adversary, the
other of himself; and when the raerchant insisted that his was
the only possible sense, the theologian swore till you would
almost believe him, that the sense which he had selected was
that given by Nicolas of Lyra.'' Now how, concludes More,
can anyone help laughing at theologians like this ? And such
are the only men ridiculed by Erasmus.
The passage I have quoted is but a page in a long letter full
of erudition, of theological as well as classical learning, and of
very earnest and eloquent pleading. Dorpius had seemed to
underrate the difficuhies of the study of Holy Scripture, in
order to exalt scholastic theology. No professor of sacred
exegesis could dwell more warmly on the depths of God's word
than does the witty lawyer ; and then turning to scholasticism,
he says : " But let us suppose that Scripture is easy, and your

92 SIR THOMAS MORE.'
questions difficult, yet the knowledge of the former may be far
more fruitful than the guessing at the latter. To dance or to
bend double like an acrobat is more difficult than to walk, and
it is easier to masticate bread than to grind pot-sherds between
the teeth, but what man would not prefer the coramon processes
of nature to such empty feats ? Which, then, of these disci
plines is the easier I will not ask, but I cannot hear it said that
these minute questionings are more useful than the knowledge
of the sacred writings to the flock for which Christ died. If
you merely maintain that they are things worth studying, I will
not contest it ; if you put them on a level with the dissertations
of the ancient Fathers, I cannot listen to you ; but when you
not only compare but prefer these kitchen-maids to the most
holy Bible, the Queen of all book?, forgive me, Dorpius, but I
cannot refrain from saying to them with Terence : Abite hinc
in malara rem cum istae magnificentia fugitiva : adeo putatis
vos aut vestra facta ignorarier ?
" I do not think you will contest this with me, that whatever
is necessary for salvation is communicated to us in the first
place from the sacred Scriptures, then from the ancient inter
preters, and by traditional custoras handed down from the
ancient Fathers from hand to hand, and in fine by the sacred
definitions of the Church. If, In addition to all this, these
acute disputants have curiously discovered anything, though I
grant it may be convenient and useful, yet I think it belongs
to the class of things without which it is possible to live. Per
haps you will say that in the ancient writers everything is not
so ready at hand and easy to find, not sorted so well as in
modern writers, who have arranged whatever is known under
certain heads, and enrolled each individual in its proper family.
Well, I grant all this ; and I allow that there is some conveni
ence in putting literary matters in their right places, just as we
arrange our domestic furniture, so that without mistake we may
lay our hand at once on what we want. This is a convenience,
yet it is used so inconveniently by some, that it would be

LITERARV. 53
almost better to be without it. The reason why the ancient
interpreters are so much neglected, is because certain unhappy
geniuses have first persuaded themselves, and then led others
to believe, that there is nowhere any honey besides what has
already been stored up in the hives of the Summists.
Theologians of this kind, who read nothing of the Fathers or of
the Scriptures except in the Sentences, and the commentators
on the Sentences, seem to me to act as if one were to set aside
aU the authors who have written in Latin, and, gathering the
rules of grammar from Alexander, try to learn all else from the
Cojtiucopia of Perottus and from Calepinus, being convinced
that all Latin words will be found there. Well, most words
will be found there, and the choicest words, and the sentences
from ancient poets and orators, some of whom are no longer
extant elsewhere. Yet such a method will never make a good
Latinist. And so also, though in your Summists and Masters
of Sentences you will find many sayings of the ancients quoted
as authorities, yet the study of these things alone will never
make a good theologian, even though he is conversant with
ten thousand thorny questions.
" And what purpose does this kind of theology serve ? To
convert or refute heretics ? Certainly not. If these are un
learned you might as well try to bring a Turk to the faith by a
French sermon. If they are learned, these very questions
supply them with weapons. It becomes Uke a fight between
two naked men among a heap of sharp stones ; each of them
has the means of injuring the other, and neither of them can
defend himself. Heretics are versed in all these tricks, and
would never be overcome by such theologians, if they were not
more afraid of one faggot than of whole bundles of these syllo
gisms. Can such a theologian make a preacher? Why, as the
people understand nothing of this kind of language, he must
lay it aside and learn by heart a sermon from his Veni mecum
or his Dormi secure,* foolish in itself, and when it is declaimed
* The names of popular sermon manuals.

94 SIR THOMAS MORE.
by a man more foolish still, how dyll and stupid the whole
affair will be.''
The above passages must suffice as specimens both of the
style and raatter of More's first public essay in theology. We
know that even before his death an imraense movement had
begun in the Church, both in scriptural and patristic studies,
while scholastic theology was purified and developed. It can
scarcely be denied that an EngUsh layman may claira some
infiuence in this movement. Of More's knowledge in theology
a further account will be given when we come to his English
controversial works.
The letter which More wrote to Dorpius was well received
by him, and he publicly retracted what he had written against
Erasmus. Nothing can be prettier than the letter in which
More congratulates him on this magnanimity. " It is well-nigh
impossible," he says, "to extort a retractation even from the
most modest. Almost all are so stupid with false shame that
they would rather show themselves always fools, than acknow
ledge that they were such once ; while you, who have so rauch
cleverness, learning and eloquence, that even if you were to
defend soraething quite improbable or purely paradoxical, you
would be able to convince your readers ; you, I say, caring
more for truth than for appearances, prefer to tell all the world
that you were once deceived, rather than to go on deceiving.
Such an act will bring you eternal glory." * More himself did
his best to suppress the letter that had gained this victory, t
VI. Letter to a Monk.
There is another letter or paraphlet, written a few years
later, also in defence of Erasmu.-i, but in a much severer tone.
* Letter in Jortin ii. 668.
+ See his letter to Lee, lb., 653. It was, however, reprinted in 1525.
Thomae Mori Dissertatio Epistolica de aliquot sui temporis theologas-
trorum ineptiis, etc.. Ad Martinum Dorpium. Lugduni Batavorum, 1525.
It is now in his collected works.

literary. 95
A monk of a contemplative order, whom More had known as
a youth before his entrance into religion, had taken on himself
to write a letter of very solemn warning against the errors of
Erasmus, and the danger to More's eternal welfare of associating
with such a man. There was a tone of assumed sanctity in
the letter, united with calumnies so atrocious, that More thought
it his duty, not only to defend Erasmus, but to strip the mask
of false zeal from his assailant, to show him how rash were his
judgments, how grossly unjust his words ; and, to bring home
the matter, he pointed out how hypocrisy and superstition, and
even gross immorality, sometimes get Into the cloister, so that
it was more befitting for a contemplative monk to watch
against spiritual pride, than to meddle with things out of his
sphere, to criticise one far more learned than himself, and to
blame where the Sovereign Pontiff approved. Out of this
letter I will merely select a few passages, which may show
Blessed Thomas More in his graver mood, when his indigna
tion had been stirred by an unjust attack, not on himself, but
on his esteemed and beloved friend.
" I wonder," he says, " at the unbounded leisure, which you
find to devote to schismatical and heretical books. Or have
you so few good books that you are obliged to consume your
short leisure on bad ones? If the books (of Erasmus) are
good, why do you condemn them ? If they are bad, why do
you read them ? As you gave up the care of the world, when
you shut yourself up in the cloister, you are not one of those
to whom leave is given to read bad books for the sake of
refuting them. Hence by reading what is perverse you are
merely learning it. Not only do you spend good hours on
bad books, but you consume much time, as it appears, in talk
and gossip worse than bad books ; so that I notice there is
no kind of rumour or calumny which does not find its way
straight to your cell. We read that formerly monks so hid
-themselves from the world, that they would not even read the
letters sent to them by their friends, nor glance back at the

96 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Sodom they had left. Now, I see, they read schismatical and
heretical books, and immense volumes filled with mere trifles.
Now, what they formerly dreaded to hear in the world, and
fled to the cloister lest they should hear it, the cunning
enemy has found a means of carrying into their very cells.
Their solemn religious surroundings only serve to irapose on
the unwary, their leisure serves to elaborate their calumnies,
their retirement from the eyes of men to prevent them from
being abashed, and their closed cells to injure the reputation
of those outside. Whoever enters their cells must say an Our
Father that the conversation may be holy. But where is the"
use of beginning slanderous gossip with the Lord's Prayer ?
If that is not taking the Name of God in vain, what is ? " *
More's rebukes are severe. Frora the sarae letter I give one
specimen of a lighter style, because it brings before us an
incident of his life.
" There was at Coventry a Franciscan of the unreformed
sort. This man preached in the city, the suburbs, the neigh
bourhood, and villages about, that whosoever should say daily
the Psalter ofthe Blessed Virgin [i.e., the fifteen decades ofthe
Rosary] could never be lost. The people listened greedily to
this easy way of getting to heaven. The pastor there, an
excellent and learned man, though he thought the saying very ¦
foolish, said nothing for a time, thinking that no harm would
come from it, since the people would become the more devout to
God frora greater devotion to the Blessed Virgin. But at last he
found his flock infected with such a disease that the very worst
were especially addicted to the Rosary for no other reason than
that they promised themselves impunity in everything ; for
how could they doubt of heaven, when it was promised to
them with such assurance by so grave a man, a friar direct
from heaven ? The pastor then began to warn his flock not to
trust too much in the Rosary, even though they said it ten
" Apud Jortin, ii. 687.

liter.\rv. 97
times a day ; that those who would say it well would do an
excellent thing, provided they did not say it with presumption,
otherwise they would do better to omit the prayers altogether,
on condition that they omitted also the crimes which they were
committing more easily under the shelter of these prayers.
"When he said this from the pulpit he was heard with
indignation, and everywhere spoken of as an emeny of Our
Lady. Another day the friar mounts the pulpit, and to hit the
parish priest harder takes for his text the words, Dignare me
laudare te, Virgo sacraia ; da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos.
, For they say that Scotus used this text at Paris when disputing
on the Immaculate Conception, having been transported there,
as they falsely allege, in a moment, from a distance of 300.
miles, as the Virgin otherwise would have been in danger. Of
course our friar easily convinces men so willing to listen to him
that the pastor was as foolish as he was impious.
" While the matter was at its hottest, it happened that I
arrived at Coventry on a visit to my sister.* I had scarcely
got off my horse when the question was proposed also to me,
whether anyone could be damned who should daily recite the
Rosary ? I laughed at the foolish question, but was at once
warned that I was doing a dangerous thing ; that a most holy
and most learned father had preached against those who did
so. I pooh-poohed the whole matter as no affair of mine. I
was immediately invited to a dinner, and accepted the invitation
and went. There enters also an old friar with head bent, grave
and grim ; a boy follows him with books. I saw that I was in
for a quarrel. We sat down, and no time was lost ; the ques
tion was at once proposed by the host. The friar answered
just as he had preached. I said nothing ; I do not like to
meddle in odious and fruitless disputes. At last they asked my
opinion. As I was obliged to speak, I told them what I thought,
* It will be remembered that More had two sisters, both married. As
Rastell's wife lived in London, this must have been his eldest sister, Jane,
married to Richard Stafferton. 7

98 .SIR THOMAS MORE.
but only in a few words and without emphasis. Then the
friar pours out a long prepared speech which raight have raade
two sermons. His whole argument hung on certain miracles
which he read from a Mariale and from other books of that
kind, which he had brought to table for greater authority.
When at last he had come to an end, I modestly replied that
he had said nothing in his whole discourse capable of con
vincing those who should not admit the truth of those miracles,
which they might perhaps deny without abjuring the Christian
faith ; and that even if they were perfectly true, they did not
prove his point. For though you may easily find a king ready
to pardon something in an enemy at the prayers of his mother,
yet there is nowhere one so great a fool as to promulgate a law
by which to encourage the audacity of his subjects against
himself, by a proraise of irapunity to traitors, on condition
of their paying a certain homage to his mother. Much was
said on both sides, but I only succeeded in getting laughed at
while he was extolled. The matter reached at last such a
height through the depraved dispositions of men who, under
colour of piety, favoured their own vices, that- it could hardly
be calmed down, though the bishop strove to do so with all
his strength.
" I have not related this In order to impute crime to any
body of religious, since the same ground produces herbs both
wholesome and poisonous ; nor do I wish to find fault with
the custom of those who salute Our Lady, than which nothing
can be more beneficial ; but because some trust so much in
their devotions that they draw from them boldness to sin. It
is such things as these that Erasmus censures ; If anyone is
indignant against him for it, why is he not also indignant with
St. Jerome ? " *
* lb., p. 693. This letter was first printed at Basle by Froben in 1520,
araongst a number of letters against Edward Lee, though there is no
reference in it to Lee. On the above passage Mr. Seebohm finds nothing
more appropriate to say, than that, although More had «not set aside

LITERARY. 99
From passages like those here quoted, some writers have
drawn the conclusion that More's early veneration for religious
orders had been shaken, when he discovered how much the
reality differed from his ideal. They should have marked
more carefully what he says in the same letter : " I have no
doubt that there is no good man to be found anywhere, to
whom all religious orders are not extremely dear and cherished.
Not only have I ever loved them, but intensely venerated
them ; for I have been wont to honour the poorest person
commended by his virtue, more than one who is merely
ennobled by his riches or illustrious by his birth. I desire,
indeed, all mortals to honour you and your orders, and to
regard you with the deepest charity, for your merits deserve it ;
and I know that by your prayers the misery of the world itself
is somewhat diminished. If the assiduous prayer of the just
man is of rauch value, what must be the efficacy of the un
wearied prayers of so many thousands? Yet, on the other
hand, I would wish that you should not with a false zeal be so
partial to yourselves, that if anyone ventures to touch on what
regards you, you should try, by your way of relating it, to give
an evil turn to what he has said well, or that what he at least
intended well you should misinterpret and pervert."
In going to the root of this touchiness. More remarks both
wisely and wittily : " Everyone loves what is his own — his own
farm, his own money, his own nation, his own guild or associa
tion. We prefer our own private fasts to the public fasts of
the Church. If we have chosen a patron saint, we make more
of him than of ten more excellent, because he is our own, and
the rest of the saints belong to all. Now, if anyone finds
mariolatry he was travelling in that direction. That Luther had not
then (in 1519) travelled so far, though in after years he travelled faster !
(Oxford Reformers, p. 476.) Surely More was a man acute enough to
know in what direction he had been travelling. When we come to his
controversies with the Lutherans we shall hear his own account of the
matter.

lOO SIR THOMAS MORE.
fault with this partiality, he is not carping at the piety of the
people, but warning them lest, under pretext of piety, impiety
find an entrance. No one will blame a nation for honouring
a certain saint by name, for good reasons ; yet, it may occur
to some that such partiality is carried too far, when the patron
saint of a hostile country is torn down and thrown out of a
church into the mud. *
"Now, just as this kind of veneration and private ceremonial
does not always turn out well with us laymen, neither does
partisanship always thrive with you who are religious. Many
esteem their own devotions and practices more than those of
their monastery ; those of their own monastery more than those
of their order ; those of their own order more than what belongs
to all religious ; and those which are peculiar to religious they
set more value on than the lowly, humble things which belong
specially to no one, but are common to the whole Christian
people — such as the plebeian virtues of faith, hope and charity,
the fear of God, humility, and such like. This is no new thing.
It is a long time since Christ reproved the chosen race : ' Why
do you transgress the commandmeirts of God for your tradi
tions?' Of course, those who do so will deny it. Who is so
senseless as to confess to himself that he makes more accbunt
of ceremonies than of precepts, since he knows that, unless he
obeys the latter, the former are useless ? Doubtless all will
answer well in words if they are questioned ; but by their
doings they belie their words. May I be held a liar if there
are not religious in certain places who observe silence so obsti
nately that at no price could you get them even to whisper in
their corridors ; but, draw them one foot outside, and they will
not hesitate to storm at whoever offends them. There are some
who would fear lest the devil should carry them off alive if they
made any change in their dress, and who have no fear of heap-
* Perhaps St. Denis had been thus treated at the cry of " St. George
for England," during the French wars.

LITERARY. IOI
ing up money, of opposing and deposing their abbot. Are there
not many who, if they omitted a verse of their office, would think
It a crime to he expiated with many tears, and who have not the
least scruple to take part In calumnious gossip longer than their
longest prayers ? Thus they crush a gnat and swallow an ele
phant whole." *
I have given these long quotations that the reader may know
the good and evil of More's times, and may see him in his
many-sided character, and not be led to believe, by a short
sentence taken here or there from his writings, that he was
either an incipient rationalist or a narrow-minded bigot.
VII. Utopia.
I now come to his Utopia. This is the work by which More
^Kbestknown^ He wrote it in Latin, and, though it was soon
translated into French and other European languages, it was
not translated into English until long after his death. He cer
tainly had no wish that it should be read by the people of
England in the days of Henry VIII. Neither its serious wis
dom nor its peculiar irony, nor its subtie mixture of philosophy
and banter, were on the level of the half-educated men and
women who could only read English. Probably More was not
loth that his free speculations should be unknown to some of
the great lords, like the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, who
ruled in the king's council.
The second book of the Utopia was written first, probably
during the leisure hours of his first erabassy in Flanders. He
there showed it to some of his learned friends, such as Giles
and Busleyden. He was urged by them so earnestly to com
plete and publish it that he set about writing the Introduction,
or first part, on his return to England in 15 16. It was printed
in Louvain by Thierry Martins In December, 15x6, under the
editorship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, and others. The reprints
have been innumerable. *Ib., 691.

102 SIR THOMAS MORE.
The book is so well known that it need scarcely be said that
an imaginary Portuguese traveller, named Raphael Hythloday,
a companion of Amerigo Vespucci, is supposed to have met
More and Peter Giles at Antwerp, and to have described to
them the institutions of a wonderful people he had found in an
island called Utopia or Nowhere.* I will not here analyse his
book, nor mention the various social, political, philosophical
and reUgious questions on which he treats. Every educated
man should read Utopia for himself; but, in doing so, he must
bear in mind the peculiarity of More's character and the circum
stances in which the book was published.
As regards More himself, Erasraus has remarked that his
countenance was often a mystery, so that even members of his
own faraily would be puzzled to gather from his look or tone
whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest.i So it was his
\ * Philomorus quotes an epigram by John Heywood, a contemporary of
JMore's, to the effect that More wrote his Utopia at North Mimms, in
Hertfordshire, where he had a house :
-" There famous More did his Utopia write,
j And there came Heywood's epigraras to light ".
J — Philomorus, p. g.
But this is doubtful. Sir yohn More had a residence at North Mimms,
but probably at a later date. Utopia {Oiniiios) or Nusquama (as More
sometiraes calls it in his letters), "Nowhere". Revised and reprinted
by Froben at Basle, Noveraber, 1518 ; reprinted in Paris -and Vienna
during the author's life, but not in England. An English translation, by
Ralph Robinson, appeared in 1551 ; it has been reprinted by Dibdin, by
Arber, and Lumley. Dibdin's edition, with his notes, was beautifully
reprinted by Roberts in 1878. Another translation was made by Burnet
in 1684 ; it has been edited by Mr. Morley in Cassell's National Library,
(price 3d.). The introduction and notes to Mr. Lumley's edition will be
found very useful to those who wish to study the book. He has joined
with it Roper's Life of More.
t More himself refers to this. In his Dialogue his corapanion says :
" Ye use (ray master saith) to look so sadly when ye mean merrily, that
many tiraes man doubt whether ye speak in sport when ye mean good
earnest " {English Works, p. 127).

LITER.\RY. 103
peculiar humour to mystify his readers. " He hovers," says
Mr. Brewer, "so perpetually on the confines of jest and
earnest, passes so naturally from one to the other, that the
reader is in constant suspense whether his jest be serious or
his seriousness a jest." * There was policy in adopting this
style in the Utopia. He had some rude truths to tell the king,
as will be seen in a future chapter; he had many burning
questions to discuss ; it was necessary therefore to mix with
them some matters which could not be taken seriously or
attributed to him as his own opinions. Thus he says of the
Utopians that they have no lawyers among them, and consider
them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise
matters and to wrest the laws aside. Who can say whether
this does or does not express his real opinion ? The Utopians
use no money, and have no private property. Such a supposi
tion gave him scope to show the evils that come from avarice
and attend property ; but no one can argue that More seriously
taught communism or the Injustice of private property. There
is a voluntary communism which the Church has ever approved
in her religious orders, and which, in Apostolic days, was
practised even by families. More merely supposes this to be
adopted by a whole nation. He attributes to his islanders
most repulsive principles on treachery in war. Under cover of
this he writes many things concerning European military tactics
and diplomatic treaties that it would have been dangerous to
state without a mixture of absurdity.
Mr. Seebohm, nevertheless, seems to think that whatever
More writes on the subject of religion, on toleration, on divorce,
and the rest, must have represented his serious views at that
time of his life. His analysis is as follows : " Their priests
were very few in number, of either sex, and, like all other
magistrates, elected by ballot ; and it was a point of dispute
even with the Utopian Christians whether they could not elect
* Introduction to Letters and Papers, ii. p. 26S.

104 SI^ THOMAS MORE.
their own Christian priests in like manner, and qualify them to
perform all priestly offices, without any Apostolic succession or
authority from the Pope. Their priests were, in fact, rather
conductors of the public worship, inspectors of the public
morals, and ministers of education, than 'priests' In any
sacerdotal sense of the word. The hatred of the Oxford
Reformers for the endless dissensions of European Christians
pointed to a mode of worship in which all of every shade
of sentiment could unite."* What are we to think of all this ?
Was Thomas More in 15 16 really an advanced Protestant of
the type here described ? If not, why are these things in his
Utopia 1 The simple answer seems to be that More is
describing purely natural and unrevealed religion. He adraits
that in Utopia there were many opinions and divisions in
reUgion, and even some idolatry. To the better class, how
ever, he attributes a kind of beautiful deism, not as something
which he would substitute for Christianity, but which might be
an excellent preparation for Christianity, could it be supposed
to exist, and in the description of which he could reprove some
vices of professing Christians. Thus, for example, in the
eagerness of the Utopians to die, in order to see and possess
the God whom they worshipped, he indirectly satirises the
reluctance of Christians to go and enjoy the Beatific Vision.
But if he so extols the natural piety of his Utopians as to put
Christians to the blush, surely it by no means follows that the
Christian revelation, in More's view, contained nothing regard
ing the sacrifice of the Mass or the sacrament of Holy Orders.
We know that More, from his boyhood, had the tenderest
devotion to Our Lord's Passion, and the firmest belief in the
redemption of the world by the Precious Blood. Yet he writes
of his Utopians : "They offer up no living creature in sacrifice,
nor do they think it suitable to the Divine Being, from whose
bounty it is that those creatures had derived their lives, to take
* Oxford Reformers, p. 363.

LITERARY. 105
pleasure in their deaths or the offering up of their blood " It
would be as reasonable to conclude from these words that
More was a Socinian at heart as that he was sceptical regarding
the constitution and discipline of the Catholic Church because
of his pictures of Utopian modes of worship. This would be a
perfectly legitimate answer to Mr. Seebohm's conclusions had
More died, hke his friend Colet, before the Lutheran and
Zwinglian heresies had arisen. But what can be the purpose
of arguing by induction from a work which was put out as a
feu d'esprit when the writer has left hundreds of pages in
which his real belief is expressed without ambiguity ?
Among the various points of Utopian discipline let us take
the first in Mr. Seebohm's enumeration as a specimen. More
says that the female sex was not excluded from the priesthood,
though female priests were few, and only widows advanced In
age were elected. ^Vhat is there in this contrary to natural
religion, which More is describing ? And considering the kind
of functions which alone he assigns to priests, what is there in
this contrary even to Catholic discipline, which has ever given
a high and honourable part to women, especially in religious
orders ? But the question is whether More held that in
Christ's Church there is no Apostolical succession, no sacrament
of Holy Orders, no Divinely comraunicated jurisdiction, no
Divinely appointed distinction between the sexes as regards the
priesthood. Well, it so happens that Tindall, an English
Lutheran, put out a theory that in case of need — as, for example,
if a woman were cast by shipwreck on an island where there
were no Christians — she might preach and consecrate the Holy
Eucharist. More replied : " Tindall may make himself sure,
that since there falleth not a sparrow upon the ground without
Our Father that is in heaven, there shall no woman fall aland
in any so far an island, where God will have His name preached
and His sacraments ministered, but that God can, and will,
weU enough provide a man or twain to come to land with her ;
whereof we have had already meetly good experience, and that

I06 SIR THOMAS MORE.
within few years. For I am sure there hath been more islands
and raore part of the firm land and continent discovered and
founden out, withiri these forty years last past, than was new
founden, as far as any man raay perceive, this three thousand
years afore. And in many of these places the name of Christ,
now new known too, and preachings had, and sacraments mini
stered, without any woman fallen aland alone. But God hath
provided that His narae is preached by such good Christian
folk as Tindall now most raileth upon, that is good reUgious
friars, and specially the Friar Observants, honest, godly, chaste,
virtuous people ; not by such as Friar Luther is, that is run out
of religion, nor by casting to land alone any such holy nun as
his harlot is."* And in another place : " His heresy reckoneth
every woraan a priest, and as able to say Mass as ever was St.
Peter. And in good faith, as for such Masses as he would have
said, without the canon, without the secrets, without oblation,
without sacrifice, without the Body or Blood of Christ, with
bare signs and tokens instead of the Blessed Sacrament, I ween
a woman were indeed a more meet priest than St. Peter.'' f
As early as 1523, that is, seven years after the publication of
the Utopia, those very points which Mr. Seebohm would per
suade the world were the advanced liberal creed of Colet, More,
and Erasmus, More had selected as the insanissima dogmata,
the " most mad doctrines " of Luther.J Nor did it once occur

* English Works, p. 428.
t /*., p. 623.
X Luther rejected the visible Catholic Church and appealed to the true
invisible Church of Christ. More takes him at his word and answers
him as follows: "Profer tu gentem aliquam, ubi unquam in tot setatibus,
ante natum te, tus probatas sunf haereses. Ostende apud quos Christi
anos sacerdos nil distarit a laico, apud quos Christianos raulieres adraissae
sint ad audiendas confessiones, ubi creditas sint foeminse sacerdotes esse
et idoneae quae conficerent Eucharistiam. Qusecuraque tot aetatibus vera
fuit ecclesia, sive ilia fuit bonorum malorumque multitudo promiscua, sive

LITERARY. I07
to him, or to his opponents, that these were the very doctrines
that he and his friends Colet and Erasmus had secretly held,
or endeavoured covertly to insinuate.
As regards the Utopia, Harpsfield assures us that the zeal
of many good priests was so stirred in reading More's account
of this admirable people, so near to the kingdom of God, that
they wished to set out at once to convert them to the faith of
Christ. Their innocent error in taking Utopia for a real
country was not so ridiculous as that of Mr. Seebohm, in
taking More's description of their religion for More's own pro
fession of Christianity.* VIII. Epigrams.
Together with the Basle edition of the Utopia there appeared
in March, 1518, a collection of Latin Epigrams, by Thoinas
More and William Lilly, and a further series by Erasmus. A
second edition came out in November of the same year, and a
more complete collection in 1520. Prefixed is a letter of
Erasmus to Froben, the publisher, in which he says : " What
might have been expected had Italy given birth to so happy a
genius, if he had given himself entirely to the Muses, and if his
talent had ripened to its autumnal fruit? For he was but a
numerus duntaxat bonorum, sive in his regionibus quas parent Romano
Pontifici, sive alibi ubicumque terrarum, seraper contra te sensit ilia, et
tua damnavit insanissima dogmata " {Responsio ad Lutherum, cap. x.
p. 62, ed. Francofiirt).
* " The true notion of Utopia is, that it intimates a variety of doctrines,
and exhibits a multiplicity of projects, which the writer regards with
almost every possible degree of approbation and shade of assent ; from the
frontiers of serious and entire belief, through gradations of descending
plausibility, where the lowest are scarcely more than the exercises of
ingenuity, and to which some wild paradoxes are appended, either as a
vehicle or as an easy means (if necessary) of disavowing the serious
intention of the whole of the Platonic fiction." — Sir James Mackintosh
(Life of More, p. 61).

Io8 sir THOMAS more.
youth when he amused himself with these Epigrams, and no
more than a boy when he wrote many of them. He has never
left his native Britain but once or twice, when he was an envoy
of his prince in Flanders." *
The epigrams appeared with the title of "Progymnasmata"
or exercises, because several of them were efforts of skill in
translation from Greek into Latin. These, however, make
only a fourth part of the whole coUection.
A writer, who has illustrated More's epigrams in a very
scholarly and interesting book, remarks that " the terra Epi
gramma, as used in the time of Erasmus, was of a more com
prehensive character than our modern word Epigram. Like
the Epigram, it was a fugitive composition springing out of the
more salient topics of every-day life, terse in diction, and
steady in its pursuit of one subject. But it was frequently of
greater length than our modern Epigram. Many of the Epi
grammata might be classed under the modern designation of
vers de sociHe." I do not think it necessary to offer any criti
cism or further account of More's verses. Those who are
interested will find all they can wish in the Philomorus.\
One short piece, however, may be here mentioned, as being
connected with some pictures painted at the period we have
been reviewing, and which are still said to exist.
When More was at Calais in 15 17, he received a present
which caused him singular pleasure. His two friends, Erasmus
and Peter Giles (Egidius), had their portraits painted. by Quen
tin Matsys on two panels united as a diptych. Erasmus was
represented as writing the first lines of his Paraphrase on the
Epistie of St. Paul to the Romans. Giles was holding in his
hand a letter to which More's narae was legibly subscribed.
Erasmus sent the diptych by a messenger with a short letter : —
" I send you these portraits that we may be in some way pre-
* Epist. Erasm. 167, in App.
t Philomorus. Second edition. Longmans, 1878.

LITERARY. I09
sent with you, even if by chance we should be taken away.
Peter pays one-half of the cost, and I the other. Either of us
would gladly have paid the whole, but we wished the gift to be
from both. I am sorry you are shut up in Calais. If
nothing else can be done, write frequently, though it be only a
few words. Farewell, dearest of mortals. From Antwerp, Sth
September, 1517."*
Giles, while the portraits were being painted, had been very
ill. More writes to him on 6th October : " My dearest Peter,
I am longing to hear about your health ; no matter of my own
gives me more anxiety. Some give me good hope, either well
founded, as I trust, or else to comfort me. I have written a
letter to Erasmus, but I send it open to you ; you will seal it
yourself. There is no need to close against you whatever I
write to him. I have written for you a few verses about the
picture, though they are as unskilful as that is skilful. If you
think them deserving of it, send them to Erasmus ; if not,
throw them in the fire." t The Latin verses were very happy,
both in matter and form. In his letter to Erasmus, More
says : " You cannot believe, my Erasmus, my darling Eras
mus, I how this eagerness of yours to bind me still raore
closely to you, has heightened my love for you, though I
thought nothing could be added to it ; and how triumphant I
am in the glory of being so much esteemed by you, as that
you should make it known by a monument like this, that there
is no one whose love you prefer to mine. It may be a proud
thought, but most certainly I esteem your gift to mean that
you would wish the memory of you to be renewed In my mind,
not daily only, but every hour. You know me so well that I
* Epist. Erasm. 179, in App. Egidius wrote to Erasmus on 27th Sep
tember : " Si Morus Caleti est jam habet spectacula nostra" {lb., 193).
t lb., 192.
X Erasmiotatos, the superlative of Erasmios, which had been incor
rectly turned into Erasmus. It means " beloved "-

IIO sir THOMAS MORE.
need not labour to prove to you that, with all my faults, I am
no great boaster. Yet, to tell the truth, there is one craving
for glory I cannot shake off, and it is wonderful how sweetly
I am elated when the thought occurs to me that I shall be
commended to the most distant ages by the friendship, the
letters, the books, the pictures of Erasmus.*
In another letter More reverts to the subject with one of his
characteristic jokes. In his verses he had likened Erasmus
and Egidius to the twin brothers. Castor and Pollux. A friar
had criticised the similitude. Erasmus and Egidius, he said,
were friends, not brothers. They would, therefore, have been
more aptly compared to Pylades and Orestes, or to Theseus
and Pirithous, who were fast friends, though not brothers.
This criticisra drew from More the following epigram : —
Duos araicos versibus paucis modo
Magnos volens ostendere,
Tantos araicos dixeram, quanti olim erant
Castorque Polluxque, invicem.
" Fratres amicis," ait, " inepte comparas,"
Ineptiens fraterculus.
" Quidni ? " inquam ; " an alteri esse quisquam amicior,
" Quam frater est fratri, potest ? "
Irrisit ille inscitiam tantam meam,
Qui rem tam apertam nesciam.
" Est ampla nobis," inquit, " ac frequens domus,
" Plus quam ducentis fratribus,'
" Sex ex ducentis, pereo, si reperis duos
" Fratres amicos invicem." +
The man would deserve a far severer epigram who should take
* lb., 193.
t Inter. Epist. Erasm., 204, in App. For those who do not know
Latin I may state the substance of the lines in the text : —
" All brothers are not friends, you truly say ;
For friars are brothers, yet what friends are they ? "

LITERARY. Ill
these verses seriously, as if More thought ill of the friars, or as
if the friars would not have laughed heartily at the epigram.*
* The reader will be interested to know that at least one of the two
portraits is still in existence. According to Mr. J. G. Nichols, the portrait
of Egidius in the collection of Lord Radnor, at Nostel Priory, which was
long attributed to Holbein, is undoubtedly the work of Quentin Matsys
raentioned in these letters. It has been detached from its corapanion.
Quentin's corapanion picture of Erasraus, or, according to Mr. Nichols, a
copy of it, is in Harapton Court, and was also wrongly attributed to Hol
bein (see in Archceologia, vol. xliv. p. 435, an article written in 1873,
thoroughly discussing the subject). There exists also in the British 1
Museum the small illuminated book of Latin verses by More presented I
to Henry VIII. soon after his marriage. The red rose of Lancaster has
an interior circle of white petals, in allusion to the white rose of York of
Henry's mother (Cotton MSS. Titus D. iv., at the beginning).

CHAPTER VIIL
DOMESTIC.
THE Strange fascination exerted by More, which has made
even the foes of his religion speak of him both reverently
and affectionately, is probably due to the beautiful details
of his doraestic life that have been handed down to us, rather
than to his wit or literary excellence. Had he been all that he
was in life and death, with one only exception — an ecclesiastic,
instead of a father of a family — he would have been still great,
araiable, and holy, but Macaulay would probably not have
selected him as "a choice specimen .of huraan wisdom and
virtue," In stating his paradoxes about transubstantiation. Thus
the very circurastances, by which in his own eyes More was
placed on a lower level than his unmarried and consecrated
fellow-martyrs, have raised him to a higher estimation in the
minds of modern Englishmen ; the " worldly wretch,'' as he
called himself, who had twice gone to earthly nuptials, is
preferred to the "blessed fathers" of the Charterhouse, whom
More admired "going like bridegrooms to their (heavenly)
marriage " Yet, while holding with the Church of all ages, that
it is a more blessed state to remain unmarried for the kingdom
of heaven's sake, we may nevertheless, and for that very reason,
admire all the more a married man and a father, to whom
family ties were no impediment, whose heart remained undivided
and altogether God's, and who equaUed on the scaffold both
the constancy and the joy of his venerable fellow-sufferers ; and
we may thank God for giving to us in both states of life.

DOMESTIC. 113
examples, variously attractive yet equally admirable, of the
power of His grace. Section I. The Family.
We owe to Erasmus more than one beautiful picture of
More's domestic life, and I will translate his words without
abridgment or interruption, reserving the details that have
come to us from other sources until we have looked carefully
at his masterly sketch. The letter to Ulrich von Hutten,
which has been frequently quoted, was written on the 23rd
July, 1519. At that time More had been eight or nine years
married to his second wife, who had given him no children, but
had been as a mother to his four children by his first wife. He
was forty-one years old, his eldest child thirteen.
A few months after the death of Jane Colt he had married,
against the advice of his friends, a widow named Alice
Middleton, neither young nor handsome — nec bella nec puella, as
More would sometimes say laughingly to Erasmus ; ' ' but an
active and vigilant housewife, with whom," continues his friend,
" he lives as pleasantly and sweetly as if she had all the charms
of youth. You will scarcely find a husband who, by authority
or severity, has gained such ready compliance as More by
playful flattery. What, indeed, would he not obtain, when he
has prevailed on a woman already getting old, by no means of
a pUable disposition, and intent on domestic affairs, to learn to
play the harp, the lute, the monochord, and the fiute (cithara,
iestudine, monochordo, tibiis), and by the appointment of her
husband to devote to this task a fixed time every day ? * With
the same address he guides his whole household, in which there
are no disturbances or strife. If such arise he imraediately
appeases it and sets all right again, never conceiving enmity
* More's friend Pace tells us that More played duets with his wife :
Sicut Morus meus didicit pulsare tibias cum conjuge (De Fructu, etc.,
P- 35). 8

114 SIR THOMAS MORE.
himself nor making an enemy. Indeed, there seems to be a
kind of fateful happiness in this house, so that no one has lived
in it without rising to higher fortune ; no member of it has ever
incurred any stain on his reputation. You will scarcely find
any who live in such harmony with a mother as does Thomas
More with his step-mother, for his father had married again, and
the son was as affectionate towards her as to his own mother.
Quite recently he has married a third wife, and More swears he
never knew a better woman. Towards his parents and his
children and his sisters his love is never intrusive or exacting,
while he omits nothing that can show his sincere attachment."
Two years later, towards the end of the year 1 5 2 1 , Erasmus
returns to the same subject in a letter to Bud^e, a very learned
French statesman, and a married man like More.
" If More had the means he would be a great Maecenas of
learning. He has helped the learned even when he himself
was in debt. Nor does he adorn letters merely by his own
learning or his partiality for learned men, for he has reared his
whole family in, excellent studies — a new example, but one
which is likely to be much imitated, unless I am mistaken, so
successful has it been. He has three daughters, of whom the
eldest, Margaret, is married to a young man who is wealthy
(beato), of excellent and modest character, and not unacquainted
with literature. More has been careful to have all his children,
from their earUest years, thoroughly imbued, first with chaste
and holy morals, and then with polite letters. He has taken
into his family another girl, and adopted her as companion to
his daughters. He has a step-daughter of rare beauty and
talent, who has been some years married to a young man not
unlearned, and of a most amiable character. He has a son by
his first wife, the youngest of his children, about thirteen years
old.* * Here the memory of Erasmus is' defective, though he says "plus
minus "- Young John More could not be over eleven in the autumn of
1521.

DOMESTIC. 115
" A year ago it occurred to More to send me a specimen of
their progress In study. He bade them all write to me, each
one without any help, neither the subject being suggested nor
the language corrected ; for when they offered their papers to
their father for correction, he affected to be displeased with the
bad writing, and made them copy out their letters more neatiy
and accurately. When they had done so, he closed the letters
and sent them to me without changing a syllable. Believe me,
dear Bud^e, I never was more surprised ; there was nothing
whatever either silly or girlish in what was said, and the style
was such that you could feel they were making daily progress.
This amiable circle, with the two husbands,* all live in his
house. In that house you will find no one idle, no one busied
in feminine trifles. Titus Livius is ever in their hands. They
have advanced so far that they can read such authors and under
stand them without a translation, unless there occurs some such
word as would perhaps perplex myself. His wife, who excels in
good sense and experience rather than in learning, governs the
little company with wonderful tact, assigning to each a task, and
requiring its performance, allowing no one to be idle or to be
occupied in trifles.
"You complain occasionally in your letters to me that
philology t has got a bad name through you, since it has both
injured your health and made you poorer. But More manages
to be well spoken of by all and in all respects ; and he avers
that he is indebted to literature both for better health, for the
favour and affection he meets with from his exceUent prince, as
well as from his own countrymen and foreigners, for an increase
of wealth, for becoming more agreeable both to himself and his
friends, more useful to his country and his relatives, more
fitted for the life at court, and intercourse with nobles, as weU
as for all society and social life, and lastly, more dear to
* Duobus sponsis ; I will discuss the meaning of this word presently.
+ Budee was a scholar and antiquarian. His great work, De Asse,
had already been published.

Il6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
heaven. Formerly learning had a bad name, since it seemed
to deprive its votaries of coramon sense. Well, no journey, no
business, however prolonged or arduous, makes More lay aside
his books ; yet you will find no one who is so companionable
a man at all times, and to every class,* so ready to render
service, so affable, so lively in conversation, or who knows so
well how to unite solid prudence with sweetness of manners.
Hence it has come to pass that, whereas a short time since,
love of literature was held to be useless either for practical or
ornamental purposes, now there is scarcely a nobleman who
considers his children worthy of his ancestors unless they are
educated in good letters. Even in kings a great part of their
royal splendour is seen to be wanting where there is little
acquaintance with literature." t
We may now go back and consider the various personages
mentioned in these letters. And first his wife, the step-mother
of his children. Cresacre More writes : " I have heard it re
ported he wooed her for a friend of his, not once thinking to
have her himself, but she wisely answering hira ' that he might
speed if he would speak in his own behalf,' telling his friend
what she had said unto him, with his good liking he married
her, and did that which otherwise he would never have thought
to have done " None of More's contemporaries mentions this
story, and though I cannot disprove it, it seems to me to have
been invented to match the second courtship with the first, and
to explain what might seem a somewhat ill-assorted marriage.
Yet, if More sought the benefit of his children rather than him
self, he appears to have made an excellent choice, and so
philosophical was his mind and happy his disposition that he
lived with her as pleasantiy, if not as affectionately, as if they
had been drawn together by similarity of tastes and character.
She was seven years his senior, as we know from the inscrip-
* Omnibus omnium horarum homo.
+ Epist. 603.

DOMESTIC. 117
tion on the family picture. The character of this good lady
seems to me to have been most gratuitously blackened. "Any
heart but More's," writes Mr. Dibdin, "would have been
broken by this match, for Mrs. Alice Middleton appears to
have been one of the most loquacious, ignorant, and narrow-
minded of women. Like another Socrates, More endeavoured
to laugh away his conjugal miseries; always replying to the
sarcastic remarks of his wife with complacency and poignant
good humour."* Let us be just. There is nothing in the
letters of Erasmus or More to authorise such a censure as this.
It is said that Erasmus found the lady rude and inhospitable.
It is true that in 15 16 he mentions in one of his letters that he
is growing weary of England, and finds that he has outstayed his
welcome with More's wife.t Yet although a lady should make
her husband's guest and dear friend feel at home, let it be
remembered that Erasmus had never taken the trouble to learn
a word of Enghsh. j It would surely be a trial to the meekest
or most genial of wives to hear all the conversation and the
laughter-moving jokes carried on daily, for weeks together, in a
language of which she could not understand a word.
Perhaps she was somewhat worldly, " but so,'' as Sir Thomas
would say of her, " that she was often penny-wise and pound-
foolish, saving a candle's end and spoiling a velvet gown ".§
More, however, had chosen her that her economical habits
might counterbalance his own rather excessive carelessness, and
we do not find that she complained of his generous alms. We
may sometimes know a person's character better by the letters
he receives than by those he writes, since the former indicate
* Biographical Introduction to More's Utopia.
t Ni jam rae tjederet Britannije, et sentirem me vetulum jam hospitera
uxori Moricae suppetere {Epist. 133). The editor has dated the letter
1511. Frora the allusions in it, it should be 1516.
X Erasmus confesses his entire ignorance of English in Letter 165,
written after he had spent years in England.
§ Cresacre's Life.

Il8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the judgment entertained regarding him. Judged by this rule
Lady More must have been a Christian and generous-hearted
woman, to whom her husband could write the following
letter : —
" Mistress AUce, in my most hearty wise I recommend me
to you. And whereas I am informed by my son Heron of the
loss of our barns and our neighbours' also [by fire] with aU the
corn that was therein ; albeit, saving God's pleasure, it is
great pity of so much good corn lost, yet since it hath liked
Hira to send us such a chance, we must and are bounden, not
only to be content, but also to be glad of His visitation. He
sent us all that we have lost, and since He hath by such a chance
taken it away again. His pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never
grieve thereat, but take it in good worth and heartily thank
Him as well for adversity as for prosperity. And peradventure
we have more cause to thank Him for our loss than for our win
ning. For His wisdom better seeth what is good for us than
we do ourselves. Therefore, I pray you be of good cheer, and
take all the household with you to Church, and there thank
God both for that He hath given us, and for that He hath
taken away from us, and for that He hath left us, which, if it
please Hira, He can increase when He will. And if it please
Him to leave us less yet, at His pleasure be it.
" I pray you to make sorae good ensearch what my poor
neighbours have lost, and bid them take no thought therefor ;
for, and I should not leave myself a spoon, there shall no
poor neighbour of mine bear no loss happened by any chance
in my house. I pray you be with my children and your house
hold raerry in God. And devise somewhat with your friends
what way were best to take for provision to be raade for corn
for our household, and for seed this year coming, if ye think it
good that we keep the ground still in our hands. And whether
ye think it good that we shall do so or not, yet I think it were
not best suddenly thus to leave it all up and to put away our
folk off our farm, till we have somewhat advised us thereon.

DOMESTIC. Iig
Howbeit if we have more now than ye shall need, and which
can get them other masters, ye may then discharge us of them.
But I would not that any man were suddenly sent away he wot
ne'er whither.
" At my coming hither I perceived none other but that I
should tarry still with the king's grace. But now I shall (I
think) because of this chance, get leave this next week to come
home and see you ; and then shall we further devise together
upon all things what order shall be best to take. And thus as
heartily fare you well, with all our children, as ye can wish.
At Woodstock the third day of September, by the hand of your
loving husband, Thomas More, Knight." *
If this letter proves that Sir Thomas More had the detach
ment, the love of justice and care of inferiors that we admire
in Job, it equally proves that Lady More was not like Job's
wife, but like the " valiant woman " of whom it is written :
" The heart of her husband trusteth in her "-
Again, if the widow of Mr. Middleton had occasionaUy a
sharp tongue, she was no termagant. In a letter to Erasmus
of 15th December, 1517, More writes: "My wife desires a
miUion of compliments, especially for your careful wish that
she may live many years. She says she is the more anxious
for this as she will live the longer to plague me." t This kind
of playful banter does not belong to a Xantippe. Harpsfield
writes as follows : " This wife on a time after shrift bade Sir
Thomas More be merry, ' for I have,' saith she, ' this day left
aU my shrewdness, and to-morrow I will begin afresh,' with
merry-conceited talk, though now and then it proved very true.
Indeed, Sir Thomas More could well digest and like it in her and
* English Works, p. 1419. The editor adds that the fire occurred
through the negligence of a neighbour's carter, not through the fault of
any of More's servants, which makes his generosity all the more striking.
The letter was written in August, 1529, just after his return from his
embassy at Cambrai. A few months later he was raade chancellor.
+ Inter Epist. Erasm., 221, in App.

120 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Others; neither was he in her debt for repaying home again
oftentimes such kind of talk. Among other things, when he
divers times beheld his wife what pains she took in straight
binding up her hair to make her a fair large forehead, and with,
strait bracing in her body to make her middle small, both twain
to her great pain, for the pride of a little foolish praise, he said
to her : ' Forsooth, madam, if God give you not hell he shall
do you great wrong, for it must needs be your own of very
right, for you buy it very dear, and take very great pains
therefor '.*
" This wife, when she saw that Sir Thomas bad no great list
greatly to get upward in the world, neither would labour for
office of authority, and besides that he forsook a right worship
ful room when it was offered him, she fell in han^ with him
and asked : ' What will you do that ye list not to put forth
yourself as other folks do ? Will you sit still by the fire, and
make goslings in the ashes with a stick, as children do ?
Would God I were a man, and look what I would do.' ' Why,
wife,' quoth her husband, ' what would you do ? ' ' What ? by
God, go forward with the best. For, as my mother was wont
to say (God have mercy on her soul), it is ever better to rule
than to be ruled. And, therefore, by God, I would not, I
warrant you, be so fbolish to , be ruled when I might rule.'
' By my troth, wife,' quoth her husband, ' in this I daresay
you say truth, for I never found you willing to be ruled
as yet.'"t
We have now seen all the evil that can be alleged against
* This saying is attributed by More to " a good worshipful man ". It
is by no raeans certain that the saying was his own, or the lady his wife
(English Works, 1205).
tThis last paragraph is taken by Harpsfield frora More's dialogue,
written in the Tower, called " Comfort in Tribulation " (English Works,
p. 1224), where the lady is called " a stout master-woman ". It is not
said to be More's wife, but the illusion is evident. I have corrected
Harpsfield by More himself.

DOMESTIC. 121
this lady, and it certainly does not justify our classing Blessed
More amongst the ill-matched great men.* To say that
when his time of suffering came she did not rise to the height
of his soul, is merely to class her with nearly all her contem
poraries, including almost every abbess, abbot and bishop in
the country.
We may pass now to the other members of More's house
hold. Erasmus mentions two sponsi. The word is ambiguous.
It may mean one engaged merely, or a husband, especially
one recently married. Here it must stand for husbands.
Erasmus had mentioned that More's eldest daughter was
recently married. Her husband was WilUam Roper. The
second sponsus must have been the husband of Alice
Middleton, More's step-daughter. This young lady had
been educated with great care in More's house. She married
young, and I do not find the name of her husband. After his
death, and during More's lifetime, she took for her second
husband, Giles (afterwards Sir Giles) Alington. t She will
be mentioned at the time of More's imprisonment in the
Tower as interesting herself much for her "father" She
appears to have lived on very affectionate terms with the
family. It is not recorded at what period she and her
husband ceased to be inmates of More's house.
Of William Roper, a strange story is related by Harpsfield,
Stapleton and Cresacre More. As Harpsfield's narrative was
written under Roper's own eye, and dedicated to him, I will
give it in his words : " Mr. William Roper, at what time he
* I cannot claim in favour of Mistress Alice the following letter of
Ammonius, because though the Leyden editor has dated it 19th May,
1515, the year should be 1511, and it refers to the first wife, who died
shortly after it was written : Morus noster melUtissimus, cum sua facil-
lima conjuge, quee nunquam tui meminit, quin tibi bene precetur, ct
liberis ac universa familia, pulcherrime valet (Inter. Epist. Erasm., 175).
t See More's English Works, p. 1435, where he speaks of her
present and her late husband.

122 SIR THOMAS MORE.
married with Mistress Margaret More, was a marvellous,
zealous Protestant, and so fervent and withal so well and
properly Uked of himself and his divine learning, that he took
the bridle into the teeth, and ran forward like a headstrong
horse hard to be plucked back again. Neither was he con
tented to whisper it in hugger-mugger, but thirsted very sore
to publish his new doctrine and divulge it, and thought
himself very able so to do^ and it were even at St. Paul's
Cross. Yea, for the burning zeal that he bare to the further
ance of Luther's new broached religion, and for the pretty
liking of himself, he longed so sore to be pulpited, that
to have satisfied his mind he could have been contented
to have foregone a good portion of his lands. This
fall into heresy, Mr. Roper (as he can conjecture) first did
grow of a scruple of his own conscience, for lack of grace
and better knowledge, as some do upon other occasions. He
daily did use iraraoderate fasting and many prayers, which,
with good discretion well-used, had not been to be misliked ; but
using them without order and good consideration, thinking
God thereby never to be pleased, did weary himself usque ad
tcediu7n. Then did he understand of Luther's works brought
into this realm, and as Eve of a curious mind, desirous to
know both good and evil, so did he, for the strangeness
and delectation of that doctrine, fall into great desire to
read his works. Amongst other his works he read a book
of Luther's De Libertate Christiana, and another De Captivitate
Babylonica, and was in affection so with them bewitched,
that he did then believe every matter set forth by Luther to
be true.
"And with these books' ignorance, pride, false allegations,
sophistical reasons and arguments, and with his own corrupt
affections, he was deceived, and fully persuaded that faith only
did justify ; that the works of man did nothing profit ; and that,
if man could once beUeve that our Saviour, Christ, shed His
Precious Blood and died on the Cross for our sins, the same

DO.MESTIC. 123
only belief should be sufficient for our salvation. Then thought
he that all the ceremonies and sacraments in Christ's Church
were very vain ; and was at length so far waded into heresy,
and puffed up with pride, that he wished that he might be
suffered publicly to preach. Who, for his open talk and
companying with divers of his own sect of the Stillyard and
other merchants, was, with them, before Cardinal Wolsey, con
vented of heresy : which merchants, for their opinions, were
openly, for heresy, at Paul's Cross abjured. Yet he, for love
borne by the cardinal to Sir Thomas More, his father-in-law,
was, with a friendly warning, discharged. And albeit he had
married the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, whom then
of all the world he did during that time most abhor, though he
was a man of most mildness and notable patience. And
these lessons he did so wiell Uke as he soon after gave over his
fasting, prayer, his primer, and got to hira a Lutheran Bible,*
wherein upon the holy days, instead of his prayers, he spent
his whole time.
" And so after continued he in his heresies until upon a time
that Sir Thomas More privately in his garden talked with his
daughter Margaret, and said : ' Meg, I have borne a long time
with thy husband ; I have reasoned and argued with him in
these points of reUgion, and still given to him my poor fatherly
counsel; but I perceive none of all this able to call him horae; and
therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, but will clean
give him over and get me to God and pray for him ' And soon
after, as Roper verily believed, through the great mercy of God,
at the devout prayers of Sir Thomas More, he perceived his own
ignorance, oversight, malice and folly, and turned him again to
the Catholic faith, wherein (God be thanked) he hath hitherto
continued." Notwithstanding what Harpsfield and others tell us of More's
arguments and prayers on this occasion, some have concluded
• Luther translated the New Testament into German in 1521.

124 SIR THOMAS MORE.
that More could not at that period have been a very staunch
CathoUc, when he allowed his daughter to marry a heretic. It
seeras to me to be pushing too far Harpsfield's expression " at
what time he married" to force it to mean "before he married".
If he became "a Protestant" (the word is used by Harpsfield
by anticipation, for it was not then invented) shortly after his
marriage, all is easily explained. The books of Luther that
made so much impression on him — The Babylonian Captivity
and Christian Liberty — only appeared in Germany at the end
of 1520. When Erasmus, at the end of 152 1, wrote his eulogy
of Margaret's husband, the news had not reached him of his fall
into the new opinions of Luther. It is likely that this happened
after his raarriage, either in 1521 or 1522. Besides this: as
obstinate Lutheranisra at that time in England meant death, it
is impossible that Sir Thomas could have allowed his favourite
daughter to marry one already fallen into that heresy. Roper
tells us that he resided with his father-in-law for sixteen years
and more. If this is correct, he must have been taken into the
family at the beginning of 1519, when he was about twenty-three
years old and Margaret about thirteen. She would be in her
sixteenth year when she married him in 1521.* Margaret
Roper will frequently appear in this history. I pass on to the
others. Elizabeth, a year younger than Margaret, married the son and
heir of Sir John Daunsey (or Dancy). Among the sketches by
Holbein in Her Majesty's collection is one which a former
keeper has supposed to represent Lady Barkley. It is really a
portrait of Elizabeth Dancy.
Cecily, the third daughter, married Mr. Giles Heron of
Shakelwell, or Spedwell in Hackney, son of Sir John Heron.
Sir Thomas More received from the king, in March, 1523, a
* In Utopia it is said : " Their women are not married before eighteen".
We do not know why Sir Thomas departed from this rule. He probably
thought an early marriage better than a long courtship.

DOMESTIC.

I2S

grant of the wardship of this young gentleman.* He was
foreman of the jury that tried Anne Boleyn ; and he was
martyred at Tyburn, 4th August, 1540.
John, the youngest child and only son of Sir Thomas, is but
Uttie known to us. Dibdin says : " It seems that More's wife
wishe(?very much for a boy ; at last she brought him this son,
who proved to be but of slender capacity, upon which Sir Thomas
is reported to have said to his wife that she had prayed so long
for a boy that she had now one who would be a boy as long as
he lived ".f If Mr. Dibdin had remarked that John's mother
died before he was a year old, he would have seen that More
could not have made such a remark to her — at least, with the
sense indicated. Contemporary writers, on the contrary, all
speak of the son as a studious youth of good abilities. Eras
mus dedicated to him his edition of Aristotle, with a very com
pUmentary letter, and Grynasus his Flato and other works.
Cresacre More writes: "Sir Thomas's son, my grandfather,
married Anne Cresacre, sole daughter and heir of Edward
Cresacre (deceased) of Baronborough, in the county of York,
esquire, whom Sir Thomas bought of the king, being his ward,
upon error for another body's land lying in the same town, as
was afterwards proved "
Margaret Glgey, or Gigs, appears to have been an orphan
girl and a relative of the family. % She was treated in every
way as one of his own children. She became singularly learned,
and married Dr. Clements, who was also an inmate of More's
* Letters and Papers, iii. 2900 ; iv. 314. Such grants were profitable,
and were one of the means at the king's disposal of rewarding his ser
vants or his favourites. On 23rd January, 1527, More received the custody
of John Morton, an idiot {Letters and Papers, iv. 2758).
t Dibdin quotes Old Biog. Brit. v. 3168.
f'Cognata," in the family picture. In the Holbein crayons in Her
Majesty's collection is a portrait of Margaret Gigs, or Clements. It is
erroneously inscribed (not by Holbein) " Mother Jak," by which narae
Mrs. Jackson, nurse of Edward VI. , was known.

126 SIR THOMAS MORE.
house. She had all the affection of a daughter towards her
benefactor, and loved to relate to Stapleton, in her old age,
littie traits of More's piety and other virtues. Amongst other
things she said she would now and then commit some slight
fault for the pleasure of drawing down on herself his gentie and
sweet correction. Twice only throughout his life did she see
him reaUy angry.* -The husband of this lady, John Clements,
had been taken into More's family from St. Paul's School,
probably at the recommendation of Dean Colet, its founder.
He fulfilled the high expectation that had been formed of his
virtue and ability. He seems to have acted as tutor in his
patron's faraily while he pursued his own Latin and Greek
studies. He became professor of Greek at Oxford, t but for
sook his chair for the study of medicine. He suffered exile
for the faith, both under Edward VI. and Elizabeth. J
Another inmate was John Harris, who acted partly as More's
secretary, partly as tutor. He also is said to have been learned
in Greek and Latin. He married Dorothy Colley, who was
lady's maid to Mrs. Roper, and altogether worthy of such a
mistress. Nor must Henry Patenson, the " fool," be forgotten in the
account of More's household, since More himself has rendered
him famous, both by introducing him into the family picture
and by several stories about him in his various works. In the
entertainraent of a domestic fool. More not only conformed to
a fashion, but followed his own judgment, for he thus writes of
the Utopians : " They have singular delight and pleasure in
* Stapleton, Vita, cap. 9.
t More writes of him in the highest possible terms (see Stapleton, cap.
10. J" John Clement and his wife Margaret," writes Sander, "had one son,
named Thomas, and four daughters, all Greek and Latin scholars, of
whora Dorothy is a Poor Clare at Louvain, and Margaret, at St. Ursula's
Convent there, though a young nun and an Englishworaan among Flem
ings, is superioress over eighty sisters by their pre-election " {De Vis.
Monarch.).

DOMESTIC. 127
Fools. And as It is a great reproach to do any of them hurt or
injury, so they prohibit not to take pleasure of foolishness, for
that, they think, doth much good to the fools. And if any man
be so sad and stern that he cannot laugh, neither at their words
nor at their deeds, none of them be committed to his tuition,
for fear lest he would not intreat them gently and favourably
enough ; to whom they should bring no delectation (for other
goodness in them is there none), much less any profit should
they yield him."*
However, when More became chancellor, he dispensed with
his jester and gave him to Sir John More, his father, t At his
father's death Sir Thomas gave him to the Lord Mayor, on
condition that he should also serve his successors during their
time of office. % Section II. Education.
We may turn now to More's method of educating his children.
We have a very full exposition both of his principles and
practice in a Latin letter written to William Gunnell, a learned
ecclesiastic of Cambridge, who held for a time the office of
tutor In his family. The letter bears no date of year. " I have
received, my dear GunneU, your letter, elegant, as your letters
always are, and full of affection. From your letter I perceive
your devotion to my children ; I argue their diligence from
their own. Every one of their letters pleased me, but I was
particularly pleased because I notice that Elizabeth shows a
* Robinson's translation.
t Stapleton Vita, cap. 9.
J Lord Herbert, Life of Henry VIII. He was of course a "servus" or
bondsman, as"K5 iti luai'EeH'on the family picture. More tells us of
another fbol or madman, named Cliff, who lived for many years in his
house, and got into some trouble for breaking off the head of the Infant
Jesus in the arms of Our Lady, on London Bridge ; " for," says Sir Thomas,
"he got the same kind of notions into his head in his madness, that the
Lutherans have in their sadness " [English Works, p. 935).

128 SIR THOMAS MORE.
gentleness and self-command in the absence of her mother, *
which some children would not show in her presence. Let her
understand that such conduct deUghts me more than all possible
letters I could receive from anyone. Though I prefer learning
joined with virtue, to all the treasures of kings, yet renown for
learning, when it is not united with a good life is nothing else
than splendid and notorious infamy : this would be specially the
case in a woman. Since erudition in women is a new thing and
a reproach to the sloth of men, many will gladly assail it, and
impute to Uterature what is really the fault of nature, thinking
from the vices of the learned to get their own ignorance
esteemed as virtue. On the other hand, if a woman (and this
I desire and hope with you as their teacher for all my daughters)
to eminent virtue should add an outwork of even moderate
skill in literature, I think she will have more real profit than if
she had obtained the riches of Croesus and the beauty of Helen.
I do not say this because of the glory which will be hers, though
glory follows virtue as a shadow follows a body, but because the
reward of wisdom is too solid to be lost like riches or to decay
like beauty, since it depends on the intimate conscience of what
is right, not on the talk of men, than which nothing is more
foolish or mischievous.
" It belongs to a good man, no doubt, to avoid infamy, but
to lay himself out for renown is the conduct of a man who is
not only proud, but ridiculous and miserable. A soul must be
without peace which is ever fluctuating between elation and dis
appointment from the opinions ofmen. Among all the bene
fits that learning bestows on men, there is none more excellent
than this, that by the study of books we are taught in that very
study to seek not praise, but utility. Such has been the teach-
* The edition of Stapleton of i68g ha.spatre, that of 1588 matre. I have
translated all the letters myself, instead of giving Cresacre's translation,
lest the old English should make the reader think he has More's own
words ; and because I find that Cresacre's translation, with all its charms,
is not always correct.

DOMESTIC. 129
ing of the most learned men, especially of philosophers, who
are the guides of human life, although some may have abused
learning, like other good things, simply to court empty glory
and popular renown.
" I have dwelt so much on this matter, my dear Gunnell,
because of what you say in your letter, that Margaret's lofty
character should not be abased. In this judgment I quite
agree with you ; but to me, and, no doubt, to you also, that
man would seem to abase a generous character who should
accustom it to admire what is vain and low. He, on the con
trary, raises the character who rises to virtue and true goods,
and who looks down with contempt from the contemplation of
what is sublime, on those shadows of good things which almost
all mortals,* through ignorance of truth, greedily snatch at as
if they were true goods.
" Therefore, my dear GunneU, since we must walk by this
road, I have often begged not you only, who, out of your affec
tion for my children, would do it of your own accord, nor my
wife, who is sufficientiy urged by her maternal love for them,
which has been proved to me in so many ways, but all my
friends, to warn my children to avoid the precipices of pride
and haughtiness, and to walk in the pleasant meadows of
modesty ; not to be dazzled at the sight of gold ; not to lament
that they do not possess what they erroneously admire in
others ; not to think more of themselves for gaudy trappings,
nor less for the want of them; neither to deform- the beauty
that nature has given them by neglect, nor to try to heighten
it by artifice ; to put virtue in the first place, learning in the
second ; and in their studies to esteem most whatever may
teach them piety towards God, charity to all, and modesty and
Christian humility in themselves. By such means they will

* Moniales (nuns) is in the edition of Frankfort, 1689. There is
nothing in the context to justify any allusion to nuns. It is clear that
the word was mortales, as in edition 1588.
9

130 SIR THOMAS MORE.
receive from God the reward of an innocent life, and in the
assured expectation of it, will view death without horror, and
meanwhile possessing solid joy, will neither be puffed up by
the empty praise of men, nor dejected by evil tongues. These
I consider the genuine fruits of learning, and, though I admit
that all literary men do not possess them, I would maintain
that those who give theraselves to study with such views, will
easily attain their end and become perfect.
" Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected
whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They
both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates
from that of beasts ; both, therefore, are equally suited for
those studies by which reason is perfectioned, and becomes
fruitful like a ploughed land on which the seed of good lessons
has been sown. If it be true that the soil of woman's brain be
bad, and apter to bear bracken than corn, by which saying
many keep woraen from study, I think, on the contrary, that a
woman's wit is on that account all the more diligently to be
cultivated, that nature's defect may be redressed by industry.
This was the opinion of the ancients, of those who were most
prudent as well as most holy. Not to speak of the rest, St.
Jerome and St. Augustine not only exhorted excellent matrons
and most noble virgins to study, but also, in order to assist
them, diligently explained the abstruse meanings of Holy
Scripture, and wrote for tender girls letters replete with so
much erudition, that now-a-days old men, who call themselves
professors of sacred science, can scarcely read them correctly,
much less understand them. Do you, my learned Gunnell,
have the kindness to see that my daughters thoroughly learn
these works of those holy men. .
" I fancy I hear you object that these precepts, though true,
are beyond the capacity of my young children, since you will
scarcely find a man, however old and advanced, whose mind Is
so firmly set as not to be tickled sometimes with desire of
glory. But, dear Gunnell, the more I see the difficulty of

DOMESTIC.

131

getting rid of this pest of pride, the more do I see the necessity
of setting to work at it from childhood. For I find no other
reason why this evil clings so to our hearts, than because
almost as soon as we are born, it is sown in the tender minds
of children by their nurses, it is cultivated by their teachers,
and brought to its full growth by their parents ; no one teach
ing even what is good without, at the same tirae, awakening
the expectation of praise, as of the prpper reward of virtue.
Thus we grow accustomed to make so much of praise, that
while we study how to please the greater number (who will
always be the worst), we grow ashamed of being good (with the
few). That this plague of vainglory may be banished far from
my children, I do desire that you, my dear Gunnell, and their
mother and all their friends, would sing this song to thera, and
repeat it, and beat it into their heads, that vainglory is a thing
despicable, and to be spit upon ; and that there is nothing
more sublime than that humble modesty so often praised by
Christ ; and this your prudent charity will so enforce as to
teach virtue rather than reprove vice, and make them love
good advice instead of hating it. To this purpose nothing
will more conduce than to read to thera the lessons of the
ancient Fathers, who, they know, cannot be angry with them,
and, as they honour them for their sanctity, they raust needs be
much moved by their authority. If you will teach something
of this sort, in addition to their lesson in Sallust — to Margaret
and Elizabeth, as being more advanced than John and Cecily
— you will bind me and them still more to you. And thus
you wiU bring about that my children, who are dear to me by
nature, and still more dear by learning and virtue, will become
most dear by that advance in knowledge and good conduct.
Adieu. From the Court on the vigil of Pentecost."
It wiU be seen from this and his other letters that while More
taught his children to hate vainglory and not to consider praise
as the end for which knowledge or virtue should be cultivated,
he was far from condemning in a child the desire of a virtuous

132 SIR THOMAS MORE.
father's approbation, and he bestowed it most liberally. More
will ever stand foremost in the rank of the defenders of female
culture ; but his example would be perhaps rashly quoted in
proof that the education of women should be in all respects
the same as that of men, or that familiarity with the ancient
classic writers is essential to all true culture, for the field of both
science and literature was so restricted in his days, that the
woman who was not trained to read Plato and Sophocles, or at
least Livy and SaUust, was Umited to her needlework and her
viol, or to Chaucer and Boccacio and the " Romaunt de la
Rose '' — works certainly less conducive to purity of life than the
masterpieces ofthe old heathen world.
It is not likely that the above letter was intended merely for
Gunnell. It would be copied out by the children, translated,
and perhaps learned by heart, and would be the subject of their
Latin letters to their father. For More never ceased to superin
tend the education of each one of them. His letters to his
children were preserved as precious treasures in the family, and
several of them have come down to us by the care of Stapleton.
I would not willingly either omit or abridge these letters, which
are among his most venerated relics.
"Thomas More to his whole school, —
" See what a compendious salutation I have found, to save
both time and paper, which would otherwise have been wasted
in reciting the names of each one of you, and my labour would
have been to no purpose, since, though each of you is dear to
me by some special title, ofwhich I could have omitted none in
a set and formal salutation, no one is dearer to rae by any title
than each one of you by that of scholar. Your zeal for know
ledge binds me to you almost more closely than the ties of
blood. I rejoice that Mr. Drew has returned safe, for I was
anxious, as you know, about him. If I did not love you so
much I should be really envious of your happiness in having so
many and such exceUent tutors. But I think you have no
longer any need of Mr. Nicholas, since you have learnt what-

DOMESTIC. 133
ever he had to teach you about astronomy. I hear you are so
far advanced in that science that you can not only point out
the polar-star or the dog-star, or any of the constellations,
but are able also — which requires a skilful and profound
astrologer — among all those leading heavenly bodies, to dis
tinguish the sun from the moon ! Go forward, then, in that
new and admirable science by which you ascend to the stars.
But while you gaze on them assiduously, consider that this holy
time of Lent warns you, and that beautiful and holy poem of
Boetius keeps singing in your ears, to raise your mind also to
heaven, lest the soul look downwards to the earth, after the
manner of brutes, while the body looks upwards. Farewell, my
dearest. From Court, the 23rd March."
Another letter is on the subject of letter-writing. Stapleton
says that the original, from which he printed, was almost worn
to pieces, so frequently had it been read.
"Thomas More to his dearest children, and to Margaret
Giggs, whom he numbers amongst his own, —
" The Bristol merchant brought me your letters the day after
he left you, with which I was extremely delighted. Nothing
can come from your workshop, however rude or unfinished, that
will not give me more pleasure than the most accurate thing
that another can write. So much does my affection for you
recommend whatever you write to rae. Indeed, without any
recommendation, your letters are capable of pleasing by their
own merits, their wit and pure Latinity. There was not one
of your letters that did not please me extremely ; but, to con
fess ingenuously what I feel, the letter of my son John pleased
me best, both because it was longer than the others, and be
cause he seems to have given to it more labour and study.
For he not only put out his matter prettily and composed in
fairiy polished language, but he plays with me both pleasantly
and cleverly, and turns my jokes on myself wittily enough.
And this he does not only merrily, but with due moderation,
showing that he does not forget that he is joking with his

134 SIR THOMAS MORE.
father, and that he is cautious not to give offence at the same
time that he is eager to give delight.
" Now I expect from each of you a letter almost every day. I
will not admit such excuses as John is wont to make, want of
time, sudden departure of the letter-carrier, or, want of some
thing to write about. No one hinders you frora writing, but,
on the contrary, all are urging you to do it. And that you may
not keep the letter-carrier waiting, why not anticipate his com
ing, and have your letters written and sealed, ready for anyone
to take ? How can a subject be wanting when you write to
me, since I am glad to hear of your studies or of your games,
and you will please me most if, when there is nothing to write
about, you write about that nothing at great length. Nothing
• can be easier for you, since you are girls, loquacious by nature,
who have always a world to say about nothing at all. One
thing, however, I admonish you, whether you write serious
matters or the merest trifles, it is my wish that you write every
thing diligently and thoughtfully. It will be no harm, if you
first write the whole in English, for then you wiU have much
less trouble in turning it into Latin ; not having to look for the
matter, your mind will be intent only on the language. That,
however, I leave to your own choice, whereas I strictly enjoin
that whatever you have composed you carefully examine before
writing it out clean ; and in this examination, first scrutinise
the whole sentence and then every part of it. Thus, If any
solecisms have escaped you, you will easily detect them.
Correct these, write out the whole letter again, and even then
examine it once more, for sometimes, in rewriting, faults slip
in again that one had expunged. By this diligence your little
trifles will become serious matters ; for while there is nothing
so neat and witty that wiU not be made insipid by silly and
inconsiderate loquacity, so also there is nothing in Itself so
insipid, that you cannot season with grace and wit if you give
a Uttle thought to it. Farewell, my dear children. From the
Court, the 3rd September."

DOMESTIC. 135
In one of his letters to his eldest daughter he writes : " I
beg yon, Margaret, tell me about the progress you are al
making in your studies. For I assure you that, rather than
allow my children to be idle and slothful, I would make a
sacrifice of wealth, and bid adieu to other cares and business,
to attend to my children and my family, amongst whom none
is more dear to me than yourself, my beloved daughter."
We have seen that, when More was a boy, his father stinted
him in money, and that he used to speak gratefully of this wise
severity when he grew up. If filial love made him thus speak,
his paternal love expressed itself differently : " You ask, my
dear Margaret, for money with too much bashfulness and
timidity, since you are asking from a father who Is eager to
give, and since you have written to me a letter such that I
would not only repay each line of it with a golden philippine,
as Alexander did the verses of Cherilos, but, if my means were
as great as my desire, I would reward each syllable with two
gold ounces. As it is, I send only what you have asked, but
would have added more, only that as I am eager to give, so ara
I desirous to be asked and coaxed by ray daughter, especially
by you, whom virtue and learning have made so dear to my
soul. So the sooner you spend this money well, as you are
wont to do, and the sooner you ask for more, the more you
wiU be sure of pleasing your father."
Among the few pieces added to the second edition of More's
Epigrams in 1520 is an epistle in Latin elegiac verse to his
children. It was composed on horseback, in the rain, while
his beast was stumbling In the deep ruts or wading through a
ford. It must be taken then, says the writer, as a proof of the
affection that wiU not allow him to forget his children even
amid such miseries to himself. He reminds them how, on
returning from his journeys, he has ever brought back some
cakes or fruit, or piece of silk to deck them; how he has
always given them plenty of kisses and but very few strokes of
the rod, the rod itself being only a bundle of peacock's feathers.

136 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Though he has by nature a tender and loving heart towards his
children, their progress in virtue and learning has made it far
more loving, and he begs them to go on in the same way until
even his present love may seem nothing by comparison with
what he will then feel.
Efficitote (potestis enim) virtutibus isdem
Ut posthac videar vos nec araare modo.
Stapleton has preserved several letters written by More to his
favourite daughter, Margaret, most like to himself (says his bio
grapher) in stature, face, voice, talent and general character.
He had also several pieces of her composition, both in prose
and verse, which he feared to print, as not bearing directly on
her father's life. For the same reason I pass by some of the
letters, and conclude this account of More's education of his
children by one which shows that even marriage was con
sidered no obstacle to the pursuit of knowledge and the study
of literature : —
" Thomas More to his raost dear daughter Margaret, —
" There was no reason, my raost sweet child, why you should
have put off writing for a day, because in your great self-distrust
you feared lest your letter should be such that I could not read
it without distaste. Even had it not been perfect, yet the
honour of your sex would have gained you pardon from any,
while to a father even a blemish will seem beautiful in the face
of a child. But, indeed, my dear Margaret, your letter was so
elegant and polished and gave so little cause for you to dread
the judgment of an indulgent parent, that you might have
despised the censorship even of an angry Momus.
"You teU me that Nicholas, who is so fond of you, and so
learned in astronomy, has begun again with you the system of
the heavenly bodies. I am grateful to him and I congratulate
you in your good fortune ; for in the space of one raonth, with
only a slight labour, you will thus learn thoroughly these sub
Ume wonders of the Eternal Workman, which so many men of

DOMESTIC. 137
illustrious and almost superhuman intellect have only discovered
with hot toll and study, or rather with cold shiverings and
nightly vigils In the open air in the course of many ages.
" I am, therefore, delighted to read that you have made up
your mind to give yourself diligently to philosophy, and to
make up by your earnestness in future for what you have lost
in the past by neglect. My darling Margaret, I indeed have
never found you idling, and your unusual learning in almost
every kind of literature shows that you have been making active
progress. So I take your words as an example of the great
modesty that makes you prefer to accuse yourself falsely of
sloth, rather than to boast of your diligence ; unless your mean
ing is that you will give yourself so earnestly to study, that your
past industry will seem Uke indolence by comparison. If this
is your meaning nothing could be more deUghtful to rae, or
more fortunate, my sweetest daughter, for you.
" Though I earnestly hope that you will devote the rest of
your life to medical science and sacred literature, so that you
may be well furnished for the whole scope of human life, which
is to have a healthy soul in a healthy body, and I know that
you have already laid the foundations of these studies, and there
will be always opportunity to continue the building ; yet I
am of opinion that you may, with great advantage, give some
years of your yet flourishing youth to humane letters and liberal
studies. And this both because youth is raore fitted for a
struggle with difficulties ; and because it is uncertain whether
you will ever in future have the benefit of so sedulous, affec
tionate and learned a teacher. I need not say that by such
studies a good judgment is formed or perfected.
" It would be a delight, my dear Margaret, to rae to converse
long with you on these matters ; but I have just been inter
rupted and called away by the servants, who have brought in
supper. I must have regard to others, else to sup is not so
sweet as to talk with you. Farewell, my dearest child, and salute
for me my most gentle son, your husband. I am extremely

138 SIR THOMAS MORE.
glad that he is following the same course of study as yourself.
I am ever wont to persuade you to yield in everything to your
husband ; now, on the contrary, I give you full leave to strive
to get before him in the knowledge of the celestial system.*
Farewell again. Salute your whole company, but especially
your tutor."
Such letters as these make the reader almost as much in love
with Margaret Roper as her father was ; and certainly whatever
little romance is wanting in the courtships of this singular man
is raade up for in the intensity of affection poured out from the
father's heart on this gracious child from her cradle to his
scaffold. It is clear that Sir Thomas had a little Utopia of his own in
his family. He was making an experiment in education, and
he was delighted with its success. The fame of his learned
daughters becarae European, through the praises of Erasmus ;
and was so great in England that in 1529, when they were all
married ladies, they were invited by the king to hold a kind of
philosophical tournament in his presence. We learn this from a
letter of John Palsgrave, who was a prebendary of St. Paul's, and
tutor to the Duke of Richmond, Henry's son. He writes to
More in July, 1529 : " when your daughters disputed on philo
sophy afore the King's Grace, I would it had been my fortune
to be piesent " ; + an ineffectual wish in which the writer of
this memoir heartily joins. J
Section III. Home and Parish.
From Bucklesbury More had removed (it Is sa,id) to Crosby
* In pernoscenda sphara.
t Letters and Papers, iv. 5806.
X The treatise Of the Sphere is referred to more than once in this chap
ter. More was fond of astronomy, and we know that the king would
take him on the leads at night and discourse with him about the
heavenly bodies. There is a rather amusing passage in one of his con
troversial works giving an account of the geocentric system then taught.
It will be found in App, D. of this work.

domestic 139
Place, in Bishopsgate Street (Without),* and in 1523 he pur
chased a piece of land in Chelsea, then more properly called
Chels-hithe, a small village utteriy separated from London, and
even from Westminster. The approach was principally by the
river Thames, a clear and pleasant stream bordered by gardens
and palaces. Here More laid out a large garden stretching
down to the river, and built himself a mansion about a hundred
yards from the river side, " coramodious rather than magnifi
cent,'' says Erasmus. Every vestige of More's house has
disappeared. After his attainder and death it passed through
the hands of a long series of proprietors, until it was pulled
down in 1740, by Sir Hans Sloane. Beaufort Row runs over
or near its site. In course of time, when, besides his daughters
and their husbands, his son and his son's wife, no less than
eleven grandchildren resided with him, he erected another
house, detached from the first, and caUed the New Building.
In this was his domestic oratory, his Ubrary, and study.
In his Utopia, More complained of the great nuraber of
retainers living idle and vicious lives in the service of noblemen,
and becoming the pest of the country as thieves and murderers
when out of service, from being unfit or unwilling to work.
Stapleton tells us how carefully he avoided this evil in the
management of his own household. It was one of the
necessities of his dignity at court that he should have several
attendants when he went out. When they were not engaged
in this service he would not allow them to remain idle. He
divided his garden into portions, to each of which he assigned
one of his men as its cultivator. Some learnt to sing, others
to play on the organ ; but he absolutely forbade games of cards
or dice, even to the young gentlemen in his house. The maid
servants lived quite apart from the men, and they seldom met.
* A part of Crosby Place still stands, and is one of the most interesting
relics of Old London. From More it passed to his rich friend Antonio
Bonvisi, the merchant of Lucca, and from him to Williara Roper, and
William Rastell.

140 SIR THOMAS MORE.
When he was at home he had night prayers for his family, at
which he presided, even when he was chancellor. He recited
with them especially the three psalms. Miserere, Ad Te
Domine levavi, and Deus misereatur nostri with the Salve
Regina and Collect, and the De Profundis for the holy souls.
Writing in one of his controversial works against Luther's
and Tindale's assertions as to Christian liberty, he says there is
no man so mad as to doubt " that servants in a man's house
hold are so bound to obey their master's lawful commandments
that if they would refuse at his bidding to kneel down and say
certain prayers with him to bedward, all the whole house
together, till he should show them some such comraandment
in scripture, they were well worthy to go to the devil for their
proud disobedience in the defence of their false evangeUcal
freedom '' From this he argues as to the authority of the
Church, and the " lewd lither losils that list not to rise, but Ue
still in bed and say that are not bound by men's traditions "
when a general procession is ordered.*
Every year on Good Friday he caUed the whole of his family
in to the New Building and there had the Passion read to
to them, generally by his secretary, John Harris. More would
sometimes interrupt the reading with a few words of pious
raeditation. At table one of his daughters intoned after the
monastic fashion t some passage of Holy Scripture, after
which a short commentary by Nicholas of Lyra or one of the
Fathers was read. Then he would propose a question concerning
the passage read, and there would be a friendly discussion. This
was done especially if any learned guest was present, and it
need scarcely be said all this was in Latin. Then he would
begin in English a joyous recreation, in which his fool or jester,
Henry Patenson, would take part. The task of reading at table
* English Works, p. 508.
t Intonando, more prorsus ecclesiastico vel potius raonastico, nara et
subjiciebatur in fine: Tu autem, etlegebatur quousque daretur signum.

domestic. 141
was taken by turns by the unmarried children ; after their
marriage by Margaret Giggs.
It has been said that he had his domestic chapel, with licence
to have the holy sacrifice offered within it. This chapel was to
him a favourite place of resort. There, according to Roper, he
used to spend the greater part of every Friday, when at home,
meditating on the Passion, his favourite subject, with prayers
and sacred penitential exercises. When his daughter Margaret
was at the very point of death with the sweating sickness, and
the doctors had given up all hopes, Sir Thoraas, " going up
after his usual manner into his aforesaid New Building, there
in his chapel on his knees with tears most devoutly besought
Almighty God that it would like His goodness, unto whom
nothing is impossible, if it were His blessed will to vouchsafe
graciously to hear his petition " During his prayer, a remedy
that the doctors had not tried came into his mind. It proved
effectual, though " God's marks,'' or the signs of death, were
already on his daughter's body ; " by her father's most fervent
prayers,'' says his grateful son-in-law, " as it was thought, was
she miraculously recovered ; whom if it had pleased God at
that time to have taken to His mercy, her father said he would
never have meddled in worldly matters more "
His love of his domestic oratory and family devotions did
not in any way cause him to neglect his parish church. In
defending the use and sanctity of churches against the false
spirituality of the heretics of his own days More has written :
" Albeit that some good men here and there, one among ten
thousand, as St. Paul and St. Anthony, do live all heavenly,
far out of all fleshly company — as far from aU occasions of
worldly wretchedness, as from the common temple or parish
church — yet if churches and congregations of Christian people
resorting together to God's service were once aboUshed and
put away, we were like to have few good temples of God in
men's souls, but all would within a while wear away clean and
clearly fall to nought. And this prove we by experience, that

142

SIR THOMAS MORE.

those which be the best temples of God in their souls they most
use to corae to the temple of stone ; and those that least come
there be well known for very ribalds and unthrifts, and openly
perceived for the temples of the devil. And this not in our
days only, but so hath been from Christ's days hither.'' *
" In the parish church of Chelsea,'' says Stapleton, " he had
built a chapel and furnished it copiously with everything
necessary for the worship of God.t In this matter he was
very generous and gave many vessels of gold and silver to his
church, being wont to say : 'The good give and the bad steal'.
In his parish church he would put on a surplice and take his
part with the choir.":{: Once when he was chancellor of the
kingdom, the Duke of Norfolk found him wearing a surpUce
and singing. " To whom, after service,'' writes Roper, '' as
they went homeward arra in arm, the duke said : ' God's body,
God's body, ray Lord Chancellor ! What ! a parish clerk — a
parish clerk ! You dishonour the king and his office.'
'Nay,' quote Sir Thomas More, smiling on the duke, 'Your
Grace may not think that the king, your master and mine,
will with rae for serving God his Master be offended, or thereby
account his office dishonoured.' "
"Sometimes," adds Stapleton, " he served the priest's Mass,
and sometimes in the public supplications he carried the
Cross before the priest, not refusing or blushing to perform
the office of a verger, rejoicing rather like David to become
still more vile and humble in his own eyes. Though he did
not carry the Cross when chancellor, yet he followed in the
* English Works, p. 122.
t This was the south aisle.
J Sacerdoti canenti concinebat. Canere, in old ecclesiastical language
does not always mean to sing the psalms and prayers in the Divine
Office, but " to say mass " Even a low Mass offered in a low voice was
said to be sung. Hence a chapel for such a Mass was called a chantry.
Yet here Stapleton is speaking of the choir. He raentions serving at
Mass subsequently.

DOMESTIC.

143

rogation processions round the parish, and though the walk
was long and difficult, and he was asked by his friends to
ride, on account of his dignity, he always refused, saying :
' My Lord goes on foot, I will not follow Him on horseback '."
More was fortunate in his parish priest. John Larke, whom
hehad appointed to the rectory of Chelsea in 1530, laid down
his Ufe rather than defile his soul with the oath of the royal
supremacy, the pastor being no doubt strengthened to this
noble mart)Tdom by the example and prayers of this leader
of his flock. Both now are honoured as Blessed by the
Church, having been joined together in the Decree of 29th
December, 1886.
Stapleton writes as follows of More's charity and almsgiving :
" He used himself to go through the back lanes, and inquire
into the state of poor families ; and he would relieve their
distress, not by scattering a few small coins as is the general
custom, but when he ascertained a real need, by two, three
or four gold pieces. When his official position and duties
prevented this personal attention, he would send some of his
family to dispense his alms, especially to the sick and the
aged. This office often fell to Margaret Gigs, and it was
especially at the time of the great feasts of the Church that
these visitations were made. He very often Invited to his
table his poorer neighbours, receiving them (not condescend
ingly but) familiariy and joyously ; he rarely invited the rich,
and scarcely ever the nobility. In his parish of Chelsea he
hired a house, in which he gathered many infirra, poor and
old people, and maintained them at his own expense. When
More was away, his daughter, Margaret, had the care of this
house. He even went so far as to receive into his own family
and maintain, a poor gentlewoman, a widow named Paula,
who had expended aU she had in an unsuccessful lawsuit.
To widows and orphans, when he practised at the bar, he
even gave his services gratuitously." *
* Vita, cap. 6.

144 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Section IV. Portraits.
To conclude these details of domestic and parochial life, before
we follow More in his public career, I will give some account of
the picture by which the family group is made familiar to us.
Erasmus, while living in Basle, had made the acquaintance of
Hans Holbein, the younger. Holbein had been accus
tomed to work for the corporation, and was also em
ployed by Froben the publisher in illustrating some of his
books. But when the heresy of CEcolampadius prevailed in
that city in 1525 and 1526, so great was the iconoclastic fury
of the mob, that the painter's business came to an end. At
this time he heard of England, as a place where his art would
be better appreciated and rewarded. Erasmus was living in
Fribourg. From hira Holbein obtained an introduction to Sir
Thomas More, and with it arrived in England towards the end
of 1526. In a letter, dated i8th December of that year, More
replies to Erasmus : " Your painter is a wonderful artist, but
I fear he may not find England so fertile a field as he
expected. I will do my best that he may not find it barren." *
More was true to his proraise, and it was owing in great
measure to his friendship that Holbein attained both wealth
and celebrity. Holbein brought with him two portraits of
* Inter Epist. Erasra., 334, in App. I have consulted with regard to
the portraits of More, Dr. Alfred Woltraann's Holbein and his times
(Eng. tr. 1872), Wornum's Holbein and Hans Holbein, by J.
Cundall (1882). The letter quoted above, alluding to Holbein, is (as
usual), raisdated as to the year by the editor of Erasmus. He gives it
as i8th Dec, 1525. Dr. Woltraann places it ih 1524, and remarks that
it is dated " from the Court at Greenwich," and that the court was at
Greenwich in the Christmas of 1524, but not in 1525. The correct date,
however, is 1526. In that year also the king was to arrive at Greenwich
on the igth Dec, and More had no doubt preceded him by a day
{Letters and Papers, iv. 2712). That the letter belongs to 1526 is proved
by the reference to the second part of the " Hyperaspistes of Erasmus,"
which only appeared that year. Dr. Woltraann adraits that Holbein did
not reach England until 1526. He therefore needlessly conjectured that
the pictures spoken of by More had been sent in advance.

domestic. 145
Erasmus, one of which is said to be in the possession of the
Eari of Radnor at Longford Castle, near Salisbury. His
work was a better recommendation than the letter of Erasmus,
and through More's influence, though he did not as yet
get known at court, several great ecclesiastics and noble
men sat for their portraits. It was on the occasion of this
visit to England that he painted his exquisite portrait of
Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, now in Lambeth. Fisher,
also, the Bishop of Rochester, sat to him, and though no
picture of the holy martyr by the hand of Holbein is now in
existence, there are tw^o sketches in crayon, one in the Queen's
Windsor collection, the other in the British Museum.* It is
asserted by Van Mander, the first biographer of Holbein, that
during his stay in England he was a guest of More's. Though
this is in accordance with More's well-known hospitality, the
assertion rests on no historical grounds, and Van Mander
makes so many mistakes about this period, that it is clear he
had no authentic information ; nor was Holbein altogether,
either in faith or morals, a man in whose society More would
have found pleasure, however much he admired his art. Of
course, More himself gave him his first commission. The
exquisite portrait, which was kindly exhibited by Mr. Henry
Huth in the National Historical Portrait Exhibition of 1866,
and again by Mr. Edward Huth in the Tudor Exhibition of
1890, bears on the table on which More is leaning the date
1527. More was not then Lord High Chancellor, but he was
both Treasurer of the Household and Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster. A heavy gold chain round his neck indicates one
or other of these dignities.t The portrait is a half-length
* It was Holbein's custom to make a rapid sketch on paper, frora which
he worked leisurely on canvas. His eye and his pencil were unerring.
t The Collar of S.S. , instituted by Henry IV., was a Lancastrian badge.
It was totally distinct from the collar of knighthood (see Cussan's
Handbook of Heraldry, p. 240 (3rd ed.), and Retrospective Review (2nd
series) ii. 500). 10

146 SIR THOMAS MORE.
figure nearly life-size. The face is clean shaved, and turned to
the right of the spectator. Beneath the lappets of the cap is
shown some dark brown hair. The dress is handsome — a
dark green coat, with deep fur collar and crimson sleeves. The
hands, lightly joined, lean against a table — a ring is on the first
finger of the left hand, the right holds a book.
Besides this portrait, Holbein I'jainted a large family group,
representing Sir John and Sir Thomas, Lady More, the three
married daughters and the son; Anne Cresacre, young John More's
fiancie; and Margaret Giggs, his adopted daughter, the wife
of Dr. John Cleraents. The Rev. John Lewis of Maidstone,
who edited Roper's Life of More in 1729, describes as follows
the picture, which he saw in March, 17 17, at WeU Hall, the
seat of the Roper family at Eltham, in Kent : " The room
which is here represented seemed to me to be a large dining-
room. At the upper end stands a chamber organ on a cup
board, with a curtain drawn before it. On each end of the
cupboard, which is covered with a carpet of tapestry, stands a
flowerpot of flowers, and on the cupboard are laid a lute, a base
viol, a pint pot or ewer covered In part with a cloth folded
several times, and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophice, with
two other books, upon it. By this cupboard stands a daughter
of Sir Thomas More's, putting on her right-hand glove, and
having under her arm a book bound in red turkey leather and
gilt, with this inscription round the outside of the cover:
Epistolica SeneccB. Over her head is written Elizabetha Dancea
ThomcB Mori filia, anno 21. Behind her stands a woman hold
ing a book open with both hands, over whose head is written
Uxor Johannis Clements.* Next to Mrs. Dancy is Sir John
More in his robes asone of the justices of the King's Bench,
and by him Sir Thomas in his ChanceUor's robes t and collar
¦* Onthe Basle sketch it is Margareta Giga dementis uxor Thoma,
Mori filiabus condiscipula et cognata, anno 22.
t When this picture was painted More was not yet Lord High Chan
cellor, nor does he wear any robe of dignity, but the common furred gown.

DOMESTIC.

147

of S.S., with a rose pendant before. They are both sitting
on a sort of tressel or armed bench ; one of the arms and
legs and one of the tassels of the cushion appear on the left side
of Sir Thomas. At the feet of Sir John Ues a cur dog, and at
Sir Thomas's a Bologna shock. Over Sir John's head is written
Johannes Morus pater, anno 76 ; over Sir Thomas's, Thomas
Morus, anno 50. Between them, behind, stands the wife* of
John More (Sir Thomas's son), over whose head is written
Anna Crisacria Joannis Mori sponsa, anno 15. Behind Sir
Thomas, a little on his left, stands his only son, John More,
pictured with a very foolish aspect,t and looking earnestly in a
book which he holds open with both his hands. Over his head
is written yi7a««M Morus Thomce filius, anno 19. A little to
the left of Sir Thomas are sitting on low stools his two other
daughters, Caecilia and Margaret. Next him is Caecilia, who
has a book in her hand clasped. By her sits her sister Mar
garet, who has likewise a book in her lap, but wide open, in
which is written : L. An. Seneca ^dipus. Fata si liceat mihi
fingere arbitrio meo, temperem zephyro levis. On Csecilia's
pettycoat is written Cacilia Herond,X Thoma Mori filia, anno
20, and on Margaret's Margareta Ropera Thoma Mori filid,
anno 22. Just by Mrs. Roper sits Sir Thomas's lady in an
elbow chair holding a book open in her hands. About her
neck she has a gold chain with a cross hanging to it before.
On her left hand is a monkey chained, and holding part of it
with one paw and part of it with the other. Over her head is
written Uxor Thoma Mori, anno 57. § Behind her is a large
arched window in which is placed a flower-pot of flowers and a
* Not wife (uxor) but fiancee (sponsa).
t This is a mere foolish fancy of Lewis. Mr. Wornum says of the
Basle sketch " he here makes the impression of a gentle, reflective, and
sterling youth " (p. 320).
, X Herona in the Basle sketch.
§ In the Basle sketch it is Alicia Thoma Mori uxor, anno 57.

148 SIR THOMAS MORE.
couple of oranges. Behind the two ladles stands Sir Thomas's
fool. He has his cap on and in it are stuck a red and white
rose, and on the brim of it is a shield with a red cross in
it, and a sort of seal pendant. About his neck he wears a
black string with a cross hanging before him, and his left
thumb is stuck in a broad leathern girdle clasped about him.
Over his head is written Henricus Pattison Thoma servus.* At
the entrance of the room where Sir Thomas and his family are
stands a raan in the portal who has in his left hand a roll of
papers or parchments with two seals appendant, as ifhe was some
way belonging to Sir Thomas [as Lord Chancellor].! Over
his head is written Joannes Heresius Thomce Mori famulus. %
In another room, at some distance, is seen through the door
case, a man standing at a large bow window with short black
hair, in an open-sleeved gown of a sea-green colour, holding a
book open in his hands, written or printed in the black letter,
and reading very earnestly in it. About the middle of the
room over against Sir Thomas hangs a clock, with strings and
leaden weights without any case." §
However minute, this is a very inartistic and unsatisfactory
description of this famous picture. Mr. Lewis says nothing
about its size, nor whether it is painted on canvas or wood, nor
with what pigments. Had he not mentioned the colour of a
book cover, the red and white rose, and the sea-green colour of
a servant's gown in the background, we should have been left
uncertain whether it was a painting at all, or a mere cartoon,
or a pen and ink drawing like that at Basle.
In the Basle Museum is preserved the study made for this
picture, a small pen and ink sketch, on which, besides the in-

* In the Basle sketch Henricus Patensonus Thomce Mori morio, anno 40.
t See note at last page.
X He is not in the Basle sketch.
§ Lewis Roper, App. xv.

DOMESTIC. 149
scriptions of names and ages in Latin,* are notes in German
by Holbein for his own direction. The Basle sketch corres
ponds in general with Lewis's account, but Lady More is
kneeUng on a prie-dieu instead of sitting in an arm-chair. But
Holbein has written Diese soil sitzen (this one shall sit), and
above Sir John's head, where a violin and clock are hanging
on the wall, is a note " Clavicord and other instruments on a
shelf" In the Basle sketch also the clerk or secretary John
Harris is not seen, nor the two dogs.
The picture described by Lewis is now in the possession of
Lord St. Oswald (formerly Rowland Winn, Esq.), at Nostel
Priory, near Wakefield. The size of the canvas is 1 1 ft. 6 in.
w. by 8 ft.- 3 in. h. Whether this is the original by Holbein or
an exceedingly able copy has been disputed.f
It is certain that Sir Thomas sent this or a similar family
group as a present to Erasmus by Holbein's own hands, and it
is certain that Holbein had reached Basle by August, 1528.
Whether the group that he conveyed was the only picture finished
by him, or whether it was a replica of one left in England,
or whether it was merely the pen and ink sketch now in Basle,
I do not find recorded. In the absence of evidence, I should
conjecture that Holbein retained his own sketch or study now
in the Basle Museum, and conveyed an oil painting to Erasmus.
Karel van Mander, who wrote in 1608, mentions an original
painting by Holbein of this family group being then in the
possession of the art collector, Andries Van Loo. " From
* Mr. Seebohra says " in Sir Thomas's handwriting," Mr. Wornum,
" perhaps by Erasraus hiraself" ; which seems very improbable, for how
should Erasmus know the ages of every meraber of the household, even
the fool ?
t A copy somewhat mutilated was in possession of Mr. Eyston of East
Hendied in 1867, and another at Thorndon Hall, the seat of Lord Petre.
They are described by Mr. Wornum in his Life and Works of Holbein, p.
237. Both these are coarsely painted, and are certainly not by Holbein.
The genuineness of the Nostel Priory picture is discussed at length by
Mr. Wornum. Ib., p. 239,

150 SIR THOMAS MORE.
him," writes Mr. Cundall, "it went back to a grandson of Sir
Thomas More ; since then it has entirely disappeared." *
It is important to notice that the engravings of the Basle
sketch have an inscription "Joannes Holbein ad vivum delin.
Londini, 1530". But this date is not on the original, and is
incorrect. Holbein left England in 1528, and was in Basle in
1530. The same erroneous date 1530 having been marked on
other copies led to misdating the ages of Sir Thomas and all
his family. The ages marked by Sir Thomas refer to the latter
part of 1527 or early in 1528.
A letter was, no doubt, sent by Sir Thomas to Erasmus, with
the picture ; but it no longer exists, nor the answer of Erasmus.
It would seem, however, that another letter was sent by the
young ladies, for there is a letter addressed by Erasmus : —
"To Margaret Roper, the ornament of Britain, —
" I cannot find words to express the joy I felt when Holbein's
picture showed me your whole faraily almost as faithfully as if
I had you before my eyes. Often do I form the wish that even
once before my last day I may look upon that most dear
society, to which I owe a great part of whatever little fortune or
glory I possess; and to none could I be indebted more wilUngly.
The painter's skiU has given me no small portion of my wish.
I recognise you all, but no one better than yourself. I seem
to behold through all your beautiful household a soul shining
forth still more beautiful. I congratulate you all in that family
happiness, but most of all your excellent father." After a few
words on female culture and its advantages, he concludes : "I am
writing in bad health and in the midst of overwhelming work,
therefore I must leave it to your tact to convince all your sisters
that this is a fair and adequate letter; and written to each one
of thera no less than to yourself. Convey my respectful and
* Hans Holbein, by Joseph Cundall (1882), p. 54. This of course
supposes that the Well Hall picture, now Lord St. Oswald's, is either a
copy, or a replica.

DOMESTIC. 151
affectionate salutations to the honoured Lady Alice, your mother.
I kiss her picture as I cannot kiss herself.* To my godson,
John More, I wish every happiness, and you will give a special
salutation on my part to your honourable husband, so justly
dear to you. May God keep you all, and give you every pros
perity by His almighty grace. From Fribourg, 6th September,
1529." +
Margaret Roper rephed in a beautiful Latin letter. Quirinus
had brought Erasmus's elegant and loving letter. She had
never deserved or expected such an honour as to receive a letter
from the hand of one who was the pride and ornament of the
whole worid (totius orbis decus). She does not know how to
thank him worthily : " You say that the visit of the painter
(Holbein) caused you great pleasure, because he brought the
picture of both my parents and of us all. We are most thank
ful that you are pleased, and we desire nothing more ardently
than to see once more our former tutor to whom we owe what
ever culture we possess, and still more to converse with the old
and faithful friend of our father. My mother cordially salutes
you, also my husband and my brother, and both my sisters.
London, 4th November, 1529."^
Many portraits have been mistaken for Sir Thomas More's.
A bearded picture of Sir Thomas Wyatt, by Holbein, in the
Louvre, was called Sir Thomas More because of a gold chain.
Even the burgomaster of Dresden and his family in Holbein's
* Erasmus mentions jokingly elsewhere the custom then universal in
England of thus saluting ladies.
¦^Letter 1075.
X Letter 352, in App. With the words of Margaret Roper — Utriusque
mei parentis nostrumque omnium effigiem depictam — I do not understand
how Mr. Wornum can doubt whether Sir Thoraas sent any picture to
Erasmus, and imagine that Holbein either carried with him a mere sketch,
or drew one frora raeraory. Erasraus also makes raention of a pictura,
and of its being perfectly life-like. How could such expressions be used
of a small pen and ink sketch ?

152 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Meyer Madonna have been taken for More and his family, though
there is not an Enghsh hne in face or dress.
Another family group formeriy at Burford Priory, the seat
of Mr. LenthaU, now in the possession of Mr. Walter
Strickland of Cokethorpe Park, Oxfordshire, is a composition.
It contains Sir John and Sir Thomas, with four other male
and four female figures, besides another female who appears
in a framed portrait. Some of these were descendants of Sir
Thomas of a rauch later date, for the picture was painted in
1593. The margin contaiiis long inscriptions, not always
accurate. It is instructive and somewhat amusing to compare the
descriptions of professed or professional art critics. There
are two crayons of Sir Thomas More's head, unquestionably
by Holbein, in Her Majesty's Windsor collection. In perfect
agreement with these is the finished portrait in the possession
of Mr. Huth. Mr. Wornum says, "the expression in this
picture is harsh and even repulsive " ; yet I have myself seen
crowds around this picture so charmed as to be almost
unable to draw theraselves away, and all uttering exclamations
on the beauty and sweetness of the expression. It would
seem that Holbein's portrait shares the mysterious property
of the face it copied ; it was a riddle to each one who read it,
or guessed at it as he felt disposed.

CHAPTER IX.
SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR.
THE events of More's public life, from 1517 to 1529, when
he became chancellor, are touched on, but very
slightly, in his son-in-law's notes. "Yet they were very
important years, the years in which he forsook the profession
of the law for the career of a statesman. That More's name
does not appear much more prominently during those years
in English history, is greatly due to his want of ambition.
There is not a solitary example in his life of his seeking any
advancement either in honours or in wealth. He discharged
his various offices, not because he delighted in them — for
several inspired him with repugnance — yet always cheerfully as
acquitting himself of a duty to God and his country.
When he first perceived the likelihood of his being drawn
into public life, he expressed his thqughts on it in such a
manner in his Utopia, that his words might serve as a protest
or declaration of principles, even if they did not prove to
Wolsey and the king that he was a man unfit for statecraft.
The long extracts I am about to give from his Utopia require
no apology. They are an exposition by More himself of his
views of the work in which he spent the years of his raanhood.
It is worth while to observe that, at the very tirae when More
was satirising the diplomacy of his age, Machiavelli in Italy,
whether satirically or not, was elaborating it into a perfect
system. * * Seebohm.

154 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Peter Giles and More, it will be remembered, were discours
ing with Raphael Hythloday, the traveUer. Peter had expressed
his surprise that Hythloday should not give the benefit of his
great experience to some prince. "'Ido not see any other way
in which you can be so useful, both in private to your friends
and to the public, and by which you can make your own con
dition happier.' ' Happier ? ' answered Raphael, ' is that to
be compassed in a way so abhorrent to my genius ? Now I
live as I will, to which, I believe, few courtiers can pretend;
and there are so many that court the favour of great men, that
there will be no great loss if they are not troubled either with
me or with others of my temper.' Upon this, said I, ' I per
ceive, Raphael, that you neither desire wealth nor greatness ;
and, indeed, I value and admire such a man much more than
I do any of the great men in the world. Yet I think you
would do what would well become so generous and philosophical
a soul as yours is, if you would apply your time and thoughts
to public affairs, even though you may, happen to find it a little
uneasy to yourself; and this you can never do with so much ad
vantage as by being taken into the council of some great prince
and putting him on noble and worthy actions, which I know
you would do if you were in such a post ; for the springs both
of good and evil flow from the prince over a whole nation, as
from a lasting fountain. So much learning as you have, even
without practice in affairs, or so great a practice as you have
had, without any other learning, would render you a very fit
counsellor to any king whatsoever.' ' You are doubly mis
taken,' said he, ' Mr. More, both in your opinion of me and in
the judgment you make of things : for as I have not that
capacity that you fancy I have, so if I had it, the public would
not be one jot the better when I had sacrificed my quiet to it.
For most princes apply themselves more to affairs of war tiian
to the useful arts of peace ; and in these I neither have any
knowledge, nor do I much desire it; theyaregenerallymoreseton
acquiring new kingdoms right or wrong, than on governing

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 55
weU those they possess : and, among the ministers of princes,
there are none that are not so wise as to need no assistance, or,
at least, that do not think themselves so wise that they
Imagine they need none ; and if they court any, it is only those
for whom the prince has much personal favour, whom by
their fawnlngs and flatteries they endeavour to fix to their own
interests ; and, indeed, nature has so raade us, that we all love
to be flattered and to please ourselves vvith our own notions :
the old crow loves his young, and the ape her cubs. Now, if
in such a court, made up of persons who envy all others and
only admire themselves, a person should but propose any
thing that he had either read in history or observed in
his travels, the rest would think that the reputation of
their wisdom would sink, and that their interests would be
much depressed if they could not run it down : and if all other
things failed, then they would fly to this, that such or such
things pleased our ancestors, and it were well for us if we could
but match them. They would set up their rest on such an
answer as a sufficient confutation of all that could be said, as
if it were a great misfortune that any should be found wiser
than his ancestors. But though they willingly let go all the
good things that were among those of forraer ages, yet, if better
things are proposed, they cover themselves obstinately with
this excuse of reverence to past times. I have raet with these
proud, morose, and absurd judgraents of things in many places,
particularly once in England.' "
Then, after a long story of a conversation at Cardinal
Morton's table, they return once more to the subject. " ' You
have done me a great kindness,' said I, ' in this relation ; you
have made me imagine that I was in my own country and
grown young again, by recalling that good cardinal to my
thoughts, in whose family I was bred from my childhood ; but
after all this I cannot change my opinion, for I still think that if
you could overcome that aversion which you have to the courts
of princes, you might, by the advice which it is in your power

J56 SIR THOMAS MORE.
to give, do a great deal of good to mankind, and this is the
chief design that every good man ought to propose to himself
in living; for your friend Plato thinks that nations will be
happy when either philosophers become kings or kings
become philosophers. It is no wonder if we are so far from
that happiness while philosophers will not think it their duty
to assist kings with their counsels.' ' They are not so base-
minded,' said he, ' but that they would willingly do it ; many
of them have already done it by their books, if those that are in
power would but hearken to their good advice. But Plato
judged right, that except kings themselves became philosophers,
they who from their childhood are corrupted with false notions
would never fall in entirely with the counsels of philosophers,
and this he himself found to be true in the person of Dionysius.
" ' Do not you think that if I were about any king, propos
ing good laws to him, and endeavouring to root out all the cursed
seeds of evil that I found in him, I should either be turned out of
his court, or, at least, be laughed at for my pains ? For instance,
what could I signify if I were about the King of France, and
were called into his cabinet council, where several wise men, in
his hearing, were proposing many expedients : as, by what arts
and practices Milan may be kept, and Naples, that has so
often sUpped out oftheir hands, recovered ; how the Venetians,
and after them the rest of Italy, may be subdued ; and then
how Flanders, Brabant, and all Burgundy, and some other
kingdoms which he has swallowed already in his designs, may
be added to his empire ? One proposes a league with the
Venetians, to be kept as long as he finds his account in it,
and that he ought to coramunicate counsels with them, and
give them some share of the spoil till his success makes him
need or fear them less, and then it will be easily taken out of
their hands ; another proposes the hiring the Germans and the
securing the Switzers by pensions ; another- proposes pro
pitiating the deity ofthe emperor by a sacrifice of gold ; another
proposes a peace with the King of Arragon, and, in order to

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 157
cement it, the yielding up the King of Navarre's pretensions ;
another thinks that the Prince of Castile is to be wrought on
by the hope of an alliance, and that some of his courtiers are
to 'be gained to the French faction by pensions. The hardest
point of all is, what to do with England ; a treaty of peace is
to be set on foot, and, if their alliance is not to be depended
on, yet it is to be made as firm as possible, and they are to" be
called friends, but suspected as enemies : therefore the Scots
are to be kept in readiness to be let loose upon England on
every occasion ; and some banished nobleraan is to be sup
ported underhand (for by the league it cannot be done
avowedly) who has a pretension to the crown, by which means
that suspected prince may be kept in awe.
" ' Now, when things are in so great a fermentation, and so
many gallant men are joining counsels how to carry on the
war, if so mean a man as I should stand up and wish them to
change all their counsels — to let Italy alone and stay at home,
since the kingdom of France was indeed greater than could be
weU governed by one man; that therefore he ought not to
think of adding others to it ; and if, after this, I should pro
pose to them the resolutions of the Achorians, a people that
Ue on the south-east of Utopia, who long ago engaged in war
in order to add to the dominions of their prince another
kingdom, to which he had some pretensions by an ancient
alliance ; this they conquered, but found that the trouble of
keeping it was equal to that by which it was gained ; that the
conquered people were always either in rebeUion or exposed
to foreign invasions, while they were obliged to be incessantly
at war, either for or against" them, and consequentiy coujd
never disband their army; that in the meantime they were
oppressed with taxes, their money went out of the kingdom,
their blood was spilt for the glory of others without peace
being secured ; and that, their manners being corrupted by a
long war, robbery and murders everywhere abounded, and
theh laws fell into contempt ; while their king, distracted with

158 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the care of two kingdoms, was the less able to apply his mind
to the interest of either. When they saw this, and that there
would be no end to these evils, they by joint counsels made
an humble address to their king, desiring him to choose which
of the two kingdoms he had the greatest mind to keep, since
he could not hold both ; for they were too great a people to
be governed by a divided king, since no man would willingly
have a groom that should be in common between him and
another. Upon which the good prince was forced to quit
his new kingdom to one of his friends (who was not long after
dethroned), and to be contented with his old one. To this I
would add that, after all those warUke attempts, the vast
confusions, and the consumption both of treasure and of
people that must follow them, perhaps upon some misfortune
they might be forced to throw up all at last ; therefore, it
seemed much more eligible that the king should improve his
ancient kingdom all he could, and make it flourish as much
as possible ; that he should love, his people, and be beloved of
them ; that he should Uve among them, govern them gently,
and let other kingdoms alone, since that which had faUen to
his share was big enough, if not too big, for him : — pray, how
do you think would such a speech as this be heard ? '
" ' I confess,' said I, ' I think not very well.'
" ' But what,' said he, ' if I should sort with another kind
of ministers, whose chief contrivances and consultations were
by what art the prince's treasures might be increased ? where
one proposes raising the value of specie when the king's debts
are large, and lowering it when his revenues were to come in,
that so he might both pay much with a little, and in a little
receive a great deal. Another proposes a pretence of war,
that money might be raised in order to carry it on, and that a
peace be concluded as soon as that was done ; and this with
such appearances of religion as might work on the people,
and make them impute it to the piety of their prince, and to
his tenderness for the lives of his subjects. A third offers

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 59
some old musty laws that have been antiquated by a long
disuse (and which, as they had been forgotten by all the
subjects, so they had also been broken by them), and proposes
the levying the penalties of these laws, that, as It would bring
in a vast treasure, so there might be a very good pretence for
it, since it would look like the executing a law and the doing
of justice. A fourth proposes the prohibiting of many things
under severe penalties, especially such as were against the
interest of the people, and then the dispensing with these pro
hibitions, upon great compositions, to those who might find their
advantage in breaking them. This would serve two ends, both
ofthem acceptable to many; for as those whose avarice led
them to transgress would be severely fined, so the selling
licenses dear would look as if a prince were tender of his
people, and would not easily, or at low rates, dispense with
anything that might be against the public good. Another
proposes that the judges must be made sure, that they raay
declare always in favour of the prerogative ; that they must be
often sent for to court, that the king raay hear them argue those
points in which he is concerned ; since, how unjust soever any
of his pretensions may be, yet stiU some one or other of thera,
either out of contradiction to others, or the pride of singularity,
or to make their court, would find out some pretence or other
to give the king a fair colour to carry the point. For if the
judges but differ in opinion, the clearest thing in the worid is
made by that means disputable, and truth being once brought
in question, the king may then take advantage to expound the
law for his own profit ; while the judges that stand out wiU be
brought over, either through fear or modesty ; and they being
thus gained, all of them may be sent to the bench to give
sentence boldly as the king would have it ; for fair pretences
win never be wanting when sentence is to be given in the
prince's favour. It wiU either be said that equity lies of his
side, or some words in the law will be found sounding that
way, or some forced sense will be put on them ; and, when all

r6o SIR THOMAS MORE.
Other things fail, the king's undoubted prerogative will be pre
tended, as that which is above all law, and to which a religious
judge ought to have a special regard. Thus all consent to that
maxim of Crassus, that a prince cannot have treasure enough,
since he must maintain his armies out of it ; that a king, even
though he would, can do nothing unjustly ; that all property is
in him, not excepting the very persons of his subjects; and
that no man has any other property but that which the king,
out of his goodness, thinks fit to leave him. And they think
it is the prince's interest that there be as little of this left as
may be, as if it were his advantage that his people should have
neither riches nor liberty, since these things make them less
easy and willing to subrait to a cruel and unjust government.
Whereas necessity and poverty blunts thera, makes them
patient, beats them down, and breaks that height of spirit that
might otherwise dispose them to rebel.
"'Now, what if, after all these propositions were made, I should
rise up and assert that such counsels were both unbecoming a
king and mischievous to him ; and that not only his honour,
but his safety, consisted more in his people's wealth than in his
own ; if I should show that they choose a king for their own
sake, and not for his ; that, by his care and endeavours, they
may be both easy and safe ; and that, therefore, a prince ought
to take more care of his people's happiness than of his own, as
a shepherd is to take more care of his flock than of himself?
It is also certain that they are much mistaken that think the
poverty of a nation is a means of the public safety. Who
quarrel more than beggars ? who does more earnestly long for
a change than he that is uneasy in his present circumstances ?
and who run to create confusions with so desperate a boldness
as those who, having nothing to lose, hope to gain by them ?
If a king should fall under such contempt or envy that he could
not keep his subjects in their duty but by oppression and iU
usage, and by rendering them poor and miserable, it were
certainly better for him to quit his kingdom than to retain it by

I SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. l6l
such methods as make him, while he keeps the name of
autho rity, lose the majesty due to it. Nor is it so becoming
the d Ignity of a king to reign over beggars as over rich and
happy subjects. .\nd therefore Fabricius, a man of a noble
and exalted temper, said "he would rather govern rich men
than he rich himself; since for one man to abound in wealth
and pleasure when all about him are mourning and groaning,
is to jbe a gaoler and not a king ". He is an unskilful physician
that Cannot cure one disease without casting his patient into
another. So he that can find no other way for correcting the
errors of his people but by taking from them the conveniences
of life, shows that he knows not what it is to govern a free
nation. He himself ought rather to shake off his sloth, or to
lay down his pride, for the contempt or hatred that his people
have for him takes its rise from the vices in himself. Let
him live upon what belongs to him without wronging others,
and accommodate his expense to his revenue. Let him punish
crimes, and, by his wise conduct, let him endeavour to prevent
them, rather than be severe when he has suffered thera to be
too common. Let him not rashly revive laws that are abro
gated by disuse, especially if they have been long forgotten and
never wanted. And let him never take any penalty for the
breach of them to which a judge would not give way in a
private man, but would look on him as a crafty and unjust
person for pretending to it.
'"If I should talk of these or such-like things to men that
had taken their bias another way, how deaf would they be to
all I could say 1 '
" ' No doubt, very deaf,' answered I ; ' and no wonder, for
one is never to offer propositipns or advice that we are certain
will not be entertained. Discourses so much out of the road
could not avail anything nor have any effect on men whose
minds were prepossessed with different sentiments. This
philosophical way of speculating is not unpleasant among
friends in a free conversation ; but there is no room for
II

1 62 SIR THOMAS MORE.
it in the courts of princes, where great affairs are carriedjon by
authority.' " ' That is what I was saying,' replied he, ' that thert| is no
room for philosophy in the courts of princes.' ' Yes, j there
is,' said I, ' but not for this speculative philosophy, that makes
everything to be alike fitting at all times ; but there is another
philosophy that is more pliable, that knows its proper scene,
accommodates itself to it, and teaches a man with propriety
and decency to act that part which has fallen to his share.
If when one of Plautus' comedies is upon the stage, and a
company of servants are acting their parts, you should' come
out in the garb of a philosopher, and repeat, out of Octavia, a
discourse of Seneca's to Nero, would it not be better for you
to say nothing than by mixing things of different natures to
make an impertinent tragic-comedy ? for you spoil and corrupt
the play that is in hand when you mix with it things of an
opposite nature, even though they are much better. Therefore,
go through with the play that is acting the best you can, and
do not confound it because another that is pleasanter comes
into your thoughts. It is even so in a commonwealth and in
the councils of princes ; if ill opinions cannot be quite rooted
out, and you cannot cure some received vice according to your
wishes, you must not, therefore, abandon the commonwealth,
for the sarae reasons as you should not forsake the ship in a
storra because you cannot command the winds. You are not
obliged to assault people with discourses that are out of their
road, when you see that their received notions must prevent
your raaking an impression upon them : you ought rather to
cast about and to manage things with all the dexterity in your
power, so that, if you are not able to make them go well, they
may be as little ill as possible ; for, except all men were good,
everything cannot be right, and that is a blessing that I do not
at present hope to see.'
" ' According to your argument,' answered he, ' all that I
could be able to do would be to preserve myself from being

SECRETARV AND PRIVV COUNCILLOR. 163
mad while I endeavour to cure the madness of others ; for, if I
speak truth, I must repeat what I have said to you ; and as for
lying, whether a phUosopher can do it or not I cannot tell : I
am sure I cannot do it. But though these discourses may be
uneasy and ungrateful to them, I do not see why they should
seem foolish or extravagant ; indeed, if I should either propose
such things as Plato has contrived in his " Commonwealth,'' or
as the Utopians practise in theirs, though they might seem
better, as certainly they are, yet they are so different from our
establishment, which is founded on property (there being no
such thing among them), that I could not expect that it would
have any effect on them. But such discourses as mine, which
only call past evils to mind and give warning of what raay
follow, have nothing in them that is so absurd that they raay
not be used at any time, for they can only be unpleasant to
those who are resolved to run headlong the contrary way ; and
if we must let alone everything as absurd or extravagant, which,
by reason of the wicked lives of many, may seera uncouth, we
must, even among Christians, give over pressing the greatest
part of those things that Christ hath taught us, though He has
commanded us not lo conceal them, but to proclaim on the
housetops that which He taught in secret. The greatest parts
of His precepts are more opposite to the lives of the men of
this age than any part of my discourse has been, but the
preachers seem to have learned that craft to which you advise
me : for they, observing that the world would not willingly suit
their lives to the rules that Christ has given, have fitted His
doctrine, as if it had been a leaden rule, to their lives, that so,
some way or other, they might agree with one another. But I
see no other effect of this compliance except it be that men
become more secure in their wickedness by it ; and this is all
the success that I can have in a court, for either I must always
differ from the rest, and then I shall signify nothing : or, if I
agree with them, I shall then only help forward their madness.
I do not comprehend what you mean by your "casting about,''

1 64 SIR THOMAS MORE.
or by "the bending and handling things so dexterously that, if
they go not weU, they may go as little ill as may be '' ; for in
courts they will not bear with a man's holding his peace or
conniving at what others do : a man must barefacedly approve
of the worst counsels and consent to the blackest designs,
so that he would pass for a spy, or, possibly, for a traitor,
that did but coldly approve of such wicked practices ; and,
therefore, when a man is engaged in such a society, he will
be sd far from being able to raend matters by his " casting
about,'' as you call it, that he wiU find no occasions of doing
any good — the ill company will sooner corrupt him than be the
better for him ; or if, notwithstanding all their ill company, he
still remains steady and innocent, yet their follies and knavery
will be imputed to him ; and, by mixing counsels with thera, he
must bear his share of all the blarae that belongs whoUy to
others.' " *
No one can say that More had not spoken out. The
siraplest peasant in England would have known that, what
ever truth there was in his invective against the insatiable
arabition and crooked policy of the French kings, Louis XII.
and Francis I., the discourse was aimed at the foolish vanity
of the king of England, who was dreaming of the recovery of
the possessions of his ancestors on the continent, and for that
end had twice invaded France.f It is somewhat to the honour
of Henry that, after reading this declaration of free and noble
principles, he should have been so eager to secure the writer
as his councUlor. Years afterwards More respectfully declared
to the king, that "he always bare in mind the most godly
words that his Highness spoke unto him upon his first entry
into his noble service — the raost virtuous lesson that ever
prince taught his servant — willing him first to look unto God,
and after God, unto him ; so in good faith, he said, he did, or
* Burnet's translation, slightly corrected by the Latin.
tin 1512 and 1513.

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 65
else might His Grace well account him for his most unworthy
servant" *
From this review of his principles let us now turn to his
acts. Roper's memory was not quite accurate as to the
sequence of events. He says that More "continued in the
king's singular favour and trusty service twenty years and
above". If we reckon from the spring of 1532, when he
resigned the chancellorship, this would take us back to 1512,
which is quite too early. On the other hand, Roper says
that "before he came to the service of the king he had been
twice ambassador " in the interests of the London merchants.
Now, the second embassy brings us to the end of 15 17, and
this date is confirmed from other sources. But, again, his
son-in-law is certainly mistaken when he says that the king
summoned him to court, " made him Master of the Requests
(having then no better room void), and within a month after
knight, and one of his privy council "
When we control these assertions by authentic records, it
appears that early in 1518 More became finally a courtier,
or rather took office at court ; t he was probably not made a
privy councUlor until the summer of that year, and not
knighted until the summer of 15 21.
A word or two about the Privy Council in the time of
Henry VIII. will help the reader to realise More's position.
The King's Great Court or Council had originally combined
the legislative, judicial and administrative functions. A large
portion of its judicial functions was separated from it, and
constituted the three tribunals of the King's Bench, Common
Pleas, and Exchequer. The king, however, still retained
near him his chief ministers who formed his Privy Council —
the ChanceUor, Treasurer, Lord Steward, Lord Admiral, Lord
* Roper.
+ He did not, however, resign his office of under-sheriff until 23rd
uly, 1519, according to Mr. Foss and Sir James Mackintosh.

l66 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Marshall, the Keeper of the Privy Seal, the Chamberlain,
Treasurer and ComptroUer of the Household, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
the Master of the Wardrobe, the Judges, Attorney-General and
Master of the Rolls. When the business was special those
only to whose departraent it belonged were suraraoned : the
chancellor and judges for matters of law ; the officers of state
for what concerned the revenue or household. Whether un
constitutionally or not, the business of the Council under the
Tudors was both deliberative and judicial; they issued
ordinances, and claimed and exercised the right to imprison
without formal conviction of crime.
The first charge given to More was that of Master of
Requests. As the king made his progresses frora place to
place, many petitions were presented to him. These were
referred to certain members of his household, of whora at least
two were to be always in attendance. More still retained this
office after being proraoted to high dignity, and it gave him
many opportunities of exercising justice and charity. *
The records of the Privy Council are lost for the whole
period of More's lifetime, so that we are left to glean our in
formation from occasional mention in letters or documents of
the time. His reputation for uprightness made his access to
the king welcome news to all good men. Sebastian Justiniani,
the Venetian ambassador, wrote on i8th February, 1518, that
the cardinal had appointed Richard Pace and Thomas More
as commissioners to negotiate the repeal of the wine duties.
" They .are," he says, " the most sage, most virtuous, and most
linked with rayself of any in England. I suspect, however,
that this promise wiU not be performed, because Pace is known
to be devoted to the Signory and More to justice."^ On 3rd
* In 1526, when the household was remodelled, he remained one of
the examiners of petitions {Letters and Papers, iv. 1939).
+ Venetian State Papers, ii. loio.

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 167
September, 15 17, More had written to Erasmus: "I gave your
letters to the Venetian ambassador. We scratched each other
with set speeches and lengthened compliments ; but, to tell the
truth, he pleases me much. He seems a most honourable
man, with great experience of tbe world, and now bent on the
knowledge of things divine ; last, not least, very fond of you."
Erasmus rejoiced that literature had gained a new patron.
" Many learned men," he writes, 26th July, 15 18, " are now in
the English Court : Linacre, the king's physician ; Tunstall,
master of the rolls ; More, privy councillor ; Pace, secretary ;
Mountjoy, chamberlain ; Colet, preacher ; Stokesley, con
fessor." * All, however, were not learned men in the Council,
and More must have been often amused at the uncouth spelling
of the king's brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk. A specimen
from a letter just of this date will amuse the reader. He wTltes
that it hath pleased God " to wyesset his wife (the ex-Queen of
France) wyet a nague, the wyche has taken Her Grace hewarre
third day 4 tyemes wyree sharpe "f (in modern spelling, "to visit
her with an ague, the which has taken Her Grace every third
day four times very sharp "). The dice and cards, hunting,
masquerades, and feasting, of which More now saw so much,
and for all of which, according to Erasmus, he had a great
aversion, must have given him less amusement than ignorance
in high places. The king was fond of theological discussions
as well as of dice, and More had to take part in these ; but
though His Majesty was willing to lose money at cards, he
would not care to be refuted in argument. He was just then
maintaining a thesis as to whether laymen are bound to vocal
prayer, and had put his arguments on paper. Wolsey had
taken the opposite side to the king, but when he saw the royal
logic in writing, he declared himself convinced, which much
* This is the earliest raention I have found of More as privy
councillor. The date of his appointment is unknown. Sir James
Mackintosh says the beginning of 1516. This seems too early.
t Letters and Papers, ii. 4134.

1 68 SIR THOMAS MORE.
pleased the conqueror, and probably encouraged him a few
years later to measure theological swords with Luther.*
Henry VIII. at this period of his Ufe was a most amiable
prince. In a letter to the Bishop of Rochester he is thus de
scribed by More : " He is so affable and courteous to aU men, that
each one thinks himself his favourite, even as the citizens' wives
imagine that Our Lady's picture at the tower smiles upon them
as they pray before it".t It is not strange that such a prince,
the evil parts of whose character were as yet but little developed,
should have been attracted strongly by a man like More — a
scholar, an orator, an accoraplished gentleraan — whom he
would prize, moreover, as his conquest.
Writing in 15 19, Erasmus draws a beautiful picture of More
as a courtier: "In serious matters no man's advice is more
prized, while if the king wishes to recreate himself, no man's
conversation is gayer. Often there are deep and intricate
matters that demand a grave and prudent judge. More un
ravels them in such a way that he satisfies both sides. No one,
however, has ever prevailed on him to receive a gift for his
decision. Happy the commonwealth where kings appoint such
officials ! His elevation has brought with it no pride. Amidst
all the weight of state affairs he reraerabers the hurable friends
of old, and from tirae to time returns to his beloved Uterature.
Whatever influence he has acquired by his dignity, whatever
favour he enjoys with his opulent king, he uses for the good
of the state and for the assistance of his friends. He was ever
desirous of conferring benefits, and wonderfuUy prone to com-
* Letter of Pace to Wolsey, 22nd June, 15 18. It is strange, that
Mr. Brewer should imagine that this letter can refer to a first sketch of the
king's book against Luther. Erasmus tells us the subject of this first
book of Henry {Epist. 418). Luther's book on the Babylonian
captivity, to which Henry replied, did not appear till two years after
this letter of Pace's.
t A " picture" in the language of those days often raeant a painted
statue or image.

SECRETARV AND PRIVV COUNCILLOR. 1 69
passion. This disposition has grown with his power of indul
ging it. Some he assists with money, others he protects by his
authority, others he advances by his recommendation. If he
can help in no other way, he does it by his counsels ; he sends
no one away dejected. You would say that he had been ap
pointed the public guardian of all those in need." *
Several casual illustrations occur here and there in state
papers of the truth of this beautiful picture drawn by a devoted
friend. One of the first duties of a councillor is secrecy. On
the 1 8th September, 15 18, the Venetian ambassador writes to
the Doge that, in a visit he had made to the king at Eltham
he had " contrived a conference with Thomas More, newly
made councillor, who was a great friend of his, but he could
learn nothing from him, as the Cardinal of York, according to
him, alone transacted the business with the French ambas
sador," etc. t So also three years later a great ecclesiastic,
who had thought by acts of courtesy to draw some secret
intelligence from More, writes that he failed to get "the
slightest hint ". J
Of his disposition to act as peace-maker, we have an
instance in a letter of Sir .A.rthur Poole. That gentieman
says that when he complained to the king how unjustly he
had been handled by the Earl of Arundel, he was greatly
miscontent, and told him to speak to Mr. More, the secretary.

* Letter to Hutten. After describing More's piety and other virtues,
Erasmus exclairas : " Ac talis Morus est etiam in aula, et postea sunt qui
putent Christianos non inveniri nisi in monasteriis," which was a sop to
Hutten, who hated raonks. Then of Henry : " Hos habet arbitros ac
testes perpetuos vitae suae "- As the Duke of Richraond, Henry's natural
son, was already bom, and acktiowledged by his father, it was rather
bold to prove the king immaculate because of the presence of men like
More in his court. As yet, however, the court was comparatively
decent. + Venetian State Papers, ii. 1072.
+ See infra, p. igo.

170 SIR THOMAS MORE.
to devise a sharp letter to him ; but More thought it better
to send him a loving letter first. *
To form some conception of the variety of duties that now
fell to More's lot, it wiU be best to follow him in the first years
of his court life. He travelled with the king, who was fond
of moving from place to place, especially when flying from the
terrible sweating sickness. In the spring of 15 18 the court
was at Abingdon, near Oxford. More soon found that to live
under a monarch's roof did not exempt him from the petty
troubles of life. His friend and co-secretary, Pace, writes to
Wolsey on AprU ist : " Dr. Clark and Mr. More desire Your
Grace to write to my Lord Steward that they may have their
daily allowance of meat which has been granted them by the
king. Here is such bribery that they be compelled to buy
raeat in the town for their servants, which is to them intoler
able, and to the king's grace dishonourable." t
The under-sheriff now found himself suddenly transformed
into a sanitary official. The court had moved to Woodstock
on 17th April, but More remained at Oxford to take measures
against the plague. He shut up infected houses, and had
them marked by wisps of hay ; those serving the sick, if
obliged to go out, had to carry white rods.J
Proximity to Oxford involved him in another plague, though
somewhat raore congenial, for a controversy was raging there
about the study of his favourite Greek, and he had to
intervene. Erasraus has related some incidents in his amusing
style. His letter is no doubt an echo of one from More or
from Pace, which has not been preserved. " England,"
* Letters and Papers, iii. 2636 (24th Oct., 1522).
t lb., ii. 4055. There is frequent mention of More's liveries, as
they are called, i.e., breakfasts, dinners, etc., in the Royal Accounts.
At the beginning of 1526 an attempt was made to remedy abuses, and
rainute regulations were drawn up {lb., iv. 1939). Sed quis custodiet
ipsos custodes ?
X lb., 4125.

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 171
writes Erasmus, " has two universities, Cambridge and
Oxford, both of good renown. Greek literature is taught
in both, but in Cambridge quietly, because its chancellor
is John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man as theological
in life as in erudition. At Oxford, where there is a young
professor of Greek of no ordinary learning, * a barbarous
preacher furiously attacked the study of Greek in a public
sermon. But the king, who was in the neighbourhood,
and who is both well instructed, and a patron of letters,
having heard of the affair from Pace and More, gave orders
that the study should be encouraged. Again, a theologian
who had to preach in the presence of the king, began
stupidly and impudently to attack Greek studies, and the
new interpreters (of scripture). Pace looked at the king
to see how he took it. The king replied by a smile. When
the sermon was ended the theologian was called. More
was appointed to defend Greek, and the king was himself
present at the discussion. After More, with much eloquence,
had made a long defence, and the reply of the theologian
was expected, instead of speaking he suddenly went on his
knees before the king and asked pardon, affirming, however,
in his excuse, that while preaching he had felt himself inspired
to say what he did against Greek. ' The spirit which inspired
you,' replied the king, ' was certainly not that of Christ, but
rather the spirit of folly.' Then he asked him whether he had
read any of the writings of Erasmus, since the king perceived
that he had been girding at me. He said that he had not.
'Then you clearly prove your foUy,' said the king, 'since
you condemn what you have not read.' ' Well, I have read
one thing, called Moria,' replied the theologian. ' May it
please Your Highness,' interposed Pace, 'his argument well
befits that book.' Meanwhile the theologian hits on a train
of reasoning to mitigate his blunder. ' I ara not altogether
* This was John Clements, More's protege.

172 SIR THOMAS MORE.
opposed to Greek,' he says, 'since it is derived from the-
Hebrew.' The king, astonished at the man's foUy, dismissed
him, but forbade him ever again to preach at court." *
In this letter Erasmus mentions two sermons and two
preachers. To the sermon delivered at Oxford he merely
alludes, perhaps he did not know the details of the affair.
The sermon was the occasion of a very important Latin letter
addressed by More to the university. A fragment of it is given
by Stapleton, who calls it luculenta oratio, a brilliant address.
He tells us also that it was translated by one of More's
daughters into English, and the English version again turned
into Latin by another daughter.t That English translation
has not been preserved, but I will give the reader the substance
of the original, which has been printed in Latin more than
once. X
The letter, as will be seen, contains some very severe
rebuke, addressed not to the university (except indirectly) but
to the preacher, and would doubtless have raised some clamour
at a layman taking on himself the office of a bishop, had it not
been known that More was really writing in the name of the
king, not in his own.
"He begins by apologising for his insufficiency and boldness
in addressing so illustrious an academy. Whatever learning he
has he owes to Oxford, and he would rather incur the reproach
of arrogance, than of ingratitude in keeping silence when the
interests of the university are at stake. When in London he
* Epist. Erasm. 380. The letter is, as usual, wrongly dated by the
editor, viz., 1519 instead of 1518.
f Vita Mori, cap. 4 et cap. 10.
X At Oxford by Johu Lichfield in 1633, and in the appendix to Jortin's
Erasmus in 1760. The title, in which More is called Eques auratus, does
not belong to the original, and the date is wrongly given as 1519. It
should be 1518. Most unaccountably Sir James Mackintosh supposes
More's letter to have been written by him in 1497, in which year he
places him as a student in Oxford.

SECRETARY AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 73
had heard of a faction at Oxford calling themselves Trojans,
either out of hatred of Greek studies or from love of fun.
The leader was said to be called Priam, another was Hector, a
third Paris, and so on. These Trojans were accustoraed to
jeer at and otherwise molest all the students of Greek. He
had thought these were merely the regrettable follies of young
men ; but since he had accompanied the king to Abingdon, he
has found that the folly is growing into madness, and that one
of these Trojans, a man, wise in his own esteera and merry in
the judgment of others, but who raust be counted insane by
all who consider his conduct, has in a public sermon, in the
sacred time of Lent, raved not only against Greek literature
and Latin culture, but most liberally against all Uberal arts.
And, that all might be of a piece, he did not comment on a
complete passage of Holy Scripture, after the manner of the
ancients, nor take a Scripture text after the modern custom, but
took for his texts some old women's proverbs in English. He
is sure the hearers must have been deeply offended, since who
could have a spark of Christian feeling in his breast, and not
lament to see the majesty of the preacher's office, which had
gained the world to Christ, degraded by one whose duty it
was to adorn and guard it ? What greater infamy could be
offered to the function of the preacher, than that the preacher
himself, in the holiest time of the year, before a great assembly
of Christian men, in the very temple of God, from a lofty
pulpit as from the throne of Christ, in the presence of the
venerable Body of Christ, should turn a Lenten serraon into a
Bacchanalian farce ? As to his attack on all secular studies, if
the good man had long withdrawn from the world and spent
years in the desert, and suddenly coming from his solitude had
urged his hearers to give themselves to watching, prayer and
fasting, saying that by such means only could they gain
heaven, and that all the rest was but trifling; that the
study of Uterature was the forging of fetters, and that
the rude and unlearned fly to heaven unhindered ; from

174 SIR THOMAS MORE.
such a preacher such a sermon might have been endured. His
simplicity might have gained him pardon, some kind hearers
might have called it sanctity, and even those who liked it least
might have excused it as piety and devotion. But here they
see a man ascend the pulpit elegantly dressed with a furred
mantle, and the insignia of a man of learning, and there, in the
midst of a university to which no one comes except for the sake
of learning, openly rail against almost every kind of literature. ¦
Who can deem this anything but mere malice and envy ? How
came it into his head to preach about the Latin tongue, of
which he knows but little ; or the liberal .sciences, of which he
knows still less ; or about Greek, of which he does not under
stand an iota ? Had he not matter enough in the seven capital
sins — matter, too, in which he is better skilled ? Since he is
so disposed that he prefers to blame what he is ignorant of
rather than to learn, is not this sloth ? Since he calumniates
those who happen to know what he is prevented from knowing
either by his indolence or his incapacity, is not this envy ?
Since he would have no science esteemed except what he
falsely fancies himself to possess, and vaunts his Ignorance
rather than his science, is not this the height of pride ? We
all know, forsooth, that without secular literature a man can
save his soul ; yet even secular learning, as he calls it, prepares
the raind for virtue. In any case it is for learning, and for
learning alone, men come to Oxford ; for every good woman
could teach her child at home rude and unlettered virtue. Nor
do all come to the university to learn theology ; some study
law, and others seek the knowledge ofhuman affairs, a matter
so useful even to a theologian, that without it he may perhaps .
sing pleasantly to himself, but will certainly not sing agreeably
to the people. And this knowledge can nowhere be drawn so
abundantiy as from the poets, orators, and historians. There
are even some who make the knowledge of things natural a
road to heavenly contemplation, and so pass from philosophy
and the liberal arts— which this man condemns under the '

SECRETARV AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR.

175

general name of secular Uterature— to theology, despoiling the
women of Egypt to adorn the queen. And as regards theology
Itself, which alone he seems to approve. If indeed he approves
even that, I do not see how he can attain it without
the knowledge of language, either Hebrew, Greek, or Latin,
unless, indeed, in his fondness for English tales he has per
suaded himself that he will find it in such coUections. Or
perhaps he thinks that the whole of theology is comprised in
the limits of those questions on which such as he are always
disputing, for the knowledge of which it must be admitted that
little enough Latin is wanted.
" Will it be pretended that what he condemns is not Uterature,
but the immoderate study of it ? Surely that sin is not so com
mon, or the rush of men so headlong towards study, that they
need to be held back by a public sermon. We do not hear of
many who have advanced so far, but that, even when they go
still further, they will be yet not half-way to the goal. But the
good man had no such moderate designs, for he openly called
the students of Greek heretics, the professors he nicknamed big
devils, and the disciples the devil's imps. And with this insane
fury he pointed at a man by the name of a devil whom all knew
to be such that the real devil would be most loth to see him
made a preacher. He did not name him, but all who listened
were as sure whom he meant as they were of the madness of
the preacher."
Of course the Greek scholar thus indicated was no other than
More's friend Erasmus. The writer then addresses the uni
versity, and points out some of the advantages of the study of
Greek, as he had done in his letter to Dorpius. He stimulates
the authorities by the example of Cambridge, "to which you
have hitherto always served as model (cui vos pralucere semper con-
suevistis), where there is now such zeal for Greek, that even
those who do not study it themselves, generously contribute to
maintain its professors"
" In conclusion," he says " that he has written, not to instruct

176 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the learned authorities in their duties, which they understand far
better than he, but to warn thera not to let those factions grow
and bring disgrace on the university, lest their chancellor, the
Archbishop of Canterbury (Warham), or the Cardinal, of York,
the great patron of letters, should be forced to intervene ; and,
lastly — and here is the point of the whole letter, indicating
from whom it really emanated — the learned and most Christian
king will certainly not tolerate that good learning should decay
in a place so favoured by himself and his ancestors. By re
pressing the factions ofwhich he has spoken, the authorities wiU
gain the favour of those most reverend fathers, and of their
illustrious prince. Thomas More, frdm Abingdon, the 29th
March (15 18)."
This letter was written in Holy Week. On the very same
¦day Pace wrote from Abingdon to Wolsey that " carding and
dicing were turned into picking of arrows over the screen in
the hall"'.* We may imagine the smile of More at this change
of amusement.s. Though he was doubtless excused from feats
of archery he was certainly throwing arrows, very sharp ones,
and with no little effect, among some of the old-fashioned and
self-satisfied " dons " of Oxford.
By way of contrast with the above, I am glad to mention his
relations with the sister university. Scarcely had he been
made knight, when his friend and fellow-martyr, the BishOp of
Rochester, sent to him a young theologian, whom he wished to
be presented to the king. In the letter of introduction Fisher
says : " Let sorae ray of favour shine frora the throne by your
means upon our Cantabrigians, in order to quicken and spur on
our youth to the love of good letters, by the hope of sharing in
the liberalities of so flourishing a prince. We have but few
friends at court, who are both able and willing to recommend
our affairs to the king's Highness, and of these few we reckon
you the first, who hitherto and while in a lower orb have ever
* Letters and Papers, ii. 4043.

SECRETARV AND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 77
proved yourself our kind protector. Now that you are assumed
to the equestrian order, and are so near the king (on which we
both congratulate you and rejoice for ourselves) show how
much you favour us." To this Sir Thomas replied that what
ever influence he had, though it was but little, should be at
their service. He thanked them for the kind letters they had
\vTitten to him. No man's house opens more freely to its
master than his service and Influence to them.*
There were others besides More to write the king's letters
both in Latin and in English, but More was a practised orator
in both languages, and whenever an important or a ceremonial
speech had to be made, it was allotted to him. In July, 15 18,
Cardinal Laurence Campeggio arrived as legate a latere, in
which commission Wolsey had been joined with him, to treat
of resistance to the Turk. + The porap with which he was
received at Deal and brought to London was no doubt of
Wolsey's contrivance. From Blackheath he was accompanied
to London by the Duke of Norfolk, the ambassadors of other
powers, bishops, lords, and gentleraen in a cavalcade of 2000
horses. As they drew near London Bridge the street was
lined on both sides by the clergy in copes of gold, with no less
than 60 gold and silver crosses and censers. At London
Bridge two bishops presented him with the relics to kiss amid
salvos of artillery. The crafts began their order at Gracechurch
Street, and in Cheapside he was welcomed by the mayor and
alderman and a brief Latin oration was delivered by Master
More. Thence he proceeded to St. Paul's, and after another
address by the Bishop of London was led to the altar.
At the beginning of June, 1525, Lorenzo Orio, knight,
arrived in England as Venetian ambassador. The king sent
Lord Dacre and Sir John Dauncy with a great number of
horsemen to conduct the envoy to Windsor. On the 6th of
* Stapleton, cap. 5.
+ Ten years later they were again united in the matter ofthe divorce.
12

178 SIR THOMAS MORE.
June, the king received him in state with the cardinal, the
Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Marquis of Dorset, and
neariy all the knights of the garter. After he had presented
his credentials and made his speech, " Sir Thomas More, a
man of singular and rare learning, and in great favour with the
king and cardinal" — such is Orio's report to the Doge and
Signory— " returned thanks to the State". The public tere-
raony being ended, they went to Mass, no doubt in St. George's
Chapel, after which the envoy dined with the cardinal, who
afterwards took him to the queen's chamber, where he was
received so graciously as to surprise all the bystanders ; so
reports the gratified ambassador. *
The year following he had again to address the ambassador
of Venice. The matter is thus related to Francis I., by his
own envoys who were present : " Last Sunday the Venetian
ambassador had his first audience at Greenwich. He made a
fair oration full of thanks to the king and Wolsey, to which
Master More made a premeditated reply, a draft of the speech
having been given by the ambassador to Wolsey three days
before, at the request of the latter." f From these examples
it is clear that More was the Latin orator, who had to do
honour to the court of Henry, as well as to second the
diplomacy of Wolsey. We shall trace presently More's own
action in the treaties and embassies of Europe. He had
joined the court in the hope of urging the king to the better
government of his own country, and it is pleasant to find that
he was not so disappointed as Hythloday predicted. Stowe
gives an account of a work in which we may trace the influence
of the new councillor. " About this time," he says, speaking
of the year 1521, "the king being raoved by such of his
council as had regard to the commonwealth of this realm,
considering how for the space of fifty years past and more,
* Venetian State Papers, iii. 1037.
t Letters and Papers, iv. 2638.

SECRETARY .\ND PRIVY COUNCILLOR. 1 79
the nobles and gentlemen of England had been given to grazing
of cattle, and keeping of sheep, to the great decay of husbandry
and tillage," caused the statutes to be put in force against
unauthorised inclosures, and the houses from which husband
men had been evicted to be rebuilt. More had written strongly
on this subject in his Utopia, and there is no doubt that these
measures were taken at his suggestion.

CHAPTER X.
DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN.
WHEN More first entered into court life, and on the
career of diplomacy, he compared himself, in a letter to
Fisher, to a man, who not being trained to ride, sits awk
wardly in his saddle. Yet, if there is one quality which shines
conspicuously in More, it is his exquisite tact. This enabled
him not merely to acquit himself well of his duties, or to
ingratiate himself with all whom he met, but above all to
keep his conscience upright and his soul unsullied.
In following him through the remainder of the twelve years
spent in the " king's service " previous to the chancellorship,
the State Papers recently arranged and edited wUl be our
principal guide, since the information to be derived from his
biographers is scanty and confused. Throughout the whole of
that period, when not absent on legations or duties belong
ing tp his various offices, he acted as one of the royal secretaries.
Wolsey, on account of his functions as chancellor had often to
reraain in Westminster, when the king was either amusing
himself or seeking purer air in one of his country houses ;
thus many letters passed between the great minister and the
monarch. Wolsey's letters were addressed to More and by
him read to the king, who gave to More the substance of his
answer. The first volume of the large collection of State
Papers of Henry VIIL* contains a considerable number of
* In eleven volumes, printed between 1830 and 1852. These are not
to be confounded with the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., still in
course of publication. The latter cover a much wider field, but give in
many cases a mere precis or abridgment of documents, especially
of those already printed in full in the State Papers.

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. l8l
such letters, and others have been printed by Sir Henry Ellis ;
but as in these More is merely a secretary, his personal action
and character are but slightly and indirectly iUustrated by them.
The addresses of these letters show the restlessness of the
king. They are dated from Greenwich, Hampton Court,
Woodstock, Abingdon, WalUngford, "The More" (in Hert
fordshire), Oking (or Woking) in Surrey, New HaU (in Essex),
Windsor and East Hampstead (near Windsor), Guildford, etc.
This change of residence of course involved More's frequent
absence from his home, and led to that correspondence with his
children, some of which we have seen.
It was his duty also to accompany the king on more solemn
progresses. His name appears in the list of gentlemen from
the county of Middlesex who were appointed to wait on the king
and queen at the famous meeting with Francis I. between Calais
and Boulogne in June, 1520, which fromits gorgeous preparations
was caUed the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold.*
There was httle sincerity in this great show, unless the rivalry in
magnificence betrayed its real character. At the same time
counter negotiations were being carried on with the young
emperor Charles V. More was one of the commissioners for
the renewal of a treaty of commerce with the emperor, which
was solemnly sworn to and subscribed on 12th April in the
chapel at Greenwich; at which time also a meeting was
arranged between Henry and Charles.f This was to have taken
place at GraveUnes and Calais, after the interview with Francis ;
but, taking advantage of a favourable wind, the emperor sailed
for England in May, and managed to anticipate his rival. On
26th May, 1520, the vigil of Pentecost, More writes to Erasmus
from Canterbury : " The emperor is expected to-day ; the king
will set out to meet him early in the morning, perhaps to-night.
It is impossible to describe the delight ofthe king, the nobles and
* Letters and Papers, iii. part ii. p. 243 (March 1520).
+ Rymer, xiii. 714. Letters and Papers, iii. 798, 804.

1 82 SIR THOMAS MORE.
even the people, when the message arrived that the emperor
was on his way to England."* Charies landed at Hithe with
the Queen of Aragon and many noblemen and ladies. They
were met by Wolsey and conducted to Dover Castle, which
they reached at lo p.m. At 2 a.m. on the morning of Whit
sunday the king arrived at Dover, and the emperor arose to meet
him. Early in the raorning they rode to Canterbury to keep
the feast, and were received in great state by Cardinal Wolsey
and the Archbishop (Warham). The emperor and king-
walked together, under one canopy, to the shrine of St.
Thomas (which Henry was one day to plunder), and thence to
the palace, where the emperor embraced his aunt. Queen
Catharine (whora the king was one day to repudiate). At the
High Mass the eraperor offered first, then the king. Of course
there was great banqueting. On Tuesday the sovereigns rode
towards Dover, and Charles re-embarked at Sandwich.
This was only the beginning of the pageants in which More
had to play his part. On Thursday the king and queen, with
their immense train of 4334 persons and 1637 horses, passed
over to Calais. The great festivities lasted from the 4th to
the 25th June, but need not be here described. Have they
not been made famous by Shakespeare ?
To-day, the French
All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods.
Shone down the English : and to-raorrow, they
Made Britain, India : every man that stood
Show'd like a mine.
What followed is less known. The eraperor was waiting for
the king of England at Gravelines, and after taking leave of
Francis, Henry maide his return visit to his imperial nephew
on the I oth July. When the emperor next day rode with the
king to Calais, all the lords and estates of England vacated
their lodgings to give hospitality to the Spaniards and Flemings.
* Inter. Epist. Erasm. 433. The date is wrongly given by the editor.

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 1 83
A marveUous banqueting house had been prepared; on the
ceiling were painted the heavens, with sun, moon, stars, and
clouds, and images of wickerwork, covered with painted canvas,
represented men of every nation, with "reasons" or inscrip
tions in various languages. It is probable enough that the
learning of More had been enlisted in this pageantry. But,
alas ! when all the preparations were complete for the most
splendid banquet ever given since the days of the Caesars,
" the wind began to rise," says Stowe, " and increasing tothe
evening, it then on a sudden blew off the canvas heavens with
the planets, and blew out more than looo torches of wax"
However, on the 12th, amid new festivities, were solemnly
read "all the articles of the league tripartite,'' between the
emperor and the kings of France and England ; the emperor
returned to Gravelines, and Henry to Dover.
We may safely gather the thoughts of More, during the
slUy and wasteful extravagance of those months from what he
had written, four years previously, in his Utopia, where he had
quaintly jested on the use of the precious metals and of jewels,
as follows : —
"The folly of men has enhanced the value of gold and
silver because of their scarcity ; whereas, on the contrary, it is
the opinion of the Utopians that nature, as an indulgent
parent, has freely given us all the best things in great abun
dance, such as air, water, and earth, but has laid up and hid
from us the things that are vain and useless.
"To teach disdain for gold they have fallen upon an expedient
which, as it agrees with their other policy, so is it very differ
ent from ours, and will scarce gain belief among us who value
gold so much, and lay it up so carefully. They eat and drink
out of vessels of earth and glass, which makes an agreeable
appearance, though formed of brittle materials ; while they
make their vilest utensUs of gold and silver, and that not only
in their public halls but in their private houses. Of the same
metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their slaves,

184 SIR THOMAS MORE.
to some of whom, as a badge of infamy, they hang an ear-ring
of gold, and make others wear a ring, a chain, or a coronet of
the same metal ; and thus they take care by all possible means
to render gold and silver of no esteem. They find pearls on
their coasts, and diamonds and carbuncles on their rocks ;
they do not look after them, but, if they find them by chance,
they polish thera, and with thera they adorn their children,
who are delighted with them, and glory in thera during their
childhood; but when they grow to years, and see that none
but children use such baubles, they of their own accord,
without being bid by their parents, lay them aside, and would
be as much, ashamed to use them afterwards as children among
us, when they come to years, are of their puppets and other
toys." There is also a clear reminiscence of the Field of Cloth of
Gold in the answer which More made to Luther's declaration,
that he would like to throw aU the reUcs ofthe true Cross where
the sun would never shine on them, and give their golden
reUquaries to the poor. Among other things More answers :
" How small a portion were the gold about all the pieces of
Christ's Cross, if it were compared with the gold that is quite
cast away about the gilding of knives, swords, spurs, arras and
painted cloths ; and as though these things could not consume
gold fast enough, the gilding of posts and whole roses, not
only in the palaces of princes and great prelates, but also
many right mean men's houses ! And yet among all these
things could Luther spy no gold that grievously ghttered in his
bleared eyes, but only about the Cross of Christ." *
It is amusing that the writer of all this should have been
made a knight, or as he was then called, Eques auratus, " a
gilded knight," because this dignity both entitled him and
required of him to wear golden insignia, and to deck with
gold the trappings of his horse, + and that he should generally
* English Works, p. 119.
t Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 437.

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 185
be represented as wearing round his neck one of those massive
gold chains, which he made the badge of notorious malefactors
among his Utopians.
While at Calais More had the great pleasure of meeting again
his dear Erasmus,* and of being introduced by hira to other
learned men, among others to ^^^illiam Bud^e, the French
king's secretary, and to Francis Cranefeld, councillor of the
empire. To BudiSe, More wrote some weeks after: "I know
not, my dear Bud^e, whether it is not better never to possess
what becomes very near to our hearts, unless we can afterwards
retain it. The reading of your works had created a beautiful
iinage of you in my mind before we met, and I counted myself
happy if I should ever behold you in reality. When my wish
was al last fulfilled, I was happier than happiness itself. But
alas ! our duties prevented us from meeting often enough to
satisfy my desire of conversing with you, and in a few days, as
our kings were obliged to separate, our intercourse was broken
off when it had scarce begun, and we were torn away perhaps
never to meet again.'' He trusts that they may continue their
friendship by frequent correspondence. In another letter he
teUs him that, among various things that rendered him so dear,
one was that erudition, formerly the prerogative of the clergy,
was now seen in the highest degree in a married raan.t It is
to be regretted that the whole correspondence between these
two learned statesmen is not extant. When Bud^e was collect
ing his own letters for publication, he wished to include those
received from More, but the latter deraurred, as he had not
written with the thought of publicity, and wished to re-exaraine
them. Thus they were not printed. Bud^e mentions presents

* Letters of Erasmus, 496, 509.
t Tam incomparabilis eruditio, quse peculiaris olim cleri gloria fuerat,
tibi feliciter obtigit uxorato ; nam Katxhy appellare non sustineo, tam
multis, tam egregiis dotibus, tara alte subvectura supra KaSv (Apud
Stapleton, cap. 5).

1 86 SIR THOMAS MORE.
received from More of English dogs, of which he seems to have
been glad to dispose very quickly to others.*
Francis Cranefeld wrote to Erasmus fiom Bruges, thanking
him for having introduced him to More. After Erasmus's
departure they had conceived a great friendship for each other,
and Cranefeld had been delighted with More's urbanity. More
had given his wife a gold ring with an English inscription, and
to himself some ancient coins, one of gold, and another of
silver, one having the effigy of Tiberius, the other of Augustus.
More also wrote to Erasmus, to tell the pleasure he had found
in Cranefeld's company.t
There was one jarring note in all this harmony — a literary
controversy, the details of which occupy a considerable space
in More's Latin works and the letters of Erasmus ; but, while
it cannot be altogether passed over in a Life of More, it will be
sufficient to give it in mere outline. During the war between
France and England in 15 12, there had been a great naval
contest, in which a large French ship, named the " Cordelier "
(Chordigera), being already on fire, had borne down on a great
English ship, grappled with it, and involved it in its own fate.
A Frenchraan, named Germain De Brie (Brixius), wrote some
verses in glorification of this feat. Against the " Chordigera " of
De Brie More composed some sharp epigrams, which had
been circulated in MS. When it was proposed to publish a
coUection of his epigrams in 15 17, More had suggested to
Erasmus and the friends who were superintending this publica
tion on the continent, the propriety of omitting these anti-
French verses, now that peace was established. X They,
however, decided to print them. The anger of De Brie was
aroused, and he composed a satirical poem, which he called
"Antimorus," in which he did his best to turn all More's epigrams
* Letters given by Brewer. Letters and Papers, iii, 413,
t Inter. Epist. Erasra., 532, 550.
I lb., 174 (in App.) (3rd Sept. 1517).

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 187
into ridicule. Erasmus, who was a friend of both, intervened
to prevent the publication of De Brie's poem, and when his
efforts were unsuccessful, to prevent More from retaliating.
To De Brie, Erasmus complains of his acerbities, and teUs him
that More stands too high in general estimation for him to in
jure — that if More wrote somewhat against France, it was during
the war. ^^'hy, then, make quarrels now in time of peace ?
More has not published but merely allowed the publication of
his epigrams, if others would superintend it.* To More he
wrote a soothing letter, telling him De Brie could do him no
real harm, and that it was more dignified to remain silent, t
More replied that he had heard two years ago that De Brie
was preparing his attack, and he had intended writing to him
a most friendly letter, but he had heard so much about him
from Paris that he saw it would be in vain. Berald, Lascar,
Budee, and Deloin, had all sought to no purpose to prevent
him from pubUshing his book. In the meantime More had
hoped that, from so long a preparation, something learned and
witty would come, which he should have enjoyed, even though
the laugh was against himself. He found it, however, full of
folly and venom, and had resolved not to answer it ; but he
was overpersuaded by friends to whom he was wont to defer.
Still, Erasmus's wish has so much force with him, that, though
his answer is already printed, he has bought it all up. Five
copies only had been sold, when the letter of Erasmus came
to hand, and he at once stopped the sale. He had sent a copy
to Erasmus and another to Peter Giles, the rest he would keep
until he heard further from Erasmus. He left himself in his
hands as to the publication or non-publication of the book.
"When we come to Calais," he writes, "for which the king
is about to start, we will talk over the matter raore at length.
In this meeting of the kings I expect you and De Brie also ;
* Letter 511, of 25th June, 1520, a letter very honourable to More as
well as to the writer.
t Letter 503.

1 88 SIR THOMAS MORE.
since the French queen will be there, and he, as her secretary,
can hardly be absent. So far as I am concerned you can
easily arrange the matter; for though without any reason he
has so treated me, as to show that the only thing wanting to
him for my destruction is ability, yet since you, Erasmus, are
more than half of myself, the fact that De Brie is your friend
wUl weigh more with me than that he is my enemy." *
For some reason not known to us, More finally published
his book. Erasmus wrote to Budde, i6th February, 1521 :
"I fear the quarrel between De Brie and More will grow
hot, for the letter of More, which I think you saw before More
showed it me at Calais already printed, is so sharp, that I who
am thought by some pretty mordant, am toothless compared .
with him ; and yet he almost promised me Ijiat he would
suppress it, if De Brie would keep quiet "."t There is little
to interest us at present in More's paraphlet, except perhaps
his defence of what he had written against the avarice which
disfigured the last years of Henry VII. On the whole, the
temper of More appears less to advantage in this piece than
in any other of his writings. The thought is forced on us, as
we read the Latin letters, and dedications and controversies of
the literates of the sixteenth cejitury, that their mutual praises
are somewhat boyish, and that they show themselves over
sensitive of their reputation as scholars.
More was not knighted at the time he accompanied the
king to Calais. This dignity seeras to have been conferred
on him in the summer of 15 21, about the time he was made
sub-treasurer. Erasmus wrote to Pace on nth June, 1521:
" I hear that More has been made treasurer, and that the office
is as profitable as it is honourable. He succeeds so weU at
court that I pity him. But I am rejoiced by the hope he
gives me that I may see him again in August ; " J and a few
4 * Inter. Epist. Erasra., 553. fib., $65.
$/i., 577.

DIPLOM.\TIST AND STATESMAN. 189
months later he writes to Bud^e : "More has been made
treasurer. That office in England is most honourable, and
at the same time neither very troublesome in itself, nor
exposed to odium. He had a rival candidate, a man who
was in good favour, who was wiUing to take the office, and
to live at his own expense. But the excellent king gave an
undoubted proof of his partiality for More, when, rather than
accept his rival's offer, he preferred to give the office to More
without his seeking it, and with a salary besides. And not
satisfied with this, he has raised him to the dignity of a
knight." *
Erasmus calls More treasurer. This office, however, was
always reserved for one of the great lords ; and at that tirae
was held by the Duke of Norfolk. More was under-treasurer,
an office which corresponds in sorae respects with that of
chancellor of the exchequer at the present day, who is also
technically under-treasurer. t
Not a year had passed since the tripartite Treaty was read
at Calais, before the emperor and the king of France were
again at war, and Wolsey again crossed the Channel to make
peace, or to affect to do so, while intriguing in his own king's
interest. The Imperial and JFrench ambassadors met him
at Calais, with the Papal Nuncio, the arabassadors of Naples
and Hungary, and the Venetian envoy to England. The last
mentioned, Antonio Suriano, wrote to the Signory on July 25,
1521, frorn London : " A diet is being held about certain dis
putes concerning the merchants. This morning the Govern
ment sends thither Sir Thomas More, Dr. Sampson, etc."J . He
was to join the cardinal at Calais when his own work at Bruges
was completed. On 24th July, Pace, the king's secretary,
wrote to Wolsey : " The king signifieth to Your Grace that.

* Epist. Erasm. 605, Equitis aurati dignitatem adjecit.
t Sir Jaraes Mackintosh {Life of More, p. 73).
X Venetian State Papers, iii. 272.

190

SIR THOMAS MORE.

whereas old men do now decay greatly within this his realm,
his mind is to acquaint other young men with his great affairs,
and, therefore, he desireth Your Grace to make Sir William
Sandys and Sir Thomas More privy to all such matters as Your
Grace shall treat at Calais ".*
Wolsey, with his great following, had arrived at Calais on 2nd
August ; but as the papal ambassador had not received the
necessary commission to sign the league between the Pope, the
emperor, and the two kings, while a messenger was being
despatched to Rome, Wolsey took advantage of the delay to
visit the emperor at Bruges, where he remained a fortnight.
We have a glimpse of Sir Thomas in a letter of Gasparo
Contarini, patriarch of Venice, and at that time ambassador of
his repubUc with Charles V. : "On coming away frora solemn
Mass of the Holy Ghost in St. James's Church (celebrated in the
presence of the emperor, the cardinal, and the resident
ambassadors), I invited an English gentleman, by name
Master Thoraas More, a very learned man, to dine with me.
He had accompanied Wolsey to Bruges. During dinner we
discussed the business negotiated with the emperor, but More
did not drop the slightest hint of any other treaty than that of
peace between the king of France and His Imperial Majesty."!
More was probably aware of what we know now, that the real
subject of the conferences was the betrothal of the emperor
to his cousin, the Princess Mary of England.
Stapleton tells us X that during their stay in Bruges some vain
glorious disputant put up a public challenge to dispute on any
question in civil or canon law, or matter of science or literature.
More could not let slip an opportunity for a joke. By way of
answer he affixed this question from English law : An averia
capta in withernam.ia sunt irreplegiabilia 1 which is said to mean :
' ' Whether cattle taken in withernam be irrepleviable ? ' ' ( Wither-
* State Papers of Henry VIII. i. 19.
t Venetian State Papers, iii. 302.
X Vita Mori, cap. 13.

DIPLOMATIST AND ST.\TESMAN. I91
nam was a writ to make reprisals on one who had wrongfully
distrained another man's cattle, and driven them out of the
county.) The document stated that there was a gentleman in
the English ambassador's suite who was willing to discuss this
point of law with the challenger. It is unnecessary to say that
the doctor utriusque juris could not understand even the terms
of the question, and got well laughed at for his vanity.
More returned with ^Volsey to Calais, where negotiations
were protracted until November ; but in October he was sent as
special messenger to the king. Wolsey vwote to the king that,
with regard to certain matters, he had sent Sir Thomas More,
the under-treasurer, and Sir WilUam FitzwiUiam : "to the which,
your councillors, it may like your Grace not only to give firm
credence in, but also to give unto them your gracious thanks
for such their laudable acquittal and diligent attendance as they
have done and taken in this journey for the advancement of
your honour and contentation of your pleasure ".*
The spring of 1522 renewed the splendours of 1521, though
on a different field. The emperor again visited England, and
this time advanced not only to Canterbury but to London and
Windsor. Full descriptions of the festivities are found in the
chroniclers, but the mere fact that More was present would not
justify any detail here, f
In April, 1523, a parUament was summoned, and by the
influence of Wolsey, Sir Thomas was chosen speaker. He
according to custom " disabled " himself, i.e., declared his
unfitness for such an office ; and when his excuses were rejected
* State Papers, i. 74. Also, Letters atid Papers, iii. App. 31. In
the royal expenses for 1521 we find ;^8o to Sir T. More, ofwhich £$ was
a loan, and £75 for his "diets" when absent firom England with the
" Easterlings," at the rate of 20s. a day (Letters, etc., iii. 1775). On
8th May, 1522, he had a grant of the manor of South, in Kent, with ad
vowson, which had come into the king's hands by the attainder of the
Duke of Buckingham (lb., iii. 2239).
t Letters and Papers, iii. 2288.

192 SIR THOMAS MORE.
by the king, he went on in a speech which Roper has given at
length and probably transcribed from the draft left of it by
More, to demand the usual privUeges of the speaker and of
the commons, especiaUy for the latter freedom of deliberation.
Roper proceeds to tell how Cardinal Wolsey came down to the
House of Comraons in order to urge them to grant the subsidy,
to which they had shown reluctance. The commons debated
whether it were better to receive him with a few only of his
lords, or with his whole train. The opinion of the majority
was that his attendants should be very few, but Sir Thomas
thus addressed them : " Masters, forasmuch as my Lord
Cardinal lately laid to our charges the lightness of our tongues
for things uttered out of this house, it shall not in my mind be
amiss to receive him with all his pomp, with his maces, his
pillars, poleaxes, his crosses, his hat, and the great seal too, to
the intent that if he find the like fault with us hereafter, we may
be bolder from ourselves to lay the blame on those that his Grace
brought here with him " * This advice prevailed, the cardinal
addressed the house, but in vain tried to get a word of answer
from anyone, though he appealed to some by name. Sir
Thoraas on his knees excused this silence, saying that it was
the ancient privilege to speak only by the speaker's mouth, but
that he could not do this until he had heard their debates.'
" Whereupon," says Roper, " the cardinal, displeased with
Sir Thomas More that had not in this parliament in aU things
satisfied his desire,t suddenly arose and departed, and, after
the parliament ended, in his gallery at Whitehall said to him :
' Would God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when I made
you speaker' 'Your Grace not offended, so would I too,'
* He can scarcely have made so sarcastic a speech publicly ; the terms
are such as he raight have used in private conversation when asked his
opinion. t " The speaker of the Tudor reigns,'' writes Bishop Stubbs, "is the
raanager of business on the part of the crown" (Lectures on Medieval
and Modern History, p. 272).

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 1 93
quoth Sir Thomas. And to wind such quarrels out of the
cardinal's head he began to talk of the gaUery, saying, ' I like
this gallery of yours much better than your gallery of Hampton
Court' Wherewith so wisely broke he off the cardinal's
displeasant talk, that the cardinal at that present, as it seemed,
wist not what more to say to him. But for the revengement of
his displeasure counselled the king to send him ambassador to
Spain, commending to his Highness his wisdom, fitness and learn
ing for that voyage. And the difficulty ofthe cause considered,
none was there, he said, so fit so serve his Grace therein.
Which when the king had broken to Sir Thoraas More, and
that he had declared unto his Grace how unfit a journey It was
for him, the nature of the country, and the disposition of his
complexion so disagreeing together, that he should never be
able to do his Grace acceptable service there, knowing right
well that if his Grace sent him thither he should send him to
his grave ; but showing hiraself nevertheless ready according to
his duty, were it with the loss of his life, to fulfil his Grace's
pleasure in that behalf. The king, allowing well his answer,
said unto him : ' It is not our pleasure, Mr. More, to do you
hurt, but to do you good would we be glad. We will, therefore,
for this purpose devise some other, and employ your service
otherwise.' "
These things must have been related to Roper by More
when they occurred, and their substantial truth can, therefore,
scarcely be called in question.* Yet if any part of More's
conduct as speaker reaUy caused Wolsey to say some hasty
words, the following letter of Wolsey to the king was certainly
not written under any feeling of displeasure : —
"Sir, — After my most humble recommendations. It may
Uke your Grace to understand, I have showed unto this bearer.
Sir Thomas More, divers matters to be by him bn my behalf
declared unto your Highness. And, sire, whereas it hath been
accustomed that the speakers of the pariiaments, in considera-
* Unfortunately there are no Journals of the Commons before 1547.
13

194 SIR THOMAS MORE.
tion of their diligence and pains taken, have had, though the
parliament hath been right soon finished, above the ;^ioo
ordinary, a reward of ;^ioo, for the better maintenance oftheir
household, and other charges sustained in the sarae; I sup
pose, sir, that the faithful diligence of the said Sir Thomas in
all your causes treated in this your late parliament, as well for
your subsidy right honourably passed, as otherwise, considered,
no man could better deserve the sarae than he hath done ;
wherefore, your pleasure known therein, I shall cause the same
to be advanced to him accordingly — ascertaining your Grace
that I am the rather moved to put your Highness in re
membrance thereof, because he is not the most ready to speak
and solicit his own cause. At your Manor of Hampton
Court, the 24th day of August [1523], by your most humble
chaplain. T. CA.-R.T,., Ebor." *
If this letter shows a very kind feeling on the cardinal's
part towards Sir Thomas, a letter of More's to Wolsey, written
a few days later, proves that the feeling was mutual. He was
acting as the king's secretary at Woking. He teUs the cardinal
how pleased the king had been with a certain letter which
Wolsey had drafted, to be sent to the Queen of Scots, the
king's sister : —
" Among which, the letter which your Grace devised in the
name of his Highness to the queen, his sister, his Grace so well
liked that I never saw him like anything better, and, so help
me God, in ray poor phantasy, not causeless, for it is for the
quantity one of the best made letters for words, matter,
sentences, and couching that ever I read in my life".t
No one wUl suspect More of flattering with an interested
motive, or even of insincerity in these words. He liked to
praise when he could, as we have seen in his letters to his
chUdren, and if such language shows that he knew that the
great minister was somewhat chUdish in his love of admiration,
yet he humoured him out of native kindliness and gratitude.
* State Papers, i. 124. + State Papers, i. 128.

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 1 95
Stapleton relates that, when More had been but a short time
privy councillor, Wolsey proposed that a new office should be
created — that of Supreme Constable of the Kingdom, to repre
sent the king everywhere, a thing unknown to the constitution,
the cardinal having, of course, an ambitious motive in such a
proposal. The whole Council was easily won over to his
view ; but when More's turn came to speak, he disapproved the
plan, and defended his opinion with so many solid reasons that
the Council declared that the matter required further delibera
tion. The cardinal, in his anger, . exclaimed : "Are you not
ashamed, Mr. More, being the last in place and dignity, to
dissent from so many noble and prudent raen? You show
yourself a foolish councillor.'' " Thanks be to God," replied
More at once, "that his royal Highness has but one fool In his
CouncU." However, the question was postponed, and Wolsey's
plan finally rejected.*
On the whole, the relations between Wolsey and More seem
to have been cordial. It is probable that the cardinal rather
feared than loved him,t since he could not doubt that More
was quite unawed by his grandeur, and read his character
thoroughly. Yet he knew that More was no rival, and he ad
mired his disinterestedness and integrity. To propose for him
an embassy in Spain, might be an honourable way of removing
one whom he could not make his tool, yet there was surely
nothing in the Spanish climate so deadly as to justify us in
attributing to him the revengeful and murderous motive hinted
at hy Roper. All seems to be explained, if we suppose that
More saw in the cardinal's proposal a plan to get him away
from England, and that More also saw (what the cardinal did
not see) that for him the climate would be perilous. The
CathoUcs of the days of Mary and Elizabeth bore a very re
sentful feeling towards Cardinal Wolsey. They were convinced
* Stapleton, cap. 13.
+ lb., cap. 3. Erasraus says the same thing.

ig6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
that his pride, ambition, and woridly policy had been the
principal cause of the degeneracy of Henry VIII. and of the
schism into which the country had been cast ; and they were
inclined to wrest all his words and deeds in sinistram partem.
The records of the next few years contain nothing on which
we need delay. Sir Thomas More's name is among those of
the gentiemen in the royal army beyond the sea, under the
Duke pf Suffolk, when war broke out again between England
and France, in August, 1523; yet other documents show that
he did not leave England. Either then the arrangements were
canceUed, or the document refers to another Sir Thomas More,
a gentiemen of Dorset.* In August, 1523, Sir Thoraas, the
subject of this memoir, was appointed one of the coUectors of
the subsidy in Middlesex.t In July, 1525, without ceasing to
be sub-treasurer, he was made Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, an office of dignity and importance ; whUe the king
still kept him near his person to act as his secretary and his
-master of requests.J Indeed, the king seems to have been
impatient of his absence even in the necessary discharge of his
duties. On 26th November, 1523, the cardinal writes to the
king : " For such great matters, as at the knitting up of this
term be requisite to be ordered in your exchequer, Sir Thomas
More may in no wise be spared from thence for four or five
* For Sir Thomas More's narae, see Letters and Papers, iii. 3288.
The presence of Sir Thomas More, the secretary and treasurer, in
England throughout August and September, 1523, firom many letters
in State Papers, vol. i. Sir Thoraas More, of " Mylplesshe," Dorset,
Letters and Papers, iv. 6721, v. 1598, 1694, vii. 508, etc. To this
latter probably belongs the £733 6s. 8d., a debt due to the king by Sir
Thoraas More, among the debts " whereof the days of payment be past,
and the money not paid " This particular debt had been contracted
tempore Henrici VII. It could not be by our More. A licence to
export 1000 woollen cloths {lb., iv. 2248) to Sir Thomas More ftiay also
belong to the Dorsetshire knight.
¦^Letters, etc., iii. 3282.
X lb., iv. 1939.

DIPLOMATIST AND ST.\TESMAN. I97
days ; for which time it may like your Highness to forbear his
coming ".*
Of the king's fondness for More, Roper has given us details,
of some of which he was eye-witness, while the rest he could
learn from his intimate famiharity with his father-in-law.
" The king," he says, " upon hoUdays, when he had done
his own devotions, used to send for him inlo his traverse, and
there, sometimes in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity,
and such other faculties, and sometimes of his worldly affairs,
to sit and converse with him. And otherwhUe in the night
would he have him up into his leads, there to consider with
him the diversities, courses, motions and operations of the
stars and planets. And because he was of a pleasant disposi
tion, it pleased the king and queen after the council had
supped, yea at the time of their supper, to send for him to be
merry with them. AVho, when he perceived so much in his
talk to delight that he could not in a month get leave to go
home to his wife and children (whose company he most
desired), and to be absent from the court two days together,
but that he should be thither sent for again ; he, much mis-
liking this restraint of liberty, began thereupon soraewhat to
dissemble his nature, and so by little and little from his accus
tomed mirth to disuse hiraself, that he was of them thenceforth
no more so ordinarily sent for at such seasons."
Elsewhere, however, the same writer tells us that if More
escaped for some time by this artifice, the king's desire of
his company was not appeased : " Such entire favour did the
king bear him that he made him Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster ; and for the pleasure he took in his company would
His Grace suddenly sometimes come home to his house at
Chelsea, to be merry with him. Whither, on a time unlooked
for, he came to dinner with him, and after dinner, in a fair
garden of his, walked with him by the space of an hour,
* State Papers, i. 146.

198 SIR THOMAS MORE.
holding his arm about his neck.* As soon as his Grace was
gone, I, rejoicing thereat, said to Sir Thomas More, how
happy he was whora the king had so familiarly entertained, as
I never had seen him do to any other, except Cardinal Wolsey,
whom I saw His Grace walk once with arm in arm. ' I thank
our Lord, son,' quoth he, ' I find His Grace my very good
lord indeed, and I believe he doth as singularly favour me as
any subject within this realm. Howbeit, son Roper, I may
tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head
would win him a castle in France (for then was there war
betwixt us), it should not fail to go.' " t
This saying is a remarkable evidence of More's insight into
character, and, it may be said, of his prescience. It also re
minds us that to understand More's life and characler we raust
not lose sight of the fact that, while he was yearly progressing
in wisdom and virtue, the king was fast declining. On this
subject I may quote the words of Dr. Brewer, as one best
qualified to speak : —
"Until the close of the year 1524," says this writer, "the
superabundant activity of the king himself and his young
courtiers, wasting itself mainly in muscular amusements, or ex
changing them for the less justifiable excitement of dice and
card-playing, found more wholesome occupation in the war with
France, or the expectation of war. But the defeat of Francis
at the battle of Pavia left them in utter idleness, without the
hope of eraployraent. Men of education, sagacity and ex
perience — generally ecclesiastics — were at that tirae engaged
in all diplomatic posts requiring more than usual tact and
ability. For such employment the nobility and gentry who
frequented the new court were either disqualified by ignorance
of their own, and still more of the Latin tongue — the common
* The king was tall, More soraewhat short.
t Though Roper had raentioned the appointment to the chancellor
ship of the duchy, this conversation must have been earlier, for there
was no war with France after that date.

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 1 99
vehicle of communication — or declined to qualify themselves
by the necessary sacrifices of their time and amusements.
"In 1525 the king, then thirty-six years old, was beginning to
pay less attention to business. He hated the drudgery of looking
over files of despatches, from which the most exciting topic was
absent ; withdrew himself more and more from the metropolis,
and spent his days in hunting. Removed more than ever from
the personal influence of Wolsey, Henry was surrounded by
favourites, who recommended themselves to his notice by
ministering to his pleasures, and fostering his love of profusion.
With them, or some of them, Henry spent the day in hunting
and the night in gambling, losing occasionally large sums of
money. In 1525 he had attempted to make a favourite of Sir
Thomas More, professing to be delighted with his society, his
wit, his modesty, and his learning. At the death of Sir Richard
Wingfield, in July, 1525, the king had advanced More to the
Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster.
"That More, combining the religious fervour and devotion
of the recluse with the urbanity, grace, and ready wit of the
most cultivated man of the world, a considerate and patient
master, a pattern of conjugal purity and fidelity, should not
seek to push his fortune among the unscrupulous candidates
for royal favour, is no more than might be expected. He knew
weU what were the king's intentions at that tirae (1527),* and
did not approve of them. He knew, also, how hard it was to
contend with one whose arguments he could not admit without
peril of his conscience, or contradict without peril of his life.
His learning, his reputation, his legal acquireraents, were sure
to point him out to the king as the one man above aU others
whose judgment on the question none would venture to im
pugn, and few would be inclined to dispute. That judgment
he had avoided giving with all the tact and dexterity of which
he was master. But the pursuits of the court and the individuals
* The allusion is tothe divorce.

200 SIR THOMAS MORE.
of which its innermost circle was composed were scarcely
such as ccteld command his sympathy and approbation. There
was hardly one of them whose character was not seriously
tainted with that vice against which the unsullied purity of
More's mind revolted ; not one who looked upon the trans
gression of the marriage vow as deserving reprobation or
censure, or at least as worse than a jest."*
This passage, in its review of More's position at court, has
brought us to the date of the great divorce question. I will
postpone this for awhile, and conclude the chapter by mention
ing sorae of the diplomatic labours in which More was engaged
previous to his receiving the great seal as chanceUor of the
kingdom. In August, 1525, he was appointed, together with Nicolas
West, Bishop of Ely, to arrange with the French envoys the
conditions of a truce between France and England. + A treaty
was enacted the next year at Hampton Court, and again More
was one of the Coraraission. J Similar negotiations were con
cluded at Westminster in May, 1527. On this occasion More's
colleague was Stephen Gardiner. § These various treaties were
only prelirainaries to a solemn embassy sent into France in
1527. Wolsey went in person, with almost more than royal
state, to meet the French king. Sir Thomas More was one
of those who accompanied the cardinal, not simply to sweU his
pomp, but to act as his councUloi-. They left London on
Wednesday, the 3rd July. Thursday night was spent in the
Bishop of Rochester's palace. We know of the long interview
in which Wolsey tried to over-reach the holy bishop with regard
* Brewer, Introduction to Letters and Papers, vol. iv. p. 216, sq.
+ Rymer, xiv. 48.
X Rymer, xiv. 185. On 14th July, 1526, Spinelli writes that " Sir
Thomas More, his Majesty's secretary, has returned from France, with
the articles of the " mutual obligation " (Venetian State Papers, iii.
1351). § Letters and Papers, iv. 3080, 3105, 3138.

DIPLOMATIST AND ST.^TESMAN. 201
to the question of the king's marriage, which had just then been
secretly mooted before the two archbishops, but we have no
record of the cordial embraces between Fisher and More, the
two loving friends so soon to be brother-martyrs. Their con
versation would have been about the captivity and danger of
the Holy Father Clement VIL, then besieged in his castie of
Sl Angelo, while Rome was given up to the most cruel and
brutal outrages ever recorded in history. Before leaving home,
More had gone with his family to take part in the solemn sup
plications for the Pope in his parish church. On leaving
Rochester he joined Wolsey and Warham in the Cathedral
Church of Canterbury in similar devotions. Passing over to
Calais on the nth, they remained there some days, and then
went by Boulogne to Abbeville, where they were detained by
the diplomacy of Francis. On Sunday, the 3rd August, they
were met outside Amiens by the French king, the king of
Navarre, cardinals, bishops and nobles. After saluting the
cardinal, Francis (says Wolsey, in his report to the king),
" saluted my Lord of London (Tunstall), my Lord Chamberlain
(Lord Sandys), Master Controller (Sir Henry Guildford), the
ChanceUor of the Duchy (Sir T. More), and such other ser
vants and gentlemen as accompanied me ''. After preparing
himself in the magnificent lodging to which the king conducted
him in person, Wolsey went with his great gentlemen, among
whom was More, to visit the queen-mother. On Sunday, 17th
August, the treaty of peace was solemnly sworn in the cathedral
church of Amiens. They remained at Amiens honoured by
splendid festivities till the end of August, and the king accom
panied them for some distance on their journey home. It was
nearly the end of September when they reached the shores of
England.* More crossed the English Channel many times, but not once
the Irish Sea. On 15th June, 1529, John Du Bellay, the
¦* "Various letters in State Papers, vol. i. , and Cavendish's Life of
Wolsey.

202 SIR THOMAS MORE.
French ambassador in London, wrote to Montmorency : " In
Ireland there were some practices going on by those of the
country, to which a stop has been put in good time. I think
they are going to send Master More thither to treat with them."*
Another employment was however found. He was joined with
the Bishop of London (Tunstall), Knight and Hacket, in an
embassy to Cambray, in which the English ambassadors were
to meet those of the emperor, of the Pope, and of the king of
France. Campeggio, who had come to England as legate on
the affair of the divorce, wrote on the 29th June to Salviati :
" I hear the king has had much discussion with the Cardinal of
York, proposing, as the cardinal is unable to go to Cambray,
to send thither the Bishop of London, a man of sense and
merit, and More, a learned layman".! The next day the Bishop
of Bayonne wrote to the king of France that the king of Eng
land begged him to defer his proceedings at Cambray till his
ambassadors, the Bishop of London and Master More, should
arrive ; for considering their age and quality, they could not be
expected to travel post. J
In another letter Cardinal Campeggio writes : " The Bishop
of London and More departed on the ist (July) to attend the
congress. They had particular instructions to promote the
interests of the Pope and the Holy See. I believe they wiU
use their good offices in this respect, because I did my utmost
both wilh the king and with them." § These words are fuU
of interest. Had the three men thus brought together died in
that year, 1529, history would have classed them together, as
equally loyal and zealous for the honour and welfare of the
Sovereign Pontiff. In a few years, however, they had been
* Letters and Papers, iv. 5679.
\Ib., iv. 5733.
Xlb., iv. 5741. In the treasurer's account is an entry of £66 13s. 4d.
advanced to Sir Thoraas More for his diets at 26s. 8d. per day (lb., v.
P- 312). § lb; 5775-

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 203
"sifted like wheat" Henry's pride and sensuahty had driven
him into hatred of the Pope and obstinate schism, in which
he died. Tunstall had followed him into schism, but re
covered and died at last in the unity of the Church. More
had won the martyr's crown in defence of the supremacy.
The Treaty of Cambray was signed by Margaret of Savoy on
the part of Charles V. : by Tunstall, More, and Hacket, on the
part of Henry: and by Francis, on 8th August, 1529, in the
Cathedral Church of Cambray ; * the ambassadors returned to
England, and More visited Wolsey on 23rd August. But the
days of that minister's glory were nearly numbered, and More
was to be his successor.
In mentioning in this and preceding chapters the nuraerous
treaties of which Sir Thomas More was a negotiator, I have
said very little as to their causes, their provisions, or their re
sult To have done so, it would have been necessary to enter
more deeply into public history than befits a biography. It
may have been noticed, however, that his legal and practical
skill was chiefly employed in commercial treaties. As regards
the purely political diplomacy of those days, he had spoken with
ruthless satire in his Utopia. The whole passage will be the
best commentary on this chapter : —
"The Utopians call those nations that come and ask
magistrates from them Neighbours ; but those to whom they
have been of more particular service, Friends ; and as aU other
nations are perpetuaUy either making leagues or breaking them,
they never enter into an alliance with any state. They think
leagues are useless things, and believe that if the coramon ties
of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of promises
will have no great effect ; and they are the raore confirraed in
this by what they see among the nations round about them,
who are no strict observers of leagues and treaties. We know
how religiously they are observed in Europe, more particularly
where the Christian doctrine is received, among whom they are
* Rymer, xiv. 326.

204 SIR THOMAS MORE.
sacred and inviolable ! which is partly owing to the justice and
goodness cf the princes themselves, and partly to the reverence
they pay to the Popes, who, as they are the most religious
observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes
to perform theirs ; and, when fainter methods do not prevail,
they corapel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure,
and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if
men who are particularly distinguished by the title of 'The
Faithful ' should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties.
But in that new-found world, which is not more distant from
us in situation than the people are in their manners and course
of life, there is no trusting to leagues, even though they were
made with all the porap of the most sacred ceremonies ; on the
contrary, they are on this account the sooner broken, some
slight pretence being found in the words of the treaties, which
are purposely couched in such ambiguous terms that they can
never be so strictly bound but they will always find some loop
hole to escape at ; and thus they break both their leagues and
their faith ; and this is done with such impudence, that those
very men who value themselves on having suggested these
expedients to their princes would, with a haughty scorn, declaim
against such craft, or, to speak plainer, such fraud and deceit,
if they found private men make use of it in their bargains, and
would readily say that they deserved to be hanged.
" By this means it is that every sort of justice passes with
thera for a low-spirited and vulgar virtue, far below the dignity
of royal greatness — or at least there are set up two sorts of
justice : the one is mean and creeps on the ground, and, there
fore, becomes none but the lower part of mankind, and, being
kept in severely by many restraints, is not able to break out be
yond the bounds that are set to it ; the other is the peculiar
virtue of princes, which, as it is more majestic than that which
becomes the rabble, so takes a freer compass, and thus nothing
is unlawful except what is unpleasant. These practices of the
princes that lie about Utopia, who make so Uttle account of

DIPLOMATIST AND STATESMAN. 205
their faith, seem to be the reasons that determine them to
engage in no confederacy. Perhaps they would change their
mind if they lived among us." ,
If this biting irony had been deserved by the diplomacy of
Europe in 1515, when More thus wrote, it had not ceased to
be merited in 1529, when MachiaveUi's principles had practicaUy
become the code of princes, and Charles V., Francis I., and
Henry VIII. were ceaselessly intent on outwitting each other.
Sir Thomas More's part, however, was confined to the making
of the promises and engagements ; he left the responsibility of
breaking them to others.
After this review of More's public life and period of prosperity,
the reader will be interested to know what was his interior life
before God. In addition to what has been said of this by his
biographers, especially Roper and Stapleton, as related in
previous chapters, we have a picture of a holy statesman drawn
by his own pen, in which he has unconsciously described him
self; or rather we have an account given of a method of sancti
fication, which we know from other sources to have been the
one so successfuUy adopted by himself. In the Dialogue of
Comfort against Tribulation, written in the Tower, Sir Thomas
gives the following advice as to the means by which a
man may keep himself humble in a state of honour and
prosperity : " To the intent that he may think of such things
(as death and judgment) the better, let him use often to resort
to confession, and there open his heart, and by the mouth of
some good, virtuous, ghostly father, have such things oft re
newed in his remembrance. Let him also choose himself some
secret solitary place, as far from noise and company as he con
veniently can, and thither let him sometimes secretiy resort
alone, imagining himself as one going out of the world, even
straight unto the giving up of his reckoning unto God of his
sinful life. Then let him there before an altar, or some pitiful
image of Christ's bitter Passion, kneel down or fall prostrate, as
at the feet of Almighty God, verily believing Him to be there

2o6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
invisibly present, as without any doubt He is. There let him
open his heart to God, and confess his faults, such as he can
call to mind, and pray God of forgiveness. Let him also call
to remembrance the benefits that God hath given hira, either
in general among other men, or privately to himself, and give
Him humble, hearty thanks therefor. There let him declare unto
God the temptations ofthe devil, the suggestions ofthe flesh, the
occasions of the world and of his worldly friends^much worse
many tiraes in drawing a man from God than are his most
mortal enemies. There let him lament and bewail unto God
his own fraility, negUgence, and sloth in resisting and with
standing of temptations, his readiness and pronity to fall there
unto. Then let him beseech God of His gracious aid and
help to strengthen his infirmity withal, both in keeping him
from faUing, and when he by his own fault misfortuneth to fall,
then with the helping hand of His merciful grace to lift him up
and set him on his feet in the state of grace again. And let
this man not doubt that God heareth him and granteth him
gladly this boon; and so, dwelling in the faithful trust of God's
help, he shall well use his prosperity and persevere in his good,
profitable businesSj and shall have therein the truth of God to
compass him about with a pa vice [a shield] of His heavenly
defence ; that of the devil's arrow flying in the day * of worldly
wrath he shall not need to dread. "t
* " Scuto circumdabit te Veritas ejus a sagitta volante in die "
(Ps. XC. 5, 6).
+ Book ii. ch. xvii., English Works, p. 1201.

CHAPTER XI.
THE GERMAN REFORMATION.
WE come now to a new phase in the life we are studying.
Among many writers it has become a theory that there
were two Thomas Mores, as there were two Henries
called the Eighth; that as the king degenerated, under the
influence of baffled lust and wounded pride, from a pious and
affable prince to a sensual and cruel despot, so too his minis
ter degenerated, under the influence of political and social
fears, from a liberal and somewhat sceptical philosopher, to
a bigoted persecutor. Horace Walpole, describing the portrait
of Sir Thomas, paintedTiy Holbein in 1527, writes: "It is
Sir Thomas More in the rigour of his sense, not in the
sweetness of his pleasantry. Here is rather that single, cruel
judge, whom one knows not how to hate, and who, in the
vigour of abilities, of knowledge and good humour, persecuted
others in defence of superstitions that he himself had exposed ;
and who, capable of disdaining life at the price of his sincerity,
yet thought that God was to be served by promoting an
imposture ; who triumphed over Henry and death, and sunk
to be an accomplice, at least the dupe, of the Holy Maid of
Kent!"* There is no doubt much coxcombry in all this balanced
antithesis, yet it expresses the perplexity which the apparent
contrast between the earlier and later life of More has excited
in deeper minds than Walpole's. The perplexity, however, is
^ Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. 70 (ed. Wornum).

2o8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
self-created by those who, turning over the pages of the
Utopia or the Praise of Folly, dream of a sceptical, rational
istic, Utopian More ; and contrast him with the More who
has depicted himself in his epitaph as the sworn eneray of
malefactors and heretics — words most true, yet easily mis
understood at the present day. Postponing for future con
sideration the charge of persecution, I will here confine my
remarks to his Latin controversial writings, and especially to
the book against Luther. Tindale hinted at some such
contrast as that described above, and Sir Thomas replied as
follows : " Of Erasmus' book on the Praise of Folly, Tindale
saith, that if it were in English every man should then weU
see that I was then far otherwise minded than I now write.
If this be true, then the more cause have I to thank God of
araendraent. But surely this is not true ; for, God be thanked,
I never had that mind in myself to have holy saints' images or
their holy relics out of reverence. Nor if there were any such
thing in Moria, that thing could not yet make any raan see
that I were myself of that mind, the book being made by
another man, though he were 'my darling' never so dear.
Howbeit, that book of Moria doth indeed but jest upon the
abuses of such things, after the manner of the disour's* part in a
play, and yet not so.far neither by a great deal as the 'Messenger'
doth in my Dialogue, which I have yet suffered to stand still
in my Dialogue, ahd that rather yet by the counsel of other
men than myself." t
Nor did Erasmus ever hint that any revolution had taken
place in the mind of his candid, his darling More, any other
wise than he admits a change in his own view of things. The
world had changed, and new opponents had arisen, who
aroused 'new feelings and required a new language ; but
neither More nor Erasmus defended what they had before
ridiculed, nor attacked what they had before encouraged.
* Disour, i.e., clown, jester. \ English Works, p. 422.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 209
More, it is said, was in his eariy days a zealous reforraer ;
in his later days he was a conservative and resisted the
reformers. But Reform is an ambiguous word. More had
lamented the prevalence of evil works among professing
Catholics. It surely does not foUow that he should have
welcomed the reform of Luther, whose principal outcry was
against the importance attached by Catholics to good works.* V
More declared war, as Pace tells us, against certain scholastic
theologians, who affirmed too dogmatically things that were
obscure and altogether outside the faith. Was he, on that
account, to accept Luther contradicting the first principles of
Catholic faith ?
But if the consistency of More is admitted, what is to be
said on the charge of asperity and scurrility brought against
his controversial writings ? This question cannot be shirked
by a biographer of More. To begin with the accusation of
scurriUty. Of More's book against Luther, published in 1523,
Bishop Atterbury has said : " It is throughout nothing but
downright ribaldry, without a grain of reasoning to support it;
so that it gave the author no other reputation but that of
having the best knack of any man in Europe at calling bad
names in good Latin ''.f It is difficult to suppose that
¦Atterbury had ever read the book of which he could thus
write. It is replete with keen irony and powerful reasoning,
as well as earnest and touching exhortation. That it is a
pleasant book to read I do not contend, nor that it is free
from language that is rude and nasty. But whether the
language deserves the name of ribaldry depends on the
* " Luther's most earnest reraonstrances were directed not against
bad but against good works, and the stress laid upon thera by the
advocates of the old religion. If that religion had been in its practice
so generally corrupt as it is represented to have been by modern writers,
such denuntiations were idle " (Dr. Brewer, Introduction to Letters and
Papers, p. 228). Tindale used to call zeal for good works " popeholiness "
t Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence, etc., iii. 452.
14

2IO SIR THOMAS MORE.
question whether, when Shakespeare's Ajax boxes the ears
of Tbersites and caUs him a "whoreson cur," he thereby
places himself on a level with Tbersites, pouring out his foul
venom on Agamemnon, AchiUes, and aU the princes of the
army. Sir Thomas More complains that he could not clean
the mouth of Luther without befouling his own fingers.
But let us understand the facts. In 1520, Luther published
his treatise called the, Babylonian Captivity in which he
finally broke with the Church, railed at the Pope, and called
on the world to embrace an entirely new religion, under the
narae of genuine Christianity. In 1521, Henry printed his
book called Defence of the Seven Sacraments. Luther repUed
in a treatise so scurrUous, that it has probably no parallel
in literature. Certainly such language had never before been
addressed to a king or prince. It cannot be said that Henry
had drawn this upon his own head. He had not attacked
Luther, but stepped in as the Church's champion, to ward off
the blows Luther was aiming at her. On the whole his defence
is dignified, and he uses language no stronger than had been
used in all ages, by saints and doctors, against inventors of
novelties and disturbers of unity. In this book of Henry's
More had no other share than that, after it was written, he had
arranged the index.* But, against his will, he was drawn
into the controversy. It was not possible for the king to reply
to an atiack such as Luther's. When Luther, a few years later,
wrote an insincere apology for his virulence, Henry answered as
it became him ; but even had he wished it, his advisers could
* The words of Sir Thoraas are that " after it was finished, by His
Grace's appointment, and consent ofthe makers ofthe same, he was only
a sorter out and placer of the principal matters therein contained "
{Life of Roper, p. 25). Mr. Bruce in the Archaol. (xxiii. 67) has a
dissertation on the authorship of the Assertio Septem Sacramentorum.
He understands the words of Sir Thomas as I have taken them. I do not
enter further into this matter, since I have pubhshed an essay on the
subject, called " Defender of the FaUh ". (Catholic Truth Society.)

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 211
not have aUowed him in 1523 to carry on a war of words with
a foul-mouthed German boor. Some of his subjects undertook
to avenge the " Defender of the Faith " Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, weighed as a theologian the original contentions of
Luther, the English king's replies, and Luther's scornful
reiterations. The king, however, in all probability, himself
suggested to More that his wit would be well employed in
chastising the insolent friar. This I gather from More's own
words. Apologising for certain expressions, he says : " I doubt
not, good reader, that your fairness will pardon me that in this
book you read so often what causes you sharae. Nothing
could have been more painful to me than to be forced to speak
foul words to pure ears. But there was no help for it, unless
I left Luther's scurrilous book utterly untouched, which is a
thing I most earnestly desired."
It does not follow that, because More engaged in the con
troversy against his inclination, his method of conducting it was
contrary to his conscience or his better judgment. He saw
that Luther deserved to be trounced ; he merely regretted that
the task had been committed to him. He pleaded for leave to
wear a mask while performing the unpleasant duly, and took
the name of William Ross, an Englishman, supposed to be on
a visit to Italy. His book is not a treatise on Lutheranisra, for
Lutheranisra as a system had not yet been enunciated, and was
still incomplete in the brain of its author. He refutes indeed
both the denials and the assertions of Luther as they occur,
but it is with Luther himself and Luther's language to Henry
that he is dealing. The Wiltenburg doctor, in the midst of his
paroxysms of fury and hurling of nicknames, still vrished to be
taken for a prophet, zealous for his master's honour; and
More's object was to turn into utter ridicule this pretension, by
showing that he was simply an enraged and fanatical buffoon.*
* If such a designation seems too strong, let me cull a few specimens
ofhis language. The king is " rex infelix, stolidissimus, delirus, nugigerulus,
sceleratissimus, sacrilegus ; latro, asinus, porcus, truncus, antichristus,

212 SIR THOMAS MORE.
He did not consider that his own book was to have any per
manent value. He therefore thus concluded it : "I confess
that my book is not such a one as the world must needs read ;
but, on the other hand, I trust it is one that need not be despised
by anyone who has condescended to read Luther's follies . As for
thbse who have simply disdained his ranting (nmnias) there is
no need for them, nor do I wish them, to waste their time over
my book."
Of "reasoning," though Dr. Atterbury could not find "a
grain,'' there was far more than was necessary to overthrow any
arguments advanced by Martin Luther. After a specimen or
two of More's lighter style of controversy, I will give a few
passages which will explain the earnest and determined opposi
tion lo the new opinions, in which he spent the rest of his life.
His method is to give Luther's words in full, and after each
paragraph to raake a commentary.
Words of Luther. — "Where are you, my Lord Henry?
Bring forth your fine book against Luther. What is it that
your Lordship is defending — the seven sacraments ? By whose
teaching — that of God, or of raen ? Let then your Thoraistical
Lordship hear the judgment, not of Luther, but of Him before
whom the poles of the earth tremble, ' In vain do they worship
Me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men '." (Matt.
XV. 9)."
Words of More. — "Reader, did you ever see a blind man
in a rage, and eager to revenge himself with his fists? To
know where to hit out, he gets his adversary to speak, and
strikes where he thinks the sound comes from, but hits nothing,
since the speaker steps back. Such is Luther, but far more
stultitia monstrum, rex mendacii ; damnabilis putredo, fseces latrinae ;
vecors et indoctissima papistici corporis belua ; scurra levissimus ; insul-
sissimus Thoraista, stropha Thoraistica ; porcus Thomista,'' etc., etc.
Sir Thomas More's contention is : " Quisnon rideat nebulonem miserrimum
tam furiosas efflantem glorias, quasi sederet in Christi pectore, cum
clausus jaceat in culo diaboli? Inde crepat ac buccinat" (Lib. i. cap. 7).

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 2 13
ridiculous ; for when the king answers him on his right hand,
he strikes out towards the left. See him with his blind eyes
standing ready to give his blow. ' Where are you, Lord Henry ? '
he cries. ' Here I am, close by you.' ' Come nearer, bring
out your pretty book against Luther.' ' Here it is.' ' Nearer
still, what is it your lordship defends — the seven sacraraents ? '
' Certainly.' ' A little nearer. By what teaching — that of God
or of man ? ' 'Of God.' Now he is going to strike ; mark
with what precision. ' Listen,' he says, ' your highness : In
vain do they worship Me with the doctrines of men ' I and then
he bursts out laughing and cannot contain himself for joy, at
the crushing blow he has inflicted on his opponent." *
Luther had boldly declared that his only foundation was the
written word of God, that he might get rid of all ecclesiastical
tradition and all exercise of ecclesiastical authority. But the
written word of God would not have served his purpose unless
it were fi-ee to him to interpret it in a new sense by his own
private judgment. We may listen to a specimen of his reason
ing and of More's reply : —
Words of Luther. — " It is written, ' All things are yours,
whether ApoUo or Cephas or Paul, and you are Christ's' (i Cor.
iu. 22). If we are Christ's only, who is this stupid king, who
strives with his lies to make us the Pope's ? We are not the
Pope's, but the Pope is ours. It is ours, not to be judged by
the Pope, but to judge him. ' For the spiritual man is judged
by none, but he judges all men ' (omnes) (i Cor. ii. 15). If it
is true that all things are yours, even the Pope, how much raore
that dirt and disgrace of men, the Thomists and Henricians ? "
Words of More. — " May I die if phrenzy itself is so phrene-
tical, or madness itself so mad, as this waggish head of Luther's.
The Pope is ours, he says ; therefore it is ours to judge hira, not
to be judged by him. By the same reasoning : The physician
is ours, therefore it is ours to cure him, not to be cured by him ;
* Lib. i. cap. 12.

214 SIR THOMAS MORE.
and the schoolraaster belongs to the scholars, therefore it be
longs to them lo teach him, and not to learn from him !
" Il is ours, he says, not to be judged by the Pope, but lo
judge him. What does he mean by ' ours ' ? Does he mean
' of the whole ' collectively, or ' of each one ' in particular ? If
he means ' of the whole,' he advances nothing for himself, since
the whole of the Church is for the Pope, and against Luther.
And in the matter of the sacraments sthl less, since people and
Pope, both present and past, are in favour of the sacraraents,
and against Luther. But if it belongs lo each one to judge the
Pope and the sacraraents, and the true sense of Scripture —
since, among so many judges, the judgment of Luther alone is
on one side —by what prerogative must his vote outweigh the
voles of all the rest? Because, he says, the spiritual* man
judges all, and he is judged by none ; and because ' all things
are yours, even the Pope ' Reader, do you not seem to be
listening to raving ? Luther alone is spiritual ; the Pope
alone is unspiritual ; so Luther must judge all and be judged by
none, and the Pope must judge none, and be judged by aU !
And this raver does not see that, while he is raving against the
Pope, he is raving also against Peter and Paul. For when the
Apostle said ' all things are yours,' he did not add ' the Pope,'
but ApoUo, Cephas, and Paul. Hence Luther must reason
consistently : We are not Peter's or Paul's, but Peter and Paul
are ours ; therefore it is ours lo judge Peter and Paul, and not
to be judged by them. Nay, not so much ours as ' mine,' for
it is the prerogative of the spiritual man to judge and not be
judged. Hence the spiritual man, Luther, shall judge, not
Thomists and Henricians only, but Peter and Paul and the rest
of the Apostles. Come now, reader, deny if you can that one
Minerva was born frora the head of Jupiter, when you see the
one head of Luther give birth to so many phrensies." *
Words of Luther.— " Everyone at his own risk beUeves truly
* Lib. i. cap. 14.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 215
or falsely ; therefore everyone must take care for himself that
he believes aright, so that common sense and the necessity of
salvation prove that the judgment regarding doctrine is neces
sarily in the hearer. Otherwise to no purpose is it said : ' Prove
aU things, hold fast that which is good '."
Words of More. — "So then, because every one must take
care to believe aright, he must have no care for Pope or
councils, or church or holy fathers, or the people, or Peter or
Paul, but he must himself judge boldly about everything ; and
because he believes at his own risk, therefore without any risk
he may believe in himself against the whole world, according
to that advice of the Wise Man, ' Son, rely not on thy own
prudence, and be not wise in thine own eyes '." *
In many places of this book Sir Thomas foretold the conse
quences to which this method of private illumination would
lead, not only in the interpretation of Scripture, but in the ac
ceptance or rejection of Scripture itself. His previsions have
been justified, though slowly, in the rationalism and universal
uncertainty in religious matters that prevails at the present day.
But quite independently of what would come by a sure process
of dissolution, contrary to the will or expectation of the original
innovators, Sir Thomas saw quite enough in the immediate
results of Luther's revolt to fiU his soul with horror, whether as
a Christian or a statesman. The following passage is from the
peroration of his answer to Luther : —
" Reader, you will easUy know the tree from its fruit. Recall
to your memory what you have read, and you will see that,
whatever the leaders of the Church, from the very cradle of
Christianity, worshipped as most holy, is held by these Lutherans
in the utmost contempt. What was celebrated with such venera
tion as the most holy sacrifice of the Mass ? and what has been
more befouled and trampled on by these swine ? As regards
prayer, not only have they abolished the liturgy of the fixed
* Lib. ii. cap. 22.

2l6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
hours, but all the prayers which, from the very beginning, the
Church has been accustomed to chant for the dead. Who will
nol abominate such cruelty ? Even ifit were altogether doubt
ful (as they falsely contend) whether the prayers of the living
can profit the dead, yet what, harm would there be to exercise
our affections of piety, and to risk our prayers, since, even if we
were doubtful of their efficacy, we are certain they cannot be
injurious ? What was reverenced more religiously than fasting,
or observed so exactly as Lent? Yet now these wretches,
'made perfect in the Spirit,' in order not to distinguish day
from day, give up every day lo bacchanalian festivities. In
how great esteem was continence held, how strictly was con
jugal chastity prescribed, how approved was the chastity of
widows, how assiduously and emphatically was virginity ex
tolled, and aU this frora the teaching of Christ Himself. But
now this antichrist has destroyed almost everything that bears
the name of chastity. Priests, monks, virgins once dedicated
to God, now at the instigation of the devil, in this ' church of
the malignant,' under the name of lawful marriage, with a great
pomp of attendant demons, celebrate their hateful nuptials ;
and, while none but evil raen violate a pact made with a fellow-
man, these fear not to violate a pact made with God, safe in
the indulgence granted by Luther, who is already beginning to
establish polygamy." He goes on to quote some sayings of
Luther about raarriage, and to relate his rage against the cultus
of the saints and their iraages, Our Blessed Lady, and the
Crucifix, at the very time that he was proud that his own portrait
was being everywhere carried about with ludicrous veneration.
"These, then," he exclaims, "are the spiritualfrults of this sect, this
is the point which Luther's ' piety ' has already reached. And all
the crimes which flow from this heresy are supported and justi
fied by one great impiety, since they contend that they are
compelled lo be what they are by the certain and predestined
will of God.
" O illustrious Germany, can you doubt, can you doubt, when

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 21 7
they sow such spiritual things, what kind of corporal Ihings
they wUl reap? Indeed the thistles, as I hear, are already
showing an ugly crop, and~God is beginning to make known
how He regards that sect, when He does not permit the priests
who marry to take other wives than public prostitutes. In
former days He forbade His priests to be joined in lawful
matrimony to any but the purest virgins ;* and now He does
not suffer these incestuous and villainous nuptials to be
contracted except with the foulest outcasts. And these bride
grooms, first sunk deep in infamy, and then ruined with
disease and want, and giving themselves up to robbery, His
justice is at last punishing with public executions. Would
that His anger might stop short in the punishment of these
dregs of men ; but unless ll is propitiated it will go farther.
For many of the princes see, not without pleasure, the apostasy
of the clergy, gaping as they do after the possessions of the
apostates, which they hope to seize as derelict. And they
rejoice to see obedience withdrawn from the Sovereign Pontiff,
conceiving then the hope that they may dispose of everything,
and may divide and dissipate it among themselves at home.
On the other hand, they need not doubt, but that the people
in their turn will throw off the yoke of the princes, and deprive
them of their possessions. And when they shall come to do
this, drunk with the blood of the princes, and exulting in the
slaughter of the nobles, they will not submit even to plebeian
governors ; but following the dogma of Luther [about Chris
tian liberty], and trampling the law under foot, then, at last
without government and without law, without rein and without
understanding, they will turn their hands against each other,
and, like the earth-born brothers of old, will perish in mutual
conflict. I beg of Christ that I may be a false prophet." y
This prevision of evil was both written and prinled two years'
before the dreadful war of the peasants proved that More was
* Levit. xxi. 13.

2l8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
no false prophet. Whal he thought of that calamity, and
especially what he thought of Luther's conduct and writings,
both before and during it, can be seen from the following
extract from a Latin letter written about 1526 : * " God does
indeed sometimes, by means of such followers of the devil,
either try the patience of the good members of His Church,
or chastise the sins of Christians ; yet He is faithful, and with
the temptation will provide an issue, and at last will wipe every
tear frora the eyes of those whom He has purified. But you,
who are the impious and bloodthirsty slaughterers of the
faithful, will by His anger be reduced to cinders, and driven
away like dust from the face of the earth. Of this vengeance
He has just given a fearful example, when those most wretched
and villainous peasants, seduced by your teaching, after having
destroyed so many monasteries, and for a time wandered
hither and thither, giving themselves up to murder and plunder
with impunity, just when they thought they had attained un
restrained and unreslrainable licence for every crirae — behold
the God of Majesty spoke in thunder, and sudden destruction
carae upon them. More than seventy thousand perished by
the sword, and those who remained were reduced to cruel
bondage. "And are you not in this matter ashamed of your great
master, Luther, first the most wicked leader, and then the,
most viUainous deserter; who after arousing, arming, and
exciting the peasants to every kind of crime, when he saw
that fortune threatened them with ruin, by his truculent
* Epistola contra Pomeranum (Lovanii, 1568). This letter is not
contained in More's collected works. It was published by John Fowler,
an English exile, firom More's autograph, which he had probably obtained
from John Harris, More's secretary. In the Preface More says that some
one placed in his hand a letter frora John Pomeranus (Bugenhagen), a
German Lutheran, to "the faithful in England"- He wrote his reply
evidently with the yiew of publication, but may have laid it aside,
preferring his English controversy with Tindall, Frith and Fish.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 219
writings, betrayed and denounced them, and gave them up
to be torn to pieces by the nobles : and by his shameful
flatteries tried to smother the odium that was felt against
himself in the blood of the poor wretches, of whose rebelUon
and slaughter he was the sole cause ? Who that has a drop
of human blood in his breast would not prefer to die ten
times over, than to prolong a life hateful to God and man by
such foul and cruel flattery ? "
One other passage must be quoted from the first answer to
Luther of 1523, described by Atterbury as "downright ribaldry,
without a grain of reason ". In it we have Sir Thoraas More's
declaration of allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff: —
" As regards the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, the Bishop
of Rochester has made the matier so clear from the Gospels,
the Acts of the Apostles, and from the whole of the Old
Testament, and from the consent of all the holy fathers, nol of
the Latins only, but of the Greeks also (of whose opposition
Luther is wont to boast), and from the definition of a General
Council, in which the Armenians and Greeks, who at that time
had been most obstinately resisting, were overcome, and
acknowledged themselves overcome, that it would be utterly
superfluous for me to write again on the subject.
" I am moved to obedience to that See not only by what
learned and holy men have written, but by this fact especially,
that we shall find, that on the one hand every enemy of the
Christian faith makes war on that See, and that, on the other
hand, no one has ever declared himself an enemy of that See
who has not also shortly after shown most evidently that he was
the enemy of the Christian religion.
"Another thing that moves me is this, that if, after Luther's I
manner, the vices of men are to be imputed to the offices they/
hold, not^onty the papacy~wtinar^~Huri^yarty7aii3~3ictator-l
ship, and consulate, and every other kind of magistracy, and
the people will be without rulers, without law, and without
order. Should such a thing ever come to pass, as il seems

220 SIR THOMAS MORE.
indeed imminent in some parts of Germany, they wUl then feel
to their own great loss how much better it is for men to have
bad rulers than no rulers at all. Most assuredly as regards the
Pope, God, who set him over His Church, knows how great an
evil it would be lo be without one, and I do not think it desir
able that Christendom should learn it by experience. It is far
more to be wished that God may raise up such Popes as befit
the Christian cause and the dignity of the Apostolic office :
men who, despising riches and honour, will care only for
heaven, will promote piety in the people, will bring about peace,
and exercise the authority they have received from God against
the ' satraps and mighty hunters of the world,' excommunicating
and giving over to Satan both those who invade the territories
of others and those who oppress their own. Wilh one or two
such Popes the Christian world would soon perceive how much
preferable it is that the papacy should be reformed than abro
gated. And I doubt not that long ago Christ would have
looked down on the pastor of His flock if the Christian people
had chosen rather to pray for the welfare of their Father than
to persecute him, and lo hide the shame of their Father than
lo laugh at it.
" But be sure, Luther, of this : God will not forsake His own
vicar. He will one day cast His eyes of mercy on him ; nay.
He is perhaps now doing it, in aUowing a most wicked son to
scourge so painfully his father. You are nothing else, Luther,
but the scourge of God, to the great gain of that See, and to
your own great loss. God wiU act as a kind mother does, who,
when she has chastised her child, wipes away his tears, and, to
appease him, throws the rod inlo the fire.''
Whal Sir Thomas More here writes of the coercitive power
of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the desirabUity of its vigorous
exercise, will probably surprise sorae readers, as the words of
an English statesman writing under the eye and in defence of
an EngUsh king, and that king Henry VIII. But it was in strict
conformity with the international law of Europe.

THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 221
The foUowing clause was introduced, in 1515, inlo the com
mission appointing EngUsh ambassadors to treat of peace, etc. :
" To take any oath upon our soul, and to do this personally on
the Holy Gospels. Also, to obtain an Apostolic bull or rescript
in due form, in which all the contents of such treaty will be
confirmed by the authority of the Holy See, wilh pains and
censures against ourselves and our heirs, and the sentence of
interdict against our kingdom and dominions, if and in so far as
we do and consent to the doing of anything contrary to the
aforesaid treaty or any part of it, renouncing at the sarae time
all exceptions of fact or law, even such as require special men
tion, for us and in our name, for the strengthening of such
treaty." *
This clause recognised the Pope as the guardian of Christen
dom, and in 1523 Henry had no wish lo quarrel with its letter
or its spirit If in 1534 his views had changed, we must re
member that, according to the same Horace Walpole, who
wrote so briUiantly about More : —
From Catharine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread,
And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed.
Henry in his reply to the apology of Luther, in which the
heresiarch affected to beUeve that the book on the sacraments
was not the king's, but the work of sorae of his ecclesiastics,
such as Wolsey or Lee, had plainly declared the book lo be his
own, yet at a later period, when it rose up to condemn him, he
had the meanness to insinuate, what he dared not assert, that
Luther's contention was true ; and he had Luther's letter trans
lated inlo English and spread abroad.t
His meanness and effrontery went even further than this.
He charged some members of his Council to reproach Sir
Thomas More that "he, by subtie sinister slights most un
naturally procuring and provoking him to set forth a book of
the assertion of the seven sacraments, and maintenance of the
* Rymer, xiii. 496, 500. An. 15 15.
t Letter of Chapuys (4th Feb., 1534). Letters and Papers, vii. 152.

222 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Pope's authority, had caused him, to his dishonour throughout
aU Christendom, to put a sword in the Pope's hand to fight
against himself" Sir Thomas's answer, which wUl be given in
full in its proper place, was an utter denial that he had in any
way whatever suggested the king's book. * No allusion seems
to have been made to his defence of it against Luther. In his
answer to Luther's apology in 1525 the king had referred to it
as follows : " I see that, both in England and other places,
some have replied to what you wrote against me. Some have
treated you according lo your deserts, and handled you after
your own fashion, except that they have given reasons as well as
insults, while you give only the latter.'' Ingratitude is the most
conspicuous feature of the later life of Henry VIII. Scarce
one of all those who laboured for him, whether nobly or ig
nobly, met any other return than insults and cruelty, t
* Roper's Life of More, n. 25.
+ In this chapter I have taken for granted that the book of Gulielmus
Rosseus is by More. The Latin style, the wit, and parallel passages in
More's English works raake this quite certain, nor have I found it any
where questioned. Stapleton, however, tells us that during More's life
time no one suspected him to be the author (cap. 6). More kept his
secret by sometimes referring to Ross. Thus in his English work against
jTindale, written in 1532, he says: "I doubt not but that Tindale hath
read both Rosseus and Luther in those places, and seeth his master made
a fool therein already" (p. 490). And again : " This reason was by one
Rosseus proved so foolish and so unreasonable, that Tindale and Barns
be both ashamed thereof" (p. 817). So also p. 513: "Luther was in
that point by Rosseus shamefully soused in the mire" Stapleton does
not tell us when the truth was discovered, nor how. There is no allusion .
to the book against Luther in Roper's notes, but its authorship was known
to Harpsfield. Stapleton (cap. 4) says that William Ross was an English
man, who had died in Italy just before More published his book. The
author of the Life of More printed by Wordsworth says he was a well-
known wild companion. Had either of these writers authority for these
statements ? I raay add that if More did not acknowledge the work of
Ross to be his own, Fisher in his book against CEcolampadius in 1526
refers to More's having written against Luther, and his words can only
lefer to this work (Pref. ad Lib. ii.).

CHAPTER XII.
CHANCELLOR.
IT is recorded in every English history how Cardinal Wolsey
by his failure to secure the royal divorce lost the favour of
the king whom he had served better than his God ; and how
on 19th October, 1529, the great seal ofhis chanceUorship was
taken from him. The Bishop of Bayonne, the French
ambassador in England, wrote on 22nd October : " The Duke
of Norfolk is made head of the Council ; in his absence the
Duke of Suffolk ; over all is Mademoiselle Anne. It is not
yet known who wUl have the seal. I think no priest will touch
it, and that in this parliament the clergy will have terrible
alarms." Wolsey is said to have declared that no man was so
fil for the office of Lord High Chancellor as Sir Thomas
More ;* but there is no likelihood that he was consulted on
the appointment, and the remark was probably made when the
name of his successor was announced to him. The iraperial
envoy, Eustace Chapuys, who had only recently arrived in
England, wrote to Charles V. on 25th October : " The
chancellor's seal has remained in the hands of the Duke of
Norfolk till this moming, when it was transferred to Sir Thoraas
More. Everyone is delighted at his promotion, because
he is an upright and learned man, and a good servant of the
Queen. "t From the official act we learn that on Monday,
the 25th October, at East Greenwich, the seal was delivered
* Erasmus. Ep. 426, in App. Harpsfield and Stapleton.
t Letters and Papers, iv. 6026.

2 24 SIR THOMAS MORE.
by the king to Sir Thomas More, in the presence of Sir
Christopher Hales, attorney general, in the king's privy
chamber, and on the next day, 26th October, More took his
oath as chancellor in the great hall at Westminster, in the
presence of the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and a large
number of the nobUity and prelates.* Roper remembered
five-and-twenty years later the great eulogy passed on Sir
Thoraas by the Duke of Norfolk, speaking in the king's name,
and especially the way in which he had acquitted himself in his
late embassy at Cambrai ; and how Sir Thoraas in reply
had alluded to his predecessor : " Considering how wise and
honourable a prelate had lately before taken so great a fall.t
he had no cause to rejoice in his new dignity. And as the
Dukes had charged him, on the king's behalf, uprightly to
administer justice without corruption or partiality, so did he
likewise charge them if they saw him at any time in anything to
digress from his duty, even as they would discharge their own
duty and fidelity to God and the king, so should they not fail
to disclose it to His Grace, who otherwise might have just
occasion to lay his fault wholly to their charge.''J Of course
More's old friend Erasraus was delighted to hear ofhis elevation,
though he wrote to Mountjoy, to Tunstall and to Pace, almost
in the same words : "I do not at all congratulate More, nor
*Ib., 6025.
t Lewis, in his edition of Roper, has " fault," but Harpsfield's MS. has
" fall " Wolsey had been prosecuted by the order of Henry in the King's
Bench, and had pleaded guilty. The charge was that he had kept his
legatine court, contrary to the statute of Premunire.
X Stapleton has amplified Roper's account by composing two long and
eloquent speeches, one for the duke and one for Sir Thoraas. These
have been well translated by Cresacre More. I omit them, as they are
raere exercises in rhetoric. Stapleton raakes More say of Wolsey : aeerbo
casu dejectus occubuit inglorius. The word occubuit may perhaps
mean "fell"; Cresacre translates it "died"; but Wolsey survived
another year after More's speech. Sir James Mackintosh has given the
speeches in full without suspecting their authenticity.

CHANCELLOR. 225
literature ; but I do indeed congratulate England, for a better
or holler judge could not have been appointed ".*
Cardinal Pole writes that the object of the king was to win
over, or in plain words, to bribe More by this dignity, to side
with him in what was called his "great matter," his divorce from
Queen Catharine, and marriage with Anne Boleyn. t Roper
confirms this, adding that the king was led into this hope by
Dr. Stokesly, whom he had made Bishop of London. We
shall see that the king and his bishop both underrated More's
integrity. It has surprised many, that More, who knew this
design, and the difficult and intricate path on which he was
entering, should have accepted the chancellorship. The truth
would seem to be, that a subject had no choice as to accepting
or rejecting an office pressed upon him by Henry VIII. The
danger to Ufe and fortune might be as great in obstinately
refusing to accept the office, as in resisting the king's will in its
execution ; while he might hope that the king would soon be
wearied of him and allow him to resign. As to the danger to
his own conscience, More had taken care to clear his way
before him regarding the only matter which then presented a
difficulty, that of the divorce.
With respect to this unhappy question, the source of so
many woes, there will be no need to enter into any details in
this memoir. Its general history wlU be sufficiently familiar to
the reader. Sir Thomas More, in a letter written to Cromwell
on 5th March, 15134, drew up a full and minute account of his
own course of action with regard to the king's divorce, both
before, during, and after his chancellorship. The substance is
as follows : Before going beyond sea with Wolsey, in July, 1527,
he had heard of the difficulties that had been started concerning
the impediment of affinity, but he then thought that the
* Epist. Erasm. 1034, 28th March, 1530 (not r529).
+ Certe ipse rerum exitus satis declarat ilium hac de causa cancellarium
esse factura, quo hac quasi mercede corruptus se eo trahi pateretur.
IS

2 26 SIR THOMAS MORE.
"hopes" and "comfort" of the king and his advisers were
founded on supposed flaws in the bull of dispensation. On
his return in September he was, therefore, surprised when, on
his visiting ,the king at Hampton Court, while they were walking
in the gaUery, His Highness suddenly told him that he had
found that his marriage was in such way contrary to Divine law,
"that it could in no wise by the Church be dispensable" The
king laid the Bible open before him, read him the words of
Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and asked his opinion. Not
thinking that his opinion on such a subject could have much
weight for or against, he gave it, in obedience to the command.
His Highness accepted benignly his sudden unadvised answer
(which was apparently contrary to his own view), and com
manded him to confer with his alraoner, Dr. Fox, and to read
wilh him a book that was then in preparation. This book was
laid before a number of learned men at Hampton Court, and,
after some modifications, il was again read at York Place in the
cardinal's chamber, and the bishops and doctors present agreed
that the king had reasons sufficient to conceive scruples about
his marriage, and " to procure to have his doubt decided by
judgment of the Church " While the cause was before the
legates, Sir Thomas held himself entirely aloof, "for the matter
was in hand by an ordinary process of the spiritual law, whereof
he could little skUl ". Besides, while the legates were still
sitting, he was sent on an embassy to Cambrai. On his return,
having been appointed chancellor, the king again moved hin^
to consider the matter. Should he be able to take the king's
point of view. His Majesty would gladly use him among other
of his counsellors in that matter. He would, however, in no
way force his conscience ; "he must first look to God, and after
God to the king" He, therefore, studied the matter more
attentively, taking for his instructors or advisers those whora the
king selected : the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Warham
and Lee), the almoner, Dr. Fox, and Dr. Nicholas De Burgo,
an Italian friar. Though he greatiy desired to do the king all

CH.\NCELL0R. 227
the service in his power, yet, as he could not bring his raind to
the king's view, he was left " free and used in olher business,"
retaining the royal favour. Thenceforward he meddled no
more in the matter, refused to read any books on the side he
had himself embraced, and finding one by chance in his study,
that had been written against the divorce by Dr. Clark, Bishop
of Bath, he offered to send il back, but was told to burn it,
and did so. Since the king's second marriage, he had in no
way discussed it with any, but had prayed and would continue
to pray for the king, for the noble lady who had been anointed
queen (Anne Boleyn), and their noble issue "long to Uve and
weU, in such way as may be to the pleasure of God, honour
and surety to themselves, wealth, peace, and profit to the
realm ".
This account of the king's designs upon More, and how he
contrived to baffle them, has led us beyond the period of his
chanceUorship. We must now return to the time of his ap
pointment. This is not the place, nor is the present writer a
fit person, to explain the nature and growth of the office of
Lord High Chancellor of England. A word or two, however,
may be allowed, in order to prevent confusion, especially in
the minds of foreign readers of this memoir.* The word
" chancellor," or " cancellarius," is ambiguous. It has been
used to indicate a doorkeeper in a court of law, a law clerk, a
diocesan official, a dignitary in a cathedral church, the presi
dent of a university, as well as in later times a great judge in
a court of equity and minister of state. The chancellor of
the kings of England was formerly a chaplain and secretary
lo the king. As spiritual adviser he was called the keeper of
the royal conscience. As chief secretary he prepared royal
mandates, grants and charters, and affixed the royal seal.
Hence he became (and still remains) keeper of the great
* The following account is derived firom Lord Campbell's Introduc
tion, Bohn's Cyclopcedia of Political Knowledge, and sirailar sources.

228 SIR THOMAS MORE.
seal. The king, as the fountain of justice, appointed judges
of the various courts, but when plaintiffs appealed to the king
for justice, his secretary directed the royal writs to the judges
to try the case.
So far, the functions of the chancellor were only ministerial.
His jurisdiction as judge originated in the discretionary powers
of the king, whose special interference was frequently sought,
either against the decisions of his courts of law, or in matters
which were not cognisable by the ordinary courts, or lastly, in
cases where powerful misdoers set ordinary jurisdiction at
defiance. Hence arose the practice of Equity as distinguished
from the Common as well as the Statute Law ; and as the
chancellor, from his skill and experience, was naturally a chief
adviser of the king and his Council, in course of time he came
lo hold (by royal appointment) a special court, in which the
validity of royal grants was decided, and matters that regarded
the possessions and transmission of land, as well as such other
extraordinary cases as had formerly been referred to his
opinion. His office, therefore, was twofold. His hanniper
or hamper contained the royal writs, his petty bag the records
of his decisions ; and al a later period, the two sides or func
tions of the court of chancery were thus designated.
In the reigns of the early Anglo-Norman kings, the chan
cellor was but the sixth of the officials in the Aula Regia.
The chief justiciar, constable, mareschal, steward, and cham
berlain preceded him. But already St. Thomas Beckett
was reckoned secundus a rege, and had fifty clerks under
him. In the time of the Tudors the chancellor's was
the highest dignity after that of the monarch, and even
when not a peer he was by his office prolocutor of the House
of Lords. Erasmus, who, from his long residence in England,
and familiarity wilh the two chancellors, Warham and Wolsey,
was well acquainted with the subject, wrote to a German
bishop that " in England the cancellarius is not, as under
the empire, a mere secretary of State, but the supreme judge.

CHANCELLOR. 229
and the right eye and right hand, so to say, of the king and
Council. When he appears solemnly, a gold sceptre is carried
at his right, at the top of which Is an imperial crown, and at
his left a book. By these emblems, the supreme power,
under the king, and the knowledge of the laws, is symbolised."*
The great seal, however, was the principal emblem as well as
instrument of the chancellor's office. It had originally been
carried in a bag of white leather ; in the time of Wolsey this
was enclosed in another of crimson velvet, embroidered with
the royal arnis.t
There was in the functions of the chancellor nothing of an
ecclesiastical character, yet the office had been hitherto held,
with very few exceptions, by ecclesiastics, and nol unfrequentiy
by great prelates, since they alone were fitted, by their superior
education and knowledge of the Roman civil law as well as
canon law, to form equitable judgments, and to fulfil the
other requirements of the office. J The appointment of Sir
Thomas More marked a great change in English public life.
Thenceforward the chanceUors, with very few exceptions, were
laymen. §
The chancellor was also at that period president of the
Court of Star Chamber. The name of this tribunal suggests
memories of tyranny, but its action in the time of Henry VIII.
was by no means oppressive. It rather provided securily for
the humbler members of the community against oppression by
their richer or more powerful neighbours, according to the
original purpose of its institution. Its authority was derived
* Epist. Erasm., 426, in App.
+ During More's office this was renewed at a cost of £^ 5s. 8d.
(Letters and Papers, v. 445).
+ Sir James Mackintosh, in his Life of More, p. 120.
§ The last Catholic chancellor was Archbishop Heath, under Queen
Mary. To this day Catholics are excluded from the office created by
Catholic churchmen, and which has made English law what it now is.
[Should this book ever reach a second edition I trust that this note will
have to be cancelled.]

230 SIR THOMAS MORE.
from the Statutes 3 Henry VIL, cap. i, and 21 Henry VIIL,
cap. 20. The first of these recites that the orderly government
of the realm was irapeded by unlawful maintenances (on the
part of nobleraen), untrue demeaning of sheriffs in the returns
and panels of juries, riots and unlawful assemblies, and it enacts
that the chanceUor, the treasurer, and certain olher dignitaries
should have power to summon persons so offending, and others,
and to punish the misdoers just as if they had been convicted
in the due course of law. The second statute enlarged the
tribunal. There exist records of cases that came before this
court, but not of the pleadings or judgments; nothing, therefore,
that throws any light on Sir Thomas as judge.*
His new dignities seem to have made little change in the
simplicity of More's domestic life; yel, as they brought with
them the obligation of greater slate in public, they were sup
ported by a greater salary. This however was insufficient for
the expenses entailed, al least to a man of More's integrity, for
the office seeras to have given to some other chancellors abun
dant opportunities of enriching themselves. We find a warrant
to the treasurer to allow Sir Thomas More, as chancellor, the
yearly sum of ;!^i42 15s., and for his attendance in the Star
Chamber ;£^2oo a year ; also to the chief butler to allow
him J^64 a year for the price of 1 2 tuns of wine, and to the
keeper of the great wardrobe ;£^i6 for wax.f If we add to
gether these suras, and multiply them by 1 2 for modern value,
we find that his income was about ;£^5ooo a year ; and accord
ing to Roper, his professional income before he entered on the
royal service was nearly as much. He had, however, acquired
certain estates and other eraoluraents which he still retained. J
* See Appendix to 4gth Report concerning Public Records, pp. 376-594.
t Letters and Papers, iv. 6079.
J Lady More mentions that- his lands forfeited at his attainder were
worth £60 a year. I find mention also of a corrody in the monastery of
Glastonbury {Letters and Papers, vii. 1601-32), and a pension from the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem (76., 1675).

CH.\NCELLOR. 23 1
Though only in his fifty-second year, Sir Thomas More was
what was then called an old man, such as he had depicted " the
old sage father sitting in his chair " in the pageants which he
had illustrated in his youth : —
Old age am I, with locks thin and hoar,
Of our short life the last and best part ;
Wise and discreet ; the public weal, therefore,
I help to rule to my labour and smart.
What has been recorded of his chancellorship, which lasted
only about two years and a half, may be grouped under two
heads. We will consider him first as a minister and next as a
judge. The famous parliament which lasted seven years, and which
before its close pronounced an attainder upon Sir Thomas
More, was solemnly opened by him as chancellor only a few
days after he had received the seal. It met at Blackfriars* on
Wednesday, 3rd November, 1529, and in his speech Sir
Thomas declared " the cause of its assembly to be lo reform
such things as had been used or permitted by inadvertence, or
by changes of time had become inexpedient ". The Parlia
mentary RoUs add that "of these errors and abuses he dis,
coursed in a long and eloquent speech ".f
The chroniclers put a very different speech inlo More's
mouth. After showing that the king was the shepherd of his
people, he added : " As you see that amongst a great flock of
sheep some be rotten and faulty, which the goOd shepherd
sendeth from the good sheep, so the great wether which is of
late fallen (as you all know), so craftily, so scabbedly, yea and so
untruly juggled with the king, that all men must needs guess
and think that he thought in himself that he had no wit lo
perceive his crafty doing, or else he presumed that the king
would not see nor know his fraudulent juggling and attempts.
" An adjournment took place to Westminster on account ofthe plague.
f Rolls of Parliament, i. 151.

232 SIR THOMAS MORE.
But he was deceived, for His Grace's sight was so quick and
penetrable that he saw him, yea and saw through him, both
within and without, so that all thing to him was open, and ac
cording to his desert he hath had a gentie correction, which
small punishment the king will not lo be an example to other
offenders." *
I confess to a profound distrust of all such records of
speeches in our sixteenth century annalists, unless when they
are borne out by official documents, or are the reports of wit
nesses. In this case Hall's version of the chancellor's speech
has no such confirmation, nor is it in harmony wilh the course
of events. Wolsey had pleaded guilty, as regards the Statute of
Premunire, for exercising the office of legate, and had sur
rendered his property to the king. Sir Thomas could, therefore,
allude to his "fall '' at the time of his own installation without
injustice. But the references in this supposed speech at the
opening of parliament can only be to the forty-four articles or
charges of maladministration. Nowlhesewere nol brought before
parliament until ist December, and though Sir Thomas More's
name, with the names of other members of the Council, was
then placed upon the bill, he was not the man lo prejudge
Wolsey, and to call him by opprobrious names a month before a
charge was formulated against him. There is also an evident
anachronism in speaking of his " gentie correction " for his
"fraudulent juggling" The ohly correction hitherto was for
the public exercise of his legatine powers.t
* Hall, followed verbatim by Grafton and Holinshed.
+ The bill of attainder was either withdrawn or rejected in parliament ;
but the cardinal was convicted before the King's Bench {Letters and
Papers, iv. 6075). It must have been under the influence of these fabri
cated speeches that a Catholic writer in the Dublin Review (June, 1858,
p. 258) allowed himself to speak of More as moved by "feelings ofthe
meanest and most malignant nature," and of repaying the friendship of
Wolsey "by supplanting, and then co-operating in his ruin "- Supplant
ing! Why, Erasraus tells us that it was Wolsey himself who proposed
More as his only fit successor.

CHANCELLOR. 233
The same chroniclers tell us that, on the 30th March, 1531,
the chancellor thus addressed the House of Commons : " You
of this worshipful House, I am sure, be not ignorant, but you
know well, that the king, our sovereign lord, hath raarried his
brother's wife ; for she was both wedded and bedded wilh his
brother, Prince Arthur. If this marriage be good or no, many
clerks do doubt ; " then, after the opinions of some foreign uni
versities had been read out to them, More concluded (according
to Hall) as follows: "Now you of the Common House may repeat
in your countries what you have seen and heard, and then all men
shaU openly perceive that the king hath not attempted this matter
of will or pleasure, as some strangers report, but only for the
discharge of his conscience and surety of the succession of his
realm." Burnet has founded on these words an argument that
More was a partisan of the divorce. "He was a man,'' says
Burnet, " of greater integrity than lo have said this if he had
thought the marriage good, so that he has either afterwards
changed his mind, or did at that time dissemble too artificially
¦with the king."* More was neither a dissembler nor did he
change his mind. Hall and his followers have twisted a message
he spoke in the king's name into a declaration of his own
opinions. This is not a conjecture, but is proved by the words
of Roper, as well as of one who knew More intimately, and
wrote at the very time. Roper says he carried the king's mes
sage, " not showing of what mind hiraself was therein " The
Imperial ambassador, Chapuys, in a letter to Charles V. on the
2nd April, 1531, says that " on the 30th March the chanceUor
declared to the lords in parliament, by command of the king,
that there were some who had said that the king was pursuing
the divorce out of love for some lady, and not out of scruples
of conscience, and that this was nol true ". (Such was the
king's message ; the responsibility for it, if it were false, rested,
of course, with the king.) Chapuys adds : " Hereupon some
* History of the Reformation. In his Appendix against Sander, iv.
552 (ed. Pocock).

234 SIR THOMAS MORE.
asked the chancellor for his opinion ; on which he said that
he had many times already declared it to the king, and said no
more. The chancellor then went down to the Commons, and
made the sarae declaration on the part of the king." *
The life of Sir Thomas More may be told intelligibly without
entering inlo the details of the momentous crisis through which
the Church in England was then passing. Il will be sufficient
to allude to the then ambiguous and mysterious title of Supreme
Head of the Anglican Church, the recognition of which the king
was requiring from the clergy, before accepting their subsidy
and withdrawing the prosecution for violating the Statute
of Premunire by accepting Wolsey as papal legate. I have
shown elsewhere t that, though this title was not then put
forward in opposition to the supremacy of the Holy See, it had
something novel and perilous about it, that boded evil to the
liberties and rights of the Church in England. The title was
given, with the saving clause "so far as the law of Christ
allows,'' on nth February, 1531. On the 20th Chapuys wrote:
"There is no one that does nol blame this usurpation, except
those who have promoted it. The chancellor is so mortified
at it that he is anxious above all things to resign his office." X
It is clear from this that his voice had ceased to have any weight in
the royal councils ; § yet either his name gave prestige to the
government, or the king was still in hopes of gaining him to
his side, or there was no pretext for his deposition. A year
later, 13th May, 1532, Chapuys again wrote: "Parliament is
* Letters and Papers, v. 171. Chapuys' despatches were not known
to Burnet, but More's own declaration to Cromwell was known to him.
He read it so carelessly, or with such prejudice, that what More says
about the king's hope and comfort regarding the invalidity of the bull ot
dispensation Burnet has supposed to be More's hope. The words of
More show that he did not even raake a pretence that the king was eager
to calm his scrupulous conscience.
t In ray Life of Blessed yohn Fisher, ch. ix.
X Letters and Papers, v. 112.
§ The council books of this period are lost.

CHANCELLOR. 235
discussing the revocation of all synodal and other constitutions
made by the English clergy, and the prohibition of holding
synods without express licence of the king. This is a strange
thing. Churchmen will be of less account than shoemakers,
who have the power of assembling and making their own
statutes. The king also wishes bishops not to have the power
to arrest persons accused of heresy. The chancellor and the
bishops oppose him. He is very angry, especially with the
chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester, and is determined
to carry the matter." * This was written only three days
before More resigned the office he could no longer hold with a
good conscience. +
It is clear that, throughout these critical years, the chancellor
had taken as little part as might be in political life, and had
confined himself to his duties as a judge. To these we must
now turn.
* Letters and Papers, v. 1013.
+ It may be of interest to many to know what Sir Thoraas thought
of synods and convocations. I take the following passage from his
Apology, written in 1533 : " I suppose he calleth those assemblings at
their convocations by the name of confederacies, and he giveth a good
thing and a wholesome, an odious, heinous name. For if they did
assemble oftener, and there did the things for which such assemblies of
the clergy in every province through all Christendom firom the beginning
were institute and devised, much more good might have grown thereof
than the long disuse can suffer us npw to perceive. But as for my days,
as far as I have heard, nor as I suppose a good part of my father's neither,
they came never together to convocation, but at the request of the king,
and at their such assemblies concerning spiritual things have very little
done. Wherefore, that they have been in that great necessary point of
their duty so negligent, whether God suffer to grow to a secret, un
perceived cause of division and grudge against them. God, whora their
such negligence hath, I fear rae, sore offended, knoweth. But surely jf
this ' Pacifier ' call those asserablies confederacies, I would not greatly
wish to be confederate with thera, for I could never wit them yet assemble
for any great winning, but come up to their travail, labour, cost and pain,
and tarry and talk, et cetera, and so get them horae again " {English Works,
p. 914).

236 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Sir James Mackintosh, by the aid of researches inlo legal
records, has shown how greatly the business in chancery in- ,
creased after the time of More. " At the utmost, he did not
hear more than two hundred cases and arguments yearly,
including those of every description. No authentic account of
any case tried before him, if any such be extant, has been yet
brought to light. No law book alludes to any part of his
judgments or reasonings. Nothing of this higher part of his
judicial life is preserved which can warrant us in believing
more than that it musl have displayed his never-failing integrity,
reason, learning and eloquence."* In the absence, then, of
official documents we are grateful for the rerainiscences of his
son-in-law. Roper, and the notes of Stapleton.
Though Wolsey had been a diligent as well as an impartial
judge, the business of the court of chancery, owing lo the
multitude of his political cares, had fallen into arrears, and
very shortly before his removal from office, a commission had
been issued to assist him.t Stapleton writes: "The chan
cellor's court is so loaded with business that it scarcely ever
happens that there are not innumerable causes pending there.
Certainly when More took the office there were causes that had
remained undecided for twenty years. He presided so dex
terously and successfuUy that once, after taking his seat and
deciding a case, when the next case was called it was found
that there was no second case for trial. Such a thing is said
never to have happened before or since." X
"Courts of law,'' writes Mackintosh, "were jealous then, as
since, of the power assumed by chanceUors to issue injunctions
to parlies to desist from doing certain acts which they were by
law entitled to do, until the court of chancery should determine
whether the exercise of the legal right would not work injustice."
Roper relates that though Sir Thomas granted but few injunc-
* Life of More, p. 125. t nth June, 1529.
X Vita Mori, cap. 3.

CHANCELLOR. 237
tions, yet the judges complained, and their complaints coming
to Roper's ears he Informed his father-in-law. Thereupon he
caused the chief clerk to make a docket of the injunctions
aheady passed by him or still depending in any of the courts.
Which done he invited all the judges to dine wilh him in the
council chainber at ^^'estminster ; where, after dinner, when
he had broken with them what complaints he had heard of
injunctions, and moreover showed them both the number
and causes of every one of them, upon full debating they were
forced to confess that they, in like case, could have done no
otherwise themselves. He then offered that if they would at
their own discretion, as they were, he thought, in conscience
bound, mitigate and reform the rigour of the law themselves, he
would issue no more injunctions. This they refused. After
that he said secretly to me : 'I perceive, son, why they like
not so to do ; for they see that they may, by the verdict of the
jury, cast off all quarrels upon them, which they do account
their chief defence '."
" He used commonly," says Roper, " every afternoon lo sit
in his open haU,* to the intent that if any person had any suit
unto him, they might the more boldly come to his presence
and then open their complaints before him. Whose manner
was also to read every bill himself, before he would award any
subpoena, and then would either set his hand to it or cancel it." f
" One of his sons-in-law on a tirae said merrily to him that
when Cardinal Wolsey was lord chancellor, not only they of
his privy chamber, but also his door-keeper, got great gain
under him, and seeing he had married one of his daughters,
he thought he might reasonably look for some ; but as the
chancellor now kept no doors shut, and all had access to his
presence, this state of things might be very coraraendable to
the judge, but was not very profitable to his son-in-law, since
* This seems to raean his hall at Chelsea. The chancellors frequently
heard cases in their own houses.
+ Roper, p. 13.

238 SIR THOMAS MORE.
he could not accept a fee for getting for those who asked his
assistance whal they could get equally well without him. Sir
Thomas praised his scrupulous conscience. ' But there are
many other ways, son,' said he, ' that I may do you good and
pleasure your friend also — I might help your client by word or
letter, or give his case precedence, or if I saw his case not the
best I raight move the parties to arbitration. Howbeit this
one thing, son, I assure thee on my faith, that if the parlies
wUl at my hands call for justice, then were il my father stood
on one side and the devil on the other, the devil should have.
his right, if his cause were good.' " *
It is right to say that Sir James Mackintosh thinks the
favours indicated by Sir Thomas would have been " altogether
dishonest," and that he would have recoiled from these in
practice, t
Another son-in-law, Giles Heron, presuming in Sir Thomas's
favour, would in no way make a compromise with his opponent,
and the result was that when the pleadings were at an end, the
chancellor made a decree against him.
Cresacre More tells a tale which, if it is not to be classed
with the judgment of Soloraon, shows at least that humour
could be allied wilh justice. A beggar woman had lost her
dog, and the finder had presented it to Lady More, who kept
il a fortnight and grew fond of it. The owner, having traced
the dog, complained to Sir Thomas. He sent at once for the
lady and the dog. He was sitting in his hall, and, asking his
wife to go to the .upper end and the beggar to the lower end,
whUe he himself held the dog, he bade them both call it. The
dog at once ran to the poor beggar woman, and the judge de
cided in her favour; but Lady More purchased it from her
* lb., p. 12.
t Sir James, however, is mistaken in saying that the story is due to
Cresacre More, who was not a lawyer, and only wrote what had reached
him by tradition. Roper is the authority, and he was a lawyer, and
reported what More said to himself.

CHANCELLOR. 239
with a piece of gold that would have bought three dogs, so that
all parties were agreed as well as amused.
Stapleton has preserved a story that perhaps belongs to the
time when More was under-sheriff raiher than to his chancellor
ship. While More was presiding in court, assisted by other
magistrates, a gang of cut-purses was brought up for trial. One
of the magistrates, an old man, thereupon broke out into a
vehement tirade against the citizens, who, by looking so care
lessly after their purses, encourage these thefts. More found
means to postpone the case till the next day, and meanwhile
arranged wilh one of the thieves what should be done,
promising him favour if he succeeded. The next day, when
the case came on for trial, the thief declared that he could clear
himself, but could only do so by making a secret and impor
tant communication to one of the judges. More told him to
choose whom he would, and he at once chose the old magistrate
who had spoken so sharply. While pretending to whisper
something into his ear he managed (as had been arranged by
More) to abstract the old man's purse, and returned lo his place,
giving to More a sign that he had been successful. Soon after
More proposed a collection in court for some special object of
pity, but when the old magistrate looked for his purse to make
his contribution, to his dismay it was gone. He declared that
he had it when he took his seat More thereupon, araid much
laughter, called on the thief to restore the purse, and gentiy
admonished the magistrate not to be so severe in censuring
other men's carelessness.*
These and similar stories may seem both insignificant and
misplaced in the record of the supreme judge of a nation, but
it often happens that a jest is immortal, while a legal judgraent
filled with ancient saws and modern instances finds no
chronicler. There remains another aspect of More's chan
cellorship that wUl demand special treatment. Stories are told
* Vita, cap. 13.

240 SIR THOMAS MORE.
not raerely of severity, but of cruelty to heretics. I will
reserve the examination of these for a separate chapter, in
which both his acts and writings against the LoUards and.
Lutherans must be dealt with in some detail.
What is rightly called the submission of the clergy, or their
surrender of the right of independent legislation, coincided
wilh the resignation of the great seal by Sir Thomas More.
The official memorandum informs us that he deUvered it into
the king's hands in the garden of York Place, near Westminster,
at 3 p.m., on i6th May, 1532, in presence of the Duke of
Norfolk.* Chapuys wrote on 22nd: "The chancellor has
resigned, seeing that affairs were going on badly and likely to
be worse, and that if he retained his office he would be obliged
to act against his conscience, or incur the king's displeasure, as
he had already begun to do, for refusing to take his part against
the clergy. His excuse was that his salary was too small, and
that he was not equal to the work. Everyone is concerned, for
there never was a better mkn in the office." t
A characteristic story has been preserved by Roper, which
must be given inhis own words : "Whereas upon the holy days
during his high chancellorship one of his gentlemen, when ser
vice at the church was done, ordinarily used to come to my lady
his wife's pew door, and say unto her, 'Madam, my lord is gone ' ;
the next holyday after the surrender of his office, and departure
of his gentlemen from hira, he came unto my lady his wife's
pew hiraself, and making a low courtesy said unto her:
' Madam, ray lord is gone ' But she, thinking this at first to
be one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her sadly
[seriously] that he had given up the great seal. Whereupon,
she speaking some passionate words, he called his daughters
then present lo see if they could not spy some fault about their
mother's dressing ; but they after search saying they could not
find none, he replied : ' Do you not perceive that your
* Rymer, xiv. 433. t Letters and Papers, v. 1046.

CHANCELLOR. 24 1
mother's nose standeth somewhat awry ? ' Of which jeer the
provoked lady was so sensible that she went away from him
in a rage."* Roper seems here somewhat to have spoilt his
story by omitting the words of the lady, which may have given
some occasion and point to this otherwise raiher rude bantering.
Sir John More had lived to witness his son's elevation, but
died before his resignation .+ It has been already mentioned
that the chancellor, passing the court of King's Bench on his
way to the chancery, if his father was already seated, would go
in and ask his blessing on his knees. " When Sir John lay on
his deathbed," says Roper, " Sir Thomas, according to his
duty, oftentimes with comfortable words raost kindly came to
visit him, and at his departure out of this world with tears,
taking him about the neck, most lovingly kissed and embraced
him, commending him into the hands of Almighty God.'' If
the son who thus honoured his father did not enjoy a long life,
it was because God had better things in store for him in the
land of the living.
* Roper's Notes, 11. 18. + His will was proved 5th Dec, 1530.

16

CHAPTER XIIL
AFTER THE RESIGNATION.
ROPER writes as foUows: "After he had given over the
chancellorship, and placed all his gentlemen and yeomen
with noblemen and bishops, and his eight watermen
wilh my Lord Aude'ly, that in the same office succeeded him, to
whom also he gave his great barge — then, he called us all that
were his children to him, and asked our advice how we might
now live. By the surrender of his office he could not, as he
had been wont, bear the whole charges of the family himself,
yet he was unwilling they should separate. When he saw us
silent, he said : ' Then I will show my poor raind to you. I
have been brought up at Oxford, at an Inn of the Chancery, at
Lincoln's Inn, and also in the king's . court, and so frora the
least degree to the highest. And yet have I in yearly revenues
at this present left rae a little over a hundred pounds a year.*
So that now must we hereafter, if we like to live together, be
contented to becorae contributors together. But by my counsel
it shall not be best for us to fall to the lowest fare first.
We will not, therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare
of New Inn ; but we will begin with Lincoln's Inn diet, where
many right worshipful and of good years do live full well to
gether. Which, if we find not ourselves able to raaintain the
first year, then will we the next year go one step down to New
Inn fare, wherewith many an honest man is well contented. If
that exceed our ability too, then we will the next year after
descend to Oxford fare, where many grave, learned and ancient
* Say ;fi2oo in modern value.

AFTER THE RESIGNATION. 243
fathers be continually conversant. Which if our power stretch
not to maintain, then may we yet with bags and wallets go a-
begging together, and hoping that for pity some good folks wiU
give us their charily, at every man's door to sing Salve Regina,
and so still keep company and be merry together." Il would
seem, however, that his sons-in-law were too generous to accept
this offer. Stapleton informs us that the family was broken up,
only Roper and his wife remaining in Chelsea, though not in
their father's house.*
Thus, as Roper remarks, he had given up a most lucrative
position to enter the king's service, in which he had spent the
most vigorous and best part of his life ; he had never been ex
travagant, yet when his official salary ceased he had not saved
enough for household expenses. " The lands that he had pur
chased were not," says his son-in-law, " I am assured, above the
value of 20 marks a year (;^i3 6s. 8d.), and after his debts
paid he had not, I know (his chain excepted), in gold and silver
left him the worth of ^^loo.'' He had sold his plate, says
Stapleton, for about ^^400. Roper speaks only of lands pur
chased. Sir Thomas, in a work written in 1533, caUed The
Apology, says : "As for aU the lands and fees that I have in
all England, besides such lands and fees as I have of the king's
most noble grace, is not at this day, nor shall be while my
mother-in-law liveth (whose life and good health I pray God
long keep and continue) worth yearly to my living the sum of
full ;^5o. And thereof have I some by my wife, and some by
my father (whose soul Our Lord assoil), and some have I also
purchased myself.f
* Vita, cap. 15.
+ English Works, p. 867. Harpsfield mentions a circumstance which
shows how far economy had to be practised : " He was corapelled for the
lack of other fuel, every night before he went to bed, to cause a great '
burden of fern to be brought into his own charaber, and with the blaze
thereof to warm hiraself, his wife and his children, and so without any
other fires to go to their beds " (MS. Life). This was of course before
the dispersion of the family.

244 SIR THOMAS MORE.
When Archbishop Warham resigned the chancellorship, in
15 1 5, More had written to him a letter of congratulation that
may be applied to himself in 1532: "I ever judged your
paternity happy in the waj'you exercised your office of chancellor,
but I esteem you much happier now that you have laid il down
and entered on that most desirable leisure, in which you can
Uve for yourself and for God. Such leisure, in my opinion, is
nol only more pleasant than the labour you have forsaken, but
more honourable than all your honours. To be a judge js the
lot of many, and sometimes of very bad men. But you pos
sessed that supreme office which, when relinquished, is as rauch
exposed to calurany as it formerly conferred authority and in
dependence ; and to give up this willingly is what none but a
moderate-minded man would care, and none but an innocent
man dare, to do.''*
Sir Thomas now was in this position. The king had, indeed,
both promised hira his continued favour, and commanded the
Duke of Norfolk to pronounce his eulogy when inducting his
successor. It was, however, well known that the king was dis
satisfied and disappointed, and that the late chancellor had
enemies at court, especially in the party of Anne Boleyn, so
that it was not without hope of success that some serious charges
were brought against hira. He was accused by a man named
Parnell that a Mrs. Vaughan, the wife of his adversary, had
carried to the chancellor a large silver-gilt cup as a bribe, and
that a decree had been given in favour of Vaughan . Sir Thomas
was called before the Council. He acknowledged that such a
cup had indeed been offered lo him as a New-Year's gift, though
long after the decree, and that he had accepted it out of courtesy.
The Earl of Wiltshire (the father of Anne Boleyn) at once ex
claimed : " Ah ! did I not teU you, my lords, that you would
find the matter true ? " Sir Thomas begged leave to complete
the tale. When he had, not without much ado, received the
* The letter, which is in Latin, is in full in Stapleton, cap. 6.

AFTER THE RESIGNATION. 245
cup, he called his butler to fill it with wine, drank to the lady,
and made her pledge him again. He had then obliged her to
receive back the cup once more, and to take it as his New-Year's
gift to her husband. The lady was summoned, and deposed to
the truth of this.
He had made a decree in favour of a Mrs. Croker, a widow,
against Lord Arundell. At the New-Year she presented him
with a pair of gloves and ^^40 in angels within them.
He said to her : " Mistress, it were against good manners to for
sake a gentlewoman's New-Year's gift. I am, therefore, content
to take your gloves; but as for your money, I must utterly refuse
it." A Mr. Gresham, who had a cause pending, had sent him at
the New-Year a silver-gilt cup, of which he much admired the
shape. He had accepted it, but by the messenger had sent him
one in return of greater value.
Roper says he could have related many similar instances of
his integrity.*
More did not forget to Inform his old friend Erasmus of his
retirement from office : —
" From the time I was a boy I have longed, dear Desiderius,
that what I rejoice in you having always enjoyed I myself might
some day enjoy also — -namely, that being free from public busi
ness, I might have some time to devote to God and myself ;
that, by the grace of a great and good God, and by the favour
ofan indulgent prince, I have at last obtained. I have not,
however, obtained it as I wished. For I wished to reach that
last stage of my life in a state, which, though suitable to my age,
might yet enable me to enjoy my remaining years healthy and
unbroken, free from disease and pain. But it remains in the
hand of God whether this wish, perhaps unreasonable, shaU be
accomplished. Meanwhile a disorder of I know not what
nature has attacked my chest, by which I suffer less in present
* Notes, n. 24, 25.

246 SIR THOMAS MORE.
pain than in fear of the consequence. For when it had
plagued me without abatement some months, the physicians
whora I consulted gave their opinion that the long continuance
of it was dangerous, and the speedy cure impossible ; but that
it must be cured by the gradual alterative effects of time, proper
diet, and medicine. Neither could they fix the period of my
recovery nor ensure me a complete cure at last. Con
sidering this, I saw that I must either lay down my office or
discharge my duty in it incompletely.
" From my house at Chelsea, i4lh June, 1532." *
This letter was detained some months in Saxony before it
reached its destination at Basle, as Erasmus informs his friend,
John Faber, Bishop of Vienna. In the meantime the report
spread rapidly over Europe that More had been deposed, and
that his successor had at once liberated all those whom More
had cast into prison for their religious teachings or professions.
The bishop had written to Erasmus lo learn the truth. Erasraus
replied that he had been quite sure the report was false before
he received More's letter, a copy of which he enclosed to the
bishop. He explained the nature of the chancellorship in
England, and made the highest eulogy of the manner in which
More had held that charge.
" As to what is said about the opening of the prisons," con
tinues Erasmus, " I do not know what the truth raay be. One
thing is certain : that More is a raan by nature most gentle,
and that he never molested anyone, who, after being ad
raonished, was willing to relinquish the sectarian contagion.
Do these newsmongers mean that the supreme judge in such
a country as England should have no prison ? Certainly More
hales the seditious doctrines which are disturbing the whole
world. He does not conceal this nor wish it to be secret,
being a man so devout that if he inclines to any extreme it is
rather towards superstition than impiety. But it is a great
* Epist. Erasm., 1223.

AFTER THE RESIGNATION. 247
proof of his clemency that, while he was chancellor, not one
underwent capital punishment for condemned doctrines, while
so many have suffered in Germany and France. Certainly that
man has a clement hatred of the impious who, when he has
the power of putting them to death, strives only to cure the
vices and save the vicious. Do they wish that he who fills
the place of the king should favour seditious novelty against
the judgment of the king and the bishops ? Let us suppose —
what, however, is far from the truth — that he had no great
aversion from these new doctrines, either he would be bound
to conceal his partiality or to resign his office.
" But let us pass over here all contention about doctrines ;
who does not know how many light and seditious men are
ready, under the pretence of doctrine, to commit freely every
crime, unless the severity of the magistrates put a rein on their
growing audacity ? Yet these newsmongers are indignant when
the supreme judge in the kingdora of England does what, in
the cities which have embraced the new opinions, the senate
is sometimes forced to do. And had it not been done long
ago, these false evangelicals would have burst into the inner
most chambers and store-rooms of the rich, and everyone
would have been called a papist who had anything to lose.
Already so great is the audacity and so unbridled the malice
of many, that even those who are the inventors and propa
gators of the new dogmas, have written sharply against them.
And yet they want the supreme judge in England to connive
at the innovations, until the whole swarm of sects shall have
spread with impunity over the kingdom — a kingdom flourishing
beyond others in riches, in learning, and in reUgion. It may
be indeed that, in honour of the new chancellor, some have
been set free from prison, such as were harmless or confined
for Ughter crimes ; for such is also the custom at the accession
of a new king, in order to gain the goodwiU of the people ;
and I fancy that was done when More entered on his office.
But what is it that these scatterers of false tales propose ? Is

248 SIR THOMAS MORE.
it to convince the sects, and favourers of sects, that a safe
retreat is at hand for them in England ? Why, from letters
that have reached me from most trustworthy men, it appears
that the king is even less tolerant of the new doctrines than
the bishops and priests. There is no man of any piety who
would not wish to see a reform of morals in the Church', but
no one of any prudence considers it right to tolerate universal
confusion." Erasmus then goes on to express his satisfaction at More's
timely escape from the absorbing cares of State ; he describes his
house on the banks of the Thames, and his delightful house
hold, which he compares lo a Platonic academy, but of a
Chrisiian Plato. "In the church of his village he has con
structed a family tomb, to which he has translated the bones
of his first wife, so Uttle does he approve of any divorce.* On
the wall he has placed a tablet, with the record of his life and
his intentions, which my secretary has written out for you,
word for word. I see I have been too talkative, but it is
pleasant to converse with a friend about a friend." +
In the suraraer of 1533, J More refers to this epitaph in a
letter to Erasmus : " The heretic Tyndale, my fellow-country
man, who is in exile nowhere and everywhere, has written to
England lately that Melanchtbon is now with the king of
France ; that he himself has spoken wilh one who saw him
received at Paris with a retinue of 150 horse. Tyndale added
that he was afraid that should France receive the word of God
from Melanchtbon, it would be confirmed in his belief con-
* Usque adeo illi non placet ullum divortium. Besides their obvious
meaning, the words would appear to hint at More's aversion to the
royal divorce.
t Ep. 426, in App. There is no date, but the letter must have been
written at the end of 1532 or early in 1533.
X The letter (inter. Epist. Erasra., 461, in App.), has no date, but refers
to Cranraer, the new archbishop, and his liberality to Erasmus. Cranmer
was consecrated March 30, 1533.

AFTER THE RESIGNATION. 249
cerning the Eucharist in opposition to Wycllffe's sect. See
how carefully these feUows treat this matter, as if God had
committed to them the instruction and nurture of the world
in the rudiments of faith.
" As to what you wrote, that you had hesitated about pubUsh
ing my letter, though there were reasons that made you wish to
publish it, you need not hesitate at all. Some gossips here have
been spreading it about that I had to resign against my will,
though I pretend it was not so. So when I set up my tomb, I
determined to state the matter as it is in my epitaph, that any
one might refute it who could. As soon as they had taken nole
df it, as they could not show it to be false, they found fault wilh
it as boastful. I preferred this to aUowing the other rumour to
gain ground, not Indeed for my own sake, for I do nol care
very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of
me; but since I had written in our own tongue some liltle
books against some of our defenders of contentious doctrines,
I considered that I ought to defend the integrity of my name ;
and that you may know how boastfully I have written you shall
receive my epitaph, by which you will see that in my securily
of conscience I by no means flatter them, to prevent them from
saying about me whatever they please. I have waited now till
the meeting of parliament, since I exercised and resigned
my office, but as yet no one has come forward to attack me.
Either I have been so innocent or else so cautious, that
my opponents must let me boast of one or other of these
qualities. "But as regards this business, the king has spoken many
times privately, and twice in public. For in words which I am
ashamed to repeat, when my successor (a most iUustrious man)
was installed, the king, by the mouth of the Duke of Norfolk,
the Lord High Treasurer of England, ordered an honourable
testimony to be given that with difficulty he had yielded lo my
request to retire. And not contented with this, the king, out
of his singular goodness to me, had the same thing repealed by

250 SIR THOMAS MORE.
my successor in his own presence, at the solemn assembly of
the peers and commons, in the speech which is made at the
opening of parliament.
" If then you think it expedient you need not hesitate to
publish my letter. As to what I profess in my letter that I gave
trouble lo heretics, I took pride in writing this.* For I so
entirely detest that race of men, that there is none to which I
would be more hostile, unless they amend. For every day
more and more, I find them to be of such a sort, that I greatiy
fear for what they are bringing on the world." t
I give this famous epitaph in the old translation of RasteU :
" Thomas More, a Londoner born, of no noble faraily, but of
an honest stock, somewhat broughi up in learning ; after that
in his young days he had been a pleader in the laws of this
hall J certain years, being one of the under-sheriffs of London,
was of noble King Henry the Eight (which alone of aU kings
worthily deserved both with sword and pen to be called the
Defender of the Faith, a glory afore not heard of) called into
the court, and chose one of the Council and made knight ;
then made first under-treasurer of England, after that chan
cellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and last of all, with great
favour of his prince, lord chancellor of England. But in the
mean season, he was chosen speaker of the parUament, and
besides was divers times in divers places tbe king's ambassador,
and last of all al Cambray, joined fellow and companion with
Cuthbert Tunstal, chief of that embassy, then Bishop of Lon
don, and within a while after Bishop of Durham, wbo so
exceUeth in learning, wit and virtue, that the whole world scant
hath at tbis day any more learned, wiser or better ; where he
both joyfully saw and was present ambassador when the leagues

* Hoc ambitiose feci.
t Inter Epist. Erasm,, 466, in App.
X Perhaps a misprint for " realra "

AFTER THE RESIGNATION. 251
between the chief princes of Christendom were renewed again,
and peace so long looked for restored to Christendom, which
peace Our Lord stablish and make perpetual.
" When he had thus gone through this course of offices or
honours, that neither that gracious prince could disaUow his
doings, nor he was odious to the nobility nor unpleasant to the
people, but yel to thieves, murderers and heretics grievous, al
last John More, his father, knight, and chosen of the prince to
be one of the justices of the King's Bench, a civU man, pleasant,
harmless, gentle, pitiful, just and uncorrupted, in years old, but
in body more than for his years lusty, after that he perceived
his life so long lengthened, that he saw his son lord chancellor
of England, thinking himself now to have lived long enough,
gladly departed to God. His son then, his father being dead,
to whom as long as he lived being corapared was wont both to
be caUed young and himself so thought too, missing now his
father departed, and seeing four children of his own, and of
their offspring eleven, began in his own conceit to wax old ;
and this affection of his was increased by a certain sickly dis
position of his breast, even by and by following, as a sign or
token of age creeping upon him. He, therefore, irked and
weary of worldly business, giving up his promotions, obtained
at last by the incomparable benefit of his most gentle prince, if
it please God to favour his enterprise, the thing which from a
child in a manner always he wished and desired : that he might
have some years of his life free, in which he liltle and little
withdrawing himself from the business of this life, raight con
tinuaUy remember the immortality of the hfe to come. And
he hath caused this tomb to be made for himself, his first wife's
bones hither too, that might every day put him in meraory of
death that never ceases to creep on him. And that this tomb
made for him in his life-time be not in vain, nor that he fear
death coming upon him, but that he may willingly, for the
desire of Christ, die and find death not utteriy death to hira,
but the gate of a wealthier life, help him, I beseech you, good

252 SIR THOMAS MORE.
reader, now with your prayers while he liveth, and when he is
dead also."
The epitaph concludes with some Latin verses, which I give
in the very literal translation of Archdeacon Wrangham : —
Within this tomb Jane, wife of More, reclines ;
This More for Alice and himself designs.
The first, dear object of my youthful vow.
Gave rae three daughters and a son to know ;
The next — ah ! virtue in a stepdarae rare ! —
Nursed ray sweet infants with a mother's care.
With both my years so happily have past,
Which most my love, I know not — first or last.
Oh ! had religion destiny allowed,
How smoothly mixed had our three fortunes flowed !
But, be we in the tomb, in heaveri allied,
So kinder death shall grant what life denied.*

* From Cayley's Life of More, i. 134.

CHAPTER XIV.
TRE.A.TMEXT OF HERETICS.
IN his epitaph More had designed and emphatically stated
that he had been " troublesome lo thieves, murderers,
and heretics" (furibus, homicidis, hareticisque molestus).
AVe have seen Erasmus's commentary on these words. It is
necessary, however, to study their force, not as apologists, but
as historians. Whom does More designate as heretics ? In
what way did he trouble or " molest " them ? In molesting
them, did he contradict the principles he had laid down in his
Utopia about toleration ? Did he remain within, or did he go
beyond the law as it existed in his time ?
There is a long-standing tradition that he was not merely
severe, which may seem to be justified by his own words, but
even arbitrary and unjust. And as his amiable and upright
character is admitted on all hands, the blame of this warp in
his character and blot on his fame is cast on the religion which
he professed. We have seen Horace Walpole writing of " that
cruel judge whom one knows not how to hate, who persecuted
others in defence of superstitions he had himself exposed " It
is probable that Walpole derived this view of Sir Thomas More
from Burnet's History of the Reformation.
Burnet writes : " More was not governed by interest, nor did
he aspire so to preferment as to stick at nothing that might con
tribute to raise him ; nor was he subject to the vanities of
popularity. The integrity of his whole life and the severity of
his morals cover him from all these suspicions. If he had

254 SIR THOMAS MORE.
been formeriy corrupted by a superstitious education, it had
been no extraordinary thing to see so good a man grow to be
misled by the force of prejudice. But how a man who had
emancipated himself, and had got into a scheme of free thoughts, ;
could be so entirely changed cannot be easily apprehended,
nor how he came to muffle up his understanding and deliver
himself up as a property to the blind and enraged fury of the
priests. It cannot, indeed, be accounted for but by charging it
on the intoxicating charms of that religion, that can darken the
clearest understandings and corrupt the best natures ; and
since they wrought this effect on Sir Thomas More, I cannot
but conclude that 'if these things were done in the green tree,
what shall be done in the dry ?'" *
In our own day the same accusation of cruelty, and the same
explanation, have been renewed by a popular historian. Mr.
Froude writes : "Wolsey had chastised them [the innovators]
wilh whips ; Sir Thomas More would chastise them with
scorpions, and the philosopher of the Utopia, the friend of
Erasmus, whose life was of blaraeless beauty, whose genius was
cultivated lo the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to
the world that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute
ofthe pedant, the bigot, or the fanatic, but may co-exist with
the fairest graces of the human character. The lives of re
markable men usually Ulustrate sorae emphatic truth. Sir
Thomas More may be said to have lived to illustrate the
necessary tendencies of Romanism, in an honest mind convinced
of the truth ; to show that the test of sincerity in a man who
professes to regard orthodoxy as an essential of salvation is
not the readiness to endure persecution, but the courage that
will venture to inflict it."t
* History of Reformation, iii. 98 (Pocock). When Burnet thus wrote
the penal laws against the Catholics were making their lives a burden.
+ History of England, ii. 73. It is instructive to mark that what
Burnet calls vaguely " intoxicating charras " Froude calls dograatic faith,
and a belief that faith is required by God for salvation.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 255
Such is the accusation. Let us now hear Sir Thomas's own
statement of the case, made in the spring of 1533 : " As touch
ing heretics, I hate that vice of theirs and not their persons,
and very fain would I that the one were destroyed and the
other saved. And that I have toward no man any other mind
than this — how loudly soever these blessed new brethren and
professors and preachers of heresy belie me — if all the favour
and pity that I have used among them to their amendment
were known, it would, I warrant you, well and plain appear;
whereof, if it were requisite, I could bring forth witnesses more
than men would ween.
"Howbeit, because it were neither right nor honesty that
any man should look for more thank than he deserveth, I will
that all the world wit it on the other side, that who so be so
deeply grounded in malice, to the harm of his own soul and
other men's too, and so set upon the sowing of seditious
heresies, that no good means that men may use unto him can
pull that malicious folly out of his poisoned, proud, obstinate
heart, I would rather be content that he were gone in time,
than overlong to tarry to the destruction of olher." *
If, then. Sir Thomas More requires a defence, no such
apology can be set up for him as may be valid for the judges,
who administered our cruel penal code with regard to theft, in
the early years of the present century — viz., that not being
legislators they were not responsible for the barbarity of the
laws, and that being judges they were bound to pass sentence
according to the laws as they found them. Such a defence is
not appUcable to the case of Sir Thomas More. It would
exonerate him from any charge of injustice, if it can be shown
(as it certainly can) that he did not go beyond the law. But
as regards the imputation of a cruel disposition, Sir Thomas
would reject a defence based on the supposition that he was
the reluctant administrator of laws, the existence of which he
^Apology, ch. xlix. ; English Works, p. 925.

256 SIR THOMAS MORE.
regretted. In his Apology, written after he had ceased to act
as judge, he fuUy and heartily approves of the laws, both
ecclesiastical and civil, that then existed in England against
heresy, and he raaintains that these laws had been administered
with the ulmost leniency and indeed with a dangerous laxity.*
The first question then that occurs is with regard to More's
consistency. Did his later theories and practice contradict the
more generous philosophy of his youth ? That the reader may
judge for himself, I will give without abridgment a passage from
Utopia in Burnet's translation.
Afterstating that in Utopia there were several sorts of religion —
sorae idolatrous, sorae monotheistical — and that the higher views
were gradually setting aside the others, Raphael (the supposed
traveller) says that Christianity also had been lately introduced
by hiraself and his companions. He then continues as follows : —
" Those among them that have not received our religion do
not fright any from it, and use none ill that goes over lo it, so
that all the while I was there one raan only was punished on
this occasion. He being newly baptised did, notwithstanding
all that we could say to the contrary, dispute publicly concerning
the Christian religion, with more zeal than discretion, and with
so much heat, that he not only preferred our worship to theirs,
but condemned all their riles as profane, and cried out against
all that adhered to them as irapious and sacrilegious persons,
that were to be damned to everlasting burnings. Upon his
having frequentiy preached in this manner he was seized, and
after trial he was condemned to banishment, not for having
disparaged their religion, but for his inflaming the people to
sedition ; for this is one of their most ancient laws, that no man
ought to be punished for his religion.
"At the first constitution oftheir government, Utopus under
stood that, before his coming among them, the old inhabitants
had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by
* So also in his defence of his Apology (Salem and Bizance, ch. xiv.,
p. 958), etc.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 257
which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it
an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their
forces against him, every different parly in reUgion fought by
themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that
every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might
endeavour lo draw others to it by the force of argument and by
amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those
of other opinions ; but that he ought to use no other force but
that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches
nor violence ; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned
to banishment or slavery.
"This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the
public peace, which he saw suffered much by dally contentions
and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of
reUglon itself required it. He judged il not fit to determine
anything rashly ; and seemed to doubt whether those different
forms of religion might not all come from God, who might
inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this
variety ; he therefore thought it indecent and foolish for any
man to threaten and terrify another to make him believe what
did not appear to him to be true.* And supposing that only
one religion was really true, and the rest false, he imagined that
the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine
bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and
attended to with a gentie and unprejudiced mind ; while, on the
other hand, if such debates were carried on with violence and
tumults, as the most wicked are always the most obstinate, so
the best and most holy reUgion might be choked with supersti
tion, as corn is with briars and thorns ; he therefore left men
* Burnet's translation is here rather firee. The Latin is "Certe viae
minis exigere ut, quod tu verum credis idem omnibus videatur, hoc vero
et insolens et ineptum censuit," i.e., " To require by violence and threats
that what you believe to be true should be accepted as true by all, this
he thought both indecent and foolish ".
17

258 SIR THOMAS MORE.
whoUy to their liberty, that they might be free to believe as they
should see cause.
"Only he made a solemn and severe law against such as should
so far degenerate from the dignity of human nature, as to think
that our souls died with our bodies, or that the world was
governed by chance, without a wise overruling Providence : for
they all formerly believed that there was a state of rewards and
punishments to the good and bad after this life ; and they now
look on those that think otherwise as scarce fit to be counted
men, since they degrade so noble a being as the soul, and reckon
it no belter than a beast's : thus they are far from looking on
such men as fit for human society, or to be citizens of a weU-
ordered coraraonwealth ; since a raan of such principles must
needs, as oft as he dares dO it, despise aU their laws and
customs : for there is no doubt to be made, that a man who is
afraid of nothing but the law, and apprehends nothing after
death, wUl nol scruple to break through all the laws of his
country, either by fraud or force, when by this means he may
satisfy his appetites. They never raise any that hold these
maxiras either to honours or offices, nor employ them in any
public trust, but despise thera, as men of base and sordid minds.
Yet they do nol punish thera, because they lay this down as a
maxim, that a man cannot make himself believe whatever he
likes." This passage of the Utopia was no doubt in Burnet's mind
when he referred to More's having once " got into a scheme of
free thoughts " Sir James Mackintosh, a real lover of liberty,
very different from Burnet, has written on this subject as
follows : " It is evident that the two philosophers (More and
Erasmus), who found all their fair visions dispelled by noise and
violence, deeply felt the Injustice of citing against them, as a
proof of inconsistency, that they departed from the pleasantries,
the gay dreams, at most the fond speculations, of their early
days, when they saw these harmless visions turned into weapons
of destruction in the blood-stained hands of the boors of

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 259
Saxony, and of the ferocious fanatics of Munster. The virtuous
love of peace might be more prevalent in More : the Epicurean
desire of personal ease predominated more in Erasmus. But
both were, doubtless from commendable or excusable causes,
incensed against those odious disciples, who now, with no
friendly voice, invoked their authority against themselves." *
Though I have cited with pleasure this passage from an
eminent writer, because it has a bearing on several things
written by More in his Utopia, I can scarcely adopt it as
regards the special matter of toleration we are now consider
ing; for I do not find that More's early theories on this
subject were ever broughi as a reproach against him during
his own lifetime, much less that the innovators whom he
resisted and prosecuted ever appealed, in favour of their
own liberty, to general principles of toleration. More himself
has put the following wish into the mouth of his interlocutor
in his Dialogue: "I would," says his friend, "all the world
were agreed to take all violence and compulsion away, upon
aU sides, Christian and heathen, and that no man were con
strained to believe but as he could be, by grace, wisdom and
good works, induced ; and then he that would go to God, go
on in God's name, and he that will go to the devil, the devil
go wilh hira ''.\ This is perhaps the raodern theory put in a
homely way ; but before giving More's answer, let me say that
this was not the theory of the Lutherans with whom More had
lo do. They pleaded for liberty as having exclusively the
truth, but they never thought of giving Uberty to Catholics.
The Mass was to be forcibly abolished as a horrible idolatry,
the monks to be dragged from their cloisters, and if necessary
whipped at a cart's taU till they would marry and work,J and
the gospel of Luther forced by the civil power upon the world.
* Life of More, p. 98.
\ Dialogue, iv. 13, English Works, p. 275.
X See Fish's Supplication of Beggars. " Tie these holy idle thieves
to the carts, to be whipped naked about every market town."

26o SIR THOMAS MORE.
The state of things that More supposes in his Utopia had
nothing parallel in that age either among Catholics or Protes
tants. Some may think that he approximately describes the
present state of England ; in which case, could he rise again,
himself unchanged, in our changed state of society, he would
doubtless plead for quiet and mutual forbearance, as did his
Portuguese friend, Raphael, in the conversation at Antwerp.
For my own part, I can find no evidence of change of views,
or of inconsistency in the author of the Utopia. In that work
More is discoursing of people who had no revelation from
God, and he condemns their acrimonious disputes and intoler
ance in matters of pure reason or natural tradition. Before he
can be accused of inconsistency, it should be shown that the
social and religious problems, discussed by him in his later
English writings, were analogous to those contemplated by
King Utopus, and if so, that he solved them differently. Did
he, in later years, teach that men left by God to the pure
exercise of their reason, should not also be left free by their
rulers, "to seek God, if happily they may feel after Him and
find Him " ? * Did he ever teach that the unbaptised heathen
should be compelled by force to accept the true faith ? Did
he ever teach that men brought up from childhood in heresy,
and in atheisra and materialism, and dazed and bewUdered by
the multitude of opinions around them, should be punished
because they could nol see their way to certainly or unity?
On the contrary, it was because he foresaw this very slate of
things as the result of Luther's revolt, and grieved over it;
because he foresaw that if once unity were broken up, and
the Catholic faith caUed in question, the people would be
" tossed about with every wind of doctrine, by the wickedness
of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to
deceive, "t he therefore met these innovations with an energy
inspired no less by his love of freedom of thought, than by his
* Acts xvii. 27. \Eph. iv. 14.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 261
love of his country. He thought, and he wrote over and over
again, that there was no slavery like the slavery of sectarianism,
and no freedom like that enjoyed where all have one unchange
able faith. Did More understand the word heretic as it is
generally understood in England at the present day ? I am
nol proposing a theological, but a historical question. I am
not asking whether More was right or wrong in his judgment
regarding heresy, but what did he mean by il ? To most Pro
testants, orthodoxy can only mean for each man his private
opinion or conviction in matters of reUgion, while heresy can
only be a nickname for his neighbour's views. It does not
require a mind of More's acuteness, or a character of his
fairness, to see at a glance that, in such circumstances, mutual
forbearance is the strictest of duties, and that no one should
be violently repressed but he who violently disturbs his
neighbour. To More the word heresy conveyed a very different meaning.
It was the private choice, by' an individual, of a doctrine con
tradictory to that held to be clearly revealed by the divinely
guided society to which that individual had belonged. More
himself points out * (and it is his views we are discussing), that
according to St. Paul, not only is heresy or faction in religion
classed with grievous sins like murder, theft, and adultery,t but
it is supposed by him to be as easily recognised and proved ;
so that the ruler of the spiritual society can admonish and
reprove and ultiraately reject the criminal, and cast hira forth
from the society, either delivering him over to Satan, like
Hymeneus and Alexander, that he may learn not to blaspheme,
or at least warning and comraanding the society to avoid him
as a pestilence. J
To More a heretic was neither a simple man erring by ignor-
* English Works, p. 828.
+ Gal. V. 20.
+ Tit. iii. 10 ; i Tim. i. 20 ; 2 Tim. ii. 17— passages frequently
quoted by More.

262 SIR THOMAS MORE.
ance, nor a learned raan using his freedom in doubtful points :
he was a man whose heart was "proud, poisoned, and
obstinate," because he denied the Divine guidance of the
Church into which he had been baptised, while he claimed
special Divine inspiration for himself.
But this is not an adequate explanation of More's aversion
to Lutheranisra and ofhis conduct towards it. What has been
said would apply to all heresy, though it were limited to the most
abstruse points of revelation, and though its holder look no
pains to propagate it. The zeal, the indignation and the horror of
Sir Thomas More were aroused, because to him the Lutheran
doctrines, as they first came before the world, appeared as the
denial of everything that the Christian people had hitherto
held in veneration, and as uprooting the foundation of all
morals. We have seen what he wrote about it in his Latin
work, under the narae of Ross. As time went on he painted
it in still darker colours, as fuller accounts came of the excesses
in Germany and Switzerland. " Is it not a wonderful thing,''
he asks, in his Dialogue, written in 1528 — " Is it not a wonder
ful thing, that we should now see a lewd friar so bold and
shameless to marry a nun and bide thereby, and be taken still
for a Christian man, and over that, for a man meet to be the
beginner of a sect, whom any honest man would vouchsafe to
follow ? If our Lord God, whose wisdom is infinite, should
have set and studied to devise a way whereby He might cast in
our face the confusion of our folly, how might He have founden
a more effectual than to suffer us that call ourselves Christian
folk, to see such a rabble springing up among us, as let nol to
set at nought all the doctors of Christ's Church, and lean to the
only authority of Friar Tuck and Maid Marion ? " *
We have not, however, yet reached the full motive of More's
conduct. It was because the buffooneries and infamies of Friar
• Dialogue, iv. ch. 9. English Works, p. 260. It is perhaps needless
to say that Friar Tuck and Maid Marion were the low buffoons in the
pageants of Robin Hood.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 263
Tuck were united with the outrages and violence of Robin Hood
that More justified their suppression by force. This is the answer
he gives to his friend who wished that everyone might be left
free to go to the devil if he chose. Yes, replies More, but he
shall not drag society with him. It is here I find a perfect
consistency with the opinions he had expressed in Utopia.
King Utopus, he says, having no means of attaining unity,
enforced moderation and mutual toleration, where he had found
nothing but confusion and bitterness, because that contention
had weakened the country and laid it open to foreign conquest.
More, on the contrary, was the highest magistrate in a country
hitherto in perfect peace and unity in religious matters.
The Catholic Church had held exclusive possession of England
for nearly a thousand years, and its doctrines, discipline, and
institutions had leavened every part of English life. The policy
of Utopus would certainly have allowed no healed dissensions
to be introduced to break up this unity. He who would nol
allow the materialists to propagate their opinions, would have
given no licence to false spiritualists "to bring in sects
blaspheming ".
This is the contention of Sir Thomas More throughout his
many voluminous works of controversy. He says that " it was
the violent cruelty first used by the heretics themselves against
good Catholic folk that drove good princes thereto, for preserva
tion not of the faith only, but also of peace araong the people".*
He enters fully into the history of the treatment of heretics.
The Church, he maintains, had in no age punished them by
death. The State had done it in self-defence, and had called
on the Church to define heresy, lo judge the fact and dehver
the relapsed heretic into the hands of the civU power. The
State (he maintains) only did this when it had attained peace
and unity by means of the Church, and when it was found by
experience that heretics ever stirred up sedition and rebeUion,
* English Works, p. 275. See also p. 570, where he enters into
much detail.

264 SIR THOMAS MORE.
and if allowed to spread, brought about division and ruin. He
points to the history of Lollardy in England in the time of
Henry IV. andHenry V.; andto the fearful results of Lutheranisra
in Germany, in the violent destruction of the Catholic Church
in some lands, the wars of the peasants in others ; to the di
vision of the empire making it unable to resist the threatened
invasion of the Turks ; and to that general break-up of what
was called Christendora, which would be the inevitable con
sequence of the spread of these principles. *
Let us now turn from the theories of More to his personal
practice. Was he ever cruel or unjust? It is surely a bold
thing to accuse him of this after his own challenge. In 1532
an anonymous writer under the character of a peace-maker had
thrown great blame on the proceedings of the clergy, but always
in general terms, as, " Sorae say," " Many say," etc. Sir
Thomas writes : " Let this pacifier come forth and appear
before the king's Grace and his Council, or in what place he list,
and there prove, calling rae thereto, that any one of all these
had wrong — but if it were for that they were burned no sooner.
And because he shall not say that I bid him trot about for
naught, this shall I proffer him, that I wiU bind myself for
surety, and find him olher twain besides of better substance
than myself, that for every one of these whom he proveth
wronged, his ordinary or his other officer by whom the wrong
was done, shaU give this pacifier all his costs about the proof
and a reasonable reward besides. And yet now, Ihough no
man would give him nothing, it were his part, perdie 1 to prove
it for his own honesty, since he hath said so far." t
This public challenge met with no response in More's life-
* Sir Jaraes Mackintosh thinks him unfair in attributing the awful
outrages of the Sack of Rome in 1527 raainly to the Lutherans. Dr.
Brewer, however, seems to distribute the guilt between the Lutherans and
the semi-christianised Saracens in the array of the Constable of Bourbon.
What More tells on this subject {Dialogue iv. ch. 7) is too hideous to
transcribe. \ Apology, ch. xxv.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 265
time. Thirty years after his death the Protestant martyrologist
Foxe brought forward some stories of More's cruelty, which are
the sole foundation on which Burnet and other writers have
grounded their accusations of his having "delivered himself up
as a property to the blind and enraged fury of the priests ".
In his account of John Tewkesbury, a pouchmaker or leather-
seUer of London, Foxe writes as follows : " He was sent from
the LoUard's Tower* to my Lord Chancellor's, called Sir
Thomas More, to Chelsea, with all his articles [i.e., the articles
of accusation], to see whether he could turn him, and that he
might accuse others ; and there he lay in the porter's lodge,
hand, foot and head in the stocks, six days without release.
Then was he carried to Jesus Tree in his privy garden, where
he was whipped and also twisted in his brows with a sraall rope,
that the blood started out of his eyes, and yet would nol accuse
no man. Then was he let loose in the house for a day, and his
friends thought to have him at liberty the next day. After this
he was sent to be racked in the Tower, lill he was alraost larae
and there promised to recant." f
Again, of James Bainham, a lawyer, Foxe writes that he also
was whipped in Sir Thomas's garden at the Tree of Truth, and
then sent to the Tower to be racked, " and so he was, Sir
Thomas More being present himself, till in a manner he had
lamed him ".J
Bumet says that Sir Thomas "looked on, and saw him put
to the rack ". §
Foxe wrote in the time of Elizabeth, and he has been proved
to have picked up every bit of traditional gossip, and to have
added so many inventions and embellishments of his own, that
unless where he gives documents his testimony is of no value.
As regards Tewkesbury, his first examination, after which he
* Part of old St. Paul's, not of Larabeth.
fBook of Martyrs, iv. 689 (ed. Townsend).
J lb., iv. 698.
§ History of Reformation, i. 270 (ed. Pocock).

266 SIR THOMAS MORE.
retracted, was on 8th May, 1529, and this was several months
before Sir Thoraas was chancellor. The story, therefore, of
his torture in More's garden is clearly mythical. Foxe has
strangely mixed up the stories of Tewkesbury and- Bainham ;
both are whipped at a tree in Sir Thomas More's garden, though
whether the Tree of Jesus was the same as the Tree of Truth
we are not told ; both are sent to the Tower and racked ; both
retract ; both are afterwards overcome by remorse, and publicly
bewail their retractation to their friends in a conventicle in Bowe
Lane, and then afterwards make a public protest in a church,
and so both are conderaned to be burnt. These are strange
coincidences ; but it is still more strange that a part of what
Foxe had written of Tewkesbury in one edition, in another
edition he omitted, and tacked on to his account of Bainham.*
The accuracy of Foxe may be judged from the fact that he im
putes the death of Frith to More, yet Frith died in 1533, and
More had resigned his office a year before.f
Foxe does nol seem to have been the inventor of the story
of the whippings and racking, for in the 36th chapter of his
Apology Sir Thomas refers to some such lies as then in
circulation. The passage is very important, and shall be given
with lillie abridgment : " They that are of this brotherhood be
so bold and so shameless in lying, that whoso shall hear them
speak, and knoweth not whal sect they be of, shall be very sore
abused [misled] by them. Myself have good experience, for
the lies are neither few nor sraall that many of the blessed
brethren have made, and daily yet make by me.
" Divers of them have said that of such as were in my house
whUe I was chanceUor I used to examine them with torments,
causing thera to be bound to a tree in my garden, and there
piteously beaten. And this tale had some of those good
* See vol. iv. p. 702, and Appendix, p. 769 (ed. Townsend).
t In his Apology (p. 887), written in the spring of 1533, More refers to
Frith as then in the Tower, not by his means, but by " the king's grace
and his Council".

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 267
brethren so caused to be blown about, that a right worshipful
friend of mine did of late, within less than this fortnight, tell
unto another near friend of mine that he had of late heard rauch
speaking thereof.
"What cannot these brethren say that can be so shame
less to say thus ? For of very truth, albeit that for a great
robbery or a heinous murder, or sacrilege in a church,
with carrying away the pix with the Blessed Sacrament, or
villainously casting it out, I caused sometimes such things to
be done by some officers of the Marshalsea, or of some olher
prisons, with which ordering of them, and without any great
hurt that aftenvards should stick by them, I found out and re
pressed many such desperate wretches as else had not failed to
have gone farther ; yet, saving the sure keeping of heretics, I
never did cause any such thing to be done to any of
them in all my hfe, except only twain. Of which the one was
a chUd and a servant of mine in mine own house, whom his
father had, ere ever he came with me, nursled up in such
matters, and had set him to attend upon George Jay or Gee,
otherwise called Clerk, which is a priest, and is now for all that
wedded in Antwerp, inlo whose house there the two nuns
were brought which John Birt, otherwise called Adrian, stole
out of their cloister to make thera harlots. This George Jay
did teach this child his ungracious heresy against the Blessed
Sacrament ofthe altar, which heresy this child afterwards, being
in service wilh rae, began lo teach another child in my house,
which uttered his counsel. And upon that point perceived, I
caused a servant of raine to stripe hira like a chUd before mine
household, for amendment of himself and ensample of such
other. "Another was one, which after that he had fallen into that
frantic heresy, fell soon after inlo plain open frenzy besides."
More then tells how he was confined in bedlam, and when set
free disturbed public service in churches, and committed acts of
great indecency: "Whereupon I, being advertised of these

268 SIR THOMAS MORE.
pageants, and being sent unto and required by very devout
religious folk to take some other order with him, caused him,
as he came wandering by my door, to be taken by the constables
and bound to a tree in the street before the whole town, and
there they striped him with rods till he waxed weary, and some
what longer. And it appeared well that his reraerabrance was
good enough, save that it went about grazing lill it was beaten
horae. For he could then very well rehearse his faults himself,
and speak and treat very well, and promise to do afterwards as
well. And verily God be thanked, I hear none harm of him
now. " And of all that ever came in my hand for heresy, as help
me God, saving (as I said) the sure keeping of them, had never
any of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much as a fillip
on the forehead.
" But now tell the brethren raany raarvellous lies, of much
cruel tormenting that heretics had in my house, so far forth
that one Segar, a bookseller of Cambridge, which was in mine
house about four or five days, and never had either bodily harm
done him, or foul word spoken him, hath reported since, as I
hear say, to divers, that he was bound to a tree in ray garden,
and thereto too piteously beaten, and yet besides that bound
about the head with a cord and wrung till he fell down dead in
a swoon. And this tale of his beating did Tyndale tell lo an
old acquaintance of his own, and to a good lover of mine, wilh
one piece farther yet, that while the man was in beating, I spied
a little purse of his hanging at his doublet, wherein the poor
man had, as he said, five marks, and that caught I quickly to
me, and pulled it from his doublet and put it in my bosom, and
that Segar never saw it after, and therein I trow he said true,
for no more did I neither, nor before neither, nor I trow no
more did Segar himself."*
Frora this it would seem that Tindale's report of Segar's false
tale of the whipping and the twisted cord had, by the time of
* English Works, p. 901.

TRE.4TMENT OF HERETICS. 269
Foxe, got into the legend of Tewkesbury. On this declaration
of Sir Thoinas More, Sir James Mackintosh writes as foUows :
"This stateraent, so minute, so easily contradicted, if in any
part false, was made public after his fall from power, when he
was surrounded by enemies and could have no friends but the
generous. He relates circumstances of public notoriety, or at
least, so known to aU his household, which it would have been
raiher a proof of insanity than of imprudence to have alleged
in his defence, if they had not been indisputably and confessedly
true. Wherever he touches this subject, there is a quietness
and a circumstantiality, which are among the least equivocal
marks of a man who adheres lo the temper most favourable to
the truth, because he is conscious that the truth is favourable to
him. Defenceless and obnoxious as More then was, no
man was hardy enough to dispute his truth. Foxe was the first
who, thirty years afterwards, ventured to oppose it in a vague
statement, which we know to be in some respects inaccurate >
and on this slender authority alone has rested such an imputa
tion on the veracity of the most sincere of men."*
Since the days of Sir James Mackintosh another charge has
been made against More. Mr. Anthony Froude writes: " I do
not intend in this place to relate the stories of his cruelties in
his house at Chelsea, which he himself partially (!) denied, and
which at least we may hope were exaggerated"; but Mr. Froude
goes on lo relate what he asserts to have been acts of illegal
imprisonment committed by More. The first is that of Thomas
PhiUps ; the second, that of John Field. The evidence against
* Life of More, pp. loi, 105. Such tales die hard. In 1889 appeared a
book called Old Chelsea, by Mr. B. G. Martin. It gives a raost interest
ing account both of Sir Thoraas More and his house. Mr. Martin writes
affectionately of More's " sweet and wholesome nature," yet he repeats
Foxe's story ofthe floggings (p. 39), and that " he was imprisoned in the
very cell, it is said, wherein he had sat as grand inquisitor aforetime
racking heretics " (p. 42). Thus visitors to Chelsea and the Tower>
instead of a raental vision of the real Blessed Thomas More, will shudder
at the spectres of scourge and rack.

270 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Sir Thomas is merely that Mr. Froude found petitions to the
king drawn up by the men themselves. Of the result of Field's
petition Mr. Froude can tell nothing ; of that of Philips he has
to tell that his complaint was against the Bishop of London
rather than against More, and that it was cast aside by the
House of Lords as frivolous.*
Mr. Froude does not seem to be aware that More himself
has spoken of these very petitions. In the 38th chapter of his
Apology he relates how Thomas PhUips, a leatherseller, was
brought before him when he was chancellor; he was examined
with great leniency ("in as hearty loving manner as I could")
and at last " I by indenture deUvered him to his ordinary,"
but afterwards, for reasons enumerated, " I advised, and by my
means helped that he was received prisoner into the Tower.
And yet after that he coraplained thereupon, not against me but
against the ordinary. Whereupon the king's highness com
manded certain of the greatest lords of his Council to know how
the matter stood; which known and reported, his highness
gave unto Philips such answer as, if he had been half so good
as I would he were, or half so wise as himself weeneth he were,
he would forthwith have followed, and not stand still in his
obstinacy so long, as he hath now put himself thereby in another
deeper perU."
Sir Thoraas continues: "Others have besides this com
plained that they have been unjustly handled, and they have
nothing gotten but rebuke and sharae. And some hath been
heard upon importunate clamour, and the cause and handling
examined by the greatest lords temporal of the king's most
honourable council, and that since I left the office, and the
complainour found in his complaining so very shameless false,
that he halh been answered that he was too easily dealt with,'
and had wrong that he was no worse served."+ Sir Thomas
* History of England, ii. 74. Field's petition is also in Letters and
Papers, vi. 1059.
t English Works, p. 906.

TREATMENT OF HERETICS. 27 1
does not mention the names in these latter cases, nor does he
say that the petitions of redress were made against himself;
yet it seems likely that Field's complaint is the one last
enumerated. In any case history contains no record that
when Cromwell and the Earl of Wiltshire, and More's other
enemies, were seeking charges against him, Field's coraplaints
were considered worthy of attention. Yet Mr. Froude lakes
the fact that complaints were made as equivalent to a proof
that they were well founded. Surely the great chancellor's
integrity can survive a ruder shock than this. In the Debella
cion of Salem and Bizance, Sir Thomas More again referred
to the accusations of harshness as follows : " The untruth of
such false fame hath been before the king's honourable council
of late well and plainly proved, upon sundry such false com
plaints by the king's gracious comraandment exarained. And
albeit that this is a thing notoriously known, and that I have
myself in mine Apology spoken thereof, and that, since that
book gone abroad, it hath been in likewise before the lords
well and plainly . proved in more matters afresh, and albeit
that this waler washeth away all his raatter, yet goeth ever
this water over this goose's back, and for anything that any
man can do, no man can make it sink unto the skin, that she
may once feel it, but ever she shaketh such plain proofs off
with her feathers of ' Some say,' and ' They say ' the contrary." *
The goose is stiU shaking her feathers in Mr. Froude's pages.
From all that has been gathered together in this chapter,
I venture to conclude that there is no evidence of change in
More's views as regards religious liberty, nor did his genial
character become deteriorated or soured. He held strongly
that the dogmatising heretics of those days, in the then
circumstances of England and Christendom, should be forcibly
repressed, and if necessary punished even by death, according
to the existing laws. Yet in the administration of those laws
he was not only rigidly upright, but as tender and merciful as
* English Works, p. 962.

272 SIR THOMAS MORE.
is compatible wilh the character and office of a judge. " What
olher controversialist can be named," asks Sir James Mackin
tosh, "who, having the power to crush antagonists whom he
viewed as the disturbers of the quiet of his own declining
years, the destroyers of all the hopes which he had cherished for
mankind, contented himself with severity of language ? " *
* Life of More, p. rn.

CHAPTER XV.
ENGLISH CONTROVERSY.
Section I. Zeal for the Faith.
THE task before me in this chapter is beset with no ordinary
difficulties. The English controversial works of Sir
Thomas More fill more than a thousand of the large,
double column, closely printed pages of the great collection of
his works, equal to perhaps six volumes like the present. To
pass these by with a general allusion would be as incongruous
in a biographer of More as for the writer of Lord Macaulay's life
to say nothing of, or lo refer vaguely to, his Essays. But the
biographer of Macaulay supposes his readers familiar with the
Essays, or that they will turn with eager Interest to those with
which they are yet unacquainted when told oftheir character or of
the circumstances in which they were written, whereas probably
not more than one or two of my readers has ever read a page of
More's polemics, or will ever cast an eye on the volurae that
contains them. Perhaps they may have read in Burnet that
More was "no divine," that "he knew nothing of antiquity,
that " his writings were designed rather for the rabble than for
learned men".* Were I to retort that there is raore soUdj
Divinity, scriptural and patristic learning, force of reasoning, tc](
say nothing of wit, in the most hastily written treatise of More's
than in Burnet's Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles, t
* History of Reformation, i. 557 (ed. Pocock).
18

274

SIR THOMAS MORE.

should be far below the truth, yet I could not ask a reader to
accepi my bare assertion. At most I could beg him to suspend
his judgment as concerning a thing unknown to him. On the
Other hand, I cannot reproduce by long quotations the some
what antiquated and very bitter controversy of the first twenty
years of Lutheranisra ; nor would it be to much purpose to
analyse minutely works that are quite unlikely to be read. The
only course left to me is to give some account here — as much
as possible in More's own words — of the reasons and the
method of his controversy, and to print in a separate volume
extracts of permanent interest and characteristic of his style.
We have already seen in the last chapter that Sir Thomas
More was moved to his opposition to the new doctrines by his
keen prevision oftheir consequences, as well religious as social.
Itis no exaggeration to saythat he clearly anticipated and foretold
such results of the Lutheran revolt as history reveals to us in
the sudden overthrow by the Scotch fanatics of the whole fabric
of the Catholic religion and of every venerated monument of
antiquity, the national raadness of the English Puritans, the im
pieties and atrocities of the various French revolutions, or the
brutal agnosticism of raodern secularists in England and America.
When he was chancellor More wrote as follows : " In good
faith, I never thought other yet, soon after the beginning, but
that when those folk fell once to their horrible heresies, which
Tindale in his books has taught us, they should not fail lo fall
soon after unto these others too" {i.e., the tenets ofthe Munster
Anabaptists, denying all obligation of law spiritual or temporal,
rejecting all government, introducing communism in property,
and abolishing all marriage), "and then that Our Blessed
Saviour Christ was but only Man, and not God at all. And, as
help rae God, I verily fear that they shall fall unto that at last,
that there is no God. And tben, reckoning neither upon God
nor devil, nor iramortality of their own souls, but jesting and
scoffing that ' God is a good fellow,' and ' as good a soul hath
an owl as a cuckoo,' and ' when thou seest my soul hang in the

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 275
hedge then hurl stones at it hardily and spare not'; and, as
Tindale saith, ' When thou speakest wilh St. Peter then pray
him to pray for thee' ; thus reckoning upon nothing but only
upon this world,* and therefore reckoning for nothing but only
for the body, they shall at the last fall in a new rage, and gather
themselves together (but if their malice' be the better suppressed)
to make other manner masters than ever they made yet, whereof
the mischief shall fall in their own necks. But yet if this may
be suffered once to rise, all the mischief will not fall in their
own necks alone, but much harm shall hap upon raany good
men's heads, ere these rebellious wretches be well repressed
again. "t
More did not find many Englishmen to share his anxieties ;
he thus expresses and laments the general apathy of good
Catholics : " If because we know our cause so good we bear
ourselves thereupon so bold, that we make light and slight of
our adversaries, it may happen to fare between the Catholics
and heretics at length, as it fareth soraetiraes in a suit at the
law by some good man, against whom a subtle, wily shrew J
beginneth a false action, and asketh frora him all the land he
hath. This good man sometimes, that knoweth his matier so
true, persuadeth to himself that it were not possible for him to
lose it by the law. And when his counsel talketh with him,
and asketh him how he can prove this point or that for him
self, answereth again : ' Fear ye not for that, sir, I warrant you
all the country knoweth it. The matter is so true and my
part so plain, that I care not what judges, what arbiters, what
twelve men go thereon. I will challenge no man for any
labour that mine adversary can make therein.' And with such
good hope the good man goeth him home, and there sitteth
StUl and putteth no doubt in the matter. But in the mean-
* The very profession from which so many of our own artisans call
themselves Secularists.
t English Works, pp. 656, 657.
X A shrew, in More's works, is not a scold, but a rogue.

276 SIR THOMAS MORE.
while his adversary, which for lack of truth of his cause must
needs put all his trust in craft, goeth about his matter busUy,
and by all the false raeans he may, maketh him friends, some
with good fellowship, sorae with rewards, findeth a fellow to
forge him false evidence, maketh means to the sheriff, getteth
a partial panel, laboureth the jury, and when they come to the
bar hath all his trinkets ready ; whereas good Tom Truth
cometh forth upon the other side, and because he weeneth all
the world knoweth how true his matter is, bringeth never a
witness with him, and all his evidence unsorted. And one
wist I once that brought unto the bar, when the jury was
sworn, and openly delivered his counsel, his tinder box, with
his flint and his matches, instead of his box of evidence, for that
had he left at home. So negligent are good folk sometiraes,
when the known truth of their matter maketh them over bold.
" And surely much after this fashion in many places play
these heretics and we. For like as a few birds, always chirk
ing and flying from bush to bush, seem a great many, so these
heretics be so busily walking, that in every ale-house, in every
tavern, in every barge, and alraost every boat, as few as they be,
\a man shall always find some. And there be they so busy
with their talking (and in better places also where they may
be heard), so fervent and importune in putting forth of any
thing which may serve for the furtherance of their purpose, that
between their importunate preaching and the diligence or
rather the negUgence of good Catholic men, appeareth oft times
as great a difference as between frost and fire.
"And surely between the true Catholic folk and the false
heretics, il fareth also much like as it fared between false Judas
and Christ's faithful Apostles. For while they, for all Christ's
caUing upon thera to wake and pray, fell fast in a slumber, and
after in dead sleep, the traitor neither slept nor slumbered, but
went about full busUy to betray his Master, and bring himself
to mischief." * * English Works, p. 921.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 277
Roper tells us : "It fprtuned, before the matter of the king's
matrimony brought in question, when I, in talk wilh Sir
Thomas More, of a certain joy commended unto him the happy
estate of this realm, that had so Catholic a prince that no
heretic durst show his face, so virtuous and learned a clergy, so
grave and sound a nobUity, and so loving, obedient subjects,
aU in one faith agreeing together. 'Truth il is indeed, son
Roper,' quoth he, and in all degrees and estates of the same
went far beyond me in commendation ihereof; 'and yet, son
Roper, I pray God,' said he, ' that some of us, as high as we
seem to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under our
feel like ants, live not the day that we would gladly be at league
and composition wilh them, to let thera have their churches
quietiy to themselves, so that they would be contented to let
us have ours quietly to ourselves.' After that I had told him
many considerations why he had no cause to say so : ' Well,'
said he, ' I pray God, son Roper, some of us live not till that
day,' showing me no reason why he should pul any doubt
therein. To whom I said, 'By my troth, sir, it is very des
perately spoken ' (that vile term, I cry God mercy, did I give
him). Who, by these words, perceiving me in a fume, said
merrily unto me, ' It shall not be so, it shall not be so '."*
In the year 1526, before he had begun any of his own
English works against the heretics, More showed his great zeal
and anxiety in the matter in the following letter to Erasmus.
After some expressions of sympathy for his physical sufferings,
he says that the Christian world can ill spare him and is
expeciing some more of his exceUent works. " But especially
what is still wanting of your Hyperaspistes. \ You can conceive
nothing more fruitful to all, more pleasing to your friends, more
honourable to yourself or raore necessary. You cannot believe
how eagerly all good men expect it ; on the contrary, the bad,
* Notes, no. xiii.
t The title ofthe answer of Erasmus to Luther's book De Servo Arbitrio.
Hyperaspistes means "champion" or "protector"-

278 SIR THOMAS MORE.
who favour Luther or envy you, seem to grow more bold and
numerous frora your delay in replying. If you have raerely
postponed this work to finish some other things, such as the
Institution of Christian Matrimony, which her Majesty the
Queen esteems so much (as you will soon, I trust, feel), I cari
bear the delay. If you are taking your time to treat the matter
raore accurately, I am deUghted, for I desire that part to be
treated with the utmost diligence. But if the reason of your
delay is, as some report, that fear has caused you to give it up,
I cannot repress ray sorrow or sufficiently express my surprise.
O my dearest Erasmus, God forbid that, after all your Hercu
lean labours and your dangers, after all the toils and vigils lo
benefit the world, in which you have spent the best years of
your Ufe, you should begin now so miserably to love these
sick souls, that rather than lose their suffrage you should desert
the cause of God.
"As regards myself I can neither promise nor hope what aU
expect from you, from the well-known examples you have given
of a soul strong and trustful in God. I can never doubt that
to your life's end, whatever catastrophe may befall, you will
manifest the same fortitude, since you cannot but trust that
God, who has allowed this tragedy, will come in due time to
our aid.
" Besides there is, as I conceive, just now no great reason
to fear, much less to be overwhelraed by it. If the Lutherans
intended lo do anything, they would have been more likely to
do it before you answered at all, for so they would have pre
vented your answering. Or if they wished to be revenged for
what you have written, they would have poured out their fury
on you when your first book appeared, in which you so painted
the wild beast, and so pointed out the evil spirit that drives him
on, that you have made that smoky and infernal demon as
visible to men's eyes as if you had dragged Cerberus out of
hell. What danger, therefore, now reraains I do not see, which
would not equally threaten if you write no raore. You have

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 279
answered his calumnies against yourself, and transfixed him
with your pen ; there now remains only to treat the passages
of Holy Scripture ; and since in the thousand copies of your
first part you have promised the whole world, as by so many
bonds, that you would diligently execute that second part, you
cannot refuse to pursue the cause of God after having success
fully achieved your own, or to perform what you have publicly
promised, especially since you can do it so easily. Nor is
Luther such a fool as to hope you will refrain, nor so unjust as
to dare to ask it. That he desires you to keep silence I have
no doubt, however much he may pretend a magnificent con
tempt of you in his letter, of which it is hard to say whether it
is more boastful or more foolish. He is conscious enough how
the miserable glosses by which he has tried to obscure the
most clear passages of Holy Scripture, cold as they were al
ready, become under your criticism the merest ice.'' More
then begs his friend to vrrite a confidential letter, if there is
really sorae danger that in England is not known. Then after
a short digression about the visit of Holbein, he concludes :
" You have done well to confute in a pamphlet the opinion
that had been wickedly spread about that you favoured the
heresy of Carldstadt.* But, although I would gladly see some
day, if God grants you leisure, a treatise on this subject [the
Holy Eucharist] to confirm our faith, proceeding from that
heart of yours which is made to defend the truth, yet I am so
solicitous regarding the Hyperaspistes, that I trust you will take '
nothing to heart so as to call off your care and thought from
the finishing of that work. Farewell, dearest of all raortals,
Erasmus. From Greenwich, the 1 8th December, 1526. Yours,
with more than my whole heart, Thomas More." t Whether
* This refers to a book published by Erasmus in 1526 called Detectio
Pratigiarum, etc.
t Letter 334, in App. inter Epist. Erasmi. The date 1525 given by Le
Clerc is wrong, for the first part of Hyperaspistes was not published till
1526, nor the Detectio above referred to.

28o SIR THOMAS MORE.
or not the admonition of More was needed to stir up the zeal
of Erasmus, it was not thrown away. The second book of the
Hyperaspistes appeared in 1527. Luther and Erasmus were
for ever separated, and Luther never ceased lo denounce his
opponent as a free-thinker, an empty pedant, a man to be
avoided like the plague.
The accusation did not on that account cease to be made
by many Catholics that Luther had merely carried out the
principles of Erasmus, and boldly denied where Erasmus only
hinted doubts, that Luther hatched the egg laid by Erasmus ; *
yet Erasmus could now repudiate the charge with some force :
" They lie most impudently who say that this Lutheran confla
gration has been kindled by my writings, for no one has beeri
able to point out one condemned proposition which I have in
common with Luther. Collusion between me and Luther !
Yes, as Hector colluded with Achilles. Read my Diatribe (on
Free WIU) and Luther's answer, than which nothing can be
more hostile, and read also the two books of my Hyperaspistes
in reply to him. There are some whose only study it is to
gather out of my many treatises, some ofwhich I wrote when I
was young and when all was peaceable, and some not seriously,
whatever they can twist towards a suspicion of Lutheran doc
trines. Even this they do most irapudently and caluraniously.
But if they really side with the Sovereign Pontiff, how much
better would il be to select those things which show that I
differ from the paradoxes of Luther." +
But to return to England.
The anxiety felt by More at the spread of heresy and its
probable results was shared by the Bishop of London, Cuthbert
Tunstall. There existed between hira and More the closest
friendship and mutual admiration. They had acted together
in several embassies, as we have seen. On the subject of the
* The words are quoted by Erasmus himself.
+ ^/- 345, in App. The whole letter, to John Gacchus, a Franciscan,
is one of Erasmus' best. It was written from Basle in 1527.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 281
supremacy of the Holy See, Tunstall's views were erroneous,*
and led him to acquiesce in Henry's schism, though experience '
made him wiser, and he was not only reconciled with the
Church, but died in resistance to the renewal of the schism in
the first year of Elizabeth. But as regards Lutheranisra and
the denial of the sacraments and visible Church as taught by
Tindale, Barns, and the other English heretics, he was always
orthodox, and no one was more anxious to slop the spread of
heretical books. English books were being prinled on the con
tinent and energetically scattered in England. The very novelty
and startling nature of their denial of hitherto received behef,
and of their attack on ancient and universal practice, excited
men's curiosity, and won for them an attention quite dispropor
tioned to their intrinsic importance. As raodern evolutionist
theories, by giving a new explanation of the universe, and
overthrowing the old foundations of morality, have excited
the imagination far beyond the influence of their scientific
appeals to reason ; so did the sweeping negations of Luther,
Zwingle, and their followers fascinate the minds of the young,
and their satire on the clergy was greedily read by the irreligious
and discontented. It appeared to Tunstall and More that the
mischief being wrought by these books could nol be effectually
met either by measures of suppressions or by the learned
refutations published in Latin by professed theologians. Eng-
glish books written in a popular style, to defend Catholic
doctrines and expose the sophisms of the heretics, were
urgently needed ; and there was no man in England so fitted for
the task as More. Whether the ihought of More's devoting his
hfe to this work originated vrith him or with TunstaU, we
cannot know. In Tunstall's Register is the following document,
dated March, 1527, and addressed to Sir Thoraas More :
" Because you, most dear brother, are able to emulate 1
Demosthenes in our vernacular tongue no less than in Latin,!
* I judge firom his own MS. treatise, which will be quoted in a later
chapter.

282 SIR THOMAS MORE.
and are wont to be an ardent defender of CathoUc truth
whenever you hear it attacked, you cannot spend the occasional
hours that you can steal from your official duties better than in
composing in our own language such books as may show to
simple and unlearned men the cunning malice of the heretics,
and fortify them against these impious subverters of the
Church ". (The Bishop, therefore, by the powers received from
the Holy See, gives to Sir Thomas faculty to read the books of
heretics for their refutation.) " For it is of great help towards
victory to know thoroughly the plans of the enemy, what they
hold and whither they tend ; for if you go about to refute
whal they protest that they do not hold, you lose your pains.
Engage therefore courageously in this holy work, by which you
will benefit the Church of God, make for yourself an immortal
fame, and win eternal glory in heaven." *
Section II. Fruits of Zeal.
I. " The Dialogue."
More's first work is in the form of a dialogue, and in his
other books he refers lo il by this title. In Utopia, and in the
Latin book against Luther, there was an ingenious fiction as to
their coraposition ; so also is this. A friend of More's is
supposed to have sent a messenger, a young man studying at
one of the universities, and somewhat bitten with the new
opinions, lo consult More, who encourages him to speak out
quite freely his own difficulties, and to state as strongly as he
can whal he has heard said by others. This gives More an oppor
tunily of stating the Lutheran doctrines and objections as forcibly
as their maintainers could have themselves desired, and with
far more wit than the best of them possessed. More and
the raessenger begin by discussing the lawfulness and reason
ableness of troubling people for their religious belief or teaching.
They soon get into the question of the use of ima^s and
* Burnet, iv. p. 13 ; Wilkins, iii. 711.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 283
pilgrimages, and of praying to saints, then very prevalent topics.
Thus they are brought to discuss the truth of mira-6les, and at
last the possibility of miracles, and (I may say in passing)
Hume's famous argument is thoroughly anticipated and solved.
Thence tbey come to the criterion of miracles, and whether
they are worked by the devil to lead the Chufch into error.
This brings them to the possibility of the Church being
deceived, and the means provided by God to learn the truth,
to Scripture and its interpretation ; the lest of inspiration, and
the presence of the Holy Ghost in the visible Church. In
the third book much is said of Tindale's recent translation of
the New Testament into English, of its heretical bias. The
fourth book gives the history of Lulhefs own fall, of his self-
contradiction, and the results of his teaching.
More is supposed to write a full account of all this discussion
to the friend who sent him the messenger. Hence he uses
perpetually the phrases, Quoth he, Quoth I, and Quoth your
friend ; so that the book was popularly known as Quod he and
Quod I. The Dialogue, though redundant in words, as was
the style of the age, is never dull, and theological disputes are
enUvened by amusing illustrations and merry tales. When
Sir Thomas was told that the lightness of his style was brought
as an objection against him, he replied that the matter required
no defence : " For, as Horace saith, a man may sometimes say i
full sooth in game ; and one that is but a layman as I am, it /
may better haply become hira raerrily to tell his raind than/
seriously and solemnly to preach. And over this, I can scant]
believe that ' the brethren ' find any mirth in my books, for 1
have nol much heard that they very merrily read them." *
II. " Supplication of Souls."
The book called The Dialogue appeared in 1528, and Sir
Thomas soon found occupation for his pen in composing a
second controversial work, called The Supplication of Souls.
^' English Works, p. 927.

284 SIR THOMAS MORE.
This was an answer to The Supplication of Beggars, an incen
diary tract that appeared late in the same year, or early
in 1529.
Simon Fish, its author, was a member of the University of
Oxford, and a law student in London. Having publicly
ridiculed Wolsey, he fled inlo the low Countries, and became
intimate with some of the English exiles, and imbibed their
heresy. It was there he composed, in 1528, his Supplication
of the Beggars. Foxe gives two contradictory accounts of the
way in which this book was brought to the knowledge of the
king, and of the way in which the king secretly connived at
its propagation. Mr. Creighton thinks it probable that Henry
saw in it a convenient means of preparing men's minds for the
ecclesiastical revolutions he was already meditating in 1529.*
In any case it was widely spread through London before the
meeting of the parliaraent, which was to begin its work by
drawing up grievances against the Church, and to end in
formal schism and heresy.
Fish's book is vigorously written, and in a form likely lo take
the popular fancy. Its statistics of the number of parishes in
England, and the wealth of the Church, are acknowledged, to
have been greatly exaggerated; but such a defect would be
littie cared for by the men likely to read it. Its great literary
merit was that it was very short — it fills only fourteen pages of
the reprint of the Early English Text Society. An answer
can seldom be as short as an objection ; yet it seems a pity
that More never saw the advantage of connecting brevity wilh
wil. Fish had drawn up his booklet in the form of a petition,
addressed by the beggars of England lo the king, complaining
that the mendicant friars consumed what belonged by right to
the diseased, the aged, and the impotent. In the course of
the petition they allude lo the alms given to the friars to say
Masses for the dead, and deny the existence of purgatory.
* Dictionary of National Biography, Art. Fish.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 285
More's religious faith was outraged no less than his social
instincts. His answer is divided into two books, in the former
of which he examines the accuracy of the charges made against
the friars and the clergy in general, and shows how the prin
ciples on which the author demands the confiscation of eccle
siastical goods would involve the general plunder of the rich
by the poor. In the second book he defends the doctrine of
purgatory, and of suffrages for the dead.
The book must have been very quickly written, and perhaps
when More adopted his opponent's literary form and raade his
answer a Supplication of Souls he scarcely foresaw the incon
gruities into which he would be led as his book gradually
developed into a political and theological treatise. The souls
give a learned dissertation on the laws of mortmain, on the
value of the currency, and (for the refutation of the beggars'
calumnies) enter into all the details ofthe treatment and death of
a certain Richard Hun. Perhaps they could do all this belter
than the " foul unhappy sort of lepers and other sore people '
could have discussed economical problems and illustrated them
from the history of King Arthur and King John, as they do in
Fish's address to the king. But we are raiher startled when,
in More's pages, the souls begin to relate merry tales and lo
make jokes. In fact, in one place they go so far that they have
to apologise lo their readers : "Surely," they say, "we cannot
but here confess the truth, these nice and wanton words do not
very well with us ; but we must pray God and you to pardon
us, for, in good faith, his matter of monks' marriages is so
merry and so mad, that it were able to make one laugh that
Ueth in the fire ".* We are more easily reconcUed to political
discourse, for are we not Ustening to ancient legislators and
statesmen? As the parliament was about to meet, and the
news had reached purgatory that plots were being contrived
against the clergy, it was natural for these holy souls to give the
* English Works, p. 306.

286 SIR THOMAS MORE.
benefit of their experience : " Ye would peradventure ween,''
they say, " that the man (Simon Fish) would now devise some
good, wholesome laws for help of all these matters. Nay, he
will none thereof, for he saith that the clergy is stronger in the
parliament than the king hiraself. For in the higher house he
reckoneth that the spirituality is raore in number and stronger
than the temporality ; and in the common house he saith that
all the learned men of the realm, except the king's learned
Council, be feed with the Church to speak against the king's
crown and dignity, and therefore he thinketh the king unable
to make any law against the faults of the clergy. This beggars'
proctor would fain show hiraself a man of great experience, and
one that had great knowledge of the manner and order used in
the king's parliaments. But then he speaketh so savourly
hereof, that it well appeareth of his wise words he neither
canneth any skill thereof, nor never came in the house. For,
as for the higher house, first the king's own royal person alone
more than counterpoiseth ail the lords spiritual present with
• hirn and the temporal too. And over this the spiritual lords
can never in number exceed the lords temporal, but must needs
be far underneath them if it please the king. For His Highness
may call thither by his writ many more temporal lords at his
own pleasure. And, being as they be, there was never yet
seen that the spiritual lords banded themselves there as a
parly against the temporal lords ; but it hath been seen that
the thing which the spiritual lords have moved and thought
reasonable, the temporal lords have denied and refused, as
appeareth upon the motion made for the legitimation of the
children born before the marriage of their parents, wherein
albeit that the reforraation which the lords spiritual moved was
a thing that nothing pertained to their own commodity, and
albeit they laid also for their part the constitution and
ordinance of the Church, and the laws of other Christian
countries, yel could they not obtain against the lords temporal,
that nothing alledged to the contrary but their own wills.'' The

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 287
souls then go on to refute what had been said of the lower
house : " And surely if he had been in the common house as
some of us have been, he should have seen the spirituality not
gladly spoken for," etc.*
There is a great deal worth studying from a historical and
political point of view in this treatise. On its religious aspect
I will not here dwell ; but I may promise the reader that he
will find no dry theological treatise on sin and its punishraent.
More makes everything picturesque. The souls thus bewail
the care they gave before death for pompous funerals, and how
little they took heed of their real wants : " Much have we left
in our executors' hands, which would God we had bestowed
upon poor folk for our own souls and our friends' with our own
hands. Much have many of us bestowed upon rich raen in
gold rings and black gowns, much in many tapers and torches,
much in worldly pomp and high solemn ceremonies about our
funerals, whereof the brittle glory standeth us here, God wot, in
very liltle stead, but hath on the other side done us great dis
pleasure. For albeit that the kind solicitude and loving
diUgence of the quick, used about the burying of the dead, is
well allowed and approved afore the face of God ; yet much
superfluous charge used for boast and ostentation, namely,
devised by the dead before his death, is of God greatly mis
hked. And most especially the kind and fashion thereof, wherein
some of us have fallen, and many besides us that now lie
damned in hell. For some hath there of us, while we were in
health, not so much studied how we might die penitent and in
good Christian plight, as how we might be solemnly borne out
to burying, have gay and goodly funerals, wilh heralds at our
hearses, and offering up our helmets, setting up our escutcheon
and coat armours on the waU, though there never came harness
on our backs, nor never ancestor of ours ever bare arms before.
Then devised we some doctor to make a sermon at our Mass in
* English Works, p. 301.

288 SIR THOMAS MORE.
our month's raind, and there preach to our praise with some
fond fantasy devised of our name ; * and after Mass, much feast
ing, riotous and costly ; and finally, like madmen made we men
merry at our death and take our burying for a bride-ale. For
special punishment whereof, sorae of us have been by our evil
angels brought forth full heavily, in full great despite, to behold
our own burying, and to stand in great pain invisible among
the press, and made lo look on our carrion corpse carried out
wilh great pomp, whereof Our Lord knoweth we have taken
heavy pleasure." +
Much more of this treatise should I like to quote, but I must
be content wilh one short passage. The evil angels appointed
to punish the souls " convey us (say the souls) into our own
houses, and there double is our pain, wilh spite sometimes of
the self-same thing, which while we lived was half our heaven
to behold. There show they us our substance and our bags
stuffed with-gold, which, when we now see, we set much less by
thera than would an old man that found a bag of cherry stones
which he laid up when he was a child."
Even in the pathetic description given by the souls of their
forgetful relatives More's humour breaks out : " Yet we hear
sometimes our wives pray for us warmly ; for in chiding with
her second husband, to spite him withal, ' God have mercy,'
saith she, ' on my first husband's soul, for he was a wise and
honest man, far unlike you' And then marvel we much when
we hear thera say so well by us, for they were ever wont to tell
us far otherwise. "X
More had adopted this style to get his book read. He knew
the temper of the times, and probably had forecast in his mind
the avarice of the monarch, which glutted itself only a few
* Not only were More's contemporaries fond of rebuses, but the
Christian or surname was taken as a text of a funeral oration, and
tortured into silly moralities.
t English Works, p. 335.
X lb., p. 336.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 289
years later in the plunder of the monasteries. The following
passage contains his warning on this head : " He (Simon Fish)
reckoneth all the clergy idle because they labour not with their
hands till their faces sweat. But Our Saviour Christ reckoned
far otherwise in Blessed Mary Magdalen, whose idle sitting at
her ease and hearkening he accounted and declared for better
business than the busy stirring and walking about of His good
hostess Martha, which was yet of all worldly business occupied
about the best ; for she was busy about alms and hospitality,
and the guesting of the best Poor Man and raost gracious Guest
that ever was guested in this world. Now, if this cannol yet
content this good man, because of God's comraandment given
unto Adam, that he should eat his bread in the sweat of his
face, then would we fain wit whether himself never go to raeat
till he have wrought so sore with his hands that his face
sweateth. Howbeit he thinketh it peradventure enough for
him that he sitteth and studieth tiU he sweat in seeking out old
heresies and devising new. And verily, if he look that such
business should serve him for a discharge of hanS-labour, much
better may we think discharged thereof many good men whom
he would have beaten thereto, living their lives in fasting,
prayer, and preaching, and studying about the truth.
" But it is good to look betime what this beggars' proctor
meaneth by this commandment of hand-labour. For if he
confess that it bindeth nol every man, then is it laid to no pur
pose against the clergy, for there was small clergy when that
word was said to our first father, Adam. But now, if ye call it
a precept as he doth, and then wiU that it extend unto aU the
whole kind of man, then, though he say lillie now, he meaneth
lo go further hereafter. For if he might first have the clergy
pul out of their living, and all that they had clean taken from
them this pageant once played he would after make
another bill to the people against merchants, gentlemen, kings,
lords, and princes, and complain that they have all, and say
that they do nothing for it but live idle, and that they be com-
19

290

SIR THOMAS MORE.

manded in Genesis to live by the labour of their hands in the
sweat of their faces, as he sayeth by the clergy now.
Whoso wiU advise princes or lay people to take from the clergy
their possessions, alledging matters at large, as laying to their
charge that they live not as they should, nor use not well their
possessions, and that therefore it were well done to take them
frora them by force and dispose of them better. We
would give you counsel to look well what will follow. For he
shall not fail to find reasons enough that should please
the people's ears, wherewith he would labour to have lords'
lands and all honest men's goods to be pulled from them by
force, and distributed among beggars. We be content
that ye beUeve us not, but if it have so proved already by those
uplandish Lutherans that rose up in Almaine. "*
Simon Fish died of the plague about a year after the pubUca
tion ofhis book, and More teUs us that, before his illness "God
gave him such grace, that he repented and carae into the
Church again, and forsook and forswore all the whole bill of
those heresies ".f
III. CON^^UTATION OF TiNDALE'S ANSWER.
Fish had written that allthe abuses came because "the king's
chief judge (the chancellor) was always a spiritual man ".J He
lived long enough lo witness Wolsey's fall and a layman's eleva
tion to the dignity. The cares of that great office, far from
blunting More's zeal, sharpened it by bringing clearly and fre
quently before him the mischief that was being worked by the
spread of heresy. It was during his chancellorship that he
made time to write the most voluminous of all his works, his
confutation of Tindale's answer to his Dialogue. This work of
More's, including his answer to Friar Barns, is divided into nine
books, and would make three good octavo volumes. §
* English Works, p. 304. \Ib., p. 881.
X Reprint by Early English Text Society, p. 13.
§ It was brought out in two separate parts. The printer was More's
brother-in-law, John Rastell.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 29T
William Tindale's name is so prominent among the first
English Protestants, and his history so well known, that it is
needless to speak of it here. More's controversy with him is
pretty well summed up in the following passage, w'hich is of
special interest because Tindale threatened More with a bad
end for resisting the truth. More died at the block; Tindale
outlived him, but died at the stake.
" It liketh Tindale to liken me to Balaam, Pharaoh, and to
Judas too. Since the pith of all his process standeth in this
one point, that his heresies be the true faith, and that the
Catholic faith is false; that the holy days nor the fasting
days no man need to keep ; that the Divine services in the
church is all but superstition ; that the church and the ale
house is all one, saving for such holy preaching ; that raen have
no free' will of their own to do good nor ill; that to reverence
Christ's Cross or any saint's image is idolatry ; that to do any
good work, fast, give alms, or other, with intent the rather to
get heaven or to be the better rewarded there, is deadly sin
afore God and worse than idolatry ; to think that the Mass may
do men any good more than the priest hiraself were a false
belief ; a false faith also to pray for any soul ; great sin to
shrive us or to do penance for sin ; friars may well wed nuns
and must needs have wives ; and the sacraments of Christ raust
serve for Tindale's jesting stock. These be the truths that Tindale
preacheth. And because I call these truths heresies, therefore,
Tindale calleth me Balaam, Judas, and Pharaoh, and threateneth
me sore with the vengeance of God and with an evil death.
"What death each man shall die, that hangeth in God's
hands, and martyrs have died for God and heretics have died
for the devU. But since I know it very well, and so doth
Tindale too, that the holy saints dead before these days, since
Christ's tirae tiU our own, believed as I do, and Tindale's truths
be stark devilish heresies ; if God give me the grace lo ^ffer
for saying the same, I shall never in my right wit wish to die
better. And, therefore, since aU the matter standeth in this

292 SIR THOMAS MORE.
point alone, that if his heresies be the true faith, then I stand
in peril, and if they be a false faith I may be safe enough ; let
hira leave his sermon hardily for the while, and first go prove
his lies true, and then corae again and preach, and Friar
Luther also, and his leman with him too, and then may the
geese provide the fox a pulpit." *
IV. Letter against Frith.
Another of More's antagonists was a young man named John
Frith, who, after being educated at Henry VI.'s foundations al
Eton and Carabridge, had been made by Cardinal Wolsey a
junior canon of Cardinal College (afterwards Christ's Church),
Oxford. Having imbibed the new heresies and gol into
trouble, he went abroad in 1528 and married. When More's
book against Frith appeared. Frith wrote a book against the
doctrine of purgatory, in which he attempts to reply not only
to More, but to what the Bishop of Rochester (Fisher) and
John Rastell, More's brother-in-law, had written on the same
subject. He returned to England in 1532, was arrested upon a
warrant of the chancellor (More), and committed to the
Tower. He was allowed rauch liberty, and wrote a short
treatise against the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, of
which several copies were raade by his friends, three of which
came into the hands of Sir Thomas, to which he made an
answer. This answer is in the form of a letter to a friend,
who had sent him the first copy. It is about a dozen folio
pages, and is reraarkable amongst all his polemical writings for
its reserve and the almost compassionate tone in which he
treats the misguided youth who has dared to attack the most
august of raysteries. Frith had said that it was the phUosophical
irapossibility of accepting the literal sense of Our Lord's words
regarding the Eucharist that obliged him to interpret them in
j a figurative sense. More meets very candidly whatever argu-
* End of second book against Tindale. English Works, p. 443.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 293
ments he had advanced, but at the same time he says that if the
faith of the whole Catholic Church is to be set aside in this
way, "I were able myself to find out [i.e., to invent] fifteen
new sects in one forenoon, that should have as much probable
hold of Scripture as this heresy has ". *
Frith had compared the Holy Eucharist lo a ring given by a
husband to his wife for a remembrance, when going to a far
country. More aUows the comparison, but adds that Frith
himself is like " a man to whom a bridegroom had delivered
a goodly gold ring with a rich ruby therein, to deliver over to
his bride for a token, and then he would like a false shrew,
keep away that gold ring and give the bride in the stead thereof
a proper ring of a rush,1" and tell her that the bridegroora
would send her no better ; or else like one that when the bride
groom had given such a gold ring to his bride for a token,
would tell her plain and make her believe that the ring were
but copper or brass to minish the bridegroom's thanks ".J
V. " The Apology ".
After More had resigned the chancellorship he wrote a book
called The Apology. Certain things had been objected against
his writings. One was their extreme length. He replies that
" every way seemeth long to him that is weary ere he begin,
but I find some men again, to whom the reading is so far from
tedious, that they have read the whole book over thrice, and
some that make tables thereof for their own remembrance.
But the objectors will, if they be reasonable men, consider in
themselves that it is a shorter thing and sooner done lo write
heresies than to answer them. For the most foolish heretic in
' English Works, p. 836.
t Pretended or mock marriages were sometimes raade with rush-
rings (Brand).
X lb., p. 835. More did not imraediately publish this letter, but he had it
printed for distribution, to those who had read Frith's tract {English
Works, p. 904). A year later he gave it to the public.

294

SIR THOMAS MORE.

a town may write more false heresies in one leaf than the
wisest man in the whole worid can well and convenientiy by
reason and authority confute in forty. * But greatly can I
not marvel, though these eyangeljeaLirethren think my works
too long. For everything think they loo long that aught is.
Our Lady's psalter [the rosary] think they too long by all the
Ave Maries and some good piece of the Creed too. Then the
Mass think they too long by the secrets, and the canon, and all
the coUects wherein mention is made either of saints or souls.
Instead of a long porteous [breviary], a short primer shall
serve them ; and yet the primer think they too long by aU
Our Lady's matins. And the seven psalms think they long
enough without the litany ; and as for dirge or commemoration
for their friends' souls, all that service think they too long by
altogether." t
Another complaint had been raade that More used opprob
rious words, and the example was quoted against him of an
anonymous Catholic writer caUed the Pacifier, who treated his
opponents gentiy. More repUes : " I cannot say nay, but that
is very truth. Howbeit every man hath not the like wit, nor
like inventions in writing. For he findeth many proper ways
of uttering evil matter in good words, which I never thought
upon, but am a simple plain body, much like the Macedonians,
for whom Plutarch writeth that King Philip, their master, made
a reasonable excuse. For when they weire in the war, some of
their enemies fied from their own king and carae inlo King
Philip's service against their own country. With whom when
the Macedonians fell sometimes at words, as il often happeneth
among soldiers, the Macedonians in spite would call them
traitors. Whereupon they coraplained to King Philip, and
made the matter sore and grievous, that whereas they had not
only left their own native country but did also fight against it
and help to destroy it for the love and service they had towards
* Englfsk Works, p. 847. t lb., p. 848.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 295
him, his own people letted not, in anger and despite, lo call
them false traitors. Whereupon King Philip answered them :
' Good fellows, I pray you be not angry with my people, but
have palience. I am sorry that their manner is no better.
But I wis ye know them well enough ; their nature is so plain,
and their utterance so rude, that they cannot call a horse but a
horse.' And in good faith, Uke those good folk am I. For^
though Tindale and Frith in their writings call me a poet, it is
but of their own courtesy, undeserved on my part. For I can
neither so much poetry, nor so much rhetoric neither, as to
find good nanies for evU things, but even as the Macedonians
could not call a traitor but a traitor, so can I not call a fool
but a fool, nor a heretic but a heretic." *
But he then compares seriously his own freedom of speech
with the abuse these man poured out on the whole Cathohc
Church. " For they say that this eight hundred years all the
corps of Christendom hath been led out of the right way from
God, and have lived all in idolatry and died in the service of
the devU, because they have done honour lo Christ's Cross,
and prayed unto saints, and reverenced their relics, and
honoured their images, and been baptised in Latin, and taken
matrimony for a sacrament, and used confession and done
penance for sins, and prayed for all Christian souls, and been
anealed in their deathbed, and have taken their housel after the
rite and usage of the Church, and have set more by the Mass
than they should do, and beheved that it was a sacrifice, a
host, and an oblation, and that it should do them good ; and
have believed that there was neither bread nor wine in the
Blessed Sacrament of the altar, but Instead of bread and wine
the very Body and Blood of Christ.
"And these things, say Tindale and Barns both, be very
false belief and great damnable sin in the doing, and so daran
they to the devil the whole Catholic Church, both temporal and
* English Works, p. 864. (Apology, ch. ix.)

296 SIR THOMAS MORE.
spiritual, and (except heretics) leave not one man for God's
part this eight hundred years past, by their own limitation; and
of truth, if these false heresies were true, not in the other seven
hundred before that neither.
" Now, when that against all the whole Catholic Church, both
that now is and that ever before hath been from the Apostle's
pays hitherto, both temporal and spiritual, laymen and reUgious,
and against all that good is, saints, ceremonies, service of God,
the very sacraraents and all, and most against the best, that is
to wit, the precious Body and Blood of Our Saviour Himself
lin the holy sacraraent of the altar, these blasphemous heretics
in their ungracious books, so villainously jest and rail ; were
not a man, ween you, very far overseen, and worthy to be
counted discourteous, that would, in writing against their
heresies, presurae without great reverence lo rehearse their
worshipful names ?
" If any of them use their words at their pleasure, as evil
and as villainous as they list, against myself, I am content to
forbear any requiting thereof, and give them no worse words
again, than if they speak me fair. For all shall be one to me,
or rather the worse the better. For the pleasant oil of heretics
cast upon raine head can do my mind no pleasure, but contrari
wise, the worse that such folk write of me, for hatred that they
bear to the Catholic Church and- jaith, the greater pleasure, as
for my own part, they do me. But surely their raiUng against
all other I purpose not to bear so patiently, as lo forbear to
let them hear some part of like language as they speak. How
beit utterly to raatch them therein, I neither can though I
would, nor will neither Ihough I could ; but am content, as I
needs raust, to give them therein the raastery, wherein to raatch
thera were more rebuke than honesty." *
More had also been accused that he treated Tindale, Barns,
and Frith, as if they were wanting in talent and learning,
To this, he repUes that he had never called in question their
* English Works, p. 865.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 297
ability, but asserted that it appeared to small advantage in
their works, which was probably owing to the badness of their
cause. If they were really as learned and clever as their
followers boasted, it must be admitted that God had shown
His indignation in causing them lo write so fooUshly ; and in
this, he adds, they have been treated with more severity than
the fallen angels, who in their fall retain their natural gifts.
This gives occasion to a bit of delicate banter about devils,
ladies, and heretics, which is so characteristic of More's genius,
that I must transcribe it : —
"Father Alphonse,* the Spanish friar, told me that the devUs
be no such deformed, evilfavoured creatures as men imagine
them, but they be in mind proud, envious, and cruel. And
he bade me, that if I would see a very right image of a fiend,
I should no more but even look upon a very fair woman that
hath a very shrewd,t fell, cursed mind. And when I showed
him that I never saw none such, nor wist not where I might
any such find, he said he could find four or five ; but I cannot
believe him. Nor verily no raore can I believe that the fiends
be like fair shrewd women, if there were any such. Nor, as
the world is, it were not good that young men should ween so,
for they be so full of courage, that were the fiends never so
cursed, if they thought them like fair women, they would never
fear to adventure upon them once. Nor, to say the truth,
no more can I believe neither that the damned spirits have
all their natural gifts as whole and as perfect as they had before
their fall. But surely if they have, then God halh on Tindale,
Barns, and Frith, and those olher heretics, raore showed His
vengeance in some part than He did upon the devil. For in
good faith God halh, as it seemeth, from these folk taken away
the best part of their wits."J
* Perhaps Alphonso de Castro, the emperor's confessor and a learned
writer — but more probably another Father Alphonsus, also a minorite,
who was confessor to Queen Katharine.
t Shrewd — i.e., shrewish, malicious.
X English Works, p. 863.

298 SIR THOMAS MORE.
The Apology was written by More, not so much to defend
his own polemical style as lo answer accusations that had been
made against the clergy as regards their treatment of heretics.
This had been done especiaUy by the writer, who is called by
More the Pacifier, because his professed object was to allay the
quarrel that was springing up between the clergy and the laity.
But his raode of pacifying was, according to Sir Thomas, like
that of a man who should step in between two combatants,
and putting one of them gently back with his hand, should
coraraence to buffet the olher about the face; "some men
would say (I suppose), that he had as lieve his enemy were
let alone with him, and thereof abide the adventure, as
have such a friend step in to part them''.* Though the
Pacifier raust have been a clergyman, yet it is the clergy who
receive all the buffets at his hand, and that too without
distinct charges, but with repetition of every kind of malicious
gossip, brought in with a "Some say'' or "They say" Of
the principal of these accusations I have given some account
in the preceding chapter.
VI. " Debellation of Salem and Bizance"
More's Apology came out in the spring of 1533. He heard
that several opponents were busily engaged in elaborating
answers, to which he thus laughingly refers : " Like as a
husband, whose wife were in her travail, hearkeneth and would
fain hear good tidings, so, since I so much heard of so sore
travail of so many, I longed of their long labour to see some
good speed, and some of those fair babes born. And when
these great hills had thus travailed long, from the week afl:er
Easter till as much afOre Michaelmas, the good hour came on
as God would that one was brought a-bed with sore labour at
last delivered of a dead mouse. The mother is yet but green,
good soul, and hath need of good keeping ; women wot what
caudle servelh against her after-throes."t It must be pardoned
* Apology, ch. xiii., English Works, p. 872. t lb., p. 930.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 299
More's adversaries if they made a sorry pun upon his name,
and called him " Master Mock,"* for certainly all men cannot
relish jests at their own expense as More is said to have done.
The " dead mouse " to which he here alludes was written by
the Pacifier, or Sir John Somesay, as More calls him, and
whdm he had handled rather sharply in his Apology. His book
was in the form of a dialogue, and called Salem and Bizance.
In less than a month More's answer was prinled, called The
Debellacion of Salem and Bizance. I need here say no more
than that il should be consulted by those who would wish lo
see the treatise of a clever man, and learned lawyer, on the
ancient ecclesiastical and civil processes against heresy.
VII. Answer to "Supper of the Lord"
Nor wiU I delay upon the last of the series of More's contro
versial works, his answer to a book called The Supper of the
Lord. After the death of Frith, a book of his on the
Eucharist, written in answer to More's letter on the sarae sub
ject, was being printed on the Continent, and was daily expected
in England in August, iSSS,"!" when another book appeared,
without author's name, but written, as More thought, either by
WiUiam Tindale or George Jay. J More Intended his answer
to consist of two parts, but the troubles that fell on him early
in 1534 prevented his composing the second part. The first
is in five books, and is mainly a scriptural exposition of the
sixth chapter of Sl. John's Gospel. On no subject could he
write more gladly and feelingly than on that raystery which had
been so dear to him from his boyhood.
Section III. Some Remarks.
I. Among the various points of Christian faith controverted in
* English Works, p. 1037.
+ lb., p. 1046.
X The author is called by More " The Masker " He is now known to
have been Tindale.

300 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the sixteenth century, there is one of which there is littie
mention in Sir Thomas More's English works, one which he
may be said to have studiously avoided — that of the supremacy
of the Roman Pontiff; and yet for this, and not for any of
those articles on which he had written so copiously, was he
destined to die. We have seen how clearly he stated his belief
in his book against Luther in 1523. His behef had not varied
"in the six or seven years devoted to the defence of the Church
in the English tongue; but there were good reasons for
avoiding this topic.
It must be remembered that, during the whole of this
period, Henry VIII. was the main obstacle to the spread of the
Lutheran heresy in England. Wilh the exception (perhaps) of
conniving at Fish's paraphlet — the Supplication of Beggars —
Henry was more zealous even than the bishops in suppressing
heretical books. It was therefore of great iraportance to More
in no way to irritate or alienate him. Now, although the king
had nol coraraitted any overt act of formal schism while More
was writing, he was engaged on his divorce, which brought him
into collision wilh the Sovereign Pontiff. It was simple
prudence in More to keep aloof the question of the nature and
extent of the Pope's authority, until the passions of the king
were again calmed, and would allow him lo lake up his old
position as the foremost champion of the Pope in Europe.
It has been said by sorae that Sir Thomas More did nol
consider the supremacy of the Pope as being essential to the
Cathohc Church. The only ground for this assertion is his
own remark that he made no mention of the Pope in his de
finition of the Church. Tindale, professing to answer More's
Dialogue, placed the following words as the titie of one of his
chapters : " Whether the Pope and his sect be Christ's Church
or no " In his reply to Tindale, More writes as foUows : " I
have, in places enough, well and plainly declared, that I call
the Church of Christ 'the Catholic known Church of aU
Christian nations, neither gone out nor cut off' And albeit

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 301
all these nations now do and long have recognised and acknow
ledged the Pope, not as the Bishop of Rorae but as the suc
cessor of St. Peter, to be their chief spiritual governor under
God, and Christ's vicar on earth ; yet did I never put the Pope
for part of the definition of the Church, defining the Church to
be ' the coramon known congregation of all Christian nations
under one head, the Pope' Thus did I never define the
Church, but purposely declined therefrom, because I would not
intricate and entangle the matter with two questions at onCe
since if he be the necessary head he is included in the
name of the whole body, and whether he be or nol, if it be
brought in question, were a matier to be treated and disputed
beside."* It is a strange thing that, because a writer refuses to assume
a point in carrying on a controversy, or lo compUcate a con
troversy by Introducing a matter that will entail dispute, and is
therefore content with a serviceable definition abstracting from
the point in question, he should be represented as adraitling
that the point is unessential.
The words Papist and Popish had been very early imported
into the Lutheran controversy, and were used where there was
nol the most distant reference to the Pope. More calls this a
mere spiteful nickname, since the matters denied by the heretics
were held unanimously by the ancient doctors whora they had
nol yet learnt to call Papists. If, however, they are willing to
Include those holy doctors under the narae of Papist, which
they count odious, no wise man will be ashamed of it.t When
the Masker taunted More with his zeal " to stablish the Pope's
kingdom," More replied : "What great cause should raove me
to bear that great affection to the Pope as to feign all these
things for stablishment of his kingdom? He thinketh that
every man knoweth'already that the Pope is my godfather, and
goeth about to make me a cardinal. "J Such answers were
* English Works, p. 615. f lb., p. noi. X lb., p. 1120.

302 SIR THOMAS MORE.
sufficient for such writers and for the occasion. What senti
ments More entertained on the Divine government of the
Church will be seen in a future chapter.
2. It would be a curious and interesting study to gather from
the various writings of Sir Thoraas More, Latin and English, what
he considered to be the principal causes of the rapid spread of
heresy in his day, in England and elsewhere. Such a study,
however, would belong raiher to the history of his times than
to that of his life. Two passages I am about to quote bear
on this subject, but I choose them rather to iUustrate his amus
ing style and his insight into characler : —
" A certain priest, as it was said, after that he fell from the
study of the law, wherein he was a proctor and partiy well
learned, unto the study of Scripture, he was very fearful and
scrupulous, and began at the first to fall into such a scrupulous
holiness, that he reckoned himself bound so straitly to keep
and observe the words of Christ after the very letter, that be
cause our Lord biddeth us when we will pray enter into
our chamber and shut the door to us, he thought it there
fore sin to say his service abroad, and always would be sure
to have his chamber door shut unto him when he said his
matins. Howbeit, I tell you not this thing for any great hurt
in the raan, for it was more peevish and painful than evUand
sinful. But surely men say that, in conclusion, with the weari
ness of that superstitious fear and servile dread, he fell as far to
the contrary ; and under pretext of love and liberty waxed so
drunk of the ' new musl ' of lewd lightness of mind and
vain gladness of heart, which he took for spiritual consolation,
that whatsoever himself listed to take for good, that thought he
forthwith approved by God. And so framed himself a faith,
framed himself a conscience, framed hhn self a devotion, wherein
him list, and wherein him liked he set himself at liberty.*
* Of scrupulosity leading to license More had a domestic example in
Roper. Luther's revolt and whole systera of theology may be traced to
the same cause. Latimer's history is another illustration.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 303
" ' And ifit so were,' quoth your friend, 'then ye see, lo ! what
cometh of this saying of service.'
'"Of saying service!' quoth I; 'that is rauch like as at
Beverley late, when much of the people being at a bear-baiting,
the church feU suddenly down at evensong time, and over
whelmed some that then were in it ; a good fellow, that after
heard the tale told, "Lo!" quoth he, "now may you see what
it is to be at evensong, when ye should be at the bear baiting "
Howbeit, the hurt was not there in being at evensong, but in
that the church was falsely wrought. So was in hira or any
man else none harm but good in saying of Divine service, but
the occasion of harm is in the superstitious fashion that their
own folly joinelh thereunto, as some think they say it not, but
if they say every psalm twice.'
" 'In faith,' quoth your friend, 'then if I were as he, I would
mumble it up apace, or else say none at all.'
'"That were as evU,' quoth I, 'on the other side. There is a
mean may serve between both.'
" ' Yea,' quoth he, 'but wot ye what the wife said that com
plained to her gossip of her husband's frowardness. She said
her husband was so wayward that he would never be pleased.
For if his bread, quoth she, be dough-baked, then is he angry.
Marry, no marvel, quoth her gossip. Marry, and wot ye
what, gossip? quoth she, and if I bake it all to hard coals,
yet is he not content neither, by Saint James. No, quoth
her gossip, ye should bake it in a mean. In a mean! quoth
she, marry, I cannot happen on it. And so in a pair of
matins,* it is much work to happen on the mean. And then
to say them too short is lack of devotion, and to say thera too

* A popular use of the word pair. They said a pair of beads, of stairs,
of cards, where we say a string, a flight, a pack. A pair of matins, either
because matins comprises many psalms and prayers, or because in addi
tion to matins of the day, matins of Our Lady or of the dead were often
recited.

304 SIR THOMAS MORE.
seriously is somewhat superstitious ; and therefore the best way
were, to my mind, to say none at all.'
" ' Yea,' quoth I, ' but then is God as wayward a husband, as
ye spake of, that wiU neither be content with His bread burned
to coals, nor dough-baken neither ? '
" 'By Our Lady,' quoth he, 'but be He contented or nol, I
ween He halh much dough-baken bread among. For the
matins, I tell you, be in some places sungen faster tlian I can
say them.'
"'Peradventure,' quoth I; 'so were it need, for if they should
sing matins no faster than ye say them, they should I ween
sing very few matins in a year.'
" 'In faith,' quoth he, 'and some that say them make rae lo
doubt much, whether the bees in their hives use to say matins
among them ; for even such a buzzing they make.'
" ' Surely,' quoth I, ' that is as true as it is evil done.' " *
Frora the above it will be seen that Sir Thoraas was nol in
clined to hide the abuses or deficiencies on the Catholic side.
Let us hear now whal he thought of the Protestant preaching
of his day. He had been saying that the new teachers in
Saxony denounced all bodily affliction as mere superstition.
Even " heaviness of heart and weeping for our sins, this they
reckon shame almost and womanish peevishness. ' Howbeit
(thanked be God) their women wax there now so mannish, that
they be not so peevish, nor so poor in spirit, but that they can
sin on as men do, and be neither afraid, nor ashamed, nor
weep for their sins at aU. And surely I have marvelled much
the less ever since that I heard the manner of their preachers
there. For as you remember, when I was in Saxony.t these
matters were in a manner but in a mammering, nor Luther was
nol then wed yel, nor religious men out of their habit, but
* English Works, p. 208.
t More never was in Saxony. He is putting these words in the mouth
of a supposed Hungarian. The sermon described by More must have
been heard by hiraself in England.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 305
suffered were those that would be of the sect freely to preach
what they would unto the people.
" And forsooth I heard a reUgious man myself, one that had
been reputed and taken for very good, and which, as far as the
folk perceived, was of his own living somewhat austere and
sharp. But his preaching was wonderful — methink I hear
him yet — his voice was so loud and shrill, his learning less than
mean. But whereas his matter was much part against fasting,
and all affliction for any penance, which he called men's inven
tions, he cried ever out upon them to keep well the laws of
Christ, let go their peevish penance, and purpose then to mend,
and seek nothing to salvation but the death of Christ. ' For
He is our justice, and He is our Saviour, and our whole satis
faction for all our deadly sins. He did full penance for us all
upon His painful Cross, He washed us there all clean with the
water of His sweet side, and brought us out of the devU's
danger with His dear precious blood. Leave, therefore, leave,
I beseech you, these inventions of men, your foolish Lenten
fasts, and your peevish penance, minish never Christ's thank,
nor look to save yourself. It is Christ's death, I tell you, that
must save us all ; Christ's death I tell you yet again, and not
your own deeds. Leave your own fasting, and lean to Christ
alone, good Chrisiian people, for Christ's dear bitter Passion.'
" Now, so loud and so shrill he cried Christ in their ears,
and so thick became forth with Christ's bitter Passion, and
that so bitterly spoken, with the sweat dropping down his
cheeks, that I marvelled not though I saw the poor women
weep, for he made my own hair stand upon my head. And
with such preaching were the people so broughi in, that some
feU to break their fasts on the fasting days, not of frailty or of
malice first, but almost of devotion, lest they should take from
Christ the thank of His bitter Passion. But when they were
awhile nuzzeUed in that point first, they could abide and endure
after many things more, with which had he then begun they
would have pulled him down. God amend that man, whatso-
20

3o6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
ever he be, and God keep all good folk from such manner of
preachers ! Such one.preacher much more abuselh the name
of Christ and of His bitter Passion, than five hundred hazarders
that in their idle business swear and forswear themselves by
His holy bitter Passion at dice. They carry the minds of the
people from the perceiving of their craft, by the continual
naming of the name of Christ; and crying His Passion so
shrill into their ears, they forget that the Church hath ever
taught them that all our penance without Christ's Passion were
not worth a pease." *
3, After the varied examples given in this chapter and else
where, no minute criticism can be necessary as to Sir Thomas
More's literary style. But as I could only illustrate his work
by detached fragraents, I will conclude with one or two general
remarks. Not one ofhis treatises is cast in a scientific form.
They were intended, not as Burnet says, for " the rabble," but
for the gentry of England. They are never merely didactic.
The dialogue was More's favourite form, a preference he had
probably derived from his study of Plato. In his first English
controversial work, the Quoth He and Quoth I, as well as In
his last devotional treatise, his Comfort against Tribulation, the
speakers are fictitious and the style is very lively. In the other
works the authors whom he is controverting are his partners
in the dialogue ; for he does nol merely refer to their arguments
or give their substance, he quotes them in full. It is greatly
owing to this that his treatises run to so great a length. But
no one could complain that he was misrepresented, or even
that his book was suppressed, since it appeared again in More's
pages, though accompanied by its antidote.
4. Another matter that could scarcely be gathered from the
fragments I have quoted is More's deep learning in Holy
Scripture. We have seen in his letter to Dorpius, written, be
it remembered, some years before Luther's first appearance as
* English Works, p. 1175.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 307
a reformer, how eagerly More upheld the study of Holy
Scripture as the most fruitful occupation of a theologian. It
had been his favourite study from his boyhood, and he was
engaged on a commentary on the Gospel when his writing
materials were taken from him in the Tower. On the other hand,
nothing pained him more than to see souls deluded by fair but
false pretences ; lo see their reverence for Our Lord and His
sacred Passion, and their belief in the inspiration of Holy
Scripture — a reverence and a belief derived solely from the
Holy Church — used as weapons against herself, by her own
revolted and ungrateful priests. This consideration is very im
portant in judging of Sir Thomas More's character and action,
since he has been often represented as an enemy of the Bible
or of its diffusion, because he concurred in the suppression of
Tindale's erroneous translation. His genuine sentiments may
be seen from the following passages : —
" Holy Scripture is the highest and best learning that any
man can have, if one take the right way in the learning. It is,
as a good holy saint saith, so marveUously tempered, that a
mouse may wade therein, and an elephant be drowned therein.
For there is no man so low, but if he will seek his way with the
staff of his faith in his hand, and hold that fast and search the
way therewith, and have the old holy fathers also for his guides,
going on with a good purpose and a lowly heart, using reason
and refusing no good learning, with caUing of God for wisdom,
grace, and help, that he may weU keep his way and follow his
good guides, then shall he never fall in peril, but well and
surely wade through, and come to such end of his journey as
himself would well wish. But surely if he be as long as
Longinus, and have a high heart, and trust upon his own wit,
look he never so lowly that setteth all the old holy fathers at
nought, that fellow shall not fail to sink over the ears and
drown. And of all wretches worst shall he walk, that forcing
litrie * of the faith of Christ's Church, cometh to the Scripture
* Makmg but slight account of.

¦1

308 SIR THOMAS MORE.
of God to look and try therein whether the Church believe
right or not. For either doubteth he whether Christ teach His
Church true or else whether Christ teacheth it at all or not.
And then he doubteth whether Christ in His words did say
true, when He said He would be wilh His Church to the end
of the world." *
Elsewhere he writes of the misuse of Scripture by the
preachers of his day : —
" I have known right good wits that have set all other learn
ing aside, save the study of Scripture, partly for sloth, partly for
pride, which affections their inward secret favour to them
selves cloaked under the pretext of simplicity and good
Christian devotion. But in a little while after, the damnable
spirit of pride, that unaware to themselves lurked in their
hearts, hath begun to put out his horns and show himself.
For then have they longed, under the praise of Holy Scripture,
to set out to show their own study. Which, because they
would have seem the more to be set by, they have first fallen
to the dispraise and derision of all other disciplines. And
because, in speaking or preaching of such common things as all
Christian men knew, they could not seem excellent, therefore,
marvellously they set out paradoxes and strange opinions
against the coramon faith of Christ's whole Church. And thus
once proudly persuaded a wrong way, they take the bridle in
the teeth and run forth like a headstrong horse, that all the world
cannol pluck them back. But, with sowing sedition and
setting forth of errors and heresies, and spicing their preaching
with rebuking of priesthood and prelacy, for the people's
pleasure, they turn many a man to ruin, and themselves also.
And then the devil deceiveth them in their blind affections.
They take for good zeal to the people their malicious envy, and
for a great virtue their ardent appetite to preach, wherein they
have so great pride for the people's praise, that preach I ween
* English Works, p. 162.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY.

309

they would, though God would with His own mouth command
them the contrary.
"And some have I seen, which, when they have for their
perUous -preaching been by their prelates prohibited to preach,
have proceeded on stUl. And for maintenance of their dis
obedience have amended the matier wilh a heresy, boldly and
stubbornly defending that, since they had cunning lo preach,
they were by God bound to preach, and that no raan, nor no
la\#that was made or could be made, had any authority to for
bid them; and this they thought sufficiently proved by the
words of the Aposties : ' We must obey God rather than men '.
As though these men were Apostles, now specially sent by God
to preach heresies and sow seditions among Chrisiian men.
" One of this new kind of preachers, being demanded why
that he used to say in his sermons that now-a-days men preached
not weU the gospel, answered that he thought so because he
saw not the preachers persecuted, nor no strife nor business
arise upon their preaching, which things he said and wrote was
the fruit of the gospel, because Christ said : ' I am not corae to
send peace into the world but the sword ' Was not this a
worshipful understanding, that because Christ would make a
division among infidels, from the remnant of them to win some,
therefore these apostles would sow some cockle of dissension
among the Christian people, whereby Christ might lose some
ofthem?"* It had been the contention of Luther when asked whence
he got his Bible, except from the Church, that the visible
Church had indeed been divinely and infallibly guided to dis
tinguish between inspired and uninspired writings, to coUect
and to preserve the written word of God. Sir Thomas had
replied that by the same divine guidance she distinguishes
between divine and human traditions, divine sacraments and
human ceremonies, and especially that if she can know which
*Ib., p. 150.

3IO SIR THOMAS MORE.
is the true Scripture she must know which is the true sense of
Scripture, since Our Lord wishes to preserve His Church, not
from erring in one particular way, but from erring at all.*
This argument he pursues at great length in his EngUsh works ;
but he puts it all in a short. And epigrammatic form in the fol
lowing words : " Since ye reckon Christ none otherwise present
with His Church than in [i.e., by means of] Holy Scripture,
doth He give His Church the right understanding of Holy
Scripture or not? 'What if he do not?' quoth he. 'Ma^,'
quoth I, ' then yourself seeth well, that they were as well with
out. And so should the Scripture stand them in as good
stead, as a pair of spectacles should stand a bhnd friar.' " t
I will conclude this notice of More's controversial writings by
the well-weighed judgment of one of the greatest of controversial
theologians, Thomas Stapleton : —
" In the English works of More, which I read through for
the most part thirty years ago, I found him most thoroughly
versed in the Holy Scriptures, and not unfamiliar with the
Fathers and even with scholastic theology. He quotes, not
frequently indeed, but appositely when necessary, Augustine,
Jerome, Chrysostora, Cyril, Hilary, Bernard, Gerson. He
hiraself, when placed on his defence, affirmed that for sevenj
years he had carefully read the Fathers to know their teaching
as lo the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. And though he was
then intent only on one subject, who can doubt how many
things a man of such talent and marvellous memory would note
in passing regarding our present heresies ? Running my eye
lately over many parts of his works, I have noticed that he had
well studied dogmatic theology, so that when he touches on
grace, free-will, merit, the nature and acts of faith, charity or
other virtues, on original sin, even on predestination, he so
manages his pen, and writes according to the rules of true
* Responsio ad Lutherum, Lib. i. cap. 9.
f English Works, p. 147.
X The printed letter has seven, the original MS. ten.

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 3II
theology, that a professed theologian could hardly do it more
accurately and fitly.
"A proof that he studiously read St. Thomas is in a fact
related by John Harris, his secretary. A book by some heretic,
which had just been printed, was brought to More, and he read
it as he was being rowed from his house to London. After a
little he pointed with his finger to some places and said to
Harris : ' See, the arguments of this rascal are precisely the
objections placed by St. Thomas in such an article of the
second question of his second part of the Summa. But the
villain says nothing about the solutions made by the holy
doctor to the objections.' I myself have seen a certain dis
putation between More and Father Alphonsus, a minorite, the
confessor of Queen Catharine, in which the former maintains
the opinion of Scotus about attrition and contrition, as more
safe and more probable, against the opinion of Occam ; so that
one cannot but marvel to see how a man, who throughout his
life was immersed in civil and political matters, and was sO'
excellently versed in profane literature, had not merely dipped
into theological and even scholastic questions, but made him
self master of them." *
More's controversy with his pen in defence of the Catholic
faith came to an end at Christmas, 1533. Henceforth we have
to follow him in a controversy of a very different nature, not
with heretics and communists, but with the " Defender of the
Faith,'' and the despotic master of England. One matter con
nected with these writings must be mentioned in conclusion.
Sir Thomas More's labours were in all respects disinterested.
It is not easy to discover what were the relations in the first
century after the invention of printing between authors and
their publishers. It would seem, however, that the latter, who
were also printers, binders, and booksellers, took all the cost
and all the profit. They left the author a certain number of
copies,- which he might present to his friends and especially to
* Vita, cap. 4.

312 SIR THOMAS MORE.
his patrons. In return for a dedication or the presentation of
a book, the author would sometimes receive a gift in money,
an office, or a benefice. There are no dedications prefixed to
More's English works. It was, however, put about that More
had become a wealthy man by means of his writings. In his
Apology he enters on this matter fully, showing how smaU was
his incorae from land or other source ; and that, except from
the royal grants or salaries belonging to his offices, " not one
groat " of his yearly revenue had come to him since he wrote
his first book. He continues: "But then say the brethren
that I have taken great rewards in ready money of divers of the
clergy" He allows that a liberal offer had been made, " but
<he says) I dare take God and the clergy to record, that they
could never fee me with one penny thereof ; but as I plainly
told them I would rather have cast their money into the
Thames than take it. For albeit they were good men and
honourable, yet look I for my thanks of God that is their
better, and for whose sake I take the labour and not for
theirs. AUhough they (the heretics) should call me
Pharisee for the boast, and Pelagian for my labour, I am not
fully so virtueless, but that of mine own natural disposition,
without any special peculiar help of grace thereto, I am both
over proud and over slothful also, to be hired for money to take
half the labour and business in writing, that I have taken in
this gear since I began." *
His son-in-law gives us further details. The clergy agreed
to make up a sum of four or five thousand pounds at the least.
The Bishops of Durham (Tunstall), Bath (Clark), and Exeter
{Voysey), were charged to convey this present, and pressed it
on him; on his refusal, they urged him to bestow it on his
wife and children. It was all to no purpose, and the money
was restored to the subscribers. t
* Apology, ch. X. ; English Works, p. 867.
t Roper's Notes, xiv. Sir J. Mackintosh remarks that " ;£5ooo was
a hundred times the amount of his income ; and according to the rate of
interest at that time would have yielded him £560 a year"

ENGLISH CONTROVERSY. 313
This honourable testimonial had been offered probably soon
after the resignation of the chancellorship in the summer of
1532. Still more honourable to himself was his own conduct
when chancellor, as related by Roper. The water-bailiff of
London, who had formerly been in his service, heard certain
merchants — probably those trafficking with Germany, and who
were infested with Lutheranisra — railing against More. He
made it known to the chancellor, and begged him to punish
their malice. Sir Thomas replied: "Why, Mr. Bailiff, would
you have me punish them by whom I receive more benefit
than by you that be my friends ? Let them, in God's name,
shoot never so many arrows at me ; as long as they do not hit
me, what am I the worse ?"*
. A man who would neither receive recompense from his
friends, nor resent injury from his enemies, was a_aiirthy
champion of theJDatholicfaith. * Roper, n. viii.

CHAPTER XVL
FIRST TROUBLES.
THE subject of the last two chapters has somewhat inter
rupted the chronological course of this narrative, since
it, was necessary to group together matters extending
over several years, both before, during and after More's chancel
lorship. The record of his literary labours has brought us to
the period of his troubles, which begins with the year 1534.
Even before his elevation he was full of anxiety, not on his
own account, but for the evils he saw impending over the
Church and over England. " Walking with me," writes Roper,
" along the Thames' side at Chelsea, in talking of other things,
he said to me : ' Now would to Our Lord, son Roper, upon
condition that three things were well established in Chris
tendom, I were put in a sack and here presently cast into the
Tharaes ', ' What great things be those, sir,' quoth I, ' that
you should so wish ? ' 'In faith, son, they be these,' quoth
he; 'the first is, that whereas the most part of Christian
princes be at mortal wars, they were all at universal peace.
The second, that whereas the Church of Christ is at this present
sore afflicted with many errors and heresies, it were settled in
perfect uniforraity of religion; the third, that whereas the
inatter of the king's marriage is now come in question, it were
to the glory of God and quietness of aU parties brought to a
good conclusion.'" Roper does not give the date of this
conversation ; from the mention of war, it would seem to

FIRST TROUBLES.

315

have been in 1528, before More's last embassy to Cambrai.
He did his best to bring about peace from national strife, and
to prevent the spread of heresy ; with regard to the divorce,
as he could do no good, he prudentiy kept aloof
When he laid down the chancellorship, he had received the
assurance from the king of his continued favour, but he had
good reasons to distrust one so capricious and despotic, now
carried forward by passion and surrounded by bad advisers.
Roper tells us of the advice he .gave to Thomas Cromwell.
" Mr. Cromwell," said More, " you are now entered inlo the
service of a most noble, wise, and Uberal prince ; if you will
foUow my poor advice, you shall, in your counsel-giving to his
Grace, ever tell him what he ought to do, but never what he
is able to do ; for if the lion knew his own strength, hard were
it for any man to rule him.'' Unfortunately, Cromwell did the
very opposite, and became the evil genius of the king, finding
prey for the lion, untU at last he was himself devoured. During
the later months of 1532 and the whole of 1533 Sir Thomas
avoided Henry's court as much as possible, and gave himself
to the composition of his books. He was, however, a careful
observer, and while meditating his own course, was preparing for
the worst. When the divorce was pronounced by Cranmer,
Sir Thomas said to his son-in-law : " God grant, son, that
these matters within a while be not confirmed with oaths "
At Pentecost, 1533, Anne Boleyn, who had been secretly
married to the king before the pretended divorce, and after
wards publicly acknowledged as queen, made her magnificent
entry into London for her coronation. More's holy friend,
Fisher, had been arrested, and kept out of the way, for it was
known he would take no part in such an act. It was, no
doubt, supposed that Sir Thomas would not dare to absent
himself. Yet this he did. The matter is thus related by
Roper : " He received a letter from the Bishops of Durham,
Bath, and Winchester (Tunstall, Clerk, and Gardiner), re
questing him both to keep their company from the Tower

3l6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
to the coronation, and also to take ;^20 (that by the bearer
thereof they had sent hira), to buy him a gown ; which he
thankfully receiving, still tarried at home. At their next
meeting he said merrily : ' My lords, you required two things
of me, the one I was so well content to grant, that I thought
I might be the bolder to deny the other'. He then explained
that he took the raoney because the bishops were rich and he
was poor ; but his reason for refusing the invitation he illus
trated by one of his merry tales, the moral of which was that
the bishops were in danger of losing their honour first, and
being afterwards destroyed, but as for himself, destroyed he
might be, but dishonoured he was resolved he would not be.
It was noticed in his family that he would now often speak
of " the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, of the lives of the
holy martyrs, of their marvellous patience, and what a happy
and blessed thing it was for the love ofGod to suffer the loss of
goods, of liberty, and even life. He would add that for himself,
ifhe could perceive hiraself encouraged by his wife and children
to die in a good cause, for joy thereof he would merrily run to
death." * Notwithstanding this interior readiness to suffer, no
one could be more cautious to give no unnecessary offence.
Sir James Mackintosh remarks that "he most warily retired
from every opposition but that which conscience absolutely
required. He displayed that very peculiar excellence of his
character, which, as it showed his submission to be the fruit
of sense of duty, gave dignity to that which in others is apt to
seem and to be slavish.'' f
He had himself written as follows : " Our Lord advised
His disciples that if they were pursued in one city, they should
not come forth and foolhardUy put themselves in peril of denying
Christ by impatience of some intolerable torments, but rather
flee thence into some other place, where they might serve Him
in quiet, till He should suffer them to fall in such point that
there were no way to escape. And then would He have them
* Roper. t Life of More, p. 150.

FIRST TROUBLES. 317
abide by their tackhng like mighty champions, wherein they
shall not in such case fail of His help." *
It seems probable that Anne Boleyn, indignant at the slight
offered her by More's absence from her coronation, and his
known disapproval of the divorce, plotted either his humiliation
or his ruin.
.¦\bout Christmas, 1533, a book or proclamation of nine
articles was devised by the king's Council in justification of his
marriage. The principal points were the foUowing : —
I. That Cranmer's judgraent was founded on the decisions
of the most famous universities and of the whole
EngUsh clergy.
2. That causes should not be removed frora the country
where they are initiated; and that parliaraent did not
desire the inherilance of this realm to depend on the
Bishop of Rome, by some men called Pope.
4, 5, 6. That the General Council is superior to all bishops ;
that any man, especially a prince, may appeal from the
Bishop of Rome to the Council, and after his appeal
may despise the Pope's censures.
8. That bishops are bound to admonish before excom
municating; which course has been foUowed by "our
good Archbishop of Canterbury admonishing the king
that he lived in unlawful matrimony"
9. That the Pope is by birth illegitimate, guilty of simony
(at his election), and of heresy in refusing the king's
appeal, t
It seems that some pamphlet appeared in answer to the
above proclamation, and More was suspected of being its.
author. His nephew, WiUiam Rastell, son of John Rastell
and Elizabeth More, afterwards a lawyer and a judge, was at
that time following his father's business of a publisher. He
was called before the Council, and denied any knowledge of
the book. This caused More to write the foUowing letter to
* English Works, p. 278. t Letters and Papers, vii. i.

3l8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
CromweU, at that time Master ofthe Jewel House and secretary
to the king : —
"Right Worshipful, —
" In my most hearty wise I recommend me unto
you. ;
Sir, — My cousin,* William Rastell, hath informed me, that
your mastership of your goodness showed him that it hath been
reported that I have, against the book of certain articles, which
was late put forth in print by the king's honourable Council,
made an answer, and delivered it unto my said cousin to print.
And albeit that he for his part truly denied it, yet because he
somewhat remained in doubt whether your mastership gave
him therein credence or not, he desired me for his farther dis
charge to declare you the very truth. Sir, as help me God,
neither my said cousin nor any man else never had any book
of mine to print, one or other, since the said book of the king's
CouncU came forth. For of truth the last book that he printed
of mine was that book that I made against an unknown heretic,
which hath sent over a work that walketh in over many men's
hands, named the Supper qf the Lord, against the Blessed
Sacrament of the Altar. My answer whereunto, albeit that the
printer, unware to me, dated it anno 1534, by which it seemeth
to be printed since the Feast of the Circumcision, yet was it of
very truth both made and printed, and many of them gone,
before Christmas. And myself never espied the printer's over
sight in the dale, in more than three weeks after. And this was
in good faith the last book that my cousin had of mine. Which
being true, as of truth it shall be found, sufficeth for his declara
tion in this behalf
" As touching my own self, I shall say thus much farther, that
* W. Rastell was Sir Thomas's nephew. Cousin (consanguineus) is a
general term for kin. Nephew (nepos) meant grandson or descendent in
remote degree. More thus writes (p. 638) : "Whether the old doctors,
whom these men call grandfathers, or else these young new naughty
nephews, be better to be believed ".

first troubles. 319
on my faith I never made any such book nor never thought to
do. I read the said book [the proclamation] once over, and
never more. But I am for once reading very far off from many
things, whereof I would have meetly sure knowledge ere ever
I would make an answer, though the matter and the book
both concerned the poorest man in a town, and were of the
simplest man's making too. For of many things which in that
book be touched, in some I know not the law, and in some I
know not the fact. . And, therefore, would I never; be so
childish, nor so play the proud, arrogant fool, by whomsoever
the book had been made, and to whomsoever the matter had
belonged, as to presume to make an answer to the book, con
ceming the matter whereof I never was sufficiently learned in the
laws, nor fully instructed in the facts. And then, while the
matier pertained unto the king's Highness, and the book
professeth openly that it was made by his honourable Council,
and by them put in print with His Grace's license obtained
thereto, I verily trust in good faith that, of your good mind
towards me, though I never wrote you word thereof, yourself
wUl both think and say so much for me, that it were a thing far
unUkely that an answer should be made thereunto by me.
" I wiU by the grace of Almighty God, as long as it shall
please Him to lend me life in this world, in all such places as
I am of my duty to God and the king's Grace bound, truly say
my mind and discharge my conscience as becometh a poor,
honest, true man, wheresoever I shall be by His Grace com
manded. Yet surely if it should happen any book to come
abroad in the name of His Grace or his honourable Council,
if that book to me seemed such as myself would not have given
mine own advice to the making, yet I know my bounden duty
to bear more honour to my prince, and more reverence to his
honourable CouncU, than that it could become me for many
causes to make an answer to such a book, or to counsel and
advise any man else to do it. And, therefore, as it is a thing I
never did nor intended, so I heartily beseech you, if you shaU

320 SIR THOMAS MORE.
happen to perceive any man, either of evil will or of lightness,
any such thing report by me, be so good master to me as
help to bring us both together. And then never take me
for honest after, but if you find his honesty somewhat impaired
in the matter. Thus am I bold upon your goodness lo
encumber you with my long, rude letter, in the contents
whereof I eflsoon heartily beseech you to be, in manner afore
said, good master and friend unto me ; whereby you shaU
bind rae to be your bedes-man while I live, as knoweth Our
Lord, whose especial grace both bodily and ghostly long
preserve and keep you,
"At Chelsea in the vigil of the Purification of Our Blessed
Lady [1534], " By the hand of,
"Assuredly aU your own,
"Thomas More, Knight." *
* English Works, p. 1422. Chelsea is written Chelchithe ; in otlier
letters it is Chelsey.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE HOLY MAID OF KENT.
NO further mention occurs in any paper now extant of the
charge related in the last chapter; but in the mean-
lime another had been in preparation : a charge of mis
prision of treason, that is, of knowledge and concealment of
treason in the matter of the Holy Maid of Kent.
Very few words will be sufficient as an introduction to the
letters that follow. Elizabeth Barton, a Kentish servant-maid,
subject in her youth to falling sickness, was said to have been
cured in a chapel of Our Lady, and had become a nun at
Canterbury. She was supposed to receive revelations from
God, and acquired so great a reputation that she was commonly
spoken of as the Holy Maid of Kent. From the time the king's
divorce from Queen Katharine was first mooted, her revelations
took a political character; she declared herself coraraissioned
by God to admonish and to threaten the king if he persisted,
and she visited, for the making known of these celestial warn
ings, nol only her diocesan, Archbishop Warhara, but Cardinal
Wolsey and Henry himself At last, in the autumn of 1533, she
was supposed to be the tool of a party opposed lo the divorce,
and was arrested and examined, together with some Benedictine
monks, some Observant Franciscan friars, some secular priests
and laymen. Of the truth of the accusations made against her
and them we need not inquire. It is well-known that several,
amongst whom was the Blessed John Fisher, Bishop of Roches-

322 SIR THOMAS MORE.
ter, were attainted of misprision of treason , and several others,
including the nun, of treason, and that these were executed at
Tyburn on 21st AprU, 1534. I shaU here confine myself -to
what regards Sir Thoraas More.*
From documents lately published it appears that it was Crom
well who, without a vestige of evidence and in the face of
evidence to the contrary, sought to include More in a matter
frora which he had wilh the utraost circumspection kept him
self free. Father Hugh Rich, one of the accused Franciscans,
Slated in reply to interrogations : " He confesseth that he hath
shewed other revelations to Sir T. More, but none concerning
the king, for he would nol hear them' This passage was
struck through, and the narae of More inserted by Cromwell
himself among those to whom the revelations about the king
were made known. t The Notes or Remembrances kept by
Cromwell were seized at his attainder and are sliU in existence,
betraying his action day by day. In January, 1534, we find:
" To cause indictments to be drawn up for the offenders in
treason and misprision concerning the nun of Canterbury";:):
and " Eftsoons to remember Master More to the king ''. §
Another document, which is too mutilated to give us any
positive information, shows how evidence was being sought
against More, as regards his domestic conversation. |j
The following letter gives a minute statement of all the
action of Sir Thomas in the matter. It bears no date, but it
alludes lo the confession of the nun at St. Paul's Cross, which
was on 23rd November, 1533, and was written before the bill
of attainder was brought Into parliament in the middle of the
foUowing February. The letter is addressed to CromweU :—
* I have entered into more detail and discussed Blessed John Fisher's
share in this matter in my Life of Fisher.
\ Letters and Papers, vi. 1468.
X lb., vii. 48.
§ 76., 50, 108.
II 76., 290.

the holy maid of kent. 323
" Right Worshipful, —
" After my most hearty recommendation, with like
thanks for your goodness, in accepting of my rude, long letter.
I perceive, that of your further goodness and favour towards
me, it liked your mastership lo break with ray son Roper, of
that, that I had had communication not only with divers that
were of acquaintance wilh the lewd * nun of Canterbury, but
also with herself; and had, over that, by ray writing, declaring
favour towards her, given her advice and counsel ; of which
my demeanour, that il liketh you to be content lo take the
labour and the pain to hear, by mine own writing, the truth, I
very heartily thank you, and reckon myself therein right deeply
beholden to you.
"Il is, I suppose, about eight or nine years ago since I heard
of that housewife t first; at which time the Bishop of Canter
bury that then was (God assoil his soul) sent unto the king's
Grace a roll of paper, in which were written certain words of
hers, that she had, as report was then made, at sundry tiraes
spoken in her trances ; whereupon it pleased the king's Grace
to deliver me the roll, commanding me to look thereon, and
afterwards show him what I thought therein. Whereunto, at
another time, when His Highness asked me, I told hira, that in
good faith I found nothing in these words that I could any
thing regard or esteem ; for seeing that some part fell in
rhythm, and that, God wot, full rude also, for any reason,
God wot, that I saw therein, a right siinple woman raight, in
my mind, speak it of her own wit well enough. Howbeit, I
said, that because it was constantly reported for a truth, that
God wrought in her, and that a miracle was shewed upon her,
I durst not, nor would not, be bold in judging the matter.
* The word "lewd " in the sixteenth century had not the definite mean
ing now attached to it. It was a. contemptuous epithet for one who
was ignorant, cunning, or malicious.
t A contemptuous term ; a hussy.

324 SIR THOMAS MORE.
And the king's Grace, as me thought, esteemed the matter as
light as it after proved lewd.
"From that time till about Christmas was twelveraonth,
albeit that continually there was much talking of her, and of her
holiness, yet never heard I any talk rehearsed, either of revela
tion of hers, or rairacle, saving that I heard say divers times,
in my lord cardinal's days, that she had been both with his
lordship and with the king's Grace, but what she said, either lo
the one or to the other, upon my faith I had never heard any
one word. Now, as I was about to tell you, about Christmas
was twelvemonth. Father Risby, Friar Observant, then of
Canterbury, lodged one night at mine house ; where, after
supper, a little before he went to his chamber, he fell in com
munication with me of the nun, giving her high commendation
of holiness, and that it was wonderful to see and understand
the works that God wrought in her ; which thing, I answered,
that I was very glad to hear il, and thanked God thereof Then
he told me that she had been with my lord legate in his life,
and with the king's Grace too ; and that she had told ray lord
legate a revelation of hers, of three swords that God had put
in my lord legate's hand, which if he ordered not well God
would lay it sore to his charge. The first, he said, was the
ordering the spirituality under the Pope, as legate. The
second, the rule that he bore in order of the temporally under
the king, as his chancellor. And the third, she said, was the
meddling he was put in trust with by the king, concerning the
great matter of his marriage. And therewithal I said unto
him, that any revelation of the king's matters I would not hear
of; I doubt not that the goodness of God should direct His
Highness with His grace and wisdom, that the thing should
lake such end as God should be pleased with, to the king's
honour and surety of the realm. When he heard me say these
words, or the Uke, he said unto me, that God had specially
commanded her to pray for the king ; and forthwith he brake
again into her revelations concerning the cardinal, that his soul

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 325
was saved by her mediation ; and without any olher com
munication went into his chamber. And he and I never talked
any more of any such manner of matter, nor since his departing
on the morrow I never saw him afterwards, lo my remem
brance, till I saw him at St. Paul's Cross.
" After this, about Shrovetide, there came unto me, a little
before supper, Father Rich, Friar Observant of Richraond ; and
as we fell in talking, I asked him of Father Risby, how he did ;
and upon that occasion, he asked me, whether Father Risby had
any thing showed me of the holy nun of Kent ; and I said,
yea, and that I was very glad to hear of her virtue. ' I would
not,' quoth he, ' tell you again that you have heard of him al
ready ; but I have heard, and known, raany great graces that
God hath wrought in her, and in olher folks, by her, which I
would gladly tell you, if I thought you had not heard them al
ready.' And therewith he asked me, whether Father Risby had
told me anything of her being wilh my lord cardinal ; and I
said, 'Yea'. 'Then he told you,' quoth he, 'ofthe three swords?'
'Yea, verily,' quoth I. 'Didhetell you,' quoth he, 'of the revela
tions that she had concerning the king's Grace ?' 'Nay forsooth,'
quoth I, ' nor if he would have done, I would nol have given
him a hearing ; nor verily no more I would indeed, for since
she hath been with the king's Grace herself, and told him, me
thought it a thing needless to tell me, or to any man else.' And
when Father Rich perceived that I would not hear her revela
tions concerning the king's Grace, he talked on a little of her
virtue, and let her revelations alone ; and therewith my supper
was set upon the board, where I required hira to sit with rae ;
but he would in no wise tarry, biit departed to London. After
that night I talked with hira twice, once in raine own house,
another time in his own garden at the Friars, at every time a
great space, but not of any revelations touching the king's
Grace, but only of other mean folk, I knew not whom, of which
things some were very strange, and some were very childish.
But albeit that he said he had seen her lie in her trance in great

326 SIR THOMAS MORE.
pains, and that he had al other tiraes taken great spiritual com
fort in her coramunication ; yet did he never tell me that she
had told hira those tales herself; for if he had, I would, for the
tale of Mary Magdalen which he told rae, and for the tale of
the hostie, with which, as I have heard, she said she was housled
at the king's Mass at Calais— if I had heard it of him as told
unto himself by her mouth for a revelation, I would have both
liked him and her the worse. But whether ever I heard the
same tale of Rich or of Risby, or of neither of them both, but
of sorae other man since she was in hold, in good faith I can
not tell : but I wot well when or wheresoever I heard il, me
thought it a tale too marvellous to be true, and very likely that
she had told some man her dream, which told it out for a reve
lation. And in effect I littie doubted but that sorae of these
tales that were told of her vvere untrue ; but yet, since I never
heard thera reported as spoken by her own mouth, I thought
nevertheless that many of them might be true, and she a very
virtuous woman loo ; as some lies be peradventure written of
some that be saints in heaven, and yet many rairacles indeed
done by them for all that.
"After this, I being upon a day at Sion, and talking with the
fathers together al the grate, they showed me that she had been
wilh them, and showed me divers things that some of them
misliked in her; and in this talking they wished that I had
spoken wilh her, and said they would fain see how I should
like her. Whereupon, afterwards, when I heard that she was
there again, I came thither to see her, and to speak with her
myself At which communication had, in a little chapel, there
were none present but we two ; in the beginning whereof I
showed that my coming to her was nol of any curious mind,
any thing to know of such things as folks talked that it pleased
God to reveal and show unto her, but for the great virtue that
I had heard so raany years, every day more and raore spoken
and reported ofher; I, therefore, had a great mind to see her
and be acquainted with her, that she might have somewhat the

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 327
more occasion to remembe. me to Ciod in her devotion and
prayers ; whereunto she gave me a very good, virtuous answer,
that as God did of His goodness far better by her than she, a
poor wretch, was worthy, so she feared that many folk, yet
beside that, spoke of their own favourable minds many things
for her, far above the truth, and that of me she had many such
things heard, that already she prayed for rae, and ever would ;
whereof I heartily thanked her. I said unto her : ' Madam, one
Helen, a maiden dwelling about Tottenham, of whose trances
and revelations there hath been much talking, she halh been
with me of late, and showed me that she was with you, and
that after the rehearsal of such visions as she had seen, you
showed her that they were no revelations, but plain illusions of
the devU, and advised her to cast them out ofher mind; and
verUy she gave therein good credence unto you, and thereupon
hath left to lean any longer unto such visions of her own ;
whereupon she saith she findeth your words true, for ever since
she hath been the less visited with such things as she was wont
to be before' To this she answered me, 'Forsooth, sir, there
is in this point no praise unto me, but the goodness of God, as
it appeareth, hath wrought much meekness in her soul, which
hath taken my rude warning so weU, and not grudged to hear
her spirit and her visions reproved ' I liked her, in good faith,
better for this answer, than for many of these things that I
heard reported by* her. Afterwards she told me, upon that
occasion, how great need folk have, that are visited with such
visions, to take heed, and prove weU of what spirit they come
of; and in that coraraunication she told me, that of late the
devil, in likeness of a bird, was fiying and fiutlering about
her in a chamber, and suffered himself lo be taken ; and being
in hands, suddenly changed, in their sight that were present,
inlo such a strange, ugly-fashioned bird, that they were all
afraid, and threw him out at a window.
" For conclusion, we talked no word of the king's Grace, or
* i.e., ofher ; concerning her.

328 SIR THOMAS MORE.
any great personage else, nor in effect, of any man or woman,
but of herself and myself; but after no long communication
had, for or [ere] ever we met my time came to go home, I gave
her a double ducal, and prayed her to pray for me and mine,
a.nd so departed from her, and never spake with her after.
Howbeit, of a truth, I had a great good opinion of her, and had
her in great estimation, as you shall perceive by the letter that
I wrote unto her. For afterwards, because I had often heard
that raany right worshipful folks, as well men as woraen, used
to have much communication with her ; and many folk are of
nature inquisitive and curious, whereby they fall sometimes into
such talking, and better were to forbear, of which thing I
nothing thought while I talked with her of charity ; therefore, I
wrote her a letter thereof, which, since it may be, peradventure,
that she brake* or lost, I shall insert the very copy thereof in
this present letter. " These were the very words : —
" ' Good Madam and my right dearly beloved Sister in our
Lord God,
" ' After most hearty commendation, I shall beseech you to
take my good mind in good worth, and pardon me, that I am
so homely as of myself unrequired, and also without necessity,
to give counsel fo you, of whom for the good inspirations, and
great revelations that it liketh Almighty God of His goodness
to give and show, as many wise, well-learned, and very virtuous
folk testify, I myself have need, for the comfort of my soul, to
require and ask advice. For surely, good madam, since it
pleased God sometime to suffer, such as are far under and of
liltle estimation, to give yet fruitful advertisement to such other
as are in the light of the Spirit so far above them, that there
were between them no comparison— as He suffered His high
prophet Moses to be in some things advised and counseUed
* i.e., tore up.

THE HOLY M.^ID OF KENT. 329
by Jethro — I cannot, for the love that in Our Lord I bear you,
refrain to put you in remembrance of one thing, which in my
poor mind I think highly necessary to be by your wisdom
considered, referring the end and the order thereof lo God
and His Holy Spirit to direct you. Good madam, I doubt
not but that you remember that in the beginning of my
communication with you I shewed you that I neither was,
nor would be, curious of any knowledge of other raen's matters,
and least of all of any matter of princes, or of the realm, in
case it so were that God had, as to many good folks before-
time He hath, any time revealed unto you such things ; I
said unto your ladyship, that I was not only not desirous to
hear of, but also would not hear of Now, madam, I consider
well that many folk desire to speak with you which are not
all peradventure of my mind in this point ; but some hap to
be curious and inquisitive of things that liltle pertain unto
their parts; and some mig.t peradventure hap to talk of such
things as might after turn to much harm ; as I think you have
heard how the late Duke of Buckingham, moved with the
fame of one that was reported for an holy raonk, and had such
talking with hira, as after was a great part of his destruction,
and disheriting of his blood, and great slander and infamy of
religion.* It sufficeth me, good madam, to put you in
remembrance of such things as I nothing doubt your wisdom
and the Spirit of God shall keep you from talking with any
person, specially with high persons, of any such raanner things
as pertain lo princes' affairs, or the stale of the realm, but only
to commune and talk with any person, high and low, of any
such manner things as may to the soul be profitable for you
to show, and for them to know. And thus, my good lady
and dearly beloved sister in Our Lord, I make an end of this
my needless advertisement unto you, whom the Blessed Trinity
preserve and increase in grace, and put in your mind to
recommend me and mine unto Him in your devout prayers.
* Executed in May, 1521, on a charge of treason.

330 SIR THOMAS MORE.
" ' At Chelsey, this Tuesday, by the hand of your hearty •
loving brother and beadsman,
"'Thomas More, Kt'
" At the receipt of this letter, she answered my servant that
she heartily thanked me : soon after this there came to mine
house the prior of the Charterhouse at Shene, and one Brother
Williams with him, who nothing talked to me but of her, and
of the great joy that they took in her virtue, but of any of her
revelations they had no communication. But at another time
Brother WUliams came to me, and told me a long tale of her,
being al the house of a knight in Kent, that was sore troubled
wilh teraptations to destroy himself; and none other thing we
talked of, nor should have done of likelyhood, though we had
tarried together much longer, he took so great pleasure, good
man, to tell the tale, with all the circumstances al length.
When I came again another day to Sion, on a day in which
there was a profession, some of the fathers asked me how I
liked the nun. And I answered that, in good faith, I liked her
very well in her talking ; ' howbeit,' quoth I, ' she is never the
nearer tried by that ; for I assure you, she were likely to be
very bad, if she seemed good, ere I should think her other, lill
she happened to be proved naught ' ; and in good faith, that is
my manner indeed, except I were set to search and examine the
truth upon likelihood of some cloaked evil ; for in that case,
although I nothing suspected the person myself, yet no less than
if I suspected him sore, I would, as far as my wit would serve
rae, search to find out the truth, as yourself hath done very
prudently in this raatter ; wherein you have done, in my mind,
to your great laud and praise, a very meritorious deed, in
bringing forth to light such detestable hypocrisy ; whereby
every other wretch may take warning, and be feared to sel forth
their own devilish, dissembled falsehood, under the manner
and colour of the wonderful work of God ; for verily, this
woman so handled herself, with help of that evU spirit hath

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 33 1
inspired her, that after her own confession declared at
Paul's Cross,* when I sent word by my servant unto the
Prior of the Charterhouse, that she was undoubtedly proved a
false, deceiving hypocrite, the good man had had so good
opinion of her so]long, that he could at the first scanlly believe
me therein. Howbeit it was not he alone that thought her so
very good, but many another right good man besides, as liltle
marvel was upon so good report, till she was proved naught.
" I remember me further, that in communication between
Father Rich and me, I counseUed him, that in such strange
things as concerned such folk as had come unto her, to whom,
as she said, she had told the causes of their coming ere
themselves spake thereof, and such good fruit as they said that
many raen had received by her prayer, he and such other so
reported it, and thought that the knowledge ihereof should rauch
pertain to the glory of God, should first cause the things to be
well and sure examined by the ordinaries, and such as had
authority thereunto ; so that it might be surely known whether
the things were true or not, and that there were no letters
intermingled among them, or else the letters might after hap
to awelgh the credence of these things that were true. And
when he told me the tale of Mary Magdalen, I said unto him :
' Father Rich, that she is a good, virtuous woman, in good faith,
I hear so many good folk so report, that I verily think il true ;
and think it well-likely that God worketh some good and great
ihings by her ; but yet are, you wot well, these strange tales no
part of our creed ; and, therefore, before you see them surely
proved, you shall have ray poor counsel, nol lo wed yourself
so far forth to the credence of thera as to report them very
surely for true, lest that if it should hap that they were after
wards proved false it might minish your estimation in your
preaching, whereof raight grow great loss ' To this he thanked
me for my counsel, but how he used it after that I cannot tell.
* On 23rd November, 1533.

332 SIR TH0M.4S MORE.
" Thus have I, good Mr. Cromwell, fully declared to you, as
far as myself can call to remerabrance, all that ever I have
done or said in this matter, wherein I am sure that never
one of them all shall tell you any further thing of effect ; for if
any of thera, or any raan else, report of me, as I trust verily no
man will, and I wot weU truly no man can, any word or deed
by me spoken or done, touching any breach of my legal *
truth and duty towards my most redoubted sovereign, and
natural Uege lord, I wiU come lo mine answer, and make it
good in such wise as becometh a poor true man to do ; that
whosoever any such thing shall say, shall therein say untrue ;
for I neither have in this matter done evil, nor said evil, nor so
much as any evU thing thought, but only have been glad, and
rejoiced of them that were reported for good ; which condition
I shall nevertheless keep towards all other good folk, for the
false, cloaked hyprocisy of any of these, no raore than I shall
esteem Judas the true apostle, for Judas the false trailor.+
" But so purpose I lo bear myself in every man's company
while I live, that neither good man nor bad, neither monk,
friar, nor nun, nor other raan or woman in this world shall
make rae digress frora my truth and faith, either towards God
or towards ray natural prince, by the grace of Almighty God ;
and as you therein find me true, so I heartily therein pray you
to continue towards me your favour and good-wiU, as you shall
be sure of my poor daily prayer ; for other pleasure can I not
do you. And thus the Blessed Trinity, both bodily and
ghostly, long preserve and prosper you.
" I pray you pardon me, that I write nol unto you of mine
own hand, for verily I am compelled to forbear writing for a
while, by reason of this disease of mine, whereof the chief
occasion is grown, as il is thought, by the stooping and leaning

* Is not this a copyist's error for loyal or leal ?
t i.e., He will not count the apostle St. Jude (Thaddeus) a traitor,
because Judas (Iscariot) was a traitor.

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 333
on my breast, that I have used in writing. And thus, eft
soons, I beseech Our Lord long to preserve you." *
That the letter written by Sir Thomas to the nun was not
considered a sufficient exculpation can only be accounted for
by the supposition that it was not taken as authentic, that he
was suspected not to have really kept a copy of his letter, but
to have now invented this in self defence. This is not a sup
position merely, for it appears, from a paper in the British
Museum, that inquiries were raade as regards More's letter,
and the answer was signally corroborative of More's veracity.
There is neither name nor date to this paper. I give what re
lates lo More verbatim, but not in its uncouth spelling : " The
phrase of Master More's letter I have utterly (as God knoweth)
forgotten, for I read it only superficially. In the which I per
ceived at that time no hurL Whereupon I counseUed and
desired Master Golde, also the woman, to keep it safe, for the
discharge of the said Master More, whom I conjectured lo have
heard, after his departing from Sion, soraething considering
her being with the king's Grace, and revelations touching this
* This letter is not in Rastell's collection. It was published by
Burnet in the Records (n. xxi.) of his second book. He took it from the
Norfolk MSS. of Gresham College. " This collection," says Mr.
Pocock, "has been destroyed." Of the 562 MSS. whichit contained
this letter formed part of n. 150, and is catalogued as 3049 in the Cata-
logi. It was probably not an original. Burnet has charged Rastell with
suppressing this letter, because of its condemnation of the Holy Maid.
Mr. Bruce has vindicated the honesty of Rastell in an article in the
Archceologia (vol. xxx. p. 149). Frora comparison with MSS. now
existing, Mr. Bruce is of opinion that Rastell printed, not from the
letters which were sent — to which he had no access — but from rough
drafts that had remained among Sir Thomas's papers. Of the above
letter he had no copy. As to the nun, she is not placed among the
Church's heroines. Catholics entertained different views of her before
Rastell published More's collected works, as they do now. Blessed
More's language is strong in reprobation of her, so was Blessed Edmund
Campion's. Blessed John Fisher abstained frora pronouncing any
judgment.

334 SIR THOMAS MORE.
laudable marriage (but the truth I know not), whereby I sus
pected that he was moved to write that letter. In which he
gave her thanks for her familiar communication, desiring her
to be a testiraonial that he never moved nothing appertaining
to our sovereign prince at his being with her. Then also he
desired her no otherwise to disdain his counsel than did Moses,
who had aU the revelations, the counsel of Jethro, whose coun
sel was, as I reraeraber, to show her revelations not to every
man, but to the spiritual and godly persons, not lo wordly
raen, who receive (as the other honey and wax) poison of
everything.* ' After he touched the Duke of Buckingham, that
had rauch displeasure by consorting to a religious person and
raonk of Hinton, t but for what his displeasure ensued I remem
ber not there to be expressed, nor yet for whal extent he moved
that matter, nor yet how it was ordered in his style, but that he '
annexed in the conclusion of his letter this petition to be num
bered as one most desirous of her prayers, and such pleasure
as he might do it should always be ready." The paper con
cludes with an acknowledgment of guUt and foUy, anda piteous
appeal for raercy, araong other things in consideralion of the
veriter's youth. X
Cromwell, of course, kept this document to himself, and
neither communicated it to Sir Thomas More, nor to the tri
bunal before which he was to be accused. The parliament
that More had opened in 1529 had not yet been dissolved, and
was summoned for a new session on i5lh January. On the
2ist of February, a bill of attainder was introduced in the
upper house against all whom it was sought to implicate with
the nun. Sir Thomas heard (perhaps without surprise) that
* It was a common saying that the bee sucks honey from the flower,
and the spider poison.
t " Mount Grace " was first written and cancelled.
X Cotton MSS. Cleopatra E., vi. f. 154. This paper seems to be
written by one of the friars, Rich or Risby. From the words, " your
goodness, your mastership," it is clearly addressed to Cromwell.

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 335
his name was included, and he wrote the foUowing letter to
CromweU : —
"Right Worshipful, —
" After right hearty recommendations, so it is that I
am informed that there is a bill pul in against me inlo the
higher house before the lords, concerning my coramunication
with the nun of Canterbury, and my writing unto her. Whereof
I not a littie marvel, the truth of the matier being such as God
and I know it is, and as I have plainly declared unto you by
my former letters, wherein I found you then so good, that I
am now bold eftsoon upon your goodness to desire you to show
me the favour, that I might the raiher by your good means
have a copy of the bill.
"Which seen, if I find any untrue surraise therein, as of
likelihood there is, I may make my humble suit unto the king's
good Grace, and declare the truth, either to His Grace, or by His
Grace's commandment, wheresover the matier shall require.
I am so sure of my tmth towards His Grace, that I cannot mis
trust His Grace's favour towards me upon the truth known, nor
the judgment of any honest man. Nor never shall their loss
in this matter grieve me, being myself so innocent as God and
I know me, whatever should happen therein by the grace of
Almighty God, who, both bodily and ghostly, preserve you.
" At Chelsea, this present Saturday,
" By the hand of,
" Heartily all your own,
" Tho. More, Knight." *
This letter was soon followed by another lo the king, but as
it is unusuaUy verbose and contains no new facts, it will be
enough to give the substance. More reminds Henry of his
gracious promise of protection in case of any suit that might
concern More's honour. For honour or profit he cares noth
ing, but a charge is being made that touches him more deeply,
* English Works, p. 1423.

336 sir THOMAS MORE.
for his allegiance is called in question. He is perfectiy clear in
his conscience, but cannot endure the suspicion of Ingratitude
and baseness. If he should lose his Majesty's good opinion
he cares not about goods, liberty or Ufe. These things " could
never do me pennyworth of pleasure ; but only should my
comfort be, that after my short life, and your long (which with
continual prosperity to God's pleasure Our Lord of His mercy
send you), I should once meet Your Grace again in heaven, and
there be merry with you ; where, among mine other pleasures,
this should yel be one, that Your Grace should surely see there
then, that, howsoever you take me, I am your true bedesman
now, and ever have been, and will be till I die, howsoever
your pleasure be to do by rae ".*
Rastell gives this as written " in February or March," the
draft from which he printed bearing no dale or signature. The
Cotton MS. concludes : " At my poor house of Chelsith, the
fifth day of March, by the known rude hand of your most
humble and heavy faiihful subject and bedeman, Thomas
More, Knight"
The bill had been read a second time on 26lh February, and
a third tirae on 6th March. The entry in the Lords' Journal
of that date is as follows (in Latin) : " A bill, written on
paper, concerning the due punishment of Elizabeth Barton,
nun and hypocrite, formerly called the Holy Maid of Kent,
wilh her adherents, was thrice read. Their lordships thereupon
thought it fit to find whether it was according to the king's will
that Sir Thomas More, and the others named with hira in the
said bill (with the exception of the Bishop of Rochester, who
is laid up with illness, and whose answer is already known by
his letters), should be required to appear before their lordships
in the Star Chamber, that it may be heard what they can say
for themselves."
The Imperial Ambassador, Chapuys, wrote to the Emperor
* English Works, p. 1423, and in Ellis. Orig. Let. (ist ser.) ii. 47,
from Cleop E., vi. 132.

THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 337
on 7th March : " More, the late chancellor, has been examined
by the chancellor [Audley] and Cromwell, for a letter which
he wrote to the nun, which could not have been more prudent,
as he exhorted her to attend to devotion and not meddle in the
affairs of princes. As the king did nol find, as it seems he
hoped, an occasion for doing him more harm, he has taken
away his salary." *
His name was indeed struck out of the bill of attainder ;
but I must relate in a separate chapter how this came about,
because the narrative wiU bring us inlo a matter of a very
different nature — More's views regarding the supremacy of the
Holy See.+
* Letters and Papers, vii. 296.
+ In More's English Works will be found some very interesting and
amusing discussions on miracles, apparitions, and revelations. He
relates with rauch wit some exaraples of imposture (see his Dialogue,
English Works, p. 134), but with great earnestness an instance of what he
considered a true diabolical possession and miraculous deliverance {lb., 137).
False miracles and imposture he considers no disproof of the existence of
true miracles and real revelations, but a proof of the need of careful
tests: "I am sure though ye see some white sapphire or berill so well
counterfeit, and so set in a ring, that a right good jeweller will take it for
a diamond, yet will ye not doubt, for all that, but that there be in raany
other rings already set right diaraonds indeed. Nor ye will not mistrust
St. Peter for Judas."

CHAPTER XVIII.
BEFORE THE COUNCIL.
ROPER relates a strange, pathetic history. Sir Thomas
More, the virtuous and accoraplished gentleraan, the
perfect statesman, the most loyal of subjects, the man who
had spent the best years ofhis life in the single-hearted service of
his king and country — this raan was hated by his king for his
very goodness, for his uprightness and honour, and the king
was bent on his ruin unless he could bring him to dishonour.
Without a shred of evidence against him, with the clearest
proofs of his loyalty in his hands, both in More's own declara
tion, in the letter he had written to the nun, and in the testi
mony of Father Hugh Rich, Henry had caused his former
friend, whose neck he had clasped so lovingly as they walked
in the Chelsea garden, to be attainted before those noblemen and
prelates, over whose assembly he had so lately presided as
chancellor, on a charge of misprision of treason, a crime in
volving confiscation of all property and imprisonment at the
king's pleasure ; and all this, says Roper, " presupposing of
likelihood that this bill would be to Sir Thomas More so troub
lous that it would force him lo relent and Condescend to his
request " (to approve his divorce), " wherein,'' adds his son-in-
law proudly, " His Grace was much deceived ".
Sir Thomas had petitioned to be heard by the lords ; the
lords also, who knew his innocence, had petitioned for leave to
hear him. A strange ihlng^that such a petition should have

before THE COUNCIL. 339
been necessary when men's honour, property and liberty were at
stake! "The king," continues Roper, "not liking this proposal,
assigned that he should appear before four members of his
Council: Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; Audley, the Lord
ChanceUor ; the Duke of Norfolk, and Thomas Cromwell. At
"which time I, thinking I had a good and fit opportunity, ear
nestly advised him to labour to those lords for his discharge
out of the bill; who answered rae that he would." The in
structions, however, of these royal tools were not to inquire inlo
truth and justice, but to seek by promises and threats to make
Sir Thomas More one like themselves.
" .'Vt his coming before them they entertained him very
friendly, wilUng him to sit down with them, which in no wise
he would. Then began the lord chancellor to declare unto
him how many ways the king had showed his love and favour
towards him, how fain he would have had him continue in his
office,- how glad he would have been to have heaped more
benefits upon him, and finally how he could ask no worldly
honour nor profit at His Highness's hands that were likely to be
denied him ; hoping by this declaration lo provoke him lo re
compense His Grace with the like again, and unto those things
which the parUaraent, the bishops, and the universities had al
ready passed to add his consent. To this Sir Thomas mildly
made answer : ' No man living is there, my lords, that would
with better wiU do the thing that should be acceptable to the
king's Highness. Howbeit, I verily hoped I should never have
heard of this raatter more, considering that I have from time
to time always from the beginning so plainly and truly declared
my mind unto His Grace; which His Highness ever seemed to
me, like a most gracious prince, very well to accept, never
minding, as he said, to molest me more therewith.'
" Many things more were there of the like sort uttered on
both sides. But in the end, when they saw they could by no
manner of persuasions remove him from his former determina
tion, then began they more terribly to touch him, telling him

340 SIR THOMAS MORE.
that the king's Highness had given commandment, if they could
by no gentleness win him, in his name wilh his great ingrati
tude lo charge him — that never was there servant so to his
sovereign so vUlainous, nor subject to his prince so traitorous
as he. For he, by subtle, sinister slights most unnaturally pro
voking the king to set forth his book on the seven sacraments
and maintaining of the Pope's authority, had caused him, to
his dishonour throughout all Christendom, to put a sword in
the Pope's hand to fight against himself
" When thus had they laid forth aU the terrors they could
imagine against him, ' My lords,' quoth he, ' these terrors be
arguments for children, and not for me. But to answer to
that wherewith you do chiefly burden rae, I believe the king's
Highness of his honour wiU never lay that to my charge, for
none is there that can in this point say in my excuse more than-
His Highness hiraself He right well knoweth that I was never
procurer nor counseUor of His Majesty thereto; but after it
was finished, by His Grace's appointment and consent of the
makers of the sarae, I was only a sorter out and placer of the
principal matters therein contained. Wherein, when I found
the Pope's authority highly advanced, and with strong argu
ments mightily defended, I said unto His Grace : I must put
Your Highness in remembrance of one thing, and that is this —
the Pope, as Your Grace knoweth, is a prince as you are, and in
league wilh all other Christian princes. It may so hereafter
fall out that Your Grace and he may vary upon some point of
leagues, whereupon may grow breach of amity and war between
you both. I think it best, therefore, that that place be amended
and his authority raore slenderly touched.' ' Nay,' quoth His
Grace, ' that shall it not. We are so much bounden to the See
of Rome that we cannot do too much honour to it.' Then did
I farther pul him in remembrance of the statute of Premunire,
whereby a good part of the Pope's pastoral cure here was pared
away. To that answered His Highness: 'Whatsoever impediment
be to the contrary, we will set forth that authority to the utter-

before the council. 341
most, for we receive from that See our crown imperial ; which
I never heard of before till His Grace told it me with his own
mouth '
" Thus displeasantly departed they. Then took Sir Thomas
his boat towards his house at Chelsea, wherein by the way he
was very merry ; and for that I was nothing sorry, hoping that
he had gotten himself discharged out of the pariiament biU.
When he was landed and come home, then walked we twain
alone in his garden together, where I, desirous to know how
he had sped, said : ' I trust, sir, that all is well because you
are so merry?' ' It is so indeed, son Roper, I thank God,'
quoth he. ' Are you, then, put out of the bUl ? ' quoth I. ' By
my troth, son Roper,' quoth he, 'I never remembered it.'
' Never remembered it ! ' said I ; 'a cause that toucheth your
self too near, and us all for your sake. I am sorry to hear it,
for I verUy trusted, when I saw you so raerry, that all had
been well.' Then said he : ' Wilt thou know, son Roper, why
I was so merry ? In good faith I rejoiced that I had given
the devil a foul fall, and that with those lords I had gone so
far as, without great shame, I could never go back again.' At
which words waxed I very sad, for though himself liked it
well, yet liked it me but a Uttle.
"Now, upon the report made to the king of all their discourse,
the king was sO highly offended, that he plainly told them he
was fully determined that the bill should proceed against hira.
To whora the lord chancellor and the rest of the lords said
that they perceived the lords of the upper house so bent to
hear him in his own defence, that if he were not put out of the
biU, it would, without fail, be utterly an overthrow of all. But
for all this needs would the king have his own will, or else (he
said) that at the passing thereof he would be personally
present himself
" Then the Lord Audley and the rest, seeing him so
vehemently set thereupon, on their knees most humbly be
sought His Grace to forbear, considering that if he should

342 SIR THOMAS MORE.
in his own presence receive- an overthrow, it would not only
encourage his subjects ever after to contemn him, but also
through all Christendom redound to his dishonour for ever ;
adding that they mistrusted not in time against him lo find
some raeet raatter to serve his time better ; for in this cause
of the nun, he was accounted (they said) so innocent and
clear, that for his dealing therein men reckoned him far
worthier of praise than of reproof Whereupon at length,
through their earnest persuasion, he was content to condescend
to their petition. And on the morrow after, Mr. CromweU
meeting me in the parliament house,* wUled me to teU my
father that he was put out of the parUament bill. But because
I had appointed to dine that day in London, I sent the
message by my servant to my wife to Chelsea. Whereof when
she informed her father, • Meg,' quoth he, ' quod differtur non
aufertur'. After this, as the Duke of Norfolk and Sir Thomas
More chanced to fall in familiar talk together, the Duke said
unto him : ' By the Mass, Mr. More, it is perilous striving
wilh princes ; therefore, I would wish you somewhat to incline
to the king's pleasure ; for by God's Body, Mr. More, indig-
natio principis mors est ' ' Is that all, my lord ? ' quoth he ;
' then, in good faith, between Your Grace and me is but this,
that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow.' "
Immediately on returning horae from his interview with the
Council,+ Sir Thomas More thought il best lo make a statement
in writing, to the same effecl as he had spoken, on the three
points which had been brdught forward — the matter of the nun,
that of the divorce, and the supremacy of the Holy See. This
he did in a letter to Crorawell, asking him to be his spokes
man and advocate wilh the king.
He repeats in a few words what he had said in a previous
letter with regard lo the faultiessness of his conduct in the
matier of the nun's revelations. I have given already from
* Roper was M.P. for Canterbury.
t The letter is dated 6th March in the MS. copy.

BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 343
this letter his account of the way he had studied the question of
the divorce, and the entirely neutral position he had kept. We
must now hear his own declaration as to the history of his mind
on the doclrine of the Pope's supremacy. "To secure his exact
words I have transcribed the following from the corrected copy
which he signed and sent to Cromwell,* not from the printed
version that was made from the rough draft.f The variations,
however, are very insignificant, except in two instances that will
be mentioned in the notes : —
"As touching the third point, the primacy of the Pope, I
nothing meddle in the matier. Truth it is, that as I told you
when you desired me to show you what I thought therein, J I
was myself sometime not of the mind that the primacy of that
See § should be begun by the institution of God, untU that I
read in that matter those things that the king's Highness had
wTitten in his most famous book against the heresies of Martin
Luther. At the first reading whereof I moved the king's High
ness either to leave out that point or else to touch it more
slenderly, for doubt of such things as after might hap to fall in
question between His Highness and some Pope, as between
princes and Popes divers times have done. Whereunto His
Highness answered me that he would in nowise anything
minish of that matter, of which thing His Highness showed me
a secret cause, whereof I never had anything heard before.
"But surely after that I had read His Grace's book therein,
and so many other things as I have seen in that point by this
continuance of this ten|| years since and more, I have found in
effect the substance of all the holy doctors, from St. Ignatius,
disciple to St. John the Evangelist, unto our own days, both
* Cleopatra E., vi. f. 150-152.
+ English Works, p. 1426.
t That is, in the appearance before the Council the same day.
§ The words " See apostolique " were first written, but " apostolique "
is cancelled. It occurs, however,, below.
II Rastell's version has seven. It is clearly x. in the MS.

344 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Latins and Greeks, so consonant and agreeing in that point,
and the thing by such General Councils so confirmed also, that
in good faith I never neither read nor heard anything of such
effect on the olher side that ever could lead me to think that
my conscience were weU discharged, but rather in right great
peril, if I should follow the other side, and deny the primacy to
be provided by God.
" Which if we did, yet can I nothing (as I showed you) per
ceive any commodity that ever could come by that denial. For
that primacy is at the leastwise instituted by the corps of
Christendom, and for a great urgent cause in avoiding of
schisms, and corroborate by continual succession more than
the space of a thousand years at the least (for there are
passed almost a thousand years since the tirae of the holy St.
Gregory). And, therefore, since all Christendom is one corps,
I cannot perceive how any member thereof may, without the
common consent of the body, depart from the comraon head.
And then if we may nol lawfully leave it by ourself, I cannot
perceive, but if* the thing were a treating in a General CouncU,
what the question could avail, whether the primacy were in
stituted immediately by God, or ordained by the Church.
" As for the General Councils asserabled lawfully, I never
could perceive, but that in the declaration of the truths, to be
believed and lo be standen to, the authority thereof ought to
be taken for undoubtable.! Or else were there in nothing no
certainty, but through Christendom upon every man's affection
ate reason all things might be broughi from day to day to con
tinual ruffle and confusion. From which by the General
Councils, the Spirit of God, assisting every such CouncU weU
assembled, keepeth, and ever shall keep, the corps of His
Catholic Church.
* " But if," i.e., except in the case that.
t Rastell has : " In the declaration of the truth, it is to 'be believed
and to be standen to, the authority whereof ought to be taken for un-
doubtable".

BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 345
" And verily, since the king's Highness hath (as by the book
ofhis honourable Council appeareth), appealed to the General
Council from the Pope, in which Council I beseech Our Lord
send His Grace comfortable speed, methinketh in my poor mind
it could be no furtherance there unto His Grace's cause if His
Highness should in his own realm before, either by laws mak
ing, or books putting forth, seera to derogate and deny, nol
only the primacy of the See Apostolic, but also the authority
of the General Councils too. Which I verUy trust His Highness
intendeth not.
" For in the next General Council it may well happen, that
this Pope may be deposed and another substituted in his roora,
with whom the king's Highness may be very well content. For
albeit that I have for my own part such opinion of the Pope's
primacy* as I have showed you, yet never thought I the Pope
above the General Council, nor never have I in any book of
mine, put forth among the king's subjects iri_our_vulgar Jongue,
advanced greatly the Pope's authority .+ For albeit that a man
may peradventure so find therein that, after the comraon
manner of all Christian realms, I speak of hira as primate, yet
never do I stick thereon with reasoning and proving of that
point. And in my book against the Masker I wrote not, I
wot well, five lines,! ^"d yet of no more but only Sl. Peter hira
self, from whose person many take not § the primacy, even of
those that grant it none of his successors. And yet was that
book made, printed, and put forth of very truth before that any
of the books of the Council || was either printed or spoken
of But whereas I had written thereof al length in my con
futation before, and for the proof thereof had compiled together!
aU that I could find therefor, at such time as I little looked
that there should fall between the king's Highness and the Pope
* Rastell has "supremacy "
t He had done this in his Latin work, as we have seen.
X Rastell has " times " § i.e., take not away.
I| i.e., the King's Council.

346 SIR THOMAS MORE.
such a breach as is faUen since; when I after that saw the
thing likely to draw towards such displeasure between theni I
suppressed it utterly, and never put word thereof in ray book,
but pul out the remnant without it." *
There are two points in this profession of faith that seem to
require elucidation. How could a highly educated Catholic
man hold, as More confesses that he did for a time, that the
supremacy of the Roman Pontiff was only of ecclesiastical
institution ? I should reply that his error, being at that tirae
purely theoretical, can be easily conceived to have existed quite
innocently in such a man. He had made no special study of
theology in his youth, and there was nothing before the rise of
Luther's heresy to call his special attention to the subject of
the nature and origin of the Pope's primacy. He was not
living in schism, and seeking to justify his position, but in
loyal obedience to the Holy See, certain of the duly of
obedience, and for that reason not careful to examine the origin
of the authority whose claim he in no way contested. Of
course il should be known to every Catholic man that the Pope
is the divinely appointed successor of St. Peter. But the
great schism and the action of the Councils of Constance and
Basle, and the theories to which that action had given rise, had
rauch disturbed and confused men's minds. A new but neces
sarUy imperfect knowledge of early Church history, and of the
writings of the Fathers, had made students acquainted wilh
difficulties for which they found no solutions. Erasmus had
put out historical doubts on this as on many other subjects ;
and his writings or conversations had probably much influence
with More.i-
* Cleopatra E., f. 150 ; also English Works, p. 1426.
+ De monarchia Pontificis nunquam dubitavi, sed an hasc monarchia
fuerit agnita tempore Hieronymi aut exserta, dubito alicubi. Sed ut
alicubi noto quod videtur facere ad h^nc opinionem, ita rursus aliis locis
annoto quae faciunt ad diversam opinionem. Et tot aliis locis voco
Petrum principem apostolici ordinis, pontificera Romanum vicarium
Christi et Ecclesise principem (Erasmus, Ep. 667).

BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 347
But I should conjecture that the main source of his error was i
his intimate famUiarity with TunstaU. More held his friend's I
learning, as well as his virtue, in the highest esteera. Now
Tunstall declares, in his answer to Pole's treatise on ecclesiastical
unity, that his opinions on the Holy See were, and ever had
been, nol such as we call GaUican, but like those of modern
Anglicans. Il will not be a digression to give a specimen of
Tunstall's language, since what he wrote to Pole in 1536 he
must have often said lo More, during their long intimacy. He
declares that the king, in making himself head of the Anglican
Church, was desiious " to reduce his Church of England out of
aU captivity of foreign powers, heretofore usurped therein, into
the pristine estate that all Churches of all realras were in at the
beginning, and to abolish and cleariy put away such usurpation
as theretofore in this realm the Bishops of Rome have, to their
great advantage and impoverishing of the realm and the king's
subjects, of the same. Would to God you had been
e.xercised in reading the ancient councils, that you might have
known from the beginning, from age to age, the continuance
and progress of the Catholic Church, by which you should
have perceived that the Church of Rorae had never of old such
a monarchy as of late it hath usurped." * In a dignified answer
Pole reminds Tunstall that men, learned and holy as Fisher and
More, held the contrary, and were so thoroughly convinced
of the Divine institution of the primacy of the Holy See, that
they had shed their blood for il.
When, in 1520, More's attention was called to this matter,
he musl at first have been perplexed between Fisher and
Tunstall ; but when he gave himself lo earnest study he soon
came to share the conviction and faith of Fisher, and he teUs
Cromwell that more than ten years' continual study had in no

* MS. in British Museum, Cleopatra E., vi. f. 389. I am not aware
whether this letter is anywhere printed. Pole's answer to it is in Strype
Mem., i. pt. ii. u. 83, p. 306.

348 SIR THOMAS MORE.
wise altered his mind, so that il was not a matter of opinion
but of conscience.
What More adds about the possibility of a General Council
deposing the Pope is somewhat male sonans, but it must be
remembered that More is taking the king at his own word ; he
had not only appealed to a future General Council against the
Pope, but he accused the Pope himself of being a usurper of the
Apostolic See by simony, and (in any case) of having forfeited it
by heresy. More, therefore, knowing full well that Henry wished
for nothing less than the meeting of a General Council, wished
His Majesty good speed. It would be rash to quote More as
holding that a Council raay depose a Pope for evil and scan
dalous life, as sorae have held. More refers only to the two
things mentioned by Henry, viz., simony and heresy. Now, it
is admitted by all that simony invalidates a Pope's election,
Could il be proved against him, he would not, strictly speaking,
be deposed, but he would be declared never to have been
Pope.* Again, if manifest and obstinate heresy were proved
against a Pope, a Council might declare his See vacant, since he
would be deposed by the Invisible Head of the Church, the
everlasting Truth. f
In these cases only is a Council above the Pope, according to
the highest " ultramontane " doctrine, nor would it be just to
cite our great chancellor for more than this. His words were
all weighed in a learned balance. It was not raany days after
this declaration that More had to prove, by loss of bodily
liberty, the freedora of his soul and his steadfast aUegiance to
conscience. * His acts, however, would have been valid ex titulo colorato (see .
Franselin, De Ecclesia. Bouix, Dc Papa, vol. iii.).
t The case has never occurred, and many hold that it cannot occur.

CHAPTER XIX.
REFUSAL OF THE OATH.
ALL attempts to entangle More in the meshes of the law
for his own actions had entirely failed. He had proved
his innocence in every point. His ruin was lo be ac
complished by the course of public events in which he had
had no share. The day that he had foretold, and for which he
was preparing himself soon came, when Henry's divorce and
marriage with Anne Boleyn, as well as the succession to the
crown in her offspring, were to be confirmed by oaths. A bill
limiting the succession, making it high treason to oppose it, and
misprision of treason to speak against il, was passed in parlia
ment and received the royal assent on 30th March, 1534. It
enacted "that all the nobles of the realm, spiritual and temporal,
and all other subjects arrived at full age, should be obUged to
lake corporal oath, in the presence of the king or his com
missioners, to observe and maintain the whole effect and con
tents of the Act " The penalties of refusal were those of
misprision of treason. Parliament, however, omitted to
prescribe a formula. That which was drawn up by the com
missioners was wider than the scope of the Act, and included
an affirmation of the truth of its prearable, declaring the
invalidity of Henry's first marriage and the vaUdity qf the
second. As the Sovereign Pontiff had, on 23rd March, 1534,
given his final decision in favour of the marriage with Katharine
of Aragon, such an oath impUed the rejection of his authority.
At the same time the formula recalled and repudiated any oath

35© SIR THOMAS MORE.
taken " to any foreign authority, prince, or potentate " This,
for the clergy, was a violation and renunciation of their oath of
fidelity and obedience to the Pope. By an evident abuse of
this Act of pariiament an oath was administered to all the clergy
throughout the realm, expressing total rejection of any authority
of the Bishop of Rome in England. For the laity the form
chosen dwelt rather on the succession to the crown.
The members of the two houses look the oath in presence of
the king before the prorogation of parliament on the 30th
March. What formula was used on that occasion we do not
know. That which appears in the Lords' Journal, and lo
which reference has just been raade as having been drawn up
by the commissioners, did not receive parUamentary sanction
until the next session, towards the close of the year, Ihough
that sanction declared it valid in the past.
Sir Thoraas now took a singular way of preparing his family
for the catastrophe, if we may believe Cresacre. This was to
give them some false alarms. He hired an official to come
suddenly to his house, as if with a summons, so as to startle all
the inmates, and thus give him an opportunity to speak on the
subject of detachment and martyrdom. On 28th March John
Graaynfyld, an official of the Court of Chancery, wrote to
Lord Lisle : " My old master. Sir Thomas More, is clearly
discharged of his trouble ".* Sir Thomas knew that he was
only at the beginning of his troubles.
On Low Sunday, which, in 1534, fell on 12th April, More
went into London wilh his son-in-law, Roper, to hear the
sermon at St. Paul's, and afterwards went to the house of John
Clements. His presence had been remarked, and the official,
following him lo Clements' house, served him wilh a citation
to appear next morning before the royal commissioners al
Lambeth, to take the new oath.f What follows must be told
* Letters and Papers, vii. 384.
t This circumstance- is not noted by Roper, but by Stapleton (cap. 15),
who no doubt learnt it from Mrs. Cleraents. There is a misprint of
Dom. in palmis for in albis.

REFUSAL OF THE OATH. 35 1
in the very words of Roper, the eye-witness : " Then Sir
Thomas More, as his accustomed manner always was ere he
entered into any matter of importance (as when he was first
chosen of the Privy Council, when he was sent ambassador,
appointed speaker of the parliament-house, made lord chan
cellor, or when he took any olher like weighty matter upon
him), to go to Church to be confessed,* to hear Mass, and to
be houseled ; so did he Ukewise in the morning early the self
same day that he was suminoned lo appear before the lords at
Lambeth" This was Monday, 13th April. The com
missioners were : Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury ; Audley,
lord chancellor ; Cromwell, secretary of slate ; to whom was
added the Abbot of Westminster.
Roper continues : "And whereas he evermore used before,
at his departure from his wife and children, whom he tenderly
loved, to have them bring him to his boat, and there to kiss
them, and bid them all farewell, then would he suffer none of
them forth the gate to follow him, but pulled the wicket after
him and shut them all from him ; and with a heavy heart, as by
his countenance it appeared, with me and our fbur servants
took boat towards Lambeth. Wherein sitting stUl sadly a while,
at the last he suddenly rounded me in the ear and said : ' Son
Roper, I thank Our Lord the field is won ' What he meant
thereby I then wist not, yet, loth lo seera ignorant, I answered :
' Sir, I am therefor very glad ' But, as I conjectured after
ward, it was for that the love he had to God wrought in him so
effectually that he conquered all his carnal affection utteriy."
I may here supplement Roper's narrative from the beautiful
treatise composed by Sir Thomas in the Tower on Our Lord's
Agony in the Garden. In it will be found the true explanation
ofhis own conduct throughout his trials and martyrdom, because
he had ever this model before his eyes. Thus, of the interior
* The old English phrase " to be confessed " (where we say " to con
fess ") indicates the sacramental character of the act, and its passive
.nature as regards absolution.

352 SIR THOMAS MORE.
conflict he endured in parting with his family and his liberty, after
mentioning that some of the martyrs of their own accord gladly
went to meet persecution, he writes : " But yet God of His in
finite mercy doth not require us to take upon us this most high
degree of stout courage, whicii is so full of hardness and diffi
culty. And therefore I would not advise every man at adven
ture rashly to run forth so far forward that he shall not be able
fair and softly to come back again, but unless he can attain to
climb up to the hill-top, be haply in hazard to tumble down
even to the bottom headlong. Let them yet whom God especi
ally calleth thereunto set forth in God's name and proceed, and
they shall reign. But yet before a man falleth in trouble, fear
is nol greatly to be discommended, and so that reason be al
ways ready to resist and master fear, the conflict is then no sin
nor offence at all, but rather a great matter of merit. Unto
one that were likely to be in such a case, Christ saith : ' Pluck
up thy courage, faint heart ; what though thou be fearful,
sorry and weary, and standest in great dread of most painful
torments, be of good comfort ; for I Myself have vanquished
the whole world, and yet felt I far more fear, sorrow, weariness,
and much more inward anguish too, when I considered My
raost bitter, painful Passion to press so fast upon Me. He that
is strong-hearted may find a thousand glorious valiant raartyrs
whose ensample he may right joyously follow. But thou now,
O timorous and weak, silly sheep, think it sufficient for thee
only to walk after Me, which am thy Shepherd and Governor,
and lo mistrust thyself and put thy trust in Me. Take hold of
the hem of My garment, therefore ; from thence shall thou per
ceive strength and relief to proceed.' " *
Sir Thomas will now himself tell us what happened to him
at Larabeth. It was a great crisis in English history, the first
overt and total renunciation of the authority of the Sovereign
Pontiff and separation from the rest of Christendom ; for such
in reality and in effect it was, though few realised at the time
* English Works, p. 1357.

REFUSAL OF THE OATH. 353
the full significance of their act. A letter to his daughter Mar
garet, written a few days later, has been preserved : " When I
was before the lords at Lambeth I was the first that was called
in, albeit that Master Dr. the Vicar of Croydon was come be
fore me and divers others. After the cause of my sending for
declared unto me (whereof I somewhat marvelled in my mind,
considering that they sent for no temporal raen but me), I de
sired the sight of the oath, which they showed me under the
great seal. Then desired I the sight of the Act of Succession,
which was delivered me in a printed roll. After which read
secretly by myself, and the oath considered wilh the Act, I
answered unto them that my purpose was not to put any fault
either in the Act or any raan that made il, or in the oath or
any man that sware it, nor to conderan the conscience of any
other man : but as for myself, in good faith my conscience so
moved me in the matter, that though I would not deny to
swear to the succession, yet unto that oath that there was
offered me I could not swear without the jeoparding of my
soul to perpetual damnation. And that if they doubted whether
I did refuse the oath only for the grudge of my conscience or
for any fantasy, I was ready therein to satisfy them by my oath
which if they trusted not, what should they be the better to
give me any oath ? And if they trusted that I would therein
swear true, then trusted I that of their goodness they would not
move me to swear the oath that they offered me, perceiving
that for to swear it was against my conscience.
" Unto this my lord chancellor said, that they all were very
sorry to hear me say this, and see me thus refuse the oath.
And they said all, that on their faith I was the very first that
ever refused it, which would cause the king's Highness to con
ceive great suspicion of me and great indignation towards me.
And therewith they showed me the roll and let rae see the •
names of the lords and the commons which had sworn and
subscribed their names already. Which notwithstanding, when
they saw that I refused to swear the same myself, not blaming
23

354 SIR TH0M.4S MORE.
any other man that had sworn, I was in conclusion commanded
to go down into the garden. And thereupon I tarried in the
old burned chamber that looketh into the garden, and would
not go down because of the heat.
"In that time I saw Master Dr. Latimer come into the
garden, and there walked he with divers other doctors and
chaplains of my lord of Canterbury. And very merry I saw
him, for he laughed and took one or twain about the neck so
handsomely, that if they had been women I would have weened
he had been waxen wanton. After that came Master Dr. Wil
son* forth from the lords, and was with two gentiemen
brought by me, and gentlemanly sent straight unto the Tower.
What time my Lord of Rochester + was called in before them,
that can I not tell. But at night I heard that he had been
before them, but where he remained that night, and so forth
till he was sent hither, I never heard. J I heard also that
Master Vicar of 'Croydon and aU the remnant of the priests of
London that were sent for, were sworn; and that they had
such favour at the Council's hand, that they were not lingered
or made to dance any long attendance to their travail and cost,
as suitors were soraetiraes wont to be, but were sped apace to
their great comfort ; so far forth that Master Vicar of Croydon,
either for gladness or for dryness, or else that it might be seen,
Quod ille notus erat pontifici, went to my lord's buttery bar
and called for drink, and drank valde familiariter.
"When they had played their pageant and were gone out of
the place, then was I called in again. And then was it declared
unto me, what a number had sworn ever since I went aside,
gladly without any slicking. Wherein I laid no blame in no
man, but for mine own self answered as before. Now, as well
before as then, they somewhat laid unto me for obstinacy, that
whereas before, since I refused to swear, I would not declare any
* Dr. Wilson had been royal chaplain.
t Blessed John Fisher.
X He was kept at Lambeth in the custody of Arobbishop Cranraer.

REFUSAL OF THE 0.A.TH. 355
special part of that oath that grudged my conscience, and open
the cause wherefore. For thereunto I had said unto thera, that
I feared lest the king's Highness would, as they said, take dis
pleasure enough towards me for the only refusal of the oath.
And that if I should open and disclose the causes why, I should
therewith but further exasperate His Highness, which I would in
nowise do, but rather would I abide all the danger and harm
that might come towards me, than give His Highness any occa-,
sion of further displeasure, than the offering of the oath unto
me of pure necessity constrained me.
" Howbeit, when they divers limes imputed this to me for
stubbornness and obstinacy, that I would neither swear the
oath, nor yet declare the causes why, I declined thus far towards
them, that rather than I would be accounted for obstinate, I
would upon the king's license, or rather his such commandment
had, as might be my sufficient warrant, that my declaration
should not offend His Highness nor put me in the danger of any
of his statutes, I would be content to declare the causes in writ
ing, and (over that) to give an oath in the beginning, that if I
might find those causes by any man in suchwise answered, as I
might think mine own conscience satisfied, I would after that
with all my heart swear the principal oath too. To this I was
answered, that though the king would give me license under
his letters patent, yet would it not serve me against the statute.
Whereto I said, that yet if I had them, I would stand unto the
trust of his honour al my peril for the remnant. But yet
thinketh me,* lo ! that if I may not declare the causes without
peril, then to leave them undeclared is no obstinacy.
" My lord of Canterbury taking hold upon that that I said,
that I condemned not the consciences of them that swear, said
unto me, that it appeared well, that I did not take it for a very
sure thing and a certain, that I might not lawfully swear it, but
rather as a thing uncertain and doubtful. ' But then,' said my
lord, 'you know for a certainty, andathing without doubt, that you
* It seeras to rae.

356 SIR THOMAS MORE.
be bound to obey your sovereign lord your king. And therefore
are you bound to leave off the doubt of your unsure conscience
in refusing the oath, and take the sure way in obeying of your
prince, and swear it.' Now aU was it so, that in mine own mind
methought myself not concluded,* yet this argument seemed rae
suddenly so subtle, and namely with such authority coming out
of so noble a prelate's mouth, that I could again answer nothing
thereto, but only that I thought myself I might not well do so,
because that in my conscience this was one of the cases in
which I was bounden that I should not obey my prince, since
that (whatsoever olher folk thought in the matier, whose
conscience or learning I would not condemn nor take upon me
to judge), yet to my conscience the truth seemed on the other
side. Wherein I had nol informed my conscience neither sud
denly nor slightly, but by long leisure and diligent search for
the raatter. And of truth, if that reason raay conclude, then
have we a ready way to avoid all perplexities ; for in whatsoever
raatter the doctors stand in great doubt, the king's command
raent, given upon whether side he list, solveth all the doubts.
" Then said ray lord of Westminster lo me, that howsoever
the matter seemed unto mine own raind, I had cause to fear
that mine own mind was erroneous, when I see the great
Council of the realm deterraine of ray mind the contrary, and
that therefore I ought to change ray conscience. To that I
answered that if there were no more but myself upon my side,
and the whole parliament upon the other, I would be sore
afraid to lean to mine own raind only against so many. But,
on the olher side, if it so be that in some things for which I
refuse the oath, I have (as I tbink I bave) upon my part as
great a council and a greater too, I ara not then bounden to
change my conscience and conforra it to the Council of one
realm against the general council of Christendom.
"Upon this Master Secretary,! as he that tenderly favoureth
* Although it seemed to rae that this reasoning was not conclusive.
t Thoraas Crorawell.

REFUSAL OF THE 0.\TH. 357
me, said and sware a great oath, that he had lever that his own
only son (which is of truth a goodly young gentleman, and shall,
I trust, come to much worship) had lost his head, than that I
should thus have refused the oath. For surely the king's
Highness would now conceive a great suspicion against me,
and think that the matter of the nun of Canterbury was all
contrived by my drift. To which I said that the contrary was
true and well known ; and whatsoever should mishap me, it
lay not in my power to help it without the peril of my soul.
" Then did my lord chancellor repeat before me my refusal
unto Master Secretary, as to him that was going unto the
king's Grace ; and in the rehearsing his lordship repeated again
that I denied not but was content to swear unto the succession.
Whereunto I said, that as for that point I would be content, so
that I might see my oath in that point so framed, in such a
manner as might stand with my conscience. Then said my
lord : ' Marry, Master Secretary, mark that too, that he will not
swear that neither but under some certain manner ' ' Verily no,
my lord,' quoth I, ' but that I will see it made in such wise
first as I shall myself see that I shaU neither be forsworn nor
swear against my conscience.' Surely as to swear to the succes
sion I see no peril ; but I thought and think it reason that to
mine own oath I look well myself, and be of counsel also in the
fashion ; and never intended to swear for a piece and set my hand
to the whole oath. Howbeit, as help me God, as touching the
whole oath I never withdrew any man frora it, nor never advised
any to refuse it, nor never put nor wUl put any scruple in any
man's head, but leave every man to his own conscience. And
methinketh in good faith that so were it good reason that every
man should leave me to mine." *
Although this letter was written by More to his daughter, yet
there are, if I mistake not, several passages intended rather for
the eyes of others than for hers. There was every likelihood
that sooner or later the letter might come before the Council or
* English Works, p. 142S.

358 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the king, and he wished to have an accurate record of what
had passed, and ofhis reasons for refusing the oath.
Sir Thomas mentions that the Bishop of Rochester has been
sent "hither " He means to the Tower, for it is known from
Roper that, after refusing the oath, Sir Thomas was kept in the
custody of the Abbot of Westminster for four days while the
king consulted with his Council as to his future treatment.
On Friday, 17th April, he was sent to the Tower, whence he
wrote to his anxious daughter the letter that has just been
given. His comraittal to the Tower was the result of the following
correspondence between Cranmer and Cromwell : —
" Right Worshipful Master Cromwell, —
" After most hearty commendations, etc. I doubt not
but you do right well remember that my Lord of Rochester and
Master More were contented to be sworn to the Act of the
king's succession, but not to the preamble of the same. What
was the cause of their refusal I ani uncertain, and they would
by no means express the same. Nevertheless, it must needs
be either the diminution of the authority of the Bishop of
Rome, or else the reprobation of the king's first pretensed
matrimony. But if they do obstinately persist in their opinions
of the preamble, yet meseemeth it should not be refused, if they
will be sworn lo the very Act of Succession, so that they wUl
be sworn lo maintain the same against all powers and potentates.
" For hereby shall be a great occasion to satisfy the princess-
dowager and the Lady Mary, which do think that they should
damn their souls if they should abandon and relinquish their
estates. And not only it should stop tbe mouths of them, but
also of the emperor and other their friends, if they give as much
credence lo my Lord of Rochester and Master More speaking
or doing against them, as they hitherto have done, and thought
that all should have done, when they spake and did with them.
"And, peradventure, it should be a good quietation to many

3
REFUSAL OF THE 0.\TH. ^9
other within this realm, if such raen should say that the succes
sion comprised within the said Act is good and according to
God's laws. For then, I think, there is not one within this
realm that would once reclaim against it. And whereas divers
persons, either of a wilfulness will not, or of an indurate and
invertible conscience cannot, alter from their opinions of the
king's first pretensed marriage (wherein they have once said
their minds, and percase have a persuasion in their heads that
if they should now vary therefrom their fame and estimation
were distained for ever), or else of the authority of the Bishop
of Rome ; yet, if all the realm with one accord would apprehend
the said succession, in my judgment it is a thing to be am-
plected and embraced. Which thing, though I trust surely in
God that it shall be brought to pass, yet hereunto might not a
little avaU the consent and oaths of these two persons, the
Bishop of Rochester and Master More, with their adherents,
or, rather, confederates.
"And if the king's pleasure so were, their said oaths might
be suppressed, but [i.e., except] when and where His Highness
might lake some commodity by the publishing of the same.
Thus Our Lord have you ever in His conservation.
" From'my manor at Croydon, the 17th day of April.
" Your own assured ever,
"Thom.\s Cantuar."*
The last clause about suppressing the exact nature of the
oath to be taken by More and Fisher is worthy of Cranmer. It
was to be given out (such was the scheme) that they had
yielded, so as to induce others to yield ; but occasionally it
might "suit the king's commodity," as when dealing with
persons of similar scruples, to reveal and use the modified form.
CromweU laid the archbishop's letter before the king. His
Majesty did not deny that another form of oath would satisfy
the Act, but it would by no means satisfy his intentions and
policy, for his whole object was to humble Sir Thomas, and
* Burnet, i. 255. Also (in abridgment) in Letters atid Papers, vii. 499.

3*60 SIR THOMAS MORE.
bend him to his wiU in the matter of the divorce. Without
any regard, therefore, to justice, he bade his minister return
the following answer : —
" My lord, after mine humble commendation, it may please
Your Grace to be advertised that I have received your letter
and showed the same to the king's Highness, who, perceiving
that your mind and opinion is that it were good that the
Bishop of Rochester and Master More should be sworn to
the king's succession, and not to the preamble of the same,
thinketh that if their oaths should be taken it were an occasion
to all men to refuse the whole, or at least the like. For, in
case they be sworn to the succession, and not to the preamble,
it is to be thought that it might be taken not only as a con
firmation of the Bishop of Rome's authority, but also as a
reprobation of the king's second marriage. Wherefore, to the
intent that no such things should be brought into the heads
of the people by the example of the said Bishop of Rochester
and Master More, the king's Highness in no wise willeth but
that they shall be sworn as well to the preamble as to the Act.
Wherefore, His Grace specially trusteth that ye will in no wise
attempt or raove him to the contrary ; for, as His Grace sup
poseth, that manner of swearing, if it shall be suffered, may
be an utter destruction of his whole cause, and also to the
effect of the law made for the same."
Roper had never seen these letters, but they entirely bear
out his assertion, that "albeit in the beginning they (the
commissioners) were resolved with an oath not to be acknown
[i.e., acknowledged] whether he had to the supremacy been
sworn, or what he thought thereof, he should be discharged ;
yet did Queen Anne, by her importunate clamour, so sore
exasperate the king against him, that, contrary to his former
resolution, he caused the said oath of supreraacy to be minis
tered unto him; who, albeit he made a discreet, qualifled
answer, nevertheless was forthwith committed to the Tower "
The 'words used by Roper should be noted. Burnet and

REFUSAL OF THE O.VTH. 36 1
others find fault with Catholic writers for speaking of an
oath of supremacy instead of an oath of succession. Roper,
however, who was a lawyer as well as a contemporary, knew
perfectiy well what he wrote. Had the oath been merely to
the succession of the crown, as was the intention of parliament.
More would have taken il, whUe regretting the raotives or
premisses that had led to the change. But because the oath
was converted into one of supremacy, he refused it.
To clear up the matier, I may remark that, although the
denial of the Pope's supremacy in the Church in no way
logically involves the affirmation of the king's supremacy in
the Church of England (as the whole of non-conformist
England has perfectly well understood), yet at the period in
question the two were inseparable in men's minds. The
headship of the king was insisted on simply to get rid of
the Pope's authority. The Pope's authority was denied simply
to make place for the king's prerogative. Thus John Leek
confesses that he had advised Blessed John Hall "nol logo
lo Hounslow before the commissioners to take oath lo re
nounce the papacy and acknowledge the king's supreraacy " ;
and he is speaking of no other oath than that exacted in virtue
of this Act of Succession in the spring of 1534.* Though the
form of oath subscribed by the clergy was much more explicit
on these points than any that was proposed to Sir Thomas
More, yet there were in it clauses or words implying the same
doctrines, as Cranmer's letter testifies.
Hence Sir Thomas, on his committal to the Tower, while
accepting and even rejoicing in the Providence of God, did
not conceal the injustice of his imprisonment on the part of
men. " I may tell thee, Meg, they that have committed me
hither for refusing of this oath, not agreeable with- their
statute, are not by their own law able to justify mine imprison
ment. And surely, daughter, it is a great pity that any Chris
tian prince should, by a flexible council, ready to follow his
* Letters and Papers,' viii. 565.

362 SIR THOMAS MORE.
affections, and by a weak clergy, lacking grace constantly to
stand to their learning, with flattery be so sharaefuUy abused." *
Lest it be suspected that Margaret may not have exactly
reported her father's words, or that Sir Thomas may haive
spoken hastily, I will add that the best legal authorities of
modern times entirely accept More's view, as related by
Roper; and that the governraent virtually acknowledged its
error, by causing parliaraent to ratify their past arbitrary pro
ceedings. A new session began on the 3rd of Noveraber,
1534. Roper says : " Al length, the Lord Chancellor and Mr.
Secretary, espying their own oversight, were fain to find the
means that another statute should be made for the confirma
tion of the oath so amplified wilh their additions "
Sir James Mackintosh writes : "An Act was passed t which
ratifies and professes lo recite the form of oath promulgated
on the day of prorogation ; and enacts that the oath above
recited shall be reputed to be the very oath intended by the
former Act of Succession, though there were, in fact, some
substantial and imporlant interpolations in the latter Act".!
And Lord Chancellor Campbell, writing of the attainder of
More in this same session, "for refusal to take the oath of
supremacy,'' says it was "an offence created by no law";
since (as he explains elsewhere) the commissioners had no
right to foist the question of the Pope's supremacy, or the
king's supremacy, into an oath which should have been limited
to the succession. An oath to the succession had never been
refused by either More or Fisher, yet in the winter session
they were both attainted of misprision of treason. In the Act
which relates to More,§ the king's grants of land to him in
1523 and 1525 are resumed; it is alleged that he refused the
oath since ist May of 1534, with an intent to sow sedition,
and he is reproached for having demeaned himself in other
respects ungratefully and unkindly to the king, his benefactor.
* From a conversation reported by Roper. + 26 Hen. viii. cap. 2.
t Life of More, p. 176. § 26 Hen. viii. cap. 23.

CHAPTER XX.
THE TOWER.
""VVTHEN Sir Thomas was going to the Tower," says Roper,
W " wearing as he commonly did a chain of gold about
his neck. Sir Richard Southwell, that had the charge
of his conveyance thither, advised him to send home his chain
to his wife or to some of his children. 'Nay, sir,' quoth he,
' that I wiU not ; for if I were taken in the field (of battle) by
my enemies, I would they should somewhat fare the better for
me.' At whose landing Mn Lieutenant* was ready at the
Tower gate to receive him, where the porter demanded of him
his upper garment 'Mr. Porter,' quoth he, 'here it is,' and
took off his cap and delivered to him, saying: 'I am very
sorr>' it is no better for thee'. 'No, sir,' quoth the porter,
' I must have your gown.' And so was he by Mr. Lieutenant
conveyed to his lodging, where he called unto him John a
Wood, his own servant, there appointed to attend him, who
could neither write nor read, and sWare him before the lieu
tenant, that if he should hear or see him at any time speak or
write any matter against the king, Council, or the state of the
realm, he should open it to the lieutenant, that the lieutenant
might incontinent reveal it to the Council."
Most of the buildings of the great fortified enclosure, then
and now caUed the Tower of London, still stand as in the days
of Henry VIII. Of these, none is more generally known than
* Sir Edmund Walsinghara.

364 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the Beauchamp Tower in the western ward, which is tradilion-
aUy said to have been the place of confinement of Sir Thomas
More. According to the fixed scale of charges of the lieu
tenant, Sir Thomas as a knight paid fees of ten shiUings a week
for hiraself and five shillings for his servant. A bill of charges
drawn up a few years after his death contains the following

Pl.4n of THE Tower.
I. The Bell Tower. 4. The Lieutenant's Lodgings.
2. The Beauchamp Tower. 5. The Scaffold.
3. St. Peter's ad Vincula. 6. All Hallows, Barking.
entry : " Sir Thomas More for 3 m. [months] unpaid, after 40s.
and his servant after 5s. [a week] . £9".* This heavy"
charge of about J^6 a week in modern value ought to have
purchased a generous diet, yet from detaUs to be mentioned
presently it would seem that even the smallest comforts had to
be supplied by friends from outside. Yet, in August, 1534,
* Cotton MSS. (B.M.) ; Titus, Bk. i.

THE TOWER. 365
Margaret Roper told her sister-in-law that "besides his old
disease of his breast, he was now grieved in the reins by reason
of gravel and stone, and with the cramp that divers nights
griped his legs " *
This did not satisfy his spirit of mortification and penance.
It had long been a practice with him on certain days lo wear a
rough hair shirt, and he continued this in the prison cell till his
death. Roper relates that one summer evening when he sal at
supper with his family and had laid aside his gown, his young
daughter-in-law, Anne Cresacre, chanced to espy the hair shirt,
and began to laugh at it. His daughter Margaret, perceiving this,
acquainted her father, who was sorry that his austerities were
detected. This beloved child entered into the secrets of her
father's heart. She had been accustomed to wash the hair
shirt for him, and to her the day before his death he had it
secretly conveyed.! A part of this precious relic lies before
me as I write. If the holy prisoner sought by penitential ex
ercises to communicate more closely with the Passion of Our
Lord, he kept up his sympathy wilh the Church during his
isolation, by celebrating all her feasts, al least in spirit, within
the walls of his dungeon. Stapleton learnt frora one of those
who cherished every detail of his raartyrdom, that he was ac
customed to dress more carefully, as far as his slender wardrobe
allowed, when the great feasts came round. J
The rigour of confinement varied much in English prisons of
that date, according to the quality of the offender, the nature
of his offence, or his means of purchasing the indulgence or
connivance of his jaUor. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir
Edmund Walsingham, had been a friend of Sir Thomas.
* English Works, p. 1434.
t It was from her that Roper learnt these details, and also that he was
wont on certain days to punish his body with whips and knotted cords.
X That he had at least two " gowns " is clear from his own words in a
letter, that, when summoned before the Council, "he changed his gown,"
and firom the fact that, when about to go to the scaffold, he wished to put
on his best apparel.

366 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Roper tells us that soon after his iUustrious prisoner's committal
to his charge, he visited him, and declared that from old affec
tion and from gratitude for favours he had himself received, he
would gladly "make him good cheer,'' but that this he could
not do without incurring the anger of the king. Sir Thomas
replied : " Mr. Lieutenant, I verily believe as you say, and
heartily thank you ; and assure yourself, I do not mislike my
cheer; but whensoever I so do, then thrust me out of your
doors". Doubtless Sir Edward Walsingham in later days
would often relate this merry saying of the martyr.
In a book written in the Tower, that will be described pre
sently, Sir Thomas gives us a glimpse of his prison cell, if (as
it seeras certain) he is writing of himself and his wife, " I wist
a woman once that came inlo a prison to visit of her charity a
poor prisoner there, whom she found in a chamber (to say the
truth) meetly fair, and at the leastwise it was strong enough.
But with mats of straw the prisoner had made it so warm, both
under the feet and round about the walls, that in these things,
for the keeping of his health, she was on his behalf glad and
very well comforted. But among many other displeasures that
for his sake she was sorry for, one she laraented much in her
raind, that he should have the chamber door shut upon him by
night, and made fast by the jailor that should shut him in.
' For, by my troth,' quoth she, ' if the door should be shut upon
me, I would ween it would stop up my breath.' At that word
of hers the prisoner laughed in his mind ; but he durst nol
laugh aloud, nor say nothing to her, for somewhat indeed he
stood in awe of her, and had his finding there much part of her
charity for airas ; but he could not but laugh inwardly, while
he wist well enough that she used on the inside to shut every
night fuU surely her own charaber to her, both doors and win
dows too, and used not to open them of all the long night.
And what difference, then, as to the stopping of the breath,
whether they were shut up within or without ? " *
* Dialogue of Comfort, Bk. iii. ch. 20.

THE TOWER. 367
From this and other details it would seem that Sir Thomas
was treated at first with some leniency. Indeed, he appears lo
have been allowed the range of the Tower, or at least occasional
exercise in the garden as well as access to the church ; for when
this liberty had been restricted, his daughter wrote that she
" cannot hear what moved them to shut him up again. She
supposes that, considering he was of so temperate mind that
he was content to abide there all his life with such liberty, they
thought it not possible' to incline him to their wUl, except by
restraining him from the church, and the company of his wife
and children. She remembers that he told her in the garden
that these things were like enough to chance shortly after." *
So thoroughly had Sir Thomas More trained himself to
make the best of everything, that he found in the solitude of
the prison the realisation of his early aspirations to a monastic
and contemplative life. " When he had remained in the Tower
littie more than a month," writes Roper, " my wife, longing to
see her father, by her earnest suit at length got leave to go
unto him. At whose coming, after the seven psalms and litany
said (which whensoever she came unto him, ere he fell in talk
of any worldly matter, he used accustomably to say with her),
among other communication he said unto her : ' I believe,
Meg, that they that have put me here ween they have done
me a high displeasure : but I assure thee on my faith, mine
own good daughter, if it had not been for my wife and ye that
be my children, I would not have failed long ere this to have
closed myself in as. strait a room, and straiter too.t But since
I am come hither without mine own desert, I trust that God of
His goodness will discharge me of my care, and with His
gracious help supply my lack among you. I find no cause, I
thank God, Meg, to reckon myself in worse case here than at
home; for methinketh God maketh me a wanton (i.e., a spoiled
child), and setteth me on His lap and dandleth me.' "
Prisoners have little or no history. From May, 15341 when
* Letter of Margaret Roper, English Works, p. 1446.
t See supra, p. 25.

368 SIR THOMAS MORE.
he finally refused the oath, to May, 1535, when new troubles
began, is almost a blank in the records of Sir Thomas More.
It is hard to realise the monotony of his life. When he had
been secluded from the church, Sunday and feast-day raust
have passed without bringing even that variety they give to
modern prison discipline. There were, indeed, two churches
within the precincts of the Tower, which may still be seen —
the ancient Norman Church of St. John in the White Tower,
and the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula, which, had recently
been burnt down and rebuilt ; but into neither of these were
prisoners conducted to hear Mass on days of precept ; nor can
I find in any records of those days the slightest trace of sermons
preached or sacraments administered, with the one exception
of confession before execution.
Lady More was allowed once or twice to visit her husband.
He has told us of his amusement at her horror of suffocation
under locks and bolts. Another interview is related by Roper,
the detaUs of which may have been witnessed by Margaret
Roper or related by Sir Thomas to Margaret, or, perhaps, told
by Lady More herself " When Sir Thomas," writes Roper,
" had continued a good while in the Tower, my lady, his wife,
obtained licence to see him. Who, at her first coming, like a
simple, ignorant woman and somewhat worldly too, with this
manner of salutation homely saluted him : ' What a good
year I * Mr. More,' quoth she, ' I marvel that you, that hitherto
have been taken for a wise raan, will now so play the fool, to
lie here in this close, filthy prison, and be content thus to be
shut up among mice and rats, when you might be abroad al
your liberty, and with the favour and goodwill both of the king
and his Council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best
learned of this realm have done. And seeing you have at
Chelsea a right fair house, your library, your gallery, garden,
orchard, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where
you might in the company of me, your wife, your children, and
* A well-known exclamation in those days.

THE TOWER. 369
household, be merry, I muse what (a God's name !) you mean
here still thus fondly to tarry.' After he had awhile quietly
heard her, with a cheerful countenance, he said unto her : ' Is
not this house as nigh heaven as mine own ? ' To whom she,
after her accustomed homely fashion, not liking such talk,
answered : ' Twittle, twattle, twittle, twattle ! ' ' How say you,
Mrs. Alice, is it not so ? ' ' Bone Deus, bone Deus, raan, will
this gear never be left ? ' quoth she. ' Well then, Mistress Alice,
if it be so, it is very well ; for I see no great cause why I
should much joy in my gay house, or in anything thereunto
belonging, when, if I should but seven years lie buried under
the ground, and then arise and come thither again, I should
not fail to find some therein that would bid me get out of doors,
and tell rae it were none of mine. What cause have I, then, to
like such a house as would so soon forget its master ? ' "
Lady More was evidently one of those good souls to whom
respectability is the law of laws, and to whom a scrilple to do
what decent people do is simply unintelligible. She probably
thought that too much learning or too much religion had
driven Sir Thomas mad. Yet she meant well, and was kind
and devoted, and was depriving herself of the very things she
most cherished, in order lo pay his weekly pension. Her
husband, therefore, loved and esteemed her, though he could
smile al her weaknesses, and did not expect from her a heroism
of which she could not even frame a conception.
Very different was his correspondence and conversation with
his daughter Margaret. According to a marginal note in
Rastell's edition of More's works, she had taken the oath with
the clause " as far as it would stand wilh the' law of God," a
manner of swearing that the government would occasionally
connive at. She seems to have more than once by word or
letter tried to persuade her father to conforra his conscience to
that of the men of learning and reputation who had yielded.
The following letters will tell their own tale. Only one of
them, however, is dated ; this is a letter from Lady Alington,
24

370 SIR THOMAS MORE.
More's step-daughter, to Margaret Roper. It was written on
the Monday after St. Lawrence (lolh A,ugust), 1534. She
relates an interview she had had with Audley, the lord chan
cellor, whose help she had asked in favour of Sir Thomas.
Audley had, easily promised this, though he declared that the
remedy was in More's own hands, if he would put aside his
foolish scruples ; and he had joked on the matter, relating
some fables, of which Lady Ahngton says : "In good faith,
they pleased me nothing, nor I wist not what to say, for I was
abashed of this answer ; and I see no better suit than to
Almighty God, for He is the comforter of all sorrows ".*
Margaret, however, took wilh her this letter on her next visit to
the Tower, the details of which are related in a very long letter
to Lady Alington, of which I musl give merely an abridgment.
After the usual prayers and some conversation about his wife
and children, Margaret told her father that she had a letter
which proved how his persistence was alienating his friends.
More replied with a smile : " What, Mistress Eve ! hath my
daughter Alington played the serpent with you, and with a
letter set you at work to come and tempt your father again, and
forthe favour that you bear him, labour to ..make him swear
against his conscience and so send him to the devil ? " And
after that he said seriously and earnestly : " Daughter Margaret,
we two have talked of this thing raore than twice or thrice, and
I have told you that if it were possible for me to do the thing
that might content the king's Grace, and God nol offended, no
man had taken this oath more gladly than I would do ". He
explained that he had long and well weighed the matter, and
had well considered all the possible consequences. God's
providence had now placed him in that strait that he must
either deadly displease God or abide any worldly harm that
might faU for his other sins. He read Lady Alinglon's letter
very carefully twice, spoke highly of her affection for him and
of his own love for her ; he laughed al Audley's fables as being
* English Works, p. 1433.

THE TOWER.

371

nothing to the point. Audley had said that "he marvelled
that More was so obstinate in his own conceit in a matter that
no one scrupled save the bhnd bishop and he ". The blind,
that is, the obstinate bishop, was, of course. Blessed John
Fisher of Rochester. On this More remarked that no doubt
raany, both temporal and spiritual, looked on the taking of the
oath as a mere trifle, though probably many did not really think
this that said it ; " But though they did, daughter, it would
not make much to me, not though I should see ray Lord of
Rochester say the same. For albeit of very truth I have him
in that reverent estimation, that I reckon in this realra no one
man in wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue meet to
be compared wilh him, yet that in this raatter I was not led by
him ver)' plainly appeareth, in that I refused the oath before il
was offered to him, and in that his lordship was content to
have sworn of that oath (as I perceived since by you) either
somewhat more or in some olher manner than ever I minded
to do. Verily, daughter, I never Intend to pin my soul al
another man's back, not even the best man that I know this
day Uving. For I know not whither he may hap to carry il.
There is no man living of whom, while he liveth, I may raake
myself sure. Some may do for favour, and some may do for
fear, and so might they carry my soul a wrong way. And
some might hap to frame himself a conscience, and think that
if he did it for fear God would forgive it. And some may
peradventure think that they will repent and be shriven thereof,
and that so shall God remit it lo them. And sorae may be,
peradventure, of the mind that, if they say one thing and think
the while the contrary, God more regardeth the heart than the
tongue ; and that, therefore, their oath goeth upon what they
think and not upon what they say. But in good faith,
Margaret, I can use no such ways in so great a matter."
Margaret told him he was not asked to swear against his
conscience, in order to keep olher men company, but to instruct
and reform his conscience by the consideration that such and

372 SIR THOMAS MORE.
SO many men considered the oath lawful, and even a duty since
parliament required it. He replied that parliament might err,
and explained at considerable length when a man is bound to
give up his own private opinion or judgment. This should be
done at the infallible decree of a general council, but not at
the enactraent of a parliament.
" But, Margaret," he concluded, " for whal cause I refuse the
oath I will never show you, neither you nor no body else, except
the king's Highness should like to command me. I have refused
and do refuse the oath for more causes than one. And this I
am sure, that of them that have sworn it, some of the best
learned, before the oath was required, plainly affirmed the
contrary of such things as they have now sworn, and that not
in haste, but often and after great diligence to seek out the
truth." Margaret caught at this, and said that probably they
now saw raore than they saw before. More would not deny
this or conderan them, but he at least had seen no reason to
change. He told Margaret, also, that he was not in the
minority, as some affirmed. Throughout Christendom the
greater part thought with him. " But go we now to them that
are dead before, and that are, I trust, in heaven ; I am sure that
it is nol the fewer part of them that, all the time while they
lived, thought in some of the things that way that I think
now." When he saw his daughter, after this discussion, sitting very
sadly, not from any fear she had. about his soul, but at the
temporal consequences she foresaw, he smiled again and ex
claimed : " How now, daughter Margaret? What now, Mother
Eve ? Where is your raind now ? Sit not musing with some
serpent in your breast, upon some new persuasion to offer
Father Adam the apple yet once again."
" In good faith, father," replied Margaret, " I can no further
go. For since the example of so many wise men cannot move
you, I see not what to say more, unless I should look to per
suade you with the reason that Master Harry Pattenson made."

THE TOWER. 373
(It wiU be remembered that Pattenson was More's fool, now in
the service of the Lord Mayor.) " For," continued Margaret,
"he met one day one of our men, and when he had asked
where you were, and heard that you were in the Tower still, he
waxed angry with you, and said : ' Why ? what aileth him that
he will not swear ? Wherefore should he stick to swear ? I
have sworn the oath myself .\nd so," says Margaret, " have I
sworn." At this More laughed, and said : " That word was like
Eve, too, for she offered -\dam no worse fruit than she had eaten
herself". Margaret then told him that CromweU had hinted that
parhament was not yet dissolved, and might decree worse
things against him. More replied that he had thought of this.
However, no man could do him hurt without doing him wrong,
and he trusted God would not suffer so good and wise a prince
as Henry thus to requite the long service of his true, faithful
servant. "Yet, since nothing is impossible, I forgot not in
this matter the counsel of Christ in the Gospel, that ere I should
begin to build this castle for the safeguard of mine own soul,
I should sit and reckon what the charge would be. I counted,
Margaret, full surely many a restless, weary night, while my
wife slept, and thought I slept, too, what peril were possible to
fall to me ; and in devising I had a full, heavy heart. But yet
I thank Our Lord for all that I never thought to change, though
the very uttermost should happen to me that my fear ran
upon." Margaret urged that things might appear still more terrible
when they should actually take place, and thus perhaps it
would be too late. This word roused her father. " Too late,
daughter Margaret ! I beseech Our Lord that if ever I make
such a change, it may be too late, indeed ; for well I wot the
change can not be good for my soul." He went on to speak
most tenderly of his trust in God to prevent his falling, or even
to raise him up should he chance to fall like Peter, adding these
solemn and heroic words : —

374 SIR THOMAS MORE.
" And finally, Margaret, this wot I very weU, that, withput
my fault. He will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with
good hope, commit myself whoUy to Him ; and if He suffer
rae for my faults to perish, yet shaU I thus serve for a praise of
His justice, But in good faith, Meg, I trust that His tender
pity shall keep my poor soul safe, and make me commend His
mercy. And, therefore, mine own good daughter, never
trouble thy mind for anything that shaU happen to me in this
worid. Nothing can come but what God wills !" He concluded
by exhorting all his faraily to be resigned, to remain united,
and to pray for him. "And if anything happen me that you
would be loth, pray to God for me, but trouble not yourselves ;
as I shall full heartily pray for us all that we may meet together
once in heaven, where we shall make merry forever, and never
have trouble after." *
I doubt whether, in the Acts of the Martyrs, there is a nobler
scene than this. Did ever temptation come in a more subtle
form? The affectionate daughter had no thought of leading
her father lo do what was unworthy of him. When we see one
so pure and wise as Margaret Roper thus deceived, we can
estimate the enorraity of the scandal given lo the laity by the
prelates and clergy of England, and we can also estiraate the
raagnificence of More's loyalty to conscience, that he should
be in no ways swayed by that exaraple, thus pressed upon him
by the mouth of his accoraplished and beloved daughter.
The following letter, dealing with the same subject, has no
date, and may perhaps have preceded the conversation related
by Margaret to Lady Alington : " Our Lord bless you. If I
had not been, my dearly beloved daughter, at a firm and fast
point, I trust in God's great mercy this good great whUe before,
your lamentable letter had not a little abashed me, surely far
above all other things, of which I hear divers times not a few
terrible towards me. But surely they all touched me never so near,
* English Works, pp. 1434-1443. Rastell doubts whether More himself
may not have written this letter.

THE TOWER. 375
nor were so grievous unto me, as to see you, my well beloved
child, in such vehement piteous manner, labour to persuade
unto me that thing wherein I have, of pure necessity for re
spect unto mine own soul, so often given you so precise answer
before. Wherein as touching the points of your letter, I can
make none answer. For I doubt not but you well remeraber
that the matters which move my conscience (without declara
tion whereof I can nothing touch the points) I have sundry
times showed you that I will disclose them to no man.
" And therefore, daughter Margaret, I can in this thing no
further, but like as you labour me again to follow your mind,
to desire and pray you both again to leave off such labour,
and with my former answers to hold yourself content. A
deadly grief unto me, and much more deadly than to hear of
mine own death (for the fear thereof, I thank Our Lord, the fear
of heU, the hope of heaven, and the Passion of Christ daily
more and more assuage), is, that I perceive my good son, your
husband, and you, my good daughter, and my good wife, and
mine other good children and innocent friends, in great dis
pleasure and danger of great harm thereby. The let whereof
while it lieth not in my hand, I can no further but commit all
lo God. Nam in manu Dei, sayeth the Scripture, cor regis est
and sicut divisiones aquarum quacunque voluerit impellit illud.
Whose high Goodness I most humbly beseech to incline the
noble heart of the king's Highness to the tender favour of you
all, and to favour me no better than God and myself know
that my faiihful heart towards him and my daily prayer for
him do deserve.
" For surely if His Highness might inwardly see my true mind
such as God knoweth it is, it would (I trust) soon assuage his
high displeasure : which, while I can in this world never in such
wise show but that His Grace may be persuaded to beUeve the
contrary of me, I can no further go, but put all in the hands of
Him for fear of whose displeasure for the safeguard of my soul,
stirred by mine own conscience (without insectation or reproach

376 SIR THOMAS MORE.
laying to any other man's), I suffer and endure this trouble.
Out ofwhich I beseech Him to bring me, when His wiU shaU'
be, into His endless bhss of heaven, and, in the meanwhile,
give me grace and you both in all our agonies and troubles,
devoutiy to resort prostrate unto the remembrance of that
bitter agony, which Our Saviour suffered before His Passion at
the Mount. And if we diligently so do, I verUy trust we shall
find therein great corafort and consolation.
" And thus, my dear daughter, the blessed Spirit of Christ for
His tender mercy govern and guide you all, to His pleasure
and your weal and comforts both body and soul.
" Your tender, loving father,
" Thomas More, Knight." *
To this letter Margaret returned the following answer :—
" Mine own good Father, —
" It is to rae no littie comforth, since I cannot talk
with you by such means as I would, at the least way to delight
myself among in this bitter time of your absence by such means
as I may, by as often writing to you as shall be expedient, and
by reading again and again your most fruitful and delectable
letter, the faithful messenger of your very virtuous and ghostly
mind, rid frora all corrupt love of worldly things, and fast knit
only in the love of God and desire of heaven, as becometh a
very true worshipper and a faiihful servant of God, which I
doubt not, good father, holdeth His holy hand over you and
shaU (as He halh) preserve you both body and soul (ut sit mens
sana in corpore sand), and namely, now when you have abjected
all earthly consolations and resigned yourself willingly, gladly
and fully for His love to His holy protection.
" Father, what think you hath been our comfort since your
departing from us ? Surely the experience we have had of your
life past, and godly conversation, and wholesome counsel, and
virtuous example, and a surety not only of the continuance of
* English Works, p. 1431.

THE TOWER. 377
that samp, but also a great increase by the goodness of Our
Lord, to the great rest and gladness of your heart, devoid of
aU earthly dregs, and garnished with the noble vesture of
heavenly virtues, a pleasant palace for the Holy Spirit of God
to rest In, who defend you (as I doubt not, good father, but of
His goodness He will) from all trouble of mind and of body,
and give me, yoilr most loving, obedient daughter and hand
maid, and all us, your children and friends, to follow that that
we praise in you ; and to our only comfort remember and com
mune [i.e., converse] together of you, that we may in conclusion
raeet with you, mine own dear father, in the bliss of heavefi,
to which Our most merciful Lord hath bought us with His
precious Blood. " Your own
"most loving obedient daughter and bedeswoman,
"Margaret Roper,
which desireth above all worldly things to be in John a Woode's
stead to do you some service. But we live in hope that we
shaU shortly receive you again ; I pray God heartily we may, if
it be His holy will." *
From another very affectionate letter of the sarae daughter I
have already given an extract regarding her father's seclusion
from the church.f He repUed that his " close keeping again did
of likelihood grow of his negligent and very plain true word,
which she would remember " He warned her to expect a new
search in all their houses, since people would not believe he
was reaUy so poor as appeared by the first search. " Which
thing," he says, " if ever it should happen, can make but game
to us that know the truth pf my poverty, unless they find out
my wife's gay girdle and her golden beads. Howbeit, I verily
believe that the king's Grace of his benign pity will lake no
thing from her.'' He repeats what he had said before of his
innocence and good conscience in refusing the oath, and the
* English Works, p. 1432. t Supra, p. 367.

378 SIR THOMAS MORE.
possibility of some new, but unjust, law being made against
him. He assures her that he has never prayed to be released
from prison or delivered from death, nor wavered one moment
at the prospect of anypain, " albeit I found myself (I cry God
mercy) very sensual and my flesh much more shrinking from
pain and from death than raethought it the part of a faithful
Christian man ".* This letter was written with a coal or burnt
wood, " and other pens have I none here ". In another letter
he says : " That your fear of your own frailty, Margaret, no
thing misliketh rae. God give us both twain grace to despair
of purselves, and wholly to hang upon the strength of God.
Surely, Meg, a fainter heart than thy frail father hath
canst thou not have. And yet I verily trust in the great mercy
of God that He shall, of His goodness, so stay me with His
holy hand that he shall not finally suffer me to fall wretchedly
from His favour. . And verily, my dear daughter, in this is
ray great comfort, that albeit I am of nature so shrinking from
pain that I am almost afraid of a fiUip, yet in all the agonies
that I have had, I thank the mighty mercy of God, I never in
ray "mind intended to consent to do anything against my con
science." t
Opportunities of writing were rarer as time went on. The
following short letter seems to belong to the later months of
his imprisonment : —
" Mine own good Daughter, —
" Our Lord be thanked, I am in good health of body,
and in good quiet of raind ; and of woridly things I no more
desire than I have. I beseech Him make you all merry in the
hope of heaven . And such things as I somewhat longed to
talk with you all concerning the world to come, Our Lord put
them into your minds, as I trust He doth and better too by His
Holy Spirit, who bless you and preserve you all.
" Written with a coal by your tender loving father, who in his
* English Works, p. 1446. f lb., p. 1446.

the tower. 379
poor prayers forgetteth none of you all, nor your babes, nor
your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your good husbands'
shrewd wives, nor your father's shrewd wife neither, nor our
other friends.
" And thus fare ye heartily well for lack of paper,
" Thomas More, Knight.
" Our Lord keep me continually true, faithful and plain, to the
contrary whereof I beseech Him heartily never lo suffer me
live. For as for long life (as I have often told thee, Meg) I
neither look for nor long for, but am well content to go, if God
caU me hence to-morrow. And, I thank Our Lord, I know no
person living that I would had one fillip for my sake ; of which
mind I am more glad than of all the world beside.
"Recommend me to your shrewd Will* and mine other
sons, and to John Harris, my friend, and yourself knoweth to
whom else, and to my shrewd wife above all, and God preserve
you all, and make and keep you His servants all." t
Wilh the exception of the few visits frora his wife and
daughter in the earlier months of More's imprisonment, no
relation or friend was allowed to-communicate wilh him. This
he expressly declares in a circular letter to all his friends, asking
them to give credit to Margaret in case she should raake known
to them any necessity. J One or two letters were, howevef,
given to him, perhaps by permission of the governor, and his
answers have been preserved. A priest named Leader had
heard that More had relented and taken the oath. He seems
to have written to congratulate with him on the fact and on his
approaching deliverance from prison. More replied : —
"The tale that is reported, albeit I cannot but thank you
though ye would it were true, yet I thank God it is a very
vanity. And I trust in the great goodness of God that He
shaU never suffer it to be true. If my mind had been obstinate
* William Roper. t English Works, p. 1430. J lb., p. 1432.

380 SIR THOMAS MORE.
in deed, I would not let for any rebuke or worldly shame
plainly to confess the truth ; for I propose not to depend upon
the fame of the worid. But I thank Our Lord that the thing
that I do is nol for obstinacy, but for the salvation of ray soul,
because I cannot induce raine own raind otherwise to think
than I do concerning the oath. As for other men's conscience
I will be no judge of, nor I never advised any man neither to
swear nor lo refuse. But as for mine own self, if ever I should
mishap to receive the oath (which I trust Our Lord shall never
suffer me), ye may reckon sure that it were expressed and ex
torted by duress and hard handling. For as for all the goods
of this world, I thank Our Lord I sel not rauch more by than
I do by dust. And I trust both that they will use no violent
forcible ways, and also that if they would, God would of His
grace (and the rather a great deal through good folks' prayers)
give me strength to stand. ' Fidelis Deus,' saith Sl. Paul, ' qui
non patitur vos tentari siipra id quod potestis ferre, sedet dat cum
ientatione proventum ut possitis sustinere.' For this I am very
sure that if ever I should swear it, I should swear deadly sore
against raine own conscience. For I ara very sure in my mind,
that I shall never be able to ehange myne own conscience to
the contrary. As for other men's I will not meddle of.
" Il hath been showed rae that I am reckoned wilful and
obstinate, because that since my coming hither, I have not
written unto the king's Highness, and by mine own writing
made some suit unto His Grace. But, in good faith, I do not
forbear it of any obstinacy, but rather of a lowly mind arid a
reverent, because that I see nothing that I could write, but that
I fear me sore that His Grace were likely rather to take dis
pleasure wilh me for it than otherwise, while His Grace beheveth
me nol that my conscience is the cause, but rather obstinate
wUfulness. But surely that my let is but my conscience that
knoweth God, to whose order I coramit the whole matter, ' In
cujus manu corda regum sunt '. I beseech Our Lord that all
raay prove as true faithful subjects to the king that have sworn,

the tower. 381
as I am in my mind very sure that they be which have refused
to swear.
" In haste this Saturday, the 16 day of January [1535]. By
the hand of your bedesman, " Thomas More, Knight,
" Prisoner." *
Two other letters are addressed to Dr. Nicolas Wilson, one
of the king's chaplains, who had refused the oath on the same
day as More and Fisher, and had been committed to the Tower.
It would seem thaf his strength of soul was exhausted by a long
solitary confinement. He found means to write to his old
friend. Sir Thoraas, suggesting doubts that now occurred to
him regarding the force of the conclusions that had made him
refuse the oath. More replies that he is sorry to see him thus
agitated, but that he cannot give hira any relief When the king
had bidden them both study the subject, they had done so to
gether as thoroughly as possible, and had arrived al the same
conclusions. " Now,'' he says, " I neither raurraur, nor
grudge, nor make assertions, nor keep disputation on the
matter ; and, as touching the oath and the causes for which I
refused it, no man knoweth what they be. For they be secret
to my own conscience, sorae olher, peradventure, than those
that other men would ween, and such as I never disclosed to
any man yet, nor never intend lo do while I live.'' He meddles
with no other man's conscience. "In mine own conscience (I
cry God raercy) I find of mine own life matters enough to think
upon. I have lived, methinketh, a long life, and now neither I
look nor long to live much longer. T have, since I came to the
Tower, looked once or twice to have given np my ghost ere this,
and, in good faith, my heart waxed the lighter with hope there
of Yet forget I not that I have a long reckoning and a great
to give account of But I put ray trust in God, and in the
merits of His bitter Passion, and I beseech Him to give me and
* English Works, p. 1450.

382 SIR THOMAS MORE.
keep me the raind to look lo be out of this world and lo be
with Hira. For I can never but trust, that who so long to be
with Him shall be welcorae to Him ; and, on the other side,
my mind giveth me verily that any that ever shall come to Him
shall full heartily wish to be with Him ere ever he shall come at
Him." Wilh some affectionate words and commendation to
his prayers, he concludes, asking him to send the letter back,
" for though its contents are-harmless, the bearer-might get into
trouble by il ".*
It seeras, however, that Dr. Wilson kept it, and wrote him a
second letter, to which Sir Thomas answered shortly : " I per
ceive that you have proraised to swear the oath. I beseech
Our Lord give you Ihereof good luck. And whereas I perceive
that you would gladly know what I intend to do, you wot weU
that I told you when we were both abroad, that I would therein
neither know your mind nor no man's else ; nor you nor no
man else should therein know mine. With God's grace I will
follow my own conscience. What my own shall be to-morrow,
myself cannot be sure ; and whether I shall have finaUy the
grace to do according to mine own conscience or not hangeth
in God's goodness, not in mine, to whom I beseech you
heartUy to remember rae in your devout prayers, and I shall
and do daily remember you in mine, such as they be."f
Whether Dr. Wilson was moved to recall his promise to take
the oath I do not find recorded. From the bill of the governor's
expenses it appears that he remained prisoner for two years and
two months ;J yet at a subsequent period he got promotions
that he could not have enjoyed without acquiescing in the
schism. By comparing the various expressions of Sir Thomas together,
it seems that he was himself deterred from taking the oath of
succession, in the form in which it was proposed lo him, by
several reasons, some of which were doctrinal, and held by the
* English Works, p. 1443. t Ib.
X Cotton MS. ; Titus, Bk. i. ; also Archceologia, xviii. 294.

THE TOWER. 383
doctors ofthe Church ; but others were of a secret nature known
to himself, and which he had never communicated lo another,
and would not reveal even to his daughter. Whether these had
reference to Anne Boleyn's affinity with Henry, or her pre
contract of marriage with Percy, or some olher irapediraent still
more secret, we cannot now discover, any more than we can know
the grounds on which Cranmer pronounced that Anne's marriage
with Henry had been null from the beginning; it may be as
weU to anticipate somewhat, in order to conclude here what is
told of the wreck of his property and home.*
Towards the end ofthe year 1534, the wife and children of
Sir Thomas petitioned for his pardon and release. They
alleged that he had remained more than eight months in the
Tower "in great continual sickness of body and heaviness of
heart " " The king during that time has allowed his wife to
retain his moveable goods and the revenues of his lands, al
though forfeited for his refusal of the oath ; but lately an Act
has been made in the last parliament, not only confirraing the
forraer forfeiture, but causing the inheritance of all the lands
which the said Sir Thomas had from the king, amounting lo the
annual value of ;^6o, to be forfeited. All that his wife brought
him is expended in the king's service, and she is likely to corae
to want, as also her son, who stands charged wilh the payment of
iifertain great sums due by Sir Thoraas to the king. But above all
this, Sir Thoraas is likely to die, after his long and true service to
the king. They beseech the king to grant this their petition, con
sidering that his offence is not of malice or obstinacy, but of
such a long continued and deep-rooted scruple as passeth his
power to avoid and put away."+
* Dr. Bailey, in his Life of Fisher, mentions several incidents of More's
life in the Tower to which I have here raade no reference — e.g., a plot
laid to gain hira over by the report that Fisher had taken the oath . In
my Life of Blessed Fisher I have given my reasons for taking all this as
apochryphal. t Arundel MS., 152, f. 300 b. Archceologia, xxvii. 369.

384 SIR THOMAS MORE.
In May, 1535, Lady More raade another appeal to Cromi
well. She had been compeUed of very necessity to sell her
apparel to provide 15s. weekly for the board wages ofher poor
husband and his servant.* Neither of these petitions found
the slightest response in the heart of the monarch wholly given
lo feasting and pageantry, and surrounded by greedy sycophants.
In January, 1535, the king granted to Henry Norris, "Es
quire of the Royal Body," the fee simple of the manors of
Doglington and Fringeford, in Oxfordshire, the advowson of
Doglington Church, and Barly Park, which had come into the
king's hand by the attainder of Sir Thonias More.f
In April, the manor of South, in Kent, with advowsons
thereto belonging, likewise forfeited, were given to the queen's
brother, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. J And the king's
brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, wrote to the king a few
days after the death of the martyr, begging him not to grant
any part of Sir Thomas More's land lying about Chelsea, be
cause he hiraself wished to have the house and lands adjoining,
which (he says) are not above the yearly value of ;^i6.§
* Letters and Papers, viii. 800.
fib., viii. 149, n. 16. He had received these by royal grant in
1525- X lb., 632, n. 13. The manor of South had been granted to Sir
Thomas in 1522.
j lb., IIOI. Whether the duke obtained his request I do not perceive.
The following are mentioned as the successive owners of More's house:
Sir William Paulet— Gregory, Lor^ Dacre — Sir WiUiam Cecil, Lord
Burghley— Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury — The Earl of Lincoln —
Sir Arthur Gorges— Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex— King Charles
I.— The Duke of Buckingham— William Plummer— The Earl of Bristol—
—Lady Ann Russell— The Duke of Beaufort— Sir Hans Sloane (who
pulled it down in 1740).

CHAPTER XXI.
ASCETIC WRITINGS.
IT would seem that during the far greater part of his im.
prisonment, Sir Thomas was allowed the use of books
to read, as well as of pen and ink and plenty of paper.
He composed works in Latin and English that would fill two
good octavo volumes. All these writings were devotional or
ascetic, that is, meditations on the mysteries of faith or treatises
on the exercise of Christian virtues.
If I mistake not, Blessed Thomas More stands quite alone
among the ascetic writers of the Church ; for whUe he is not
inferior to the best ecclesiastics in his use of Holy Scripture,
his knowledge of the human heart, his analysis of the workings
of passion and the counterworkings of grace, he considered it
his layman's privilege to use a livelier style and to illustrate his
matter wilh abundance of merry stories.
As far back as 1522, when he had lately been made a knight
and treasurer of the kingdom, and was in the midst of all the
splendours of Henry's court, he had sought to keep his heart
pure and humble by composing a treatise in English on the
words of Ecclesiasticus : " In all thy works remember thy
last end, and thou shalt never sin '' * Novissima, the last
things, were understood to be these four — Death, Judgment,
Heaven, and Hell. Sir Thomas began a treatise that was to
comprise all four, but he laid it aside before he had concluded
* Ecclus. vii. 40.
25

386 SIR THOMAS MORE.
the first part, on Death, and the fragment was not published
unlU 1557.
" This short medicine,'' he says, i.e., the remembrance of the
Last Things, " is of a marvellous force, able to keep us all our
life from sin. This medicine, though thou makest a sour face
at it, is not so bitter as thou makest for. He biddeth thee not
take neither death, nor doora, nor pain, but only to remember
them, and yet the joy of heaven therewith to temper them
withal. Now, if a raan be so dainty-stomached, that going
where contagion is, he would grudge to take a little treacle, yet
were he very nicely wanton if he might not, at the leastwise,
take a httle vinegar and rose water on his handkercher."*
And, indeed, in More's treatraent of the matter, though he has
barely touched on heaven, and written merely of death, there
is far more rose water than vinegar. Not that his descriptions
or exhortations lack strength, but that they have a Uterary
interest which entices the reader to linger over the' most
appaUing subjects. A few samples will show my meaning.
Here is an allusion to the famous pictures of Death in Pardon-
Church-Haugh at St. Paul's, London : " We were never so
raoved by the beholding of the Dance of Death pictured in
Paul's as we shall feel ourselves stirred by the imagination in
our hearts, of our own deaths. And no marvel ; for those
pictures express only the loathly figure of our dead, bony bodies ;
which, though il be ugly lo behold, yet neither the sight thereof,
nor the sight of all the dead heads in that charnel house, nor
the apparition of a very ghost, is half so grisly as the deep con
ceived phantasy of death in its nature by the lively imagination
graven in thine own heart. For there seest thou not one plain
grievous sight of the bare bones hanging by the sinews, but
thou seest thyself — if thou die no worse death — yet at leastwise
lying in thy bed, thy head shooting, thy back aching, thy veins
beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattiing, thy flesh
trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legs cool-
* English Works, p. 71.

ASCETIC WRITINGS. 387
ing, thy fingers fumbling,- thy breath shorting, all thy strength
fainting, thy life vanishing, and thy death drawing on." *
He thus describes the pompous funerals that were so fashion
able in those days : " Instead of sorrow for our sins and care
of heaven, the devU putteth us in mind of provision for some
honourable burying, so many torches, so many tapers, so many
black gowns, so many merry raourners laughing under black
hoods, and a gay hearse, with delight of goodly and honourable
funerals, in which the foolish sick man is soraetiraes occupied,
as though he thought he shbuld stand in a window and see how
worshipfuUy he shall be brought lo church " +
The certainty and uncertainty of death he illustrates by what
he calls " a homely example, not very pleasent, but nalhless
very true" "If there were two, both condemned to death,
both carried out at once towards execution, of which two the
one were sure that the place of his execution were within one
mUe, the other twenty miles off, yea, a hundred, if ye will, he
that were in the cart to be carried a hundred railes would not
take much more pleasure than his fellow in the length of his
way, notwithstanding that it were a hundred tiraes as long as
his feUow's, and that he had hereby a hundred times as long to
live, being sure and out of all question to die at the end.
" Reckon me now yourself a young man in your best lust,
twenty year of age if ye will. Let there be another ninety.
Both must ye die ; both be ye in the cart carrying forward.
His gallows and death standeth within ten mile at the farthest,
and yours vrithin eighty. I see not why ye should reckon
much less of your death than he, though your way be longer,
since ye be sure ye shall never cease riding till ye come at it.
" And this is true, although ye were sure that the place of
your execution stood so far beyond his. But what if there
were to the place of your execution two ways, of which the
one were fourscore mile farther about than your, fellow's, the
other nearer by five mUe than his, and when ye were put in the
* English Works, p. 77. t lb., p. 79.

v/

388 SIR THOMAS MORE.
cart had warning of both ; and though ye were showed that it
were likely that ye should be carried the longer way, yet it
might happen ye should go the shorter ; and whether ye
were carried the one or the olher ye should never know till ye
corae to the place, I trow ye could not in this case make much
longer of your life than of your fellow's. Now in this case are
we all. For Our Lord hath not endented with us of the time.
He that appointed what we may not pass, but not how soon we
shall go nor where nor in what wise. And, therefore, if thou ,
wilt consider how little cause thou hast to reckon thy death so
far off, by reason of thy youth, reckon how many as young as
thou have been slain in the self-same ways in which thou ridest,
how many have been drowned in the self-same waters in which
thou rowest.
" And thus shalt thou well see that thou hast no cause to
look upon thy death as a thing far off, but a thing undoubtedly
nigh thee, and ever walking with thee. By which, not a false
imagination but a very true contemplation, thou shalt behold
him and advise him such as he is, and thereby take occasion
to flee vain pleasures of the flesh that keep out the very
pleasures of the soul." *
Frora his considerations on death Sir Thomas draws raany
forcible conclusions, of which the following was suggested by
his life at court : —
" Now, the high raind of proud fortune, rule and authority.
Lord God ! how slight a thing it would seem to him that
would often and deeply remember that death shall shortly take
away aU this royalty and his glory shall (as scripture saith) never
walk with him into his grave. But he that overlooketh every
man, and no man may be so homely (as) to come too near
him, but thinketh that he doth much for them whom he
vouchsafeth to take by the hand or beck upon, whom so many
men dread and fear, so many wait upon, he shaU within a few
years, and only God knoweth within how few days, when death
* English Works, p. 82.

ASCETIC WRITINGS. 389
arresteth him, have his dainty body turned into stinking carrion,
be borne out of his princely palace, laid in the ground, and
there left alone, where every lewd lad will be bold to tread on
his head. Would not, ween ye, the deep consideralion of this
sudden change, so surely to come, withdraw the wind that
puffeth us up in pride upon the solemn sight of worldly worship?
" If thou shouldst perceive that one were earnestly proud of
the wearing of a gay golden gown while the losel playeth the
lord in a stage play, wouldest thou nol laugh at his folly, con
sidering that thou art very sure that when the play is done, he
shaU go walk a knave in his old coat ? Now, thou thinkest
thyself wise enough while thou art proud in thy player's gar
ment, and forgettest that when thy play is done, thou
shalt go forth as poor as he. Nor thou rememberest nol that
thy pageant may happen to be done as soon as his." * Clearly
the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and the iraperial poraps of
Charles V., and the pageants of Whitehall and Hampton Court
had but little blinding or dazzling power on the mind of Blessed
Thomas More.
This book was written the year after the execution of the
Duke of Buckingham on a charge of high treason. Sir Thomas,
showing how the thought of death is a remedy against the
temptation of envy, thus illustrates the subject : " If it so were
that thou knewest a great duke, keeping so great estate and
princely port in his house that thou, being a right mean man,
haddest in thine heart great envy thereat, and specially at
some special day in which he keepeth for the marriage of his
child a great honourable court above olher times ; if thou, being
thereat, and at the sight of the royalty and honour showed him
of all the country about resorting to him, while they kneel and
crouch to him, and at every word barehead be-grace hira ; if
thou shouldst suddenly be advertised that for secret treason
lately detected to the king, he should undoubtedly be taken
the morrow, his Court all broken up, his goods seized, his wife
* English Works, p. 84.

390 SIR THOMAS MORE.
put out, his children disherited, himself cast in prison, brought
forth and arraigned, the matter out of question, and he should
be condemned, his coat armour reversed, his gilt spurs hewn
off his heels, himself hanged, drawn, and quartered, how
thinkest thou by thy faith, araid thine envy shouldest thou not
suddenly change into pity ? " *
One is reminded of Buckinghara's cry at his arrest : —
My life is spann'd already ;
I am the shadow of poor Buckingham :
Whose figure even this instant cloud puts out.
By dark'ning ray clear sun. f
There is one passage in this book that derives a very deep
interest frora the reflection that the author of it was to spend
fifteen raonths in the Tower and be thence led out to execu
tion. " Mark this well, for of this thing we be very sure, that
old and young, man and woman, rich and poor, prince and
page, all the while we live in this world we be but prisoners,
and be within a sure prison, out of which there can no raan
escape. And in worse case be we than those that be
taken and iraprisoned for theft. For they, albeit their heart
heavily hearkeneth after the sessions, yet have they some hope,
either lo break prison the while, or to escape there by favour,
or after condemnation some hope of pardon. But we stand all
in another plight, we be very sure that we be already condemned
to death, some one, sotne olher, none of us can tell what death
we are doomed to, but surely can we all tell that die we shall.
And clearly know we that of this death we get no manner
pardon. For the King, by whose high sentence we be con
demned lo die, would not of this death pardon His own Son.
" The prison is large, and raany prisoners in it, but the
JaUer can lose none ; He is so present in every place, that we
can creep inlo no corner out of His sight. For as holy David
saith to this JaUer : ' Whither shaU I go froin Thy Spirit, and
* English Works, p. 86. t Shakspere, Henry VIII., Act i., sc. l.

ASCETIC WRITINGS. 39 1
whither shall I flee from Thy face ?' as who saith — no whither.
There is no remedy, therefore, but as condemned folk and
remediless, in this prison of the earth we drive forth a while :
some bound to a post, some wandering abroad ; some in the
dungeon, some in the upper ward ; some building them bowers
and making palaces in the prison ; sorae weeping, sorae laugh
ing ; some labouring, some playing ; some singing, some chiding,
some fighting ; no man almost remembering in what case he
standeth, tiU that suddenly, nothing less looking for, young,
old, poor and rich, merry and sad, prince, page, pope, and
poor-soul priest, now one, now another, some time a great
rabble at once, without order, without respect of age or of estate,
all stripped stark naked, and shifted out in a sheet, be put to
death in divers wise in some corner of the same prison, and
even there thrown in a hole, and either worms eat hira under
ground or crows above.
" Now come forth, ye proud prisoners, for I wis ye be no
better, look ye never so high, when ye build in the prison a
palace for your blood, is it not a great royally if it be well
considered? Ye build the lower of Babylon in a corner of
the prison and be very proud thereof, and some time the
jaUer beateth it down again with shame. Ye leave your
lodging for your own blood, and the jailer, when ye be dead,
setteth a strange prisoner in your building, and thrusteth your
blood into the other cabin. Ye be proud of the arras of your
ancestors sel up in the prison ; and all your pride is because
ye forget that it is a prison. For if ye look the matter aright,
the place a prison, yourself a prisoner condemned to death,
from which ye cannot escape, ye would reckon this gear as
worshipful as if a gentleman thief, when he should go to
Tyburn, would leave for a memorial the arms of his ancestors
painted on a post in Newgate.
"Surely, I suppose- that if ^e took not true figure for a
phantasy, but reckoned it (as il is indeed) the very express
fashion and manner of aU our estate, men would bear them-

392 SIR THOMAS MORE.
selves not much higher in their hearts, for any rule or authority
that they have here in this worid, which they may well perceive
to be indeed no better but one prisoner bearing a rule among
the remnant, as the tapster doth in the Marshalsea ; or at the
uttermost, one so put in trust with the jaUer, that he is half
an under-jailer over his fellows, till the sheriff and the cart
come for him." *
When al last, twelve years later, Sir Thomas found himself
locked up in the upper ward of the Beauchamp Tower, very
naturally all these thoughts recurred to his mind, and, strange
as it may seem, he comforted hiraself by the consideration that
he was in reality no more a prisoner than when he was at liberty
or than the rest of the world. He worked out the parallel with
great ingenuity and infinite wit in his Dialogue of Comfort
against Tribulation. One of the interlocutors, Vincent, asserts
that the whole argument is ingenious yet unreal — in a word,
sophistical. Antony, the other speaker, replies : " In good faith,
cousin, such an old fool ara I, that this thing, in the persuading
whereof unto you I had weened I had quit me weU, and when
I have all done, appeareth to your raind but a trifle and a
sophistical phantasy, myself have so many years taken for so
substantial truth that as yet my mind cannot give me lo think
it any other. Wherefore, lest I play as the French priest played,
that had so long used to say Dominus, with the second syllable
long, that at the last he thought it must needs be so, and was
* English Works, p. 84. More had already expressed similar thoughts
in a Latin epigrara : —
Damnati ac raorituri in terras claudimur omnes
Carcere, in hoc mortera carcere nerao fugit.
Carceris in raultas describitur area partes,
Inque aliis alii partibus sedificant.
Non aliter quam de regno de carcere certant.
In ca^co cupidus carcere condit opes.
Carcere obambulat hic vagus, hic vincitur in an tro,
Hic servit, regit hic ; hic canit, ille gemit.
Jara quoque dum career non tanquam career araatur, '
Hinc aliis alii mortibus extrahiraur.

ASCETIC WHITINGS. 393
ashamed to say it short ; to the Intent that you may the better
perceive me, or I the better myself, we shall here between us a
httle more consider the thing. And hardily spit well on your
hands, and take good hold, and give it nol over against your
mind." Vincent does his best, but Antony replies to his objec
tions and difficulties with such skill that at last, as regards the
matter of liberty, he has to admit that all men are God's
prisoners. " But," says he, " that God, our chief Jailer, useth
any such prisonly fashion of punishment, that point I must
needs deny. For I neither see Him lay any raan in the stocks,
or strike fetters on his legs, or so much as shut hira up in a
chamber either." Antony replies : " Is he no minstrel, cousin,
that playeth not on a harp ? Maketh no man melody, but he
that playeth on a lute? He may be a minstrel and make
melody, you wot well, with sorae other instrument, sorae strange-
fashioned, peradventure, that never was seen before. God, our
chief Jailer, as Himself is invisible, so useth He in His punish
ment invisible instruments, and, therefore, not of like fashion as
the other jailers do, but yet of like effect, and as painful in feel
ing as those. For He layeth one of the prisoners with a hot
fever as evil at his ease in a warm bed as the olher jailer layeth
his upon the cold ground. He wringeth by the brows with a
megrim, He collareth them by the neck with a quinsy, He
bolteth them by the arms with a palsy, that they cannot lift
their hands to their heads. He manacleth their hands wilh the
gout in their fingers, He wringeth them by the legs with a
cramp in their shins, He bindeth them to the bed board with
the crick in the back, and layeth one there along, and as un
able to rise as though he lay by the feel fast in the stocks.
Some prisoner of another gaol singeth, danceth in his two
fetters, and feareth not his feet for stumbling at a stone ; while
God's prisoner, that hath but his one foot fettered by the gout,
lieth groaning on a couch, and quakelh and crieth out if he
fear there would faU on his foot no more than a cushion."*
* English Works, p. 1246.

394 SIR THOMAS MORE.
The above must suffice as specimens of More's ascetic
writings. The reader will not be disappointed who goes to the
Dialogue of Comfort in search of holy precepts, acute reason
ing, or briUiant wit. Indeed, in none of his writings does Sir
Thomas so abound in humour as in these pages written whUe
waiting for a traitor's death, in the dim light let in by the loop
holes of dungeon walls eleven feet thick.
It does not appear to be recorded how he managed to have
his MS. safely conveyed out of prison. The Dialogue was
written primarily for the instruction and comfort of his own
family ; yet its form was adapted for publication at some future
day. He entitled it : " ^ Dialogue of Comfort against Tribula
tion, made by a Hungarian in Latin, and translated out of
Latin into French, and out of French into English ; now newly
sel forth, with many places restored and corrected by conference
of sundry copies ".* He wished to speak clearly of the dangers
to faith and liberty menacing England, and yet to do this
under cover of a parable, as in his Utopia. The device was in
genious. The Hungarians were expecting an invasion of the
Turks, and the choice between apostasy on the one hand, and
death, imprisonment, or at least exclusion from public life and
impoverishment, on the other. In this crisis a Hungarian noble,
named Vincent, is supposed to visit his uncle Antony, who is
near his death, and who is famed for wisdom and piety. He
seeks advice and consolation in the tribulations that menace
them. In the conversations which ensue the purposes and
advantages of trials and sufferings are thoroughly considered,
both in general and in their various species. The forra of
dialogue, as raanaged by More's skilful hand, lends itself to
objections, explanations, digressions, amusing iUustrations,
which make this one of the most instructive and interesting
* It was printed by Serjeant Rastell in the complete works in 1557,
and by John Fowler, in Antwerp, in 1573, and in modern spelling by
Dolman in 1847. A reprint, in an abridged form, by the present writer
will appear shortly.

ASCETIC WRITINGS. 395
books ever written " to justify the ways of God to man ". Its
earnest and pathetic arguments are relieved by mirth, yet its
very mirth is full of pathos when we remember the writer, and
the time and place of its composition. Vincent is asking
whether a man in tribulation may seek some worldly recreation,
and amongst other things he quotes St. Thomas, that " proper,
pleasant talking, which is called eurpaircXta, is a good virtue,
serving lo refresh the mind " Antony will not deny it, and
confesses : " Of truth, cousin, as you know very well, myself
am of nature even half a giglot and more. I would I could as
easily mend my fault as I can well know it ; but scant can I
refrain it, as old a fool as I am. Howbeit, let such recrea
tions serve us but for sauce, and make them not our meat, and
let us pray unto God that we may feel such a savour in the
delight of heaven, that in respect of the talking of the joys
thereof all worldly recreation be but a grief to think on." *
The reader may remember how the mirthfulness of More's
conversation, as well as the earnestness and sincerity with which,
as a young man, he would talk of eternal life, were among the
characteristics that had most irapressed Erasmus. Neither
business nor literature, nor the wiles, of diplomacy, nor the
pomps and pleasures of courts, had robbed him of his rairth or
dimmed his vision of eternity. The secret strength of his
heart was this, to use his own expression, that to him "the
sayings of Our Saviour Christ were not a poet's fable, nor a
harper's song, but the very holy word of Almighty God
Himself", f
I have said that the trials of fines, confiscations, imprison
ment and death which were now falling on the writer of this
Dialogue, and which (he foretells) would soon fall on all the
faiihful followers of Christ, are supposed lo come from the
Turk. Had the book fallen into the hands of Henry, the
Defender of the Faith could only have found treason lurking
in its pages by Identifying himself wilh the eneray of the
* Book ii. ch. i. t/A., Bk. iii. ch. 15.

396 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Christian narae. It is probable, however, that Margaret Roper
secretiy conveyed the MS. frora the Tower and kept it for a
safer day.
His other devotional writings, as prayers, raeditations, and
the treatise on the Passion, may have been seized by those who
were sent lo take from him his books and writing material upon
the discovery of his correspondence with Blessed John Fisher
in June, 1535 ; but as they were seen to be harmless they were
given to his faraily. Of the treatise on the Passion, which
though imperfect is very lengthy, I must say a few words. It
was written by Sir Thomas partly in Latin and partly in English.
He begins with long meditations on the creation and fall of
angels and of men, and the rederaption. Then for the Passion,
adopting the concordance of the Gospels by Gerson, he develops
each word in very learned and devout reflections. These were
evidently the result of his life-study of Our, Lord's Passion.
The long catena of quotations frora Greek and Latin Fathers
on the Blessed Sacrament proves that he had either raany
books at hand or (more probably) that his note-books were
already well stored. The plotting of Judas, the washing of the
disciples' feet by Our Lord, and the institution of the Holy
Eucharist, complete the part written by Sir Thomas in English.*
In Latin he had continued the history of the Agony in the
Garden, and had just reached the words, " They laid hands on
Jesus,'' when the hands of Henry's officials were laid on his
books and he knew that the time of his own passion had corae.
The second part was translated by a daughter of Margaret
Roper, Mistress Basset, who was attendant on Queen Mary,
and who, with her raother's learning in the Latin tongue, has
caught perfectly her grandfather's English style, f
I conclude this notice of More's ascetic writings by a trans-
* English Works, pp. 1270-1349. This part is not in the Latin works.
+ She is called " niece " in the old folio ; but the words " nephew "
and "niece" in those days were equivalent to our "grandson" and
"granddaughter" (nepotes).

ASCETIC WRITINGS. 397
lation of a few lines of a Latin tract found among the martyr's
papers, with the title : " Death for the faith is nol to be
shunned " : —
" If you save your life to-day by offending God, you will hate
it to-morrow, and lament that you did not undergo death yes
terday. For you will call lo mind that death has still lo be en
dured, and you wUl not know what kind of death it will be,
nor how soon it will come. And you will have reason to fear
lest your death, thus postponed a little, shall be followed by the
torments of hell, in which men will desire to die, but death
will flee from them ; whereas the eternal joys of heaven would
have followed that death from which you have fled. What
folly by trying to avoid temporal death to incur death eternal,
whUe you do not reaUy avoid temporal death but raerely post
pone it I If you escape death now, can you live for ever, or die
without pain ? When the fatal sickness comes and the pains
of death begin to press upon you, oh ! how you will wish that
you had already endured for your soul's salvation, a death how
ever cruel." *
Clearly the holy prisoner, before the charge of treason was
made against him, had a presentiment of a violent death, and
that his death would be endured not only without crirae against
his sovereign, but for the faith of his Divine Master : or, in
olher words, that a martyr's crown would in all likelihood be
offered lo him ; and for this he prepared hiraself with fear and
trembling, as well as with peace and hope.
* Quod mors pro fide non sit fugienda — a short treatise of about two
pages. I do not recognise the phrase of Sir Thomas, though no doubt it
was printed from a paper in his handwriting.

CHAPTER XXII.
EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON.
THE parliaraent which More had opened in 1529 raet for
another session in November, 1534. It passed the fol
lowing Acts, to which he owes his martyrdom : —
Chapter I. says: "Albeit the king's Majesty justly and
rightfully is, and ought to be, supreme head of the Church of
England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realra in
their convocations ; yet, nevertheless, for corroboration and
confirraation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ's
religion within this realra of England, and to repress and ex
tirpate all errors, heresies, and olher enorraities and abuses
heretofore used in the same, be it enacted, by the authority of
this present parliament, that the king, our sovereign lord, his
heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, ac
cepted, and reputed, the only supreme head in earth of the
Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia, and shall have
and enjoy, annexed and united to the imperial crown of this
realra, as well the title and style Ihereof as all honours, digni
ties, iraraunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity of
supreme head of the said Church belonging and appertaining.
" And that our said sovereign lord, his heirs and successors,
kings of this realm, shall have full power and authority,
from time to time, to visit, repress, redress, reform, order, cor
rect, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses,

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON. 399
offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they be, which
by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction, ought to
be or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, ordered, redressed,
corrected, restrained, or amended, most to the pleasure of
Almighty God, the increase of virtue in Christ's religion, or for
the conservation of the peace, unity, and tranquillity of this
realm, any usage, custom, foreign laws, foreign authority, pre
scription, or any other thing or things to the contrary hereof
notwithstanding. ''
By the thirteenth chapter of the same year il was made high
treason for any person after the first day of February next
coming [i.e., February, 1535, new style) "maliciously to wish,
wiU, or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, Invent,
practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed
to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their heirs ap
parent, or deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title or
name of their royal estates, or slanderously and maliciously
publish and pronounce, by express writing or words, that the
king, our sovereign lord, should be heretic, schismatic, tyrant,
infidel, etc."
There was a good deal of hesitation al making hasty words
treason, and the word " maliciously " had been purposely intro
duced to exempt from the penalties of high treason words
uttered incautiously, or words spoken soberly and as the result
of conviction, but with no purpose of rebellion or sedition.
This parliamentary precaution proved vain, for the judges (as
we shall see) not only explained the word "maliciously" as
belonging necessarily to all words spoken, but made even
silence malicious and equivalent to denial.
Sir Thomas, whose imprisonment was in itself a perpetual
profession of faith, had all along resolved to maintain a perfect
silence, so as in no way to provoke persecution, but to wait
quietly on the Providence of God. Silence, however, was too
loud a protest to please the king, and the wretched monarch,
angry that a year's imprisonment had wrung no compliance

40O SIR THOMAS MORE.
from his former councillor and friend, determined to try the
force of the new instrument that pariiament had placed in his
hand. Il did not, indeed, authorise scrutiny into anyone's
opinions, but his slavish CouncU made no such objection when
he comraissioned sorae of them to proceed to the Tower and
interrogate More and Fisher. More has himself told the result
in the following letter : —
" My Dearly Beloved Daughter, —
" Our Lord bless you. I doubt not but by the reason
of the king's councillors resorting hither, in this time in which
(Our Lord be their comfort) these fathers of the Charter
house and Master Reynoldes of Sion, be now judged to death
for treason (whose matters and causes I know not), raay hap
to put you in trouble and fear of mind concerning me being
here a prisoner, specially for that it is not unlikely that you
have heard that I was brought also before the CouncU here my
self I have thought it necessary to advertise you of the very
truth, to the end that you should neither conceive more hope
than the matter giveth, lest upon another term it might agrieve
your heaviness ; nor more grief and fear than the matter giveth
on the other side.
"Wherefore, shortly ye shall understand, that on Friday, the
last day of April, in the afternoon, Master Lieutenant came in
here unto me, and showed rae that Master Secretary would
speak with me. Whereupon I shifted my gown, and went out
with Master Lieutenant into the gallery to him, where I met
many — sorae known and some- unknown — in the way. And in
conclusion, coming into the chamber where his mastership sal,
with Master Attorney, Master Solicitor, Master Bedyll, and
Master Dr. Tregonwell, I was offered to sit down with them,
which in no wise I would.
" Whereupon Master Secretary showed unto me that he
doubted not but that I had, by such friends as hither had re
sorted to me, seen the new statutes made at the last sitting of

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON.

401

the parhament. Whereunto I answered, yea, verily. How
beit, for as much as being here I have no conversation with
any people, I thought it littie need for me to bestow much
time upon them, and, therefore, I redelivered the book shortly,
and the effect of the statutes I never marked nor studied to
put in remembrance. Then he asked me, whether I had not
read the first statute of them of the king being head of the
Church. Whereunto I answered, yes. Then his mastership
declared unto me, that since it was novv by Act of Parliament
ordered that His Highness and his heirs be, and ever of right
have been, and perpetually should be, supreme head on earth
of the Church of England under Christ, the king's pleasure was,
that those of his Council there assembled should demand mine
opinion and what my mind was therein. Whereunto I
answered, that in good faith I had well trusted that the king's
Highness would never have commanded any such question to
be demanded of me, considering that I ever from the beginning
well and truly from time to lime declared my mind unto his
Highness ; and since that time2(I said) unto your mastership,
Master Secretary, also, both by mouth and by writing. And
now I have in good faith discharged my mind of all such
matters, and neither will dispute kings' titles nor Popes' ; but
the king's true, faithful subject I ara and will be, and daily I
pray for him, and all his, and for you all that are of his honour
able Council, and for all the realm. And otherwise than this
I never intend lo meddle. Whereunto Master Secretary
answered, that he thought this manner of answer should not
satisfy nor content the king's Highness, but that His Grace would
exact a more full answer. And his mastership added thereunto,
that the king's Highness was a prince, not of rigour, but, of
mercy and pity. And though that he had found obstinacy at
some time in any of his subjects, yet 'when he should find them
at another time conformable and submit themselves, His Grace
would show raercy; and that concerning myself, His Highness
would be glad to see me take such conformable ways, as I
26

402 SIR THOMAS MORE.
might be abroad in the worid again araong other men, as I have
been before. Whereunto shortly (after the inward affection of
my mind) I answered for a very truth, that I would never meddle
in the world again, to have the world given me. And to the
remnant of the matter I answered in effect as before, showing
that I had fully determined with myself neither to study nor
meddle wilh any matter of this world, but that my whole study
should be upon the Passion of Christ, and mine own passage
out of this world.
" Upon this I was commanded to go forth for a while, and
after called in again. At which tirae Master Secretary said unto
rae, that though I were a prisoner conderaned to perpetual
prison, yet I was not thereby discharged of mine obedience and
allegiance unto the king's Highness. And thereupon demanded
me, whether that I thought that the king's Grace might not
exact of me such things as are contained in the statutes, and
upon like pains as he might upon other raen. Whereto I
answered that I would not say the contrary. Whereunto
he said, that likewise as the king's Highness would be gracious
to them that be found conformable, so His Grace would fol
low the course of his laws towards such as he shall find
obstinate. And his mastership said farther, that my de
meanour in that matier was a thing that of likelihood made ^
other so stiff therein as they be. Whereto I answered, that I
gave no raan occasion to hold any point one or other, nor
never gave any raan advice or counsel therein one way or
olher. And for conclusion I could no farther go, whatsoever
pain should come thereof ' I am (quoth I) the king's true,
faithful subject and daUy bedesman, and pray for His Highness,
and all his, and aU the realm. I do nobody no harm, I say
none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good.
And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith
I long not to Uve. And I am dying already, and have, since
I came here, been divers times in the case that I thought lo
die within One hour. And I thank Our Lord I was never sorry

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON.

403

for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang past. And, there
fore, my poor body is at the king's pleasure. Would God my
death might do him good.' After this Master Secretary said :
'WeU, ye find no fault in that statute ; find you any in any of
the other statutes after?' Whereto I answered : 'Sir, whatsoever
thing should seem to me other than good in any of the other
statutes, or in that statute either, I would not declare whal fault
I found, nor speak thereof Whereunto finally his mastership
said full gentiy, that of any thing that I had spoken there
should none advantage be taken. And whether he said farther
that there was none lo be taken I am not well remembered.
But he said that report should be made unto the king's Highness,
and his gracious pleasure known.
" Whereupon, I was delivered again to Master Lieutenant,
which was then called in. And so was I by Master Lieutenant
brought again into my chamber. And here am I yet in such
case as I was, neither better or worse. That that shall follow
lieth in the hand of God, whom I beseech lo put in the king's
Grace's mind that thing that may be to His high pleasure, and
in mine to mind only the weal of my soul, with little regard of
my body, and you with all yOurs, and ray wife, and all my
chUdren, and all our other friends, both bodily and ghostly
heartily well to fare.
"And I pray you and them all pray for me and take no
thought whatsoever shall happen rae ; for I verily trust in the
goodness of God, seem it never so evil to this worid, it shall
indeed in another world be for the best.
" Your loving father,
"Thomas More, Knight."
On receiving this letter Margaret again made earnest suit to
visit her father, and it was probably in the hope that her
presence would bend him that her suit was granted. Something
very different took place. Her visit was on 4th May, the day
of the martyrdom of the Carthusians and others. Roper's
words have made this interview famous : " As Sir Thomas

404 SIR THOMAS MORE.
More was looking out of his window, he chanced to behold one
Master Reynolds, a religious, learned, and virtuous father of
Sion, and three monks of the Charterhouse, for the matter of
the supremacy and matrimony going out of the Tower to
execution ; he, as one longing in that journey to have accom
panied them, said unto my wife, then standing there beside
him : ' Lo, dost thou not see, Meg, that these blessed fathers
be now as cheerfully going lo their deaths as bridegrooms .
to their marriage ? Wherefore, thereby mayest thou see, raine
own good daughter, what a great difference there is between
such as have in effect spent all their days in a strait and peniten
tial and painful life religiously, and such as have in the world,
like worldly wretches (as thy poor father hath done), consumed
all their time in pleasure and ease licentiously. For God,
considering their long-continued Ufe in most sore and grievous
penance, wUl no longer suffer them to remain here in this vale
of raisery, but speedUy hence taketh them to the fruition of
His everlasting Deity. Whereas thy silly father, Meg, that like
a wicked caitiff hath passed forth the whole course of his
miserable life most sinfully, God, thinking him not worthy so
soon to come to that eternal felicity, leaveth him here still in
this world further to be plagued and turmoiled with misery.' "*
On 7th May, some members of the Council again visited the
Tower and interrogated both Fisher and More. The following
letter has no date, but from the names of the councillors being
different from those who are known to have visited the Bishop
of Rochester on that day, ll seems to refer to a subsequent
interrogation on 3rd June. It is addressed to Margaret
Roper : —
* The martyrs of the 4th May were : Blessed John Houghton, Blessed
Augustine Webster, Blessed Robert Lawrence, all Carthusian priors ;
Blessed Richard Reynolds, a Bridgetine monk ; and Blessed John Hale,
vicar of Isleworth. They were drawn on hurdles from the Tower to
Tyburn, where they were hung, cut down alive, brutally rautilated and
quartered.

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON. j 405
" Our Lord bless you and all yours. Forasmuch (dearly
beloved daughter) as it is likely that you either have heard
or shortly shall hear that the Council were here this day,
and that I was before them, I have thought it necessary to
send you word how the matter standeth. And verily, to be
short, I perceive littie difference between this time and the
last For as far as I can see, the whole purpose is, either
to drive me to say precisely the one way, or else precisely
the other.
" Here sat my Lord of Canterbury, my Lord Chancellor, my
Lord of Suffolk, my Lord of Wiltshire, and Master Secretary. And
after my coming Master Secretary made rehearsal in what wise
he had reported unto the king's Highness what had been said
by His Grace's Council to me, and what had been answered by
me to them, at mine other being before them here last, which
thing his mastership rehearsed in good faith very well, as I
knowledged and confessed, and heartily thanked him therefore.
Whereupon he added thereunto that the king's Highness was
nothing content nor satisfied with mine answer ; but thought
that by my demeanour I had been occasion of much grudge and
harm in the realm, and that I had an obstinate mind and an
evil towards him, and that my duly was, being his subject (and
so he had sent them now in his name upon raine aUegiance to
command me), to make a plain and a terminate answer, whether
I thought the statute lawful or not. And that I should either
knowledge and confess it lawful that His Highness should be
supreme head of the Church of England, or else utter plainly
my malignity. Whereto I answered that I had no malignity,
and, therefore, I could none utter. And as to the matter, I
could none other answer make than I had before made, which
answer his mastership had there rehearsed. Very heavy I was
that the king's Highness should have any such opinion of me.
Howbeit, if there were one that had informed His Highness many
evil things of me that were untrue, to which His Highness for
the time gave credence, I would be very sorry that he should

4o6 \

SIR THOMAS MORE.

have that opinion of me the space of one day. Howbeit, if I
were sure that other should come on the morrow by whom His
Grace should know the truth of mine innocency, I should in
the mean while corafort myself with consideration of that.
And in likewise now, though it be great heaviness to me that
His Highness hath such opinion of me for the while, yet have I
no remedy to help it, but only to comfort myself with this con
sideration, that I know very well that the time shaU come
when God shall declare my truth towards His Grace before him
and all the world. And whereas it might haply seem to be but
small cause of comfort, because I might take harm here first in
the mean while, I thanked God that my case was such here in
this raatter, through the clearness of mine own conscience, that
though I might have pain I could not have harm. For a man
may in such a case lose his head and have none harm. For I
was very sure that I had no corrupt affection, but that I had
always from the beginning truly used myself, looking first upon
God, and next upon the king, according to the lesson that His
Highness taught me at my first coming to his noble service, the
most virtuous lesson that ever prince taught his servant, whose
Highness to have of me now such opinion is my great heaviness.
But I have no mean, as I said, to help it, but only comfort
myself in the mean time with the hope of that joyful day, in
whicb my truth toward him shall well be known. And in this
matier further I could not go, nor other answer thereto I could
not make.
"To this it was said by my Lord Chancellor and Master
Secretary both, that the king might by his laws cpmpel me to
make a plain answer thereto either the one way or the other.
Whereto I answered that I would not dispute the king's
authority what His Highness might do in such a case. But I
said that verily, under correction, it seemed to me somewhat
hard. For if it so were that my conscience gave me against
the statute (wherein how my conscience giveth me I make
no declaration), then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON. 407
the Statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say,
either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my
soul, or precisely against it to the destruction of my body.
" To this Master Secretary said, that I had, ere this, when I
was chancellor, examined heretics, and thieves, and other male
factors, and gave me great praise above my deserving in that
behalf And he said, that I then, as he thought, and at the
least wise bishops, did use to exainine heretics, whether they
believed the Pope to be head of the Church, and used to com
pel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should
not then the king, since it is a law made here that His Grace is
head of the Church here, compel men to answer precisely to
the law here, as they did then concerning the Pope. I an
swered and said, that I protested that I intended not to defend
my part or stand in contention. But I said there was a differ
ence between those two cases, because that at that time, as
weU here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the
Pope's power was recognised for an undoubted thing ; which
seemeth not like a thing agreed in this realm, and the contrary
taken for truth in other realms. Whereto Master Secretary
answered, that they were as well burned for the denying of
that as they be beheaded for the denying of this ; and, there
fore, as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to
the one as to the other. Whereto I answered, that since in
thi§ case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his
conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christen
dom to the contrary in a matter touching belief, as he is by a
law of the whole corps, ihough there happen to be made in
some place a law local to the contrary, the reasonableness or
the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer
standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading
and buming, but because of the difference in change of con
science, the difference standeth between beheading and heU.
Much was there answered unto this, both by Master Secretary
and my Lord ChanceUor, over long to rehearse.

4o8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
" And, in conclusion, they offered me an oath by which I
should be sworn to make true answer to such things as should
be asked rae on the king's behalf, concerning the king's own
person. Whereto I answered, that verily I never purposed
to swear any book oath more while I lived. Then they
said, that I was very obstinate, if I would refuse that, for
every man doth it in the Star Chamber and everywhere.
I said that was true ; but I had not so littie foresight,
but that I might well conjecture what should be part of
mine interrogatories, and as good it was to refuse them at
the first as afterwards. Whereto my Lord Chancellor an
swered, that he thought I guessed truth, for I should see them.
And so they were showed rae, and they were but twain : the
first,' whether I had seen the statute ; the other, whether I be
lieved that it were a lawful made statute or not. Whereupon
I refused the oath and said further by mouth, that the first I
had before confessed, and to the second I would make none
answer ; which was the end of our coramunication, and I was
thereupon sent away.
" In the communication before, it was said it was marvelled
that I stuck so rauch in my conscience, while at the uttermost
I was not sure therein. Whereto I said, that I was very sure
that raine own conscience, so inforraed as it is by such dili
gence as I have so long taken therein, may stand with mine
own salvation. I meddle not with the conscience ofthem that
think otherwise. Every man suo damno stat aut cadit.* I am
no man's judge. It was also said unto me, that if I had as
lief be out of the world as in it, as I had there said, why did I
not then speak even plain out against the statute. It appeared
well I was not content to die, though I said so. Whereto I
answered, as the truth is, that I have not been a man of such
holy living as I might be bold to offer myself to death, lest
God, for my presumption, might suffer rae to fall ; and, there
fore, I put not rayself forward, but draw back. Howbeit, if
* So in print. It should probably be domino.

EXAMINATIONS IN PRISON. 409
God draw me to it Himself, then trust I in His great mercy
that He shall not fall to give me grace and strength. In con
clusion, Master Secretary said, that he liked me this day much
worse than he did the last time. For then, he said, he pitied
me much, and now he thought I meant not well. But God
and I know both that I mean weU, and so I pray God do by
me. " I pray you be, you and mine other good friends, of good
cheer, whatsoever fall of me, and take no thought for me, but
pray for me, as I do, and shall do, for you and all thera.
" Your tender, loving father,
" Thomas More, Knight."
About this time it was discovered that some letters had
passed at different times between More and Fisher. It was
hoped that something treasonable might be discovered, or
soraething that could be interpreted as conspiracy. The
Council thereupon proceeded to raake inquisition inlo the
matter. Questions were drawn up and ministered to the three
servants, Wilson, Golde, and Wood, and to any others known
to have visited the prisoners or acted as messengers.
Wilson, Fisher's servant, examined on 7th June, acknow
ledged that when he found how much importance the bishop
attached to the word "raaliciously" in the statute, he sus
pected that he had been counselled by More, but found that
it was not so. It was Robert Fisher who had spoken of it to
the bishop, and he thinks the bishop told George to caU
More's attention to it. He had heard from George that More
told him the secretary had given him good words, but More
would say nothing about his answer. Wilson had carried and
had received littie presents of food but no letters. " He had
sent Mr. More's servant half a custard on Sunday last, and
long since green-sauce. More, or his servant, sent hira an
image of St. John, and apples and oranges, after the snow that
fell last winter. On New Year's Day More sent hira a paper

41 0 SIR THOMAS MORE.
with writing, 2000/. in gold,* and an image of the Epiphany.''
He had often suspected George of carrying letters between Mr.
More and the bishop, indeed he gave George a letter to More
from my lord, since the first examination. The servants had
agreed to deny any letters being sent, but not to forswear
themselves. Had heard the bishop tell George he might say
he had never carried any letters on the king's business.
Interrogated again on 8th June, he admitted that the bishop
wrote a letter to More, which was not closed, and told WUson,
if George was sober, to give it him to be delivered, .which he
did. Does not know wliether George brought any answer,
but heard him say that Mr. More was merry, and that my
lord was satisfied. The bishop had told him that the Council
had blamed the lieutenant very sore for his negUgence in keep
ing himself and Mr. More, thinking they had had counsel of
each other, which was an error.
George Golde, the lieutenant's servant, examined on 8th
June, acknowledged that he had carried about a dozen letters
between More and Fisher, some written with ink and some
with coal, and that he had been told both by Fisher and
More to burn some of these. More had also written four letters
to his daughter, Mrs. Roper. Examined again on 9th June, he
said that Bonvisi sent to More, two or three times a week, meat
and a bottle of wine, till a quarter of a year ago, since when he
had sent none.
John k Wood, More's servant, was examined on the loth; said
that about a fortnight after the first being of the Council in the
Tower, George, the lieutenant's servant, came to More, and
asked him from the bishop what answer he had made. More
replied that he would not dispute of the king's title, but give
himself to his beads and think on his passage hence ; and this
he wrote in a letter to be given to Fisher. Soon after he sent
another letter by George, to the effect that he would counsel
* As More had not a piece of gold of his own, was this New Year's
present a drawing of bags of gold ?

EX.\MINATI0NS IN PRISON. 4II
Fisher not to make the same answer, lest the Council might
think they had agreed, and that he could meddle with no
man's conscience but his own. After the Council were at
the Tower, the bishop sent to tell More what answer he had
made ; does nor know if More replied. Next day he declared
that on the morning after the CouncU came to the Tower his
master told him that his daughter, Roper's wife, wished to
know what had taken place, and he wrote her three letters.*
Nothing of any importance regarding Sir Thomas was elicited
from any of the other messengers. On 12th June, the Bishop
of Rochester was interrogated. Of his answer I give only
what regards More. About four letters had passed between
them concerning the matters mentioned in the question. More's
first letter was to ask him what answer he had given to the
Council in the matter for which he was first committed. He
had sent a reply.f George Golde showed him a letter from
More to his daughter, stating that when the CouncU had
proposed to him the matter about which they came, he said
he would nol dispute about the king's title, and the secretary
had given him good words. He had then sent a letter by
George to know his answer more precisely, but does not
recollect his reply. Wrote also to More about the word
" maliciously " in the statute, but did not ask More's advice.
More thought that their answers would be much alike, and
that the Council would suppose that one had taken light of
the other, and he wrote to Fisher to avoid this suspicion.
After the Council was last at the Tower, and Mr. More's
books were taken from him, George told the bishop that
More was in a "peck of troubles," and wished lo know
Fisher's answer. He wrote that he had appealed to the
statute, and had begged not to be forced to reply to the
* Letters and Papers, viii. 856. Mr. Gairdner, with great difficulty,
has put together and read the twenty-one mutilated papers containing
the above and other details.
t This was in July, 1534, as appears from More's answers.

412 SIR THOMAS MORE.
interrogations. He had burnt the letters lest they should
bring any blame on the Ueutenant.*
On the 14th, interrogations were administered to Sir Thomas
More. He denied that any communication had passed between
hiraself and any one else concerning the Acts of Succession, of
supreme head, or the Act making it treason to speak certain
words of the king. He had written divers scrolls to Dr. Fisher,
and received others from him, containing for the most part
nothing but comforting words and thanks for meat and drink
sent by one to the other. But about a quarter of a year after
his coming to the Tower he wrote to Fisher, saying he had re
fused the oath, and never intended lo teU the Council why;
and Fisher answered that he had not refused lo swear lo the
succession. No other letters passed touching the king's affairs
till the Council carae to examine upon the Act of Supreme
Head, but after his exaraination he received a letter of Fisher
desiring to know his answer. He had replied stating that he
raeant not to raeddle, but fix his mind on the Passion of Christ,
or words to that effecl. He afterwards received another letter
from Fisher staling that he was informed the word "maUciously"
was used in the statute, and suggesting that, therefore, a raan
who spoke nothing of malice did not offend the statute. He
replied that he agreed, but feared it would not be so interpreted.
Did not report to Fisher his answer to the Council, with the
advice to make his own answer different, lest the Council should
suspect confederacy.f After his last examination, sent Fisher
word by a letter, that Mr. Sohcitor had informed him that it
was all one not to answer, and to say against the statute what a
* Letters and Papers, n. 858.
+ This seeras contrary to the testiraony of the bishop and of More's own
servant. Perhaps the discrepancy'may be explained by supposing that it
was John a Wood who officiously gave the advice as if from More, and
that Fisher's memory was inaccurate as to its being in a letter. More
was so circumspect as regards writing or speaking, that it is very unlikely
he should have written so compromising a document and have communis
cated its contents to a gossiping servant. John a Wood could not read.

EX.'VMINATIONS IN PRISON. 413
man would, as aU the learned men of England would justify.
He therefore said he could only reckon on the uttermost, and
desired Fisher to pray for him, as he would for Fisher.
And considering that it would come to the ears of his
daughter, how the Council had been with him, and other things
might be reported which would cause her to lake sudden fright;*
and fearing that, being, as he thought, wilh child, she might
take harm, he sent to her, both after his first examination and
after his last, letters telling her the answers he had given, and
that he could not tell what the end might be, but, whatever it
were, he prayed her to take it patiently and pray for him.
She had written him before divers letters, advising him to
accommodate himself to the king's pleasure, especiaUy urging
this in her last.
Other letters he neither sent nor received from any person.
George, the lieutenant's servant, carried the letters to and fro.
There is none of these letters forthcoming. He would have
had George keep them, and George always said there was no
better keeper than the fire. When he saw this he desired George
to let some trusty friend of his read thera, and if he saw any
matter of importance in them, he might report it to the Council
and get thanks ; otherwise that he should deliver them. But
George said he feared the lieutenant, who. had ordered him not
to meddle with such matters, and so burned them.
After this the Council proposed the three great questions :—
I. Whether he would obey the king as supreme head?
He can raake no answer.
2. Whether he will acknowledge the king's raarriage with
Queen Anne to be lawful and that wilh Lady Katha
rine invalid ? Never spoke against il ; can thereunto
make no answer.

* The original word is " flight," which is not to be understood in its
modern sense. We still use the word "flighty," of one subject to sudden
emotions.

414 SIR THOMAS MORE.
3. Where it was objected to hira that by the said statute
he, as one of the king's subjects, is bound to answer
the said question, and recognise the king as supreme
head, Uke all other subjects. He can make no
answer.*
On the discovery of the correspondence between More and
Fisher, the Council sent Mr. Rich the Solicitor- General, Sir
Richard Southwell, and a servant of Cromwell named Palmer,
to take from Sir Thomas all his books and writing materials.f
Of a conversation which took place on this occasion an account
will be given in the next chapter. Stapleton adds that when
his books were gone Sir Thomas closed the shutters of his
narrow window and sat in the dark, not in gloomy despair, but
to meditate more freely on the joys of heaven. The lieutenant,
finding him thus one day, asked him the reason. Sir Thomas
replied merrily that as the wares were all gone the shop win
dows might as well be shut. Cresacre More, his great-grand
son, says : " Yet still, by stealth, he would get little pieces of
paper, in which he would write divers letters with a coal ; of
which my father left me one which was to his wife [i.e., to More's
wife] which I account as a precious jewel, afterwards drawn over
by my grandfather's son with ink "
* Letters and Papers, n. 867. f Roper's Notes.
Life of More, ch. ix.

CHAPTER XXIIL

THE TRIAL.

" /^^ CITY of London," exclairaed Cardinal Pole, " you
V__^ saw led out from prison on a charge of treason the
man at whose tribunal you had so lately beheld others
standing for a similar crime ; the man whom you had known
as a boy, a youth, and whora you had marked in later Ufe, as,
amid the applause and congratulations of all, he mounted
through every grade of honour, until he reached the very
highest office. And because he was your own citizen and
child, not without a secret sense of joy you beheld his pros
perous career tending always lo your own praise and honour.
You saw him at last led out as a criminal from prison, in sordid
dress, and grown old, not by the lapse of years, but by the
squalor and sufferings of his dungeon, and for the first time
you beheld his head made white by long confineraent ; you saw
his weak and broken body leaning on a staff, and even so
scarcely able to stand, and dragged along the way that led to
the place of trial, or rather of certain conderanation. Could
you see this spectacle with dry eyes ? Or could you without
tears see him return by the same road condemned to the
penalty of traitors, while you knew that his fidelity towards
yourself could never be shaken by bribes or threats ? How, in
deed, could the citizens of London be unraoved, when I see
utter strangers, who never knew hira and never received benefit
from him, conceive such sorrow in reading the story of his trial

4l6 SIR THOMAS MORE.
as not to be able to restrain their tears. I *myself, who have
loved and venerated him, not because of private affection, but
hecause of his virtue and integrity and benefits to my country,
writing now about his death, in my exile far frora England, feel
the tears gush to ray eyes against my will, so that — as God is
my witness — they hinder my writing, and blot the words that I
have written." *
I will try to give as accurately as I can what has been re
corded of this trial, designated by Lord Campbell as a " judicial
murder,'' and as " the blackest crime that ever has been 'per
petrated in England under the form of law". On the 26th
June, 1535, a special coraraission of Oyer and Terminer for
Middlesex had been issued, directed to Sir Thoraas Audley,
chancellor; Thoraas, Duke of Norfolk; Charles, Duke of Suffolk ;
the Eari of Huntingdon, the Eari of Cumberland, tiie Eari
of Wiltshire (father of Anne Boleyn), Lord Montague, Lord
Rochford (brother of -Anne Boleyn), Lord Windsor, Thomas
Cromwell, secretary ; Sir John Fitz-Jaraes, chief justice of the
king's bench ; Sir John Baldwin, chief justice of the common
pleas; Sir Richard Lister, chief baron of the exchequer;
Sir WiUiam Paulet, Sir John Porte, Sir John Spelraan, Sir
Walter Luke, Sir Williara Fitz-WiUiara, Sir Antony Fitz-
Herbert, justices, t
The trial of the second band of Carthusian fathers, and of
the Bishop of Rochester, had already taken place. _ The
Carthusians won the crown of raartyrdom on 19th June;
Blessed John Fisher on the 22nd. Perhaps the king had
hoped that these deaths would intimidate More, and he was
kept for the last. His trial was fixed for the ist July, and a
jury-panel was formed ofthe following inhabitants ofthe liberties
* Pro Ecclesiae Unitatis Defensione, f. xciii. This book was written and ,
sent to Henry VIII. a few months after More's death, though not pub
lished till sorae years later.
fBaga de Secretis, pouch 7, bundle 3. See also Third Report of the
Deputy-keeper of Public Records (1842), pp. 16-240.

THE TRIAL 417
of the Tower, within which the crime was alleged to have been
committed: Sir T. Palmer, Sir T. Bent, knights; George
Lovell, Thomas Burbage, esquires ; Geoffrey Chamber,
Edward Stockmore,| William Brown, Jaspar Leake, Thomas
Bolllngton, John Parnell, Richard Bellamy, and George
Stoakes, gentlemen.
The indictment is in Latin, and of enormous length.* It is
founded, not on the Act of Succession, but on that of
Supremacy 26, Hen. VIII. cap. i and cap. 13. It sets forth
that on the 7th May, at the Tower, before Thomas Cromwell,
Thomas Bedyll and John Tregonell and divers others the
king's councillors, being examined on the king's supremacy, he
rephed : " I wiU not meddle with such matters" That after
wards, on the 1 2th May, the said Sir Thomas, "knowing that
John Fisher, clerk, was then and had been detained in the
Tower for divers great misprisions committed by him against
the king, and that the said Fisher, being examined, had denied
to accept the king as before mentioned, wrote a letter to him,
by which he agreed with Fisher in his treason, and intimated
the silence which he (More) had observed ; he also used the
expression : ' The Act of Parliament is like a two-edged sword,
for if a man answer one way it will confound his soul, and if
the other way it will confound his body ' " Then afterwards
More, fearing lest Fisher on his renewed examination should
reveal what More had written, he (More) on the 26lh May sent
other letters, requesting Fisher not to give the same answer, but
to speak his own mind, lest the king's counciUors should
suspect confederacy. Nevertheless, Fisher, on the 3rd June,
when examined by Sir Thomas Audley, the Duke of Suffolk,
the Earl of Wiltshire, and others, did refuse a direct answer,
and said : " The statute is like a two-edged sword, etc., there
fore, I will make no answer in that matter " That on the same
* It is in the Baga de Secretis ; there is also a copy in the Arundel
MS. 151. Sir James Mackintosh did not know of this, and erroneously
thought that Sir Thomas More was indicted under the Act of Succession.
27

41 8 SIR THOMAS MORE.
3rd June More gave the same answer. Lastly, that on 12 th
June there was a dialogue between Richard Rich, the solicitor-
general, and More, which is there detaUed.
The said Richard Rich charitably moved Sir T. More to be
conformable to the before-mentioned laws, to which More
replied: "Your conscience will save you and ray conscience
will save rae " Rich then, protesting that he was speaking
without authority, said : " Supposing that it were enacted by
parliament that I, Richard Rich, should be king, and that it
should be treason to deny the same, what would be the offence
if you, Sir T. More, was to say that I, Rich, was king; for
cerlAjn it is that in my conscience (said Rich) you would be
obliged so to accept me for king, because you would be bound
by the Aet of Parliament ". To which More then and there
answered, " that he should offend if he were to say no, for he
was obliged by the Act, because he could give his consent to
the sarae " But he said that was a light case, wherefore the
said Thomas More further said to Rich that he would put a
higher case : " Suppose it should be enacted by parliament
quod Deus non esset Deus [that God were not God], and that
opposing the act should be treason ; and if it were asked of
you, Richard Rich, whether you would say that God were not
God according to the statute, and if you were to say no, would
you offend ? " To which Rich answered More : " Certainly ;
because it is irapossible that God were not God. But because
your case is so high, I wiU put a raedium one. You know that
our lord the kmg is constituted chief head on earth ofthe Church
of England; and why, Master More, can you not affirm to
accept the sarae, just as you would in the preceding case that
I should be made king, in which case you agree that you would
be obliged to acknowledge and accept me as king?" To which
More, persevering in his treasons, answered to Rich, that the
cases were not sirailar ; because " the king can be made by par
liament and deprived by pariiament, to which Act every subject
being in pariiament gives his consent ; but m the first case the

THE TRIAL. 419,
subject cannot be obliged, because his consent cannot be given
for that in parliament, and although the king might be so
accepted in England, yet many do not assent to the same in
foreign parts ".*
Such was Rich's testimony as recited in the indictment. Il
bears on the face of It the evidence of forgery; for who can
think for a moment that More would thus speak to a raan like
Rich on the power of parliament to depose kings, or on the
recent statute of supremacy? But we shall hear More's own
statement. Official docuraents do not give the pleadings at
the trial ; but a few days after More's death there appeared on
the continent a French account of his speeches, which was
immediately spread through Europe and translated into raany
languages. It bears intrinsic evidence of truth : in the first
place, because it entirely corresponds with the indictraent;
and secondly, because More's answers are in exact conforraity
with what he had written in the various letters given in previous
chapters — letters, of course, unknown to the writer.f
"On the ist July, 1535, Master Thomas Morus, formerly
chancellor of England, was brought before the judges, and the
accusations against him read in his presence. The chancellor
and the Duke of Norfolk turned to him and said : 'You,
Master More, have gravely erred against the king ; neverthe
less we hope by his clemency that if you repent and correct
your obstinate opinion, in which you have so rashly persevered,
* The account of the conversation in all previous biographies is that
given by Roper. It is substantially the same, but contains a proposition
about Rich being made Pope, which More rejects. Roper had probably
no other authority than the indictment and More's answer as related to
him. He mentions, however, that the supposed conversation took place
in presence of Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer while More's books
were being packed up.
t MS. Bibl. Nat., Paris. Castlenau's Memoirs i. 415 (ed. 1731,
Brussels). The following is the translation given by Mr. Gairdner. I
have compared it with the French, and added a few words that had been
omitted (see Letters and Papers, viii. p. 394).

420 SIR THOMAS MORE.
you will receive pardon ' He replied : ' My lords, I thank you
very heartily for your good will. I pray God preserve me in
my just opinion even lo death. As to the accusations against
me, I fear words, memory, and judgment would alike fail me
to reply to such a length of articles, especially considering ray
present imprisonment and great infirmity.' A chair was then
ordered to be placed for him, and he proceeded as foUows : —
" ' As to the first article, charging me wilh having always
maliciously opposed the king's second raarriage, I will only
answer that what I have said has been according to my con
science. I never wished to conceal the truth, and if I had, I
should have been a traitor. For this error, if error it should
be called, I have been condemned to perpetual imprisonment,
which I have already suffered for fifteen months, and my goods
confiscated. For this reason I will only reply lo the principal
charge against me, that I have incurred the penalty of the
statute made in the last parliament since I was in prison, by
refusing to the king, maliciously, falsely, and traitorously, his
title of Supreme Head of the Church of England, in proof of
which you allege my reply to the secretary and Council, that as
I was dead to the world, I did not care to think of such things,
but only of the Passion of Christ. I reply that your statute
cannol condemn rae to death for such silence, for neither your
statute nor any laws in the world punish people except for
words and deeds — surely nol for keeping silence.' To this the
king's proctor replied that such silence was a certain proof
of raalice intended against the statute, especially as every faith
ful subject, on being questioned about the statute, was obliged
to answer categorically that the statute was good and whole
some. ' Surely,' repUed More, ' if what the comraon law* says
is true, that he who is silent seems lo consent, my sUence
should rather be taken as approval than contempt of your
* " Ce que Ton dit vulgairement." But the Spanish version says : " Lo
que el directio comun dire ". Erasmus translates it : " Si verum est quod
habetur in legibus ".

THE TRIAL. 42 1
statute. You say that all good subjects are obliged to reply ;
but I say that the faithful subject is more bound to his conscience
and his soul than to anythihg else in the world, provided his
conscience, like mine, does not raise scandal or sedition, and I
assure you that I have never discovered what is in my conscience
to any person hving.
" ' As to the second article, that I have conspired against the
statute by writing eight letters * to the Bishop of Rochester, ad
vising him to disobey it, I could wish these letters had been
read in public, but as you say the bishop has burnt them, I
will tell you the substance of them. Some were about private
matters connected with our old friendship. Another was a
reply to one of his asking how I had answered in the Tower to
the first examination about the statute. I said that I had in
formed my conscience, and so he also ought to do the same.
I swear that this was the tenor ofthe letters, for which I cannott
be condemned by your statute.
'"Touching the third article, that when I was exajnined by
the Council, I answered that your statute was like a two-edged
sword, for he who approved it would ruin his soul, and he who
contradicted it his body; and that the Bishop of Rochester
answered simUarly, showing that we were confederates : I reply
that I only answered thus conditionally, that supposing a
statute to cut thus both ways like a two-edged sword, how could
a man behave so as not to incur either danger ? I do not know
how the bishop replied, but if he answered like me, it must
have been from the agreement between us in opinion, but not
because we had ever arranged it between us. Be assured I
never did or said anything maliciously against the statute, but
it may be that this has been maliciously reported to the king.'
" Then they ordered an usher to summon twelve men, accoid-
* " Huit paires de lettres." The Spanish says simply, " ocho letras".
Erasmus, " octa paria" On the word " pair," see Note, p. 303.
t The negative is omitted in the French, but is given in the Spanish
and in Erasmus.

422 SIR THOMAS MORE.
ing to the custom of the country, and these articles were given
to them that they might judge whether More had maliciously
contravened the statute. After a quarter of an hour's absence,
they declared him guilty of death, and sentence was pronounced
by the chanceUor, ' according to the tenour of the new law '.*
" More tben spoke as foUows : ' Since I am conderaned,
and God knows how, I wish to speak freely of your statute, for
the discharge' of my conscience. For the seven years that I
have studied the matter, I have nol read in any approved
doctor of the Church that a temporal lord could or ought to
be head of the spirituality.' t The chancellor, interrupting
him, said : 'What, More, you wish to be considered wiser and
of belter conscience than all the bishops and nobles of the
realm?' To this More replied: 'My lord, for one bishop
of your opinion I have a hundred saints of mine ; and for one
parliament of yours, and God knows of what kind, I have all
the General Councils for looo years ; and for one kingdom I
have France and all the kingdoms of Christendom ' Norfolk
told him that now his malice was clear. More replied : ' What
I say is necessary for discharge of my conscience and satisfac
tion of my soul, and lo this I call God to witness, the sole
Searcher of human hearts. I say further, that your statute is
ill raade, because you have sworn never to do anything against
the Qhurch, which, through all Christendom, is one and undi
vided, and you have no authority, without the common consent
of all Christians, to make a law or Act of Parliament or Council
against the union of Christendom. I know well that the reason
why you have condemned rae is because I have never been
willing lo consent to the king's second marriage ; but I hope,
in the Divine goodness and mercy, that, as St. Paul and Sl.
* " Selon la lettre de la noble loi " (De Castelnau). Apparently a mis
reading of " nouvelle " The Spanish has, " segun la forma y tenor de
la nueva ley" ; Erasmus, " juxta tenorem novae constitutionis ".
t Quod laicus, aut, ut vocant, secularis, possit aut debeat esse caput
status spiritualis aut ecclesiastici (Erasmus).

THE TRIAL.

423

Stephen, whom he persecuted, are now friends in Paradise, so
we, though differing in this world, shall be united in perfect
charily in the other. I pray God to protect the king, and give
him good counsel.' "
This account Is accurate, but incomplete. The writer has
omitted Sir Thomas More's answer to the evidence of Rich.
The recital of the long dialogue, with its various suppositions,
and More's rehearsal of the true conversation, were probably
too complicated for the French writer to follow. More's answer
is recorded by Roper, who says that, though he was not present
at the trial, he gives the words of More as reported to him by
Sir Anthony St. Leger, by Mr. Chaywood, and Mr. Webb, and
others, as correctly as his meraory would serve. " If I were a
man, my lords, that did not regard an oath, I need not stand
in this place, at this time, as an accused person. And if this
oath of yours, Mr. Rich, be true, then I pray that I may never
see the face of God, which I would not say were it otherwise
to win the whole world." He then recited the conversation in
the Tower as it had really taken place, adding : " In good
faith, Mr. Rich, I ara sorrier for your perjury than for ray own
peril ; but neither I, nor any other man else, to my knowledge,
ever took you to be a man of such credit, as that, in any matter
of importance, I, or any other, would, at any lime, vouchsafe to
communicate with you. And I, as you know, of no sraall
while, have been acquainted wilh you and your conversation,
who have known you from your youth hitherto, for we long
dwelled together in one parish. I am sorry you compel me so
to say, that you were esteemed very light of your tongue, a
great dicer, and of no commendable fame. And so in your
house at the Temple, where hath been your chief bringing up,
were you likewise accounted.
" Can it, therefore, seem likely to your honourable lordships
that I would, in so weighty a cause, so unadvisedly overshoot
myself as to trust Mr. Rich, a man of me always reputed of
httle troth, so far above my sovereign lord the king or any of

424 SIR THOMAS MORE.
his noble councillors, that I would utter unto him the secrets
of my conscience touching the king's supremacy, the special
point at my hands so long sought for — a thing that I never did,
nor never would, after the statute thereof made, reveal unto
the king's Highness himself? Can this, in your judgment, my
lords, seem likely lo be true ?
"And yet, if I had so done indeed, seeing it was spoken
but in secret, farailiar talk, nothing affirming, and only in
putting of cases, it cannot justly be taken to be spoken
maliciously. I can never think, my lords, that so many worthy
bishops, so raany honourable personages as at the making of
that law were assembled, ever meant to have any man punished
by death in whora there could be found no malice, taking
malitia for malevolentia, for if malitia be generally taken for
sin, no man is there that can then excuse himself"
Thereupon Rich caused Sir Richard Southwell and Mr.
Palraer to be sworn, but they both said that they were so en
gaged in packing the books that they paid little attention lo
the conversation — a paltry corapromise between fear and con
science. Roper also says that when Sir Thomas, after the verdict of
the jury, was asked what he could allege against the sentence,
he replied not only that supremacy in the Church could not
belong to a layman, but that it "rightfully belonged to the
See of Rome, as granted personally by Our Lord when on earth
to St. Peter and his successors," and that, as the city of London
could not make a law against the laws of the realm of England,
so England could not make a law contrary to the general law
of Christ's Catholic Church, and that the Magna Charta of
England was that "the English Church should be free and
enjoy all its right entire,'' and so the king had sworn at his
coronation. He added that for England to refuse obedience
to the See of Rome was the same as for a child to refuse
obedience to a parent. As St. Paul said to the Corinthians :
" I have begotten you in Christ," so might St. Gregory say to

THE TRIAL. 425
the English: "You are my children, because I have under
Christ given to you everlasting salvation ".
Lord Macaulay has called the state trials of those days
"murder preceded by mummery". The trial was indeed an
empty farce, since on 25th June, after the death of Blessed
Fisher, the king had ordered the preachers lo set forth to the
people the treasons of the late Bishop of Rochester, and of
Sir Thomas More ; joining them together Ihough the latter was
still untried.*
But the martyr's earnest part was a spectacle to God, to
angels, and to men.
In what follows not a word may be changed or omitted from
Roper's narrative : " Now, after his arraignment departed he
from the bar to the Tower again, led by Sir William Kingston,
a tall, strong, and comely knight, constable of the Tower, and
his very dear friend.t Who, when he had brought him from
Westminster to the " Old Swan," towards the Tower, there, with
a heavy heart, the tears running down his cheeks, bade him
farewell. Sir Thomas More, seeing him so sorrowful, comforted
him with as good words as he could, saying : " Good Mr.
Kingston, trouble not yourself, but be of good cheer, for I will
pray for you and my good lady your wife, that we may meet in
heaven together, where we shall be merry for ever and ever "
Soon after. Sir William Kingston, talking with me of Sir
Thomas More, said : " In good faith, Mr. Roper, I was ashamed
of myself that at my departing from your father I found my
heart so feeble and his so strong, that he was fain to comfort
me that should rather have comforted him "
"When Sir Thomas,'' continues Roper, "came from West
minster to the Tower, his daughter, my wife, desirous to see
* Letters and Papers, viii. 921.
t According to the official record it was Sir Edmund Walsingham, he
lieutenant, who conducted the prisoner to Westminster. Roper cannot
have been mistaken in saying that it was the constable, Sir William
Kingston, who conducted hira back to the Tower.

426 SIR THOMAS MORE.
her father, whom she thought she should never see in this
world after, and also to have his final blessing, gave attend
ance about the Tower wharf, where she knew he should pass
before he could enter into the Tower. There tarrying his
coming, as soon as she saw him, after his blessing upon her
knees reverently received, she hasting towards him, without
consideration or care of herself, pressing in among the midst
of the throng and company of the guard, that with halbards
and bills went round about hira, hastily ran to him, and there
openly, in sight of them, embraced him, and took him about
the neck and kissed him.* Who, weU liking her most natural
and dear daughterly affection towards him, gave her his
fatherly blessing and many godly words of comfort besides.
From whom after she was departed, she, not satisfied wilh
the forraer sight of him, and like one that had forgotten
herself, being all ravished wilh the entire love of her father,
having respect neither to herself nor to the press of people
that were about hira, suddenly turned back again, ran lo
him as before, took him about the neck, and divers times
kissed hira lovingly, and at last, with a full and heavy heart,
was fain to depart from him ; the beholding whereof was to
many that were present so lamentable that it made them for
very sorrow thereof to weep."i-
Roper, in his modesty, says nothing here about himself, yet
it seems evident that he was a spectator of all these things,
and was supporting his wife in her great trial. Stapleton
informs us that John More, Sir Thomas's son, also came to
receive his father's blessing on his knees, probably as he left
Westminster HaU; he adds also that Margaret Gigs and
Dorothy Collig accompanied Margaret Roper, and ventured
to follow her example in embracing the holy martyr.
* Cresacre More mentions her cry : " Oh ! ray father ! Oh ! ray father !"
t Erasraus, in the account he published under the name of Covrinus
Nucerinus, gives the interview with Margaret with the same details,
rem arking that even the guards were melted to tears».

THE TRIAL. 427
The sentence passed on More was that he should die at Tyburn
with aU the Infamous brutalities then inflicted on traitors. The
time, however, had not been fixed, and the decision of the
king was awaited. Cresacre More, after Stapleton, tells us
that he redoubled his penitential exercises, scourging himself,
and meditating on death, wilh a sheet around him, as if he
were a corpse prepared for burial. He was condemned on
the ist July, and executed on the 6th. " In the meantime,''
says Cresacre,* " came to him a light-headed courtier, talking
of no serious matter, but only urging him this, that he would
change his mind ; and being wearied with his importunity, he
answered him, that he had changed it, who presently went
and told the king thereof. And being by hira coraraanded to
know wherein his mind was changed. Sir Thomas rebuked
him for his lightness in that he would tell the king every
word that he spoke in jest, meaning that whereas he had
purposed to be shaven, that he might seem to others as before
he was wont, now he was fully minded that his beard should
take such part as his head did ; which made the fellow blank
and the king very angry."
On Monday, the 5tli July, he wrote with a charred stick
this his last letter to Margaret, al the same time sending to
her his hair shirt : —
"Our Lord bless you, good daughter, and your good
husband, and your little boy, and all yours, and all my
children, and all my god-children and all our friends. Re
commend me when ye may to my good daughter Cecily,
whom I beseech Our Lord to comfort; and I send her my
blessing and to aU her children, and pray her to pray for
me. I send her a handkercher, and God comfort my good
son, her husband. My good daughter Daunce hath the
picture in parchment that you delivered me from my Lady
Coniers, her name on the back. Show her that I heartily
* Stapleton is his authority.

428 SIR THOMAS MORE.
pray her that you may send it in ray name to her again,
for a token frora me to pray for rae.
" I like special well Dorothy Colly. I pray you be good
unto her. I would wot whether this be she that you wrote me
of If not, yet I pray you be good to the other as you may in
her affliction, and to my good daughter Jane Aleyn too.
Give her, I pray you, some kind answer, for she sued hither to
me this day to pray you be good to her.
" I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry
if it should be any longer than to-morrow, for it is St. Thomas's
even, and the ulas of St. Peter ; * and, therefore, to-morrow
long I to go to God. It were a day very meet and convenientv
for me.
" I never liked your raanner towards me better than when
you kissed me last ; for I love when daughterly love and dear
charity halh no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell,
my dear child, and pray for me, and I shall for you and all
your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven. I thank
you for your great cost. I send now my good daughter
Cleraent t her algorism stone, and I send her and my
godson and all hers God's blessing and mine. I pray you at
time convenient recommend me to my good son John More.
I liked well his natural fashion. Our Lord bless him and his
good wife, my loving daughter, to whom I pray him to be good,
as he hath great cause : and that, if the land of mine come to
his hands, he break not my will concerning his sister Daunce.
And the Lord bless Thomas and Austin, and all that they
shall have." J
In one of the last days of his life he wrote a Latin letter to
his friend of forty years' standing, Antonio Bonvisi, an erudite
and wealthy Italian merchant settled in London, who had sent
* Utas, i.e., the octave day of the feast of St. Peter, 29th June ; the
7th July is the Translation of the Relics of St. Thomas of Canterbury.
t Margaret Gigs, who had married Dr. Cleraent.
X English Works, p. 1457.

THE TIBIAL. 429
both to him and to the Bishop of Rochester many little
presents during their imprisonment. The letter is full of
affection, and he bids him farewell till they meet again where
there will be no need of letters, where no walls will keep them
apart, and no jailer forbid their conversation, but where, with
God the Father, and His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and
the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from both, they will enjoy
eternal bliss.* * English Works, p. 1455.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MARTYRDOM.
If love be strong, hot, mighty, and fervent.
There may no trouble, grief, or sorrow fall
But that the lover would be well content
All to endure, and think it eke too small,
Though it were death, so he might therewithal
The joyful presence of that person get
On whom he hath his heart and love yset.
Thus should of God the lover be content
Any distress or sorrow to endure.
Rather than be from God his love absent.
And glad to die, so that he raay be sure.
By his departing hence, for to procure
After this valley dark the heavenly light,
And of His love the glorious blessed sight.
THUS More had written in his early manhood. They
were no erapty, idle words. The thought of eternity,
the desire of the vision of God, run through the
texture of his whole life. Many a man, before and since, has
met death bravely. Not only in the excitement of a field of
battle, or the enthusiasm of a rescue from fire, but calraly in
the execution of duty, as when the captain stands erect upon
the sinking ship, while he sees the last boat depart with the
woraen and children. AU admiration to such deaths ! AU
honour to such men I But it is not mere physical or moral

THE MARTYRDOM. 43 1
courage we honour in the death of Blessed Thomas More. It is
that his death was willing, though not wilful. One word of
compliance and he would have been carried from the Tower to
the palace of the king triumphantiy, and little shame would
have been his where all had yielded. But his death was not
only wiUing, it was desired. All the martyrs have accepted
death to be faithful to their God, but not all have desired
death ; al least, they have not aU, like More, desired il through
out their life. To him eternity had ever been the only reality,
the only hope that makes life worth living. Pleasure, literary
fame, wealth, the smiles of princes, had only proved to him
how mean are all the goods this life can offer, and his soul
thirsted for the strong God from the midst of weakness, for the
living God from the midst of death : " As the hart panteth
after the fountains of water, so my soul panteth after Thee, O
God ; my soul hath thirsted after the strong living God ; when
shall I come and appear before the face of God ? " *
The details of More's glorious martyrdom have been made
familiar to all by the narration of his son-in-law. Stapleton
gathered a few additional circumstances from Margaret Clements
and Dorothy Colly, t Shame caused the king to comraule the
sentence of drawing, hanging, mutilating and quartering at
Tyburn into beheading on Tower Hill.J The day he chose
was that which More had desired, the 6th July. Early in the
morning of that day an old friend of More, Sir Thomas Pope,
was sent by the king to announce to him that he must die that
day before nine o'clock. Not one of the historians has a word
about confession and coraraunion; but as we know from a

* Psalm xli.
t Stapleton's history has been very literally followed by Cresacre More.
X Cresacre says that when this royal cleraency was raade known to
More, he answered: "God forbid the king should use any more such
mercy unto any of ray friends, and God bless all ray posterity from such
pardons " The words seem authentic, but I do not find the authority
for them.

432 SIR THOMAS MORE.
letter of Chapuys' that a confessor was assigned to Fisher, and,
as this was an ordinary concession before execution,* we may
suppose that Sir Thomas had this consolation once more before
he died, though probably not that of receiving the Viaticum of
Our Lord's Body and Blood. More thanked Sir Thomas Pope
for the news he brought, and expressed his gratitude to the
king for placing hira where he had had so much leisure to pre
pare for his last end. " And so, God help me, am I bounden
to His Highness most of all, that it pleaseth him so shortly to
rid me from the miseries of this wretched world ; and therefore
will I not fail earnestly to pray for His Grace both here and also
in the world to come." " The king's pleasure is farther," said
Pope, " that at your execution you shall not use many words.''
" Mr. Pope,'' replied More, " you do well to give me warning
of His Grace's pleasure, for, otherwise, at that tirae had I pur
posed to have spoken, but of no matter wherewith His Grace or
any should have had cause to be offended. I beseech you,
good Mr. Pope, to be a mean to His Highness that my daughter
Margaret may be al my burial." " The king is content already,"
rephed Pope, " that your wife and children and olher friends
shaU have liberty lo be present thereat." " Oh, how much be
holding, then, am I unto His Grace, that unto my poor burial
vouchsafeth to have so gracious consideration." Sir Thomas
Pope could not restrain his tears, but the martyr comforted him
with his usual words about a happy meeting in heaven.t
His friend Bonvisi had sent to him a handsome dress of
camelot (a kind of silk) to wear at his execution. J The lieu-
lenant advised him to take it off, saying that he who should
have it after his death — for it was the perquisite of the heads
man—was but a rascal. "What! Mr. Lieutenant," replied
* " Whom the protector bade speed and shrive him apace, for, by St.
Paul," quothhe, "I will not to dinner till I see thy head off" (More's
Richard III).
t The above is from Roper.
t Stapleton.

THE MARTYRDOM. 433
More, " shall I account him a rascal that shall do me this day
so singular a benefit ? Were ll cloth of gold I should think it
weU bestowed on him, as St. Cyprian did who gave his execu
tioner thirty pieces of gold." He yielded, however, to the
insistance of the lieutenant; but gave a gold angel to the
headsman on the scaffold, and he had before asked his son to
befriend him in any way he could.*
Stapleton says that Margaret Clements once showed him a
curiously wrought representation or statuette of Sir Thoraas
More going towards the scaffold. This she had made, or
caused to be made, as the iraage of the martyr was present in
her raemory. His face was very pale and emaciated, he wore
a poor dress of frieze, and carried a red cross in his hand. His
beard was long, and his eyes were raised to heaven.
Harpsfield says that as he left the Tower gale a woraan asked
him to notify that he had certain evidences of hers, that were
delivered to him when he was chancellor, and that since he
had been imprisoned she had been unable lo recover them.
" Good woman," he replied, " content thyself and take patience
a little while, for the king is so good and gracious to me, that
even within this half-hour he will disburden rae of all worldly
business, and help thee himself" t Another woman followed
him crying that he had done her a great injury when he was
chancellor. He replied calmly that he reraerabered her case
weU, and should still give the same decision. J The selfish
women were exceptions. One good woman came frora her
house and offered him a cup of wine. He thanked her, but
refused it, saying that Christ at His Passion drank no wine, but
gall and vinegar. " Last of all," says Cresacre, "there came a
citizen of Winchester. This man had long laboured under a
temptation of despair and suicide. Sir Thomas, when chan-
* Stapleton, who says he gave the money himself. Roper says that
he sent it.
t Harpsfield's MS., from whom Stapleton relates this.
X Cresacre. This is not in Harpsfield. 28

434 SIR THOMAS MORE.
cellor, had tried to console him, and had, by his prayers rather
than his words, delivered him for three years. After Sir Thomas's
comraittal to prison, the old temptation returned raore violently.
But now, hearing that his friend was to be executed, he came
to London, and ran towards him as he was led out to execution,
desiring, with great earnestness, that he would help him by his
prayers ; to whom Sir Thomas said : " Go and pray for me, and
I will carefully pray for you " He went away with confidence,
and was troubled no more.*
The scaffold, says Roper, was very unsteady, and putting his
feet on the ladder, he said merrily to the lieutenant : " I pray
thee see me safe up, and for my coming down let rae shift for
myself". "Then desired he all the people to pray for him
and to bear witness with him that he should there suffer death
in and for the faith of the CathoUc Church." This is Roper's
account. The French report, copied by Erasmus, adds that he
exhorted the people to pray for the king that God would send
him good counsel, and protested that he died his faiihful ser
vant, but especially the' servant of God.
He then knelt down and, according to Stapleton, recited the
psalm Miserere, which had always been his favourite prayer.t
The executioner as usual asked pardon, and he kissed him,
saying cheerfully: "Pluck up thy spirits, man,, and be not
afraid to do thy office. My neck is very short ; take heed,
therefore, thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty." J
Ridebit in die novissima.
The block used al that period was a mere low log, so that
the victim had to lie at full length on the scaffold with his face

* Cresacre, from Stapleton. Ch. vi.
t " The martyrs in their agony made no long prayers aloud, but one
inch of such a prayer so prayed in that pain was worth a whole ell and
more, even of their own prayers prayed at sorae other time " {English
Works, p. 1 164).
X Roper.

THE MARTYRDOM.

435

downwards.* More had brought with him a handkerchief : he
Dllndfolded himself, and placing his head upon the block, re-
:eived the fatal but blessed blow that will surround his brow
for ever with the martyr's aureole.f He had lived fifty-six
years and five months.
The story of More's life and death is told. The reader wiU
make his own reflections. As I have tried to say only what
was strictly necessary on contemporary history, so I will forbear
to speak of the consequences of More's life and death on Eng
land, and on the Church. Wilh the record, then, of his earthly
relics I will make an end. Of the disposal of his sacred head
and body his own son-in-law says nothing, and Archdeacon
Harpsfield, who could have learned every detail from Roper,
and who wrote freely in the days of Mary, omitting all mention
of the body, merely gives the well-known fact that the head was
placed on London Bridge, and tells us nothing of its fate. The
account given by Stapleton is as follows : " The head remained
fixed on a stake on London Bridge for a month, when Margaret
Roper bribed the man whose business it was lo throw it into
the river to give it to her " Though it had been parboiled
before being exposed (as Erasmus mentions, and as was the
custom), yet it was easily recognised, not only by the absence of
a tooth that he had lost before death, but because its appear
ance was almost as fair as during life. But the beard, which
had been hoary before death, became of a reddish colour after
wards. Margaret had it preserved in spices, and kept it most
reverently while she lived ; " and to this day," adds Stapleton,
cautiously, " it is still preserved in her family ".J Even in the
* Thus Blessed John Fisher was executed (see my Life of Fisher,
2nd ed., App.).
t Cresacre adds that, having his head on the block, he bade the execu
tioner stay until he had removed his beard, saying that it had coramitted
no treason. This incident is not in Roper, Harpsfield, or Stapleton.
+ Et hodie adhuc apud aliquem suorura custoditur.

436 SIR THOMAS MORE.
next century Cresacre More thought it more prudent to say :
" She buried it where she thought fittest " Sir Richard Mori
son, on the contrary, writing in 1536 an answer to Cochlasus,
who in a little book had mentioned the removal of More's and
Fisher's heads from the bridge, boldly denies such removal.
-' Come here," he says, "and you shall see both heads where
they were placed, and still warning men by the spectacle not
to conspire against the king or the laws of the kingdom."*
Morison, a proteg^ of CromweU's, was seeking court favour,
and had been sel up to defend Henry against the execrations
of Europe. He could not deny that the most venerable heads
in England had been Impaled on London Bridge. He thought
it, therefore, best to pretend no shame and affirm relentless
justice. His affirmations and denials are of little value. I
prefer to believe the veracity of Stapleton, who says that Mar
garet was sumraoned before the Council for keeping her father's
head as a relic, as well as his books and writings. She replied
that she had procured her father's head for burial that it might
not be the food of fishes ; and that she had, with the exception
of his printed books, few of his writings but familiar letters,
which she earnestly begged that she might keep for her solace.
Powerful raen at court befriended her, and she was no more
molested. " Carrying her love beyond the grave," writes Sir
Jaraes Mackintosh, " she desired that the head raight be buried
wilh her when she died. The remains of this precious relic
are said lo have been since observed in the burial place, lying
on what had been her bosom." Tennyson's words wiU occur
to the mind : —
Morn broaden'd on the borders of the dark
Ere I saw her, who clasped in her last trance
Her murder'd father's head, t
This legend is so beautiful that it is almost cruel to question
il. It is nol, however, ancient, and it seems irapossible to
" Apomaxis calumniarum, etc., f. 93, b.
t A Dream of Fair Women.

THE MARTYRDOM.

437

reconcUe it wilh facts. The vault of the Ropers is in St. Dunstan's
Church, Canterbury, and it is there that Margaret, wilh her
father's head, is supposed to lie. Indeed, a leaden vessel, such
as would contain a head, was seen in the Roper vault as late as
183s, though it was not lying in or on a coffin, but placed on
a ledge behind an iron grating. That may, indeed, be the
head of Blessed Thomas, and Margaret may, in obedience to
the Council, have placed it where she hoped it would be safe.
She died in 1544, nine years after her father, and thirty-four
before her husband. But, though she has a monumental
inscription at St. Dunstan's, she was buried at Chelsea ; and
WiUiam Roper, her husband, who died 4th January, 1578,
directs in his will that his body be placed with that of his wife
and chUdren, at Chelsea, Co. Middlesex "in the vault with
the body of my dearly beloved wife (whose soul Our Lord
pardon), where my father-in-law, Sir Thomas More (whose
soul Jesus bless); did mind to be buried " Margaret, it seems,
had chosen to be buried with her mother, whom More had
already placed in the family vault. For some reason Roper's
injunction was not carried out, and he lies at St. Dunstan's,
Canterbury.* The headless body of More suffered no such outrages as
were offered, by the express orders of the king, lo that of Fisher.
No doubt he wished to revenge on the cardinal what he called
the wrongs done him by the Pope. He had no such reason
for insulting More. By the governor's permission, then, the
body was laid in the chapel of Sl. Peter ad Vincula in the
Tower. This is expressly stated by Stapleton, who had all the
details from Margaret Clements and Dorothy Harris. These
two women assisted Margaret Roper in the burial. They used
to relate that, when they came to take up the body they had all
forgotten the winding sheet, and had brought no money with
them, and, being far from their homes, had no credit in that
* See Roper Pedigree at Coll. Arms (MS. Norfolk, xii. p. 2). Informa
tion kindly communicated by E. Bellasis, Esq., Lancaster Herald.

438 SIR THOMAS MORE.
quarter. Mrs. Harris, however, went lo a draper's shop, and
agreeing on the price, made as though she would look for
raoney in her purse, and then try whether they would trust her ;
and to her great surprise she found the exact sum they had
agreed on.*
In the British Museum there is a Latin Life of Blessed John
Fisher, of which the greater part has been consumed by fire,
and most of the reranant is iUegible. But the foUowing
passage is easy to decipher.t After slating that Fisher's body
remained for seven years in AU Hallows' Churchyard, on Tower
Hill, visited and venerated especially by foreigners, the writer
continues : " The martyr's enemies were so angry at the con
course, that they had the body exhumed and carried to the
Tower, and with the relics of Thomas More cast inlo an
obscure place. But certain persons who have taken note of
events have left in writing, that the bodies of these holy men
did not even rest there ; but that, when the heat of persecution
somewhat abated, they were devoutly carried to the village of
Chelsea, where More had resided, and are there kept to this
day entombed in a new monument which he had prepared for
himself when he was in (royal) favour. But while I was en
deavouring to discover from coramon report or from written
records the real place where this precious treasure is hidden,
I was hindered. May God grant that some day, when
religion revives and peace is restored to the Church, it may be
known lo the faiihful where are those longed-for rehcs." All
this is very perplexing. The life is anonymous, but bears
intrinsic evidence of having been written in the time of Queen
Mary. How could there be any difficulty in discovering the
truth of the removal when Roper was still alive and so many of
More's grandchildren ? It would seem that the writer was just
* This story is related by Stapleton and by Sander. Burnet reproaches
Sander with inventing it. He merely, like Stapleton, told what he heard
on the best authority.
t Arundel MS. 152, f. 233.

ST. Peter's ad vincula.

To/xce p. 43S.

THE MARTYRDOM. 439
making his inquiries when the death of Queen Mary drove him
into exile and interrupted all communication wilh the family.
Stapleton, who wrote in 1588, says nothing of this removal lo
Chelsea.* Cresacre More, who had no doubt all the family traditions,
writes that " the body was buried in the chapel of Sl. Peter, in
the belfry, or as some say, as one entereth into the vestry, near
unto the body of the holy martyr Bishop Fisher, who being put
to death just a fortnight before, had small respect done unto
hira all this whUe " This last phrase musl point to the shame
ful outrages perpetrated on the body of Blessed Fisher, and
imply that it was reraoved frora All Hallows lo the Tower, not
seven years, but one fortnight after its burial. Cresacre's
knowledge of Fisher's history may have been imperfect, or
Margaret may really have got leave to take up the bishop's
remains and lay them witb her father's. Cresacre gives no
hint of subsequent removal. He could scarcely bave visited
the chapel of St. Peter, for there was no vestry in the entrance
to which the body could have been laid. The spot pointed
out at present is near the entrance to the small bell-tower ; and
if that was the resting-place of the holy ashes, they will not
have been removed to the vaults, as was the case with those in
the nave, when the church was repaired in 1876.1-
Near the entrance door at the west end has been recently
placed a memorial tablet with the following inscription : —
" List of remarkable persons buried in this chapel :
" I. Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, 1534.
"2. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1535.
"3. Sir Thomas More, 1535.
* Weever and others affirm the removal of More's body to Chelsea,
but they give no authority. The Rev. J. Morris, S.J., argues in favour of
the removal in the Month for Feb., 1891. Perhaps the vault at Chelsea
may be some day opened, and the truth revealed. As yet the evidence
to me seems in favour ofthe Tower.
t On this reraoval see The Chapel in the Tower, by Mr. C. Doyne Bell.

440 SIR THOMAS MORE.
"4. George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, 1536-
"5. Queen Anne Boleyn, 1536-
"6. Thomas Crorawell, Earl of Essex, 1540-
" 7 . Margaret of Clarence, Countess of
Salisbury, iS4i>"
etc. ; in aU, 34, ending :
" 34. Siraon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, i747-''
These lines throw open many a dark and painful page of
English history, and they remind us of More's words to Tindale :
that violent death may corae to saint or sinner, to raartyr or
heretic, to patriot or traitor. They suggest bitler refiections on
More's false friends and open enemies — on Cromwell, Anne
Boleyn, and Henry VIII. But I refrain. I have said as little
of these as I could, and I will not conclude a Life of Blessed
More by reproaches of those for whom he prayed with his last
breath. A more fitting termination wUl be found in his own
words, written in the Tower in the prospect of the block : —
" To this great glory of heaven can there no raan come
headless. Our Head is Christ, and, therefore, to Him raust
we be joined, and as raerabers of His must we follow Him, if
we will come thither. ' Know ye not that Christ must suffer
passion and by that way enter into the kingdom ? ' Who can
for very shame desire to enter into His kingdom of Christ
vrith ease, when He Himself entered not into His own without
pain ? " *
* Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, Bk. iii. ch. 26.

APPENDIX A.
RELICS OF BLESSED THOMAS MORE.
FATHER THOMAS MORE, S.J., the last English pro
vincial of the old Society, was the last male heir of the
raartyr. He died in 1795, and through him the family
heirlooms of various relics of his blessed ancestor came to
• Stonyhurst College. Father More had a sister, who was
superioress of the English Canonesses of St. Augustine at
Bruges, and he gave her the only relic of the body of the
martjrr that is known to exist — excepting, of course, the head.
Half of the Bruges relic is now, by the kindness of a successor
of Reverend Mother More, at Manresa, Roehampton. The
existence of this relic, descending in the family, speaks for the
existence of a family tradition that the tomb of Blessed Thoinas
had been opened some time after the raartyrdom." *
A large coUection of interesting relics of Blessed Thoraas is
preserved by the Jesuit fathers in their college of Stonyhurst
The following description is from the Stonyhurst Magazine of
February, 1887 : —
I. The Hat. Fr. Boone, S.J., Superior of the Brussels
Residence, April 25, 1835, attests that he received it from
MUe. Th^rfese Gaiilard the day before her death, to be given
to the Enghsh Jesuits. It was given to her, June 24, 1809,
by Philippe de la Tour, parish priest of SS. Michael and
* Rev. J. Morris, S.J., in the Month, Feb., 1891.

442 SIR THOMAS MORE.
Gudule, in Brussels. He took ll, in the presence of Fr. Perez,
S.J., of Alost, from the Brussels College Library at the Sup
pression. It was received by Fr. Otho Zylius, the librarian of
the CoUege af Brussels, January 15, 1654, given by Fr. Charles
de Breuil, S.J., rector of the CoUege of Roermond in HoUand,
by leave of Fr. John Baptist Engelgrave, S.J., the provincial.
It had been given to that CoUege by Godfrey Gilekens, chan
cellor of the supreme court in Guelderland, who had it for
many years, and on the day on which the holy martyr died
(July 6) used always lo wear it in court.
2. The Sodality Crucifix. Its inscription in Greek says
that " this is a rehc of St. Thomas the Apostle " Inside the
cross now are bits of half-decayed paper, on which is written
"Sl. Charles Borromeus," with some very smaU rehcs. There
is also a bit of wood in a separate paper without any wrilirig.
The foUowing is copied from the original document : —
" I, Thoraas More, of the Society of Jesus, and last of the
family of Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor of England, wilh
the leave and approbation of R. F. Philip Carteret, provincial,
do give unto the Sodality of our Blessed Lady in the Enghsh
College at St. Omer's, this large gold cross, formerly belonging
unto, and us'd or wore by Sir Thomas More hiraself, and since
his time kept with great care in our family.
" Witness my hand, 29th June, 1755.
" Thos. More.
" Philip Carteret, Provincial."
In a cover, on which is written: "Thorase More Donum et
authenticu Testimonium de cruce aurea Ven. Thomae Mori
Anglise Cancellarii pro fide passi sub Henrico 8vo "
3. Silver Seal of Blessed Thomas More when sub-treasurer.
Its handle is a. fleur-de-lys. The arms are quarterly: ist and
4th, a chevron engrailed between three cocks (More) ; and 2nd
and 4th, a chevron between three unicorns' heads couped.
The crest is a Moor's head. The inscription round the seal

appendix a. 443
is " Sigillu T. More Equitis Aurati Subthesauraii Angl." Wilh
this was kept another seal, the handle of which consists of two
crucifixes, back to back. The seal, engraved on a cornelian,
has the inscription, " Christiano Catholica R." The arms are
quarterly : ist and 4th, a chevron engrailed between three cocks
(More); 2nd and 4th, three lions rampant (Cresacre). The
heiress of the Cresacres married Sir Thomas More's only son,
John, who would have impaled his wife's arms, or rather, as she
was an heiress, borne them on an escutcheon of pretence.
The earliest More, therefore, to whom the seal can have be
longed is Sir Thomas' grandson, Thomas, who was born in
1531, and died in 1606. The seal is now in the Museum.
4. The George : so-called because on its obverse it has,
beautifully worked in gold and enamel, St. George and the
Dragon. Sir Thomas was not a Knight of the Garter, so that
this is not the decoration of that Order, coraraonly called a
George. On the reverse is Our Blessed Lord sitting on the
tomb stripped and surrounded by emblems of the Passion.
The inscription round the rim is, " O passi graviora dabit his
quoque finem "- Mr. Edmund Walerton says that when ^the
George was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries and at the
Fine Art Exhibition of 1862, the minimum value put upon it
was ;^iooo.
5. Cameo — the head of the Blessed Virgin — " formerly be
longing to Sir T. More " . It is thus entered in the old
catalogue of the Stonyhurst Museum.
6. " Cap of Sir T. More.'' So entered in the sarae cata
logue, which adds : " The five preceding articles [the two seals,
the George, the cameo, and the cap] were all received from
Father T. More, Prov. Angl., S.J., last descendant of the
family "
7. Pouncet Box, a shell with a silver lid, neariy plain. The
catalogue says : " Presented by Revd. James Parker ". This
gives us the authorship of the following note : " This box was
given to Revd. Mr. Coomb by Mrs. Dalton, sister of Revd. T.

444 SIR THOMAS MORE.
More, my provincial, at ye dissolution of ye Society by Pope
GanganeUi, who had received it from his father as a special
gift, having been used by his ancestor, Sir T. More, lord
chancellor of England, beheaded in ye reigning year [sic] of
King Henry VIII. LP. " Father James Parker died at
Liverpool, October 29, 1822, at. 75.
8. A silver reliquary with crystal on both sides, containing a
Bone. The inscription round the rim is " ReUquiae Thorase
Mori Mar. Ang. Chan." This is entered in the catalogue :
" 296. Relick of Sir T. More," and in the new catalogue this
entry is given, under the date 1826, as the gift of John Gage,
Esq. He probably also gave the next entry in the old cata
logue, viz. : —
9. "298. A Gold Cross which belonged to Sir T. More."
It is a small but beautifully enamelled crucifix. It is worth
noticing that the gold cord attached to it is the same as that
attached to the cornelian Cresacre seal. It is singular that the
inscription, " Presented by John Gage, Esq.," on the glass case
in which the relics have been kept in the Museum should have
attjibuted the gift of all to Mr. Gage, while he appears to have
given at the raost two out of the ten articles the case contained
— the tenth being the Cresacre seal, still in the Museum.
' Mgr. Eyston of East Hendred, in Berkshire, possesses the can
or cup commonly used by More. " It is a pint cup, with a lid
and handle raade of pieces of oak, and bound together by rings
of silver, and narrower at the top than at the bottom. It is
\stiU perfect" (Wornum : Holbein, p. 203).
/ The Augustinian Canonesses of Abbots' Leigh, near Newton
Abbot, in Devonshire, possess the hair shirt worn by More,
and sent to his daughter Margaret tbe day before his martyrdom.
It was brought to them by the daughter of Margaret Clements,
the adopted child of Sir Thomas.
Letters in the autograph of Sir Thomas may stiU be seen in
the British Museum.

APPENDIX B.

MONUMENTS.

THERE has been a great readiness on the part of English
men lo render justice and honour to the meraory of Sir
Thomas More. It would be easy lo fiU a long and
interesting chapter with the panegyrics that have been pro
nounced upon him. Yet England has been very slow to testify
her veneration by any visible raemorial. Surely London, at
least, ought long ago, by a public act, to have raade reparation
to her noblest citizen. Yet it was only within the last few years
that the devotion and generosity of a Catholic gentleman,
George Amold, Esq., of Milton HaU, Gravesend, erected the first
statue. This stands over a doorway of a corner house in Carey
Street, Chancery Lane. In building these chambers and shops,
Mr. Arnold arranged with the benchers of Lincoln's Inn to
make a passage through to New Square, called More's Passage.
On a slab beneath the statue is the following inscription : —
" Sh Thomas More, Knight,
Some time Lord High ChanceUor
of England;
Martyred 6lh July, 1535.
The Faithful Servant
Both of God and the King."
The houses, as well as the statue, were designed by George
Sherrin, Esq., architect, and aie engraved in the British
Architea for 13th September, 1889.

I

APPENDIX C.
PEDIGREES AND ARMS.
OWE the following notes to the courtesy of E. Bellasis, Esq.,
Lancaster Herald : —

I. Sir John More.
The MS. in College of Arms (Vincent, iii. p. 370), notes that
Sir John More's grandfather More married Joanna, daughter of
John Leicestre. It also stales that Sir John had two brothers,
Richard and Christopher, the latter of whom was married.
Sir John's first wife is called Alice, daughter of  Han-
combe of Hancombe, Co. Bedford.
This Latin pedigree ends with the three children of
Christopher Cresacre More, who was born 3rd July, 1572.
This MS. also mentions Sir John's second wife as Alice,
relict of Clarke, and notes that she had by her first husband a
. daughter, Agnes Clarke.
The date of this MS. is probably circa 162 1-6, and it consists
of imperfect copies of Glover's Visitation, 1584, and of St.
George's Visitation in 161 2, with raany additions and pedigrees
from Dodsworth's deeds, and other genealogies and arms not
in the originals, and supposed to have been coUected by
Vincent. The MS. (CoU. Arms, xlvii D. xiv. p. 333) describes Sir
John More's second wife as Alice, daughter of John and sister
of Sir Christopher More of Losely, Surrey.

appendix c. 447
II. The Martyr's First Wife.
The MS. (Vincent, cxxiv. p. 291) has this entry in the Colt
pedigree: "Jana, nupta Thomae Moore militi, Cancellario
Angliae " ; and she appears as the daughter of John Colt or
Cowlt of Essex by his wife Jane, daughter of Sir John Elring-
ton of Middlesex, knight. She had two brothers — Sir George
Colt of Candish, Suffolk, knight, and Thomas Colt — and four
sisters. All six raarried. III. Arms.
A pedigree of four descents and arms of Colt appear in (CoU.
Arms) MS. D. xi. p. 32". The descents begin with Jane
More's father, John Colt, and the arms are given thus : " argent
a fess between 3 colts courant sable "
In MS. (CoU. Arms) E.D.N. Ivi. p. 148, being the grants
by Sir Christopher Barker (Norroy, 1536; Garter, 1536-50) and
other kings of arms in trick, occurs this entry : "Sir Tho. Moore
Lord Chancellor T. H. 8 " The trick below this is : " 4ly, ist,
and 4th, are a chevron engraUed between 3 moorcocks sable ;
2nd and 3rd argent on a chevron between 3 unicorns' heads,
erased sable (not blazoned), 3 roundles (not blazoned) "
How the martyr quarters this unicorn coat is not shown in
the pedigrees. The coat is apparently intended for 'that of
KUlingbeck, an old faraUy of Chapel-Allerton in Yorkshire,
whom the heralds Flower, in 1584-5, and Dugdale, in 1665
duly visited; ie., " argent on a chevron sable between 3 uni
corns' heads (couped. Flower; erased, Dugdale), azure, 3
annulets or ".
No crest given, but il is described officially in 1797 as "a
Moor's bust is a profile proper, frora the ear two annulets con
joined, or, shirt also proper ''

APPENDIX D.
ASTRONOMICAL SYSTEM.
BLESSED Thomas More was fond of astronoray. It is
needless to say that he held the Ptolemaic or geocentric
system, in which the earth is the centre of all things and
various spheres revolve around it. The bookmark ofhis brother-
in-law, John Rastell, which adorns the title pages of the first
edition of More's works, illustrates this system. In the lower
part are four concentric hemispheres. The smallest and central
one — by hills, castles and trees upon it — is intended to represent
the earth. Round this is another, by points or fine lines repre
senting the atmosphere. Above this another, being the region
of clouds, and higher still the region of fire. At the top of the
plate is the bust of God the Father and under it the word
Fiat , and the space above the spheres is dotted over with sun,
moon and stars. In the midst of these a merman and mer
maid hold a tablet with the initials "J. R." Royal coals of
arms fill up the top corners.
In one of Sir Thomas's controversial works an ignorant
objection to the Divine presence in the Church is amusingly
compared to a popular objection to the laws of gravitation.
The illustration is correct, though More's astronomical system
was incomplete. If the gentlewoman raentioned was Lady
More, as seems pretty certain, the story iUustrates More's
doraestic sphere as well as the heavenly spheres. Sir Thomas
had been arguing that because the Church was before the sects,

APPENDIX D. 449
and the sects came out from the Church ; therefore, the Church is
right and the sects wrong. Tindale mocked at this argument.
It would prove, he said, that the synagogue was right, and Our
Lord and His Aposties wrong. Sir Thomas answers that the
cases are not similar unless the synagogue had the promise and
gift of perpetuity on earth like the Church. Tindale's retort
reminds him of a reply made by a gentlewoman to her husband.
He was trying to teach her the treatise of the sphere, i.e., the
system of the universe. He began at the earth, and to make
her perceive that the "earth hangeth in the midst ofthe world
(the universe) by its own weight, 'you must,' he said, 'mark well
this, that in the universe higher and lower mean simply outer
and inner ; so that of the whole world, earth, water, air, and
all the spheres above, being each in a round compass over the
other, the earth lieth in the very midst, and is the innermost
place of the universe. Being, therefore, in the lowest place, its
own weight keeps it there, because no heavy thing can of itself
ascend upwards, and to fall out of its place on any side would
be to fall from a lower place to a higher.
" ' Imagine, therefore, that a hole were bored through the earth
and a mUlstone thrown down here on this side from our feet ;
it would finally remain in the centre of the earth. It could not
go farther, for then it would be falling outwards or upwards.'
" Now while he was telling her this tale, she nothing went
about to consider his words, but as she was wont in all other
things, studied all the while nothing else but what she might
say to the contrary. And when he had, with much work and
oft interrupting, brought at last his tale to an end : ' Well,'
quoth she, as Tindale saith to me, ' I will argue like and make
you a like sample. My maid hath yonder a spinning wheel, or
else, because all your reason resteth in the roundness of the
world : come hither, thou girl ; take out thy spindle and bring
me hither the whorl. Lo, sir, ye make imaginations, I cannot
tell you what. But here is a whorl, and it is round as the world
is, and we shall not need imagine a hole bored through, for it
29

45 O SIR THOMAS MORE.
hath a hole bored through indeed. But yet, because ye go by
iraaginations, I will imagine you. Imagine me now that this
whorl were ten mile thick on every side, and this hole through
it still, and so great that a mUlstone might well go through it.
Now, if the whorl stood at one end and a millstone were thrown
in alone at the other end, would it go no farther than the
midst, trow you ? By God, if one threw in a stone no bigger
than an egg, I ween if ye stood at the nether end of the hole
five mile beneath the raidst, it would give you a pat upon the
pale that it would make you claw your head, and yet should
ye feel none itch at all.'
" It were too long to tell you all their disputations, for words
would she none have lacked, though they should have disputed
the space of seven years. Her husband was fain to put up
his sphere and leave his wife her whorl, and fall in talking of
some olher matter.
" Now playeth Tindale even the same part wilh me, and
maketh an argument and a sample of the synagogue, as like to
the Church of Christ for the point we speak of as the whorl
was like the world, etc." *
* English Works, p. 628.

APPENDIX E.
SOME DESCENDANTS OF THE MARTYR.
I. "T^HE last heu- male of Sir Thomas More was Father
X Thomas More, S.J. He was born in 1722, and died
in 1795. -^* ^^^ ti°^^ of the suppression of the
Society in 1773 he was English provincial.
2. The last male descendant of William and Margaret Roper
was Edward, who died unmarried at Almanza, in Spain, in 1707,
or January, 1708. His sister Elizabeth married Charles Hen
shaw. They had four chUdren — a son, who died unmarried, and
three daughters, co-heiresses, who were married, viz., Susanna,
to Sir Rowland Wynne of Nostell, from whom the present Lord
St. Oswald descends ; EUzabeth, to Sir Edward Dering of Sur
render Dering, ancestor of the present baronet ; and Catherine,
who married Sir WUliam Strickland, but left no chUdren.
3. As Anne Roper, Margaret's descendant in the fourth
degree, married Sir PhUlp Constable of Everingham, the
ancestor of the present Lord Herries, many Catholic families,
through theh relationship with the Constable-MaxweUs, can
thus claim descent from Blessed Thomas, through his daughter
Margaret. 4. The direct representative of Blessed Thomas More is
Charles Eyston, Esq., of East Hendred, who is descended
through the Metcalfes from Bridget More. She had a brother,
Thomas (mentioned above in No. i), and a sister, who was
prioress of the Augustinian Canonesses at Bruges. Bridget
married, secondly, John Dalton, Esq., of Thurnham.

452 SIR THOMAS MORE.
5. In the preceding generation, Mary More married Charles
Waterton, Esq., of Walton HaU, whose descendant is now of
Deeping Waterton.
6. There are probably innumerable other descendants of
Blessed Thoraas by the various female lines.
(Information given me by Rev. J. Morris, S.J., P".S.A.)

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.
I. LIFE.

1478. Feb. 7.

Birth, .

PAGE 2

1490.

With Cardinal Morton,

7

1492.

Sent to Oxford,

9

1494.

At New Inn, London,

37

1496.

At Lincoln's Inn,

20, 37

1498.

Makes the acquaintance of Erasraus, .

38

1501.

Resides in or near Charterhouse (four years),

31

Called to the Bar,

22

Lectures,

22

1504.

Member of Parhament,

37.42

1505. (Spring).

Marries Jane Colt,

53

„ (End).

Daughter Margaret born,

55

1506.

Daughter Elizabeth born,

146

1507.

Daughter Cecilia born,

147

1508.

Visit to Louvain and Paris,

44

1509. April 21.

Accession of Henry VIIL, .

1509.

Son John born,

147

1510.

Death of his wife Jane,

55

„ Sept. 3.

Made Under-sheriff of London,

65

)»

Marries Alice Middleton,

55

IS".

Reader in Lincoln's Inn,

65

15 15. May 12.

Erabassy to Flanders,

67

1516.

Reader (second time).

65

1517. May I.

Evil May-day riot,

72

>»

John More becomes Judge,

4

>»

Sweating Sickness,

74

„ August.

Erabassy to Calais,

75

1518 (or 1516).

Privy Councillor,

165

Master of Requests, Secretary, .
166
1520. June.
At Calais, Field of Cloth of Gold,
182
1521.
Knighted, made Under-Treasurer,
188
456

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.

Embassy to Bruges and Calais, .
1523, Moves to Chelsea,
„ April. Speaker of House of Commons,
1525. July. Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster,
1527. July. Embassy to France,
1529. July. Embassy to Cambrai,
„ Oct. 25. Lord High Chancellor,
„ Nov. 3. Opens Long Parliament,
1530. Dec. Sir John More Dies, .
1531. Feb. II. The Clergy acknowledge Henry Supreme Head,
" as far as God's law permits,"
„ March 30. More gives King's message to both Houses,
1532. May 16. Resigns the Great Seal,
1533. June I. Absent from Anne Boleyn's Coronation,
1534. Feb. I. Letter rebutting suspicions,
„ March 6. Examination by Council,
„ March 30. Act of Succession,
,, April 13. Oath refused,
,, May I. Again refused,
,, Nov. Attainted of Misprision of Treason,
„ „ 18. Act of Supremacy,
1535. April 30. Before Council,
„ May 4. Martyrdom of Carthusians and others,
,, June 19. Martyrdom of other Carthusians,
„ ,, 22. Martyrdora of Blessed John Fisher,
„ July I. Trial, .
„ „ 6. Martyrdom of Blessed Thomas More, aged 57,

PAGE 189139
191
196
200
202223
231241 234233
240
315318 338
349353
362 362398 400
404416 416415
435,

II. WRITINGS.

1503-1505.
1508. 1509. 1510.

1513-

Extracts.

Early Verses, . . 14,
Ode on Death of Elizabeth of York,
Translation and Imitation of Lucian,
(Erasmus writes Pj-flSfseo/Foi/y in More's house), *
Odes on Accession and Marriage of Henry
vm., . . . Ill,
Life of Pico della Mirandula,
Austerities, 27.— Monastic Life, 27. — Savonarola,
28. — Submission to Church, 81. — Love of
Gpd, 63.
Life of Richard III.,

430 15
8083
188 78

79

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.

457

PAGE
1516. Utopia, IOI — 107
Extracts. Card. Morton, 7. — Worship, 103-106. — Female
Priests. 105. — Toleration, 256. — Privy
Councillors, 154-164. — Treaty-making, 203.
— Precious Metals, 183.
1516. Pamphlet-Letter to Dorpius, 8g
Extracts. English Universities, 44. — Contentious Theolo
gian, 90. — Holy Scripture, 92. — True Theo
logy. 93-
1518. Letter to University of Oxford, . 172
1518. Epigrams, . . 107
Specimens. Confession of Sailors, 49. — His First Love, 53. —
Choice of Wife, 54. — Friends and Brothers,
no. — God's Prison, 392.— To his Children,
135-
1520. Pamphlet-Letter to Brixius, 186
,, Pamphlet-Letter to a Monk, . 94
Extracts. Censoriousness, 95. — Foolish Preachers, 96. —
Self love, 100.
1522. Four Last Things, 385
Extracts. Thought of Death, 386. — Pompous Funerals,
387. — Place of Execution, 387. — Life a
Play, 388. — Duke of Buckingham, 389. —
God's Prisoners, 390.
1523. Answer to Luther, 209, 222
Extracts. Specimens ofhis Reasoning, 212-215. — Fruits of
his Teaching, 215. — Scripture without its
True Sense, 310. — Primacy of Holy See,
2ig.
1525. Pamphlet-Letter against Pomeranus, . 218
1528. Dialogue, " Quoth He, and Quoth I," 282
Extracts. Reliquaries of Gold, 184. — Frequenting Church,
i4i.^Friar Tuck and Maid Marion, 262. —
Light Style, 283.— Holy Scripture, 307, 308.
— Scrupulosity, 302. — Censuring the Clergy,
32.— Miracles, 337.
1529. Supplication of Souls, 283
Extracts. Jokes, 285. — Parliament, 286.— Funeral pomp,
287. — Communism, 289.
1531. Confutation of Tindale, 290

458

CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX.

1532-1532.

1533-
1533-1534-

1535-

1535-

Extracts. The Moria of Erasmus, 87, ¦ 208.— Female
priests, 105. — Violent death, 291. — Pope's
authority, 301. — Geocentric system, 448. —
Precepts of Church, 140.
Letter against Frith,
Apology,
Extracts. Evil May-day, 73.— A fable, 36.— Treatment of
bad priests, 32. — Apathy of Catholics, 275.—
Prolixity, 293. — Personalities, 294-8. — Treat
ment of heretics, 255, 264, 266, 270. —
Convocation, 235.— Light Style, 283.
Debellation of Salem and Bizance,
Answer to Supper of the Lord, .
Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation,
Extracts. Advice to great men in prosperity, 205. — Abuse
of Christ's Narae, 305. — Merry talk, 395. —
God's prison, 392. — Lady More's visit to
Tower, 366. — No martyr headless, 440.
On the Passion, .
Extract. Fear not sinful, 352.
Death for Faith,

292293

298299
394

396

397

LETTERS.
General reraarks, . 97-89i 181
To Colet, 46.— To Ruthal, v.— To Gunnell, on Edu
cation of Women, 127. — To Lady More, on a fire,
118. — To his children, 132, 133. — To Dorpius, 94. —
To Budee, 185.— To Wolsey, 194.— To Peter Giles,
log. — To Maid of Kent, 328. — To Bonvisi, 428.^— To
Leader, 379. — To Dr. Wilson, 38. — To Lady Alington,
370.— To the King, 336.
To Margaret — On her studies, 135, 136 ; on his refusal of
oath, 353 ; on her solicitations, 370, 374 ; blessings,
378 ; on his exarainations, 400, 405 ; last words, 427.
To Cromwell — On supposed libel, 318; on Maid of Kent,
323, 335 ; on divorce question, 225 ; on Pope's primacy,
343-
To Erasmus — On Flemish embassy, 68 ; on sweating sick
ness, 75 ; on residence at Calais, 76 ; on changed times,
86, 87 ; sarcastic, 88 ; on resignation of Chancellorship,
245 ; on his epitaph, 248 ; on zeal against Luther, 277.

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Records of the English Province of the Society of
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Church." — Genealogist.
FORMBY, REV. HENRY.
Monotheism : in the main derived from the Hebrew
nation and the Law of Moses. The Primitive Reli
gion pf the City of Rome. An historical Investiga
tion. Demy Svo. • 050
FEANCIS DE SALES, ST. : THE WORKS OF.
Translated into the English Language by the Very Rev.
Canon Mackey, O.S.B., under the direction of the
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Vol. I. Letters to Persons in the Worid. Cloth . 060
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Vol. II. —The Treatise on the Love of God. Father
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and the Religious State." . . . . .060
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its perfection that pervade the letters, make them pregnant of in
struction for all serious persons. The translation and editing bave
been admirably done." — Scotsman.
%* Other vols, in preparation.
GALLWEY, EEV. PETEE, (S.J.)
Precious Pearl of Hope in the Mercy of God, The.
Translated from the Italian. With Preface by the
Rev. Father Gallwey. Cloth . . ..046
Lectures on Ritualism and on the Anglican Orders.
2 vols. ( Or may be had separately.) 080
Salvage from the Wreck. A few Memories of the
Dead, preserved in Funeral Discourses. With
Portraits. Crown Svo. . . . 076
GIBSON, EEV. H.
Catechism Made Easy. Being an Explanation of the
Christian Doctrine. Fourth edition. 2 vols., cloth 076
"This work must be of priceless worth to any who are engaged in
any form of catechetical instruction. It is the best book of the kind
that we have seen in English." — Irish Monthly.
GILLOW, JOSEPH.
Literary and Biographical History, or. Bibliographical
Dictionary of the English Catholics. From the
Breach with Rome, in 1534, to the Present Time.
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The Haydock Papers. Illustrated. Demy Svo. . 076
_ *! We commend this collection to the attention of every one that
IS interested in the records of the sufferings and struggles of our
ancestors to hand down the faith to their children. It is in the
perusal of such details that we bring home to ourselves the truly
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dismal times."— 7"3W«^.
GEOWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUE LOED.
Meditations for every Day in the Year, exclusive of
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Sold only in sets. Price per set, . . . .126
V "The praise, though high, bestowed on these excellent meditations
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spectacles, spreads treasures before our vision without attractinc
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Our Divine Saviour, and other Discourses, Crown
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tainly think, their freshness — freshness of thought, treatment, and
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HUMPHREY, REV. W. (S.J.)
Suarez on the Religious State : A Digest of the Doc
trine contained in his Treatise, ' *De StatQ Religionis ."
3 vols., pp. I200. Cloth, roy. Svo. . . . i lo o
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tip every atom of its meaning and force." — Dublin Review.
The One Mediator; or. Sacrifice and Sacraments.
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Christian religion. ... A profound work, but so far from being
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KING, PRANGIS,
The Church of my Baptism, and why I returned to
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LEDOUX, REV. S. M. ^ r ,_ ^ ^ r
History of the Seven Holy Founders of the Order ot
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Edward the Sixth : Supreme Head. Second edition.
Crown Svo  '. -.j,.- ° ^ °
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facts, and his rare artistic power in welding them into a harmonious
and effective whole." — John Bull.
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Founder of the Society of the Little Brothers of Mary.
Containing a portrait of Fr. Champagnat, and four
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LIGUORI, ST. ALPHONSUS. , ,,^ ,
New and Improved Translation of the Complete Works
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I. The Love of our Lord Jesus Christ . . 014
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3. A Christian's rule of Life .....
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containing Meditations and Devotions on the Birth
and Infancy of Jesus Christ, &c. , suited for Advent
and Christmas.
Cheap edition .......
Vol. III. The Mysteries of the Faith— The Blessed
Sacrament Cheap edition 
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Or separately : — Jesus hath loved us.
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With Frontispiece, cloth
LIVIUS, REV. T. (M.A., C.SS.R.)
St. Peter, Bishop of Rome ; or, the Roman Episcopate
of the Prince of the Apostles, proved from the
Fathers, History and Chronology, and illustrated by
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Eminence Cardinal Newman. Demy Svo, cloth o 12 O
*' A book which deserves careful attention. In respect of literary
qualities, such as effective arrangement, and correct and lucid
diction, this essay, by an English Catholic scholar, is not unworthy
of Cardinal Newman, to whom it is dedicated." — The Sun.
Explanation of the Psalms and Canticles in the Divine
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from the Itahan by Thomas Livius, C.SS.R.
With a Preface by his Eminence Cardinal MANNING.
Crown Svo, cloth . . . . . . .07^
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Mary in the Epistles ; or. The Implicit Teaching of
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forth in devout comments on their writings.
Illustrated from Fathers and other Authors, and
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MANNING, CARDINAL.
England and Christendom ..... £o lo 6
Four Great Evils of the Day. 5th edition. Wrapper 026
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Petri Privilegium . . . o 10 6
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Temporal Power of the Pope. 3rd edition . . 050
True Story of the Vatican Council. 2nd edition . 050
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MANNING, CARDINAL, Edited by.
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Nature and Thought. Second edition , . . £o 4 o
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to render this one of the most admirable books of its class." —
British Quarterly Review.
A Philo5,ophic,al Catechism. Fifth edition O i o
"It should become the vade tnecum of Catholic students."— Ta^/^/.
MONTGOMERY, HON. MRS.
Approved by the Most Rev. George Porter, Archbishop of
Bombay.
The Divine Sequence : A Treatise on Creation and
Redemption. Cloth . ....036
The Eternal Years. With an Introduction by the
Most Rev. George Porter, Archbishop of Bombay.
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Catholic Book News.
MORRIS, REV. JOHN (S.J.)
Letter Books of Sir Amias Poulet, keeper of Mary
Queen of Scots. Demy Svo  0106
Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, related by them
selves. Second Series. Svo, cloth. o 14 o
Third Series ... . . . o 14 o
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rewritten and enlarged . . . . . o 14 o
The Life and Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket. Second
and enlarged edition. In one volume, large post Svo,
cloth, pp. xxxvi., 632,  o 12 6
or bound in two parts, cloth  o 13 O
MORRIS, REV. W. B. (of the Oratory.)
The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Fourth
edition. Crown Svo, cloth 
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proper key to the extraordinary, the mysterious life and character of
bt. Patrick. He has taken the Saint's own authentic writings as
the foundation whereon to hnWi."— Irish Ecclesiastical Record.
Promises to become the standard biography of Ireland's Apostle
For clear statement of facts, and calm judicious discussion of con
troverted points. It surpasses any work we know of in the literature
of the sv.hiect."— American Catholic Quarterly.
MURPHY, J. N.
Chair of Peter. Third edirion, with the statistics, &c.,
brought down to the present day. 720 pages.
Crown Svo  r & •
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^¦Dublin Review. ' '

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Church of the Fathers .... ;^o 4 o-
Prices of other works by Cardinal Newman on
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NORTHCOTE, VERY REV. J. S. (D.D.)
Roma Sotterranea; or. An Account of the Roman
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enlarged. This work is in three volumes, which
may at present be had separately —
Vol. I. History . . . 140
Vol. II. Christian Art. . . 140
Vol. III. Epitaphs of the Catacombs o 10 o
The Second and Third Volumes may also be had
bound together in cloth . . . . i 12 o
Visit to the Roman Catacombs: Being a popular
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Mary in the Gospels . 036
PAYNE, JOHN ORLEBAR, (M.A.)
Records of the English Catholics of I7IS- Demy Svo.
Half-bound, gilt top  0150
"A book of the kind Mr. Payne has given us would have astonish
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English Catholic Non- Jurors of 1715. Being a Sum
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logical and other Notes, and an Appendix of
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Office. In one Volume. Demy Svo. . .110
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POOR SISTERS OF NAZARETH, THE.
A descriptive Sketch of Convent Life. By Alice Meynell.
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14 SELECTION FROM BURNS 6- OATES'

QUARTERLY SERIES Edited by the Rev. H. J.
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Selection.
The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. By the
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The History of the Sacred Passion. By Father Luis
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The Mother of the King. Mary during the Life of
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The Mother of the Church. Mary during the first
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The Life of St. Bridget of Sweden. By the late F. J.
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Garcia Moreno, President of Ecuador. 1S21— 1S75.
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Letters of St. Augustine. Selected and arranged bv
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A Martyr from the Quarter-Deck— Alexis Clerc, S.J.'
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QUARTERLY SESJEB— (selection) continued.
The Preaching of the Beatitudes . . . £0 6 6
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RAM, MRS. ABEL.
"Emmanuel." Being the Life of Our Lord Jesus
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RAWES, THE LATE REV. Fr., Edited by.
The Liirary of the Holy Ghost : —
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RICHARDS, REV. WALTER J. B. (D.D.)
Manual of Scripture History. Being an Analysis of the
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Catholic Controversy: A Reply to Dr. Littledale's
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SOULIER, REV. P.
Life of St. Philip Benizi, of the Order of the Servants
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A Menology of England and Wales ; or. Brief Mem
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The Life of Jean-Jacques Olier, Founder of the
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WARD, WILFRID.
The Clothes of Religion. A reply to popular Positivism 036
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The Canons and Decrees ofthe Sacred and CEcumenical
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WISEMAN, CARDINAL.
Fabiola. A Tale of the Catacombs. . . 3s. 6d. and
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o 10 6
040

YALE UNIVERSITY

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