The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The idea of institutions and societies living through history lies at the very heart of the humanist’s belief in civic activity and involvement within the world. Consider again More’s private seal which displays the face of the Emperor Titus. Titus was not a Christian emperor, but for More he was an image of practical wisdom and civic virtue. He had conquered Judaea and wasted Jerusalem, in what was considered to be an act of divine reprisal for the death of Christ less than forty years before, but More would have read in Suetonius of his exemplary social actions during his brief reign. Titus provided an example of what might now be called ‘enlightened government’, and More would also have known that he had once trained as a lawyer and had a great facility in composing verses and orations. He had stamped his image upon the changing times, just as More would use that image upon the seal with which he conducted public business. This sense of usefulness in public affairs characterised the ‘humanism’ of the early sixteenth century and prompted More’s own involvement in civic life. It is to be seen in the production of the new maps and globes, in the renewed interest in medicine and natural science, and in that belief in the efficacy of the will which was soon to be elaborated by Machiavelli in his great treatise on the uses of statecraft. For More, public duty was the natural consequence of his professional training as a rhetorician, and at no point did it ever come into conflict with his instinctive piety; indeed, it was an aspect of it.

  One proviso ought to be added, however, in a life replete with ambiguity. In The Prince Machiavelli distinguished the ideal world of eternal verity from the actual world of human affairs; he directed his enquiry towards the lessons of history rather than the idealised concepts of a medieval polity. He also distinguished ethics from politics, thus promoting the forces of human will and the possibility of harnessing ‘fortune’ to individual ambition. In his own writing More would adopt a cautious attitude towards this new understanding of the self; he was attracted by its novelty and even welcomed it in the sphere of civic activity, but at the same time he sensed its dangers.

  His early composition of verse, as of prose, was also associated with this practical instruction in rhetoric and grammar; it is impossible to separate his ‘creative’ activities from his scholarship and general training. From the beginning his own writing was firmly based upon classical models. In his youth, according to Erasmus, he had written a dialogue in defence of Plato’s Republic—a suggestive preliminary to his own work in the sphere of political fantasy. His first poetical exercises were translations into Latin from the Planudean Anthology, better known as the Greek Anthology, and it is these Latin verses which manifest the first stirrings of his genius. They were eventually published in 1518, together with the third edition of Utopia, but he had been writing epigrams since the beginning of the century. That he was composing them in his early twenties, while still a student of law in Lincoln’s Inn, is not unusual; the invention or translation of epigrams was a customary method among humanists for beginning a literary career. Some of the earliest were written by More in conjunction (and friendly rivalry) with William Lily, the grammarian who later became the first high master of St Paul’s school in London. On publication they were given the title Progymnasmata (‘preliminary exercises’), which suggests that they were meant to provide examples of rhetorical and grammatical correctness; these Latin versions of Greek originals are not entirely free of solecisms, but they provide skilful examples of a relatively ‘pure’ Latin. More employs a variety of metres, and his concern for balance, co-ordination and symmetry shows evidence of a good instructor. A line on holding fortune in contempt, ’Iam portum inueni, Spes et Fortuna ualete’ (‘Now that I have found port, farewell hope and good fortune’), is not simply an exercise in syntax and metre but also a handy classical maxim to be put to use in the world; it is an example of what Erasmus meant when he declared that the best poetry was always rhetorical in nature. Some of More’s most original epigrams, for example, are on the horrors of tyrannical rule and the evils of avaricious or despotic monarchs; they represent his unique contribution to the epigrammatic tradition.

  Yet the general mood of these short Latin poems—there are 276 of them in the authoritative edition of his works—is one of irony and mordant wit. He could be sarcastic at the expense of a doltish philosopher with ‘the brains of a donkey’ or of a young woman who pretends to have been raped. He takes pleasure in repeating jokes or farcical tales—there is even one about an attendant removing flies from a drink—and the epigrams bear as much relation to a London tradition of ‘merry tales’ or ‘quick answers’ as to the Greek Anthology itself. It has in the past been noticed how close in spirit More remains to Geoffrey Chaucer, and we may see this as another aspect of More’s native traditionalism. There are times, indeed, when his becomes the poetry of the streets, and there is a good reason for the description of him as ‘Londinii gloria’.5 There is one verse about a fart, and another about the merits of eating ‘merda’ or excrement. One short poem might be quoted in full to gauge the nature of More’s humour:

  Ergo puella uiri quis te negat esse capacem,

  Quam tua tam magnum circumdant crura caballum?6

  It is addressed to a girl riding a horse: Who denies that you can take a man, when your legs can get around even that pack-horse? It might not be the refined humour of sainthood; but by staying closer to a grossly secular level we may come nearer to More himself.

  In his earliest work More was drawn to imitation and adaptation; this was, of course, the condition of all verse-writing. But in mastering the expression of so many themes and attitudes, he seems to revel in doubleness, disguise and impersonation. He wrote seven epigrams on the topic of a lame beggar carried by a blind beggar, as if he were testing his ability to describe the situation in a variety of ways. He is able to capture a character in a redolent phrase and discern a human folly in an instant of perception. He is always observant, but always able to keep his distance. Some of the stenches and the more disagreeable sights of late medieval London are embedded within the verses; his aversion to the flesh is also clearly rendered, in epigrams condemning ‘coitu’ and ‘libidine’. But all these themes are carefully and formally sustained within the tight syntactical and cultural frame of the epigram itself. One of them makes a pointed allusion to ‘bifrons Janus’,7 the two-faced god who thereby saw everything. There are, similarly, two faces to More’s first work. These epigrams were said by Sir John Harington to ‘flie over all Europe for their wit and conceit’,8 while to another poetaster they were ‘too obscene to be lookt upon, and who so rubbeth stincking weeds, shall have filthy fingers’.9 But even if they did fly over Europe, despite their bawdiness, they were overtaken on the way by another of More’s classical imitations.

  His translations of Lucian became by far the most popular of his productions; estimates of the number of editions within his lifetime vary from nine to fourteen but on any count they outdistance the sales and general reputation of the now more famous Utopia. The truth is that, in Lucian, the young More found his perfect match. It was said of this second-century satirist that ‘ridentem dicere verum’, he spoke the truth through laughter, and Erasmus noted that he treated everything ‘naso’,10 with a nose—with ridicule and with a certain dislike for the odour of old verities. Erasmus also said of himself that he had a nose; this is generally taken to represent his dislike for the smell of fish and domestic stoves, but it perhaps implies a shared distaste for the more farcical elements of orthodoxy, custom and traditional observance. Lucian was one of the ancients, therefore, who could join the ranks of the moderns. His extant works, and in particular his satirical dialogues, were some of the most widely circulated and translated of the fifteenth century; he also hit the mark for those prose writers of the early sixteenth century, such as More, who were looking for a model upon which they could establish their own satire of vain ritual and conceit.

  More had started his systematic study of Greek under the aegis of Thomas Linacre and William Grocyn, putting a
side his Latin for a time in order to master the new language. It is not known when he first came upon the works of Lucian—an edition emerged from the Aldine press in 1503, however, and it seems the likely spur to his interest. It is remarkable, in any event, how quickly he acquired a working knowledge of this difficult tongue. Within four or five years of beginning to learn how to read and write an entirely different set of characters, he was able to translate one of the finest exponents of the language in a proficient and reliable fashion. He worked with Erasmus upon some of Lucian’s dialogues, and their Latin versions were published in the winter of 1506. More was the junior partner in the enterprise, providing four translations beside twenty-eight by Erasmus, but the influence of Lucian upon his subsequent writing was permanent and profound. When Erasmus suggested that a correspondent read Utopia ‘si quando voles ridere’11 (’if you want to laugh’), we are in the same Lucianic world of ‘ridentem dicere verum’. Medieval schoolmen were generally supposed to lack humour; certainly any sense of irony might have proved fatal for their aspiration towards total and systematic knowledge. Lucian provided an antidote for the somewhat mirthless pursuit of certainty upon the uncertain earth. It was reported of More that he could make even the most solemn colleague burst into laughter; in that respect he resembles Tiresias, who, in one of the Lucianic dialogues, declares that it is not necessary to become anxious over the affairs and events of the world but, rather, to remain as cheerful as possible and pass your life in laughter.

  There are formal, as well as informal, connections with Lucian. In the work of the satirist More discovered the possibilities of dialogue as a way of exploiting the dramatic possibilities of the world; most of his own prose works would eventually assume the same form. He thereby became the begetter in the English language of a tradition which stretches from the spirited dialogue of Blake’s ‘Island in the Moon’ and Walter Savage Landor’s ‘Imaginary Conversations’ to the particular London art of ‘after-pieces’ and comic dialogues. But Lucian had also been a rhetorician, and More persuaded Erasmus to extend their translations with their own ‘declamations’ in reply to one composed by Lucian on the theme of tyrannicide. More always excelled at the art of impersonation, and Lucian himself compared the orator to the actor and the pantomimic.

  Yet every play must end, and in More’s epigrams there are intimations of a greater reality; there are verses on death, on earthly vanity and on the necessary contempt for this world. One poem opens with an observation that could have been used as the epigraph for much London writing: ‘Damnati ac morituri in terrae claudimus omnes/Carcere’12 (’all of us, condemned to death and about to die, are inmates of the prison of this world’). In Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, More read that devout monk’s paraphrase of Isaiah, ‘I will open the doors of the prison and reveal unto thee hidden secrets.’13 The doors of the contemplative Charterhouse had already opened for More, even as he was composing his epigrams and translations of Lucian. When he bent over his classical texts, he was wearing his hair shirt. It is to the site of More’s spirituality that we must now turn.

  CHAPTER X

  THE WINE OF ANGELS

  HOMAS More’s first biographer asserts that More ‘gave himselfe to devotion and prayer in the Charterhouse of London, religiously lyvinge there, without vowe, about iiii yeares’.1 Another chronicler, Cresacre More, believed that his famous relative only lived ‘nere the Charterhouse, frequenting daily their spirituall excercises without any vowe’.2 The more general aspect of his faith is emphasised by Erasmus, who has an account of the young More applying his whole mind to the study of piety,3 by means of vigils, fasting and prayer. Yet another narrative suggests that More also consulted a friend in holy orders, William Lily, about the possibility of being ordained as a priest. Everything at this time, then, points in the direction of the monastery.

  It survives still, largely restored or rebuilt, to the north of Smithfield. In the sixteenth century it was beyond the western gates of the city, between Smithfield itself and the unhappy Pardon Churchyard where the bodies of plague victims and executed felons were indiscriminately buried. The cells of the monks had been erected upon another old burial ground, and a chapel of St Mary the Virgin had once stood upon the area in spiritual commemoration of ‘above one hundred thousand bodies of Christian people’4 who were interred there. Perhaps the vast concourse of the dead may account for the visions and miracles that occurred in the Charterhouse during More’s lifetime. The Carthusian ‘House of the Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary’ was established in the 1370s by a wealthy foreign patron, Sir Walter de Mauny, who had been knighted for services to Edward III. In this combination of money, royal affinity and European connection, we can discern the more secular aspects of the Carthusian order; from its foundation by St Bruno at the end of the eleventh century, its regimen of seclusion, labour and perpetual prayer had attracted the beneficence of powerful patrons as well as the spiritual ardour of rich merchants or noblemen who desired to find a place where ‘springs not fail’. Certainly the austerity of the monks formed a suggestive contrast to the lives of the regular clergy; it was said that they had never been reformed because they had never been corrupted. By the time of More’s association with the London Charterhouse its twenty-four cells (with a different letter of the alphabet upon each door) had been built and financed with the aid of individual patrons, while many of the monks themselves came from rich or noble families. Nor was it unusual for ‘guests’ to stay in special accommodation, for an appropriate fee, and the Charterhouse was one of the two or three Carthusian foundations where young men of spiritual tendency could lodge while at the same time pursuing a secular career—in the Inns of Court, for example. Many did eventually choose the holier profession, however, and in More’s lifetime there were at least three former lawyers and one royal courtier who donned the white robes and cowl.

  More’s own position, within or beside the Charterhouse, is not entirely clear. It is possible that he remained in its guest quarters for four years; the rules limiting the stay of these secular sojourners had not yet been enacted. Under ordinary circumstances he would have remained a resident of Lincoln’s Inn, to which he was formally connected; although such a requirement was less important than his regular attendance in chapel or in hall. But it is most likely that Cresacre More has passed on a reliable item of family information—having attained the rank of ‘utter barrister’ at the Inn, but still unable to attend the courts at Westminster, he can be supposed to have taken temporary lodgings near the Charterhouse. It would not have been difficult to find accommodation; there were houses in Aldersgate Street, St John Street and Charterhouse Lane, while Smithfield was ‘compassed about with buildings’.5 He was also close to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn; it was no more than a five minute ride away, down Cow Lane and across Holborn Bridge, past Ely Place and through Holborn before turning left into Chancery Lane.

  More, then, was an expected and familiar ‘guest’. He never took vows and never entered the less exalted ranks of either the oblates or the lay-brothers, known also as ‘converses’ because of their choice irrevocably to turn away from the world. Yet even if More had not taken that extreme decision, the great oak doorways into the courtyard of the Charterhouse admitted him to a world of discipline and devotion that affected him profoundly. The spirit of the place was reflected in its buildings, which followed the standard plan of a Carthusian foundation. There was a ‘parvum cloistrum’, where there were guest cells on the upper floor; the monks used the arcade and quadrangle below, but the guests had a private staircase to their rooms so that they would not disturb the meditative privacy of the inmates. To the north was the ‘guesten hall’ or dining-room for visitors, while a ‘slype’ or passage on the west side led to the ‘Wash House Court’. This was the area reserved for the accommodation of the lay-brothers; their cells were on the first floor, their workshops on the ground floor beneath them. Here were installed the brewery house, kitchen, buttery, larders, wine cellar
and the ‘wash house’ itself. The cells of the monks were built individually around the great cloister, to the north-east of these smaller courts. A ‘cell’ comprised three wainscoted rooms on the first floor—a study, bedroom and oratory—with a work-room and wood-house on the ground floor looking out upon a small garden. There was a hatch beside each cell through which food was dispensed to the resident monk. These were austere but not penitential surroundings, appropriate enough for inmates from wealthy families. The Charterhouse itself was not entirely deprived of the more luxurious examples of religious observance; at the time of its dissolution it was stripped of much plate, gilt ornament and rich cloth. There were bay trees, ponds of carp, rosebushes and small falcons known as merlin birds, all of them adding to that air of sancta simplicissitas on the edge of the city. The church was ‘semi-public’, with several chapels, rich alabaster tombs and more than fifteen altars complete with intricately carved statues and painted images.