The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The letters are concerned with urgent matters of war and peace, with details of army movements as well as secret negotiations, and there can be no doubt that More was entirely trusted by both men. He was one of only two or three courtiers who had attained that position of confidence. But one of Henry’s letters can suddenly turn from high matters of state to a detail of ecclesiastical patronage; in the same way More can remain perfectly clear and measured about official business, while on occasion introducing a private note which suggests that he was altogether at ease with his masters. On the cardinal’s good health he passes on the king’s message that ‘he saith that ye may thank his counsel thereof, by which ye leue the often takyng of medicines’.4 Henry claimed to have foreseen a foreign cardinal’s duplicity, and asks More to remind Wolsey ‘wherby he thinketh your Grace will the bettre truste his coniecture hereafter’.5

  Only once does More venture his own opinion in the correspondence between the two men; when Henry seems to be moving towards war and More interjects ‘I pray God send his Grace an honorable and profitable peace’.6 There is no evidence of More’s advice being sought or offered, but there are stray signs of his participation in the great debates of the period. ‘And whan,’ he wrote to Wolsey in one long letter, ‘I was abowte to haue shewed his Highnes sumwhat of my pore mynde in the matter …’;7 he was interrupted on this occasion, but the reference does suggest that his ‘pore mynde’ was sometimes employed. He may not have been a forceful or opinionated counsellor, however, since, as Wolsey informed the king, More was ‘not the most ready to speake and solicite his own cause’.8 In turn both of his masters are ready to compliment him and commend ‘my pore service’.9 But the cardinal once wrote to him, on a certain diplomatic matter, that ‘I am in noo smal perplexite howe the same may be continued’;10 it may be an oblique message to the king, but it may also be an implicit request for More’s advice. It is impossible to be sure of such things, of course, but it may be supposed that More on occasions played more than a secretarial part.

  Yet Wolsey was the principal agent in such matters. More is continually passing on compliments to him from the king, in which More himself sometimes joined; ‘hit is for the quantite one of the best made lettres,’ he said of one diplomatic communication concocted by Wolsey, ‘… that ever I redde in my life’.11 There are various references to the cardinal’s ‘labor, travaile, study, payne and diligens’,12 and it becomes clear that Henry was often ready to defer to his advice. Letters from the king were sometimes ‘devised by the prudent caste of your Grace’,13 and Wolsey was often asked to devise ‘the moost effectuall meanys’14 to expedite policy. It was not that Henry lacked self-confidence; the overwhelming impression of the king’s letters is that of a man swift and certain of his judgement in most personal matters, but more wary and circumspect in the great affairs of state. Impressions are sometimes so strong that we might be listening in the next room: ‘Nay by my soul that will not be, ffor this is my removing day sone at New Hall. I will rede the remenaunt at night.’ So Henry replied to a request from More. Of Wolsey, he once exclaimed: ‘He has hit the nayle on the hed.’15 Here are some phrases taken from a conversation between More and the king:

  ‘Nay veryly, Sir, my Lord hath yit no word …’

  ‘No had? I mych mervaile …’

  ‘Sir, if hit lyke your Grace this mornyng my Lord Grace had no thing herd …’

  ‘Mary, I am well a paied thereof …’

  The king laughs. ‘And his Grace answered me that he wold takea breth therin.’16 And so it goes on, this invaluable record of the relationship between three highly dissimilar men—each of them, in their own way, intelligent and watchful—in which friendship and formality, irony and authority, secrecy and service, are strangely mingled.

  More’s work as royal secretary was not confined to the correspondence between Wolsey and the king. If a member of the Council had important news for Henry, they would generally write to More. He also received the foreign post and was one of the principal agents in dealing with foreign courts and ambassadors; such was his legal expertise that it is likely he read over the first draft of treaties or diplomatic instructions. He held the ciphers for secret correspondence and maintained the diplomatic registers. He controlled access to the king, at least in epistolary matters, in a period when such access was of paramount importance; to be physically close to the king was in a sense to imbibe power and More, even though he often denied it, became a very powerful man indeed. He was responsible for checking various grants and appointments; he signed warrants and witnessed royal documents.

  His influence is also attested by the fact that he assumed control of the king’s ‘signet seal’, which was the visible token of royal authority permitting many forms of expenditure. He was involved in other financial transactions for the king, such as the securing of manors and estates, and on many occasions acted as the court’s official Latin orator. In addition, he was asked to advise on private matters; at one point, for example, he was involved in deciding the best form of education for the king’s illegitimate son.

  If he helped to administer the channels of patronage, he also benefited from them: on several occasions he successfully requested posts, for members of his household and for others close to him, in the administration of both City and court. Certainly he was soon considered influential enough to be the recipient of what might now be termed ‘begging letters’ from some of the most important people in the kingdom. Much of his private correspondence was destroyed at the time of his imprisonment, but there does survive one reply from More to a request by John Fisher; the bishop of Rochester wished to arrange an ecclesiastical appointment for one of his priests and More confirmed that he had obtained the king’s agreement. He went on to say that his influence with Henry was extremely small,17 but this may be taken as a pardonable and almost ritual understatement. It suits his generally reticent and ‘diplomatic’ manner, however; when the Venetian ambassador attempted to extract information from him, ‘he did not open, and pretended not to know in what the difficulties consisted’.18

  More’s formal administrative powers are easier to define. He had been appointed as a member of Wolsey’s commission on enclosures even before he entered the court, and the author of the strictures against that practice in Utopia might well have played some part in Wolsey’s ultimate decision to prosecute those who had enforced enclosure ‘contrary to the statutes and law of the realm’.19 More also remained a member of the king’s council and continued to perform various legislative and judicial duties. He was still attending the Court of Requests, both at Westminster and in the king’s court; there is a record of one judicial matter resolved by him at ‘Grenewich’.20 He had ceased to practise law on his own behalf, but there were occasions when he still agreed to act for the Company of Mercers. He was appointed to various commissions of inquiry, and, since he attended the Council of the Star Chamber, he became a regular traveller to Westminster. He could have taken the boat from Greenwich or Three Cranes Stairs, the landing closest to his house in Bucklersbury; in Hollar’s panorama of early seventeenth-century London it is clearly visible, with skiffs and boats bobbing at the edge of the water by the stone parapet. Then he passed Bridewell and Whitefriars before coming up to the King’s Stairs at Westminster itself. More has left his own vivid recollection of the journey to Westminster, completed on horseback, where he came upon a group of ‘poore folke’ begging for alms by the abbey; the press of them was so great (and no doubt the odour) that he was ‘fayn to ryde another waye’. But he lingered, and praised the monks for their bounty. ‘No thanke to them,’ one of the poor muttered, for the monks received their money from ‘landes that good prynces haue gyuen them’.21 More replied that this was better far than that the princes should take it from them again. And so on to the Star Chamber.

  It is not possible fully to document More’s itinerary for these early months and years of service, but certain episodes survive in contemporary accounts. He was with the king at Ab
ingdon and Woodstock in late March and April of 1518, for example, at a time when the monarch and his court were moving from place to place in order to escape the contagion of the plague and sweating sickness. The plague itself had visited Oxford, only a few miles from both royal residences, and More was asked to enforce the precautions which had been taken in London the year before; all infected houses had to display a small bundle of hay for forty days and any inhabitant of those houses had to carry a white rod some four feet in height when he or she walked abroad. It was not a popular measure, but three children from Oxford had already died of the disease; its virulence did not abate throughout the summer and More’s friends became concerned for his health. The Countess of Salisbury even sent him some medicines. He in turn must have been fearful for the safety of his own household, ensconced in the middle of the city, yet it was his obligation to stay beside the king. Such were the blessings (as Erasmus might have repeated) of royal service.

  There were disturbances of another kind in Oxford at that time. Public lectures in Greek had been established at the university in the previous year, and already there were signs of opposition to the new learning. A group of those more inclined to orthodox scholastic teaching called themselves ‘Trojans’, as opposed to ‘Greeks’, and one of their number delivered a sermon of great wrath against the newly introduced studies. More was by now one of the most prominent exponents of those studies in England, and his role at court gave him a position of particular power; so he felt obliged to compose a magisterial remonstrance to the proctors and masters of the university. His letter exudes authority and self-confidence, which could only have been acquired from his status as the king’s servant. Erasmus claimed later that Henry specifically encouraged the study of Greek by those who were inclined to that learning.22 It is in this context that More’s letter to the university, dated ‘Abingdon. 29 March’, can best be understood. It begins with an attack upon the ‘Trojan’ preacher—he is not named, but is likely to have been a Franciscan monk—and continues with an encomium on the merits of ‘seculares literas’23 as a way of advancing true knowledge and virtue. But he ends with what can only be described as a veiled threat that if the university does not suppress these emerging factions24 then others with more power will do it for them. This famous epistle is not only a perfect example of formal rhetoric, and therefore a suitable production from the pen of a courtly Latin orator. It also marked More’s most enthusiastic celebration of the possibilities of good letters, which suggests that his support of a central humanist programme of studies had the additional encouragement of the very people whom he mentions in his letter—Warham, Wolsey and Henry himself. There is a sequel to this episode, narrated by Erasmus, when a ‘theologus’ preached before the king; he, too, attacked the study of Greek. The king apparently smiled at Richard Pace, another supporter of the new learning, and then asked More to engage in a disputation with the theologian. After More had delivered what must have been a formidable oration his opponent knelt before Henry and begged to be excused a response. He had attacked Greek studies while filled with the spirit of folly,25 replied the king, rather than that of Christ. It all ended in humiliating defeat for the hapless preacher who, according to Erasmus, was banished for ever from the court.

  It sounds too neat to be altogether true, but it emphasises an important aspect of More’s career in this period. It has sometimes been surmised that his humanism did not survive his transition to the realpolitik of court life, but this was clearly not the case; indeed it seems to have been strengthened and amplified by his close association with king and cardinal. Certainly, in these first years of royal service, More became a spirited advocate of humanism as well as a firm defender of Erasmus. He wrote two further, and much longer, letters in response to critics of that scholar. One was addressed to Edward Lee, a theologian and Londoner with whom More had been acquainted for many years, while the other was directed against an unnamed monk whom recent research has revealed to be John Batmanson; Batmanson was previously of the Charterhouse, where More had known him. He had admired both men and, since they were both younger than More himself, his assault upon their arguments is touched by a certain frustration that the precepts of the new learning had failed to convince them. The principal point of contention was Erasmus’s recension of the New Testament. In his Novum Testamentum he had published parallel Greek and Latin texts, freed of solecisms or false readings, while at the same time adding his own notes at the back of the volume. For many theologians the revision of the Vulgate was an act of impiety, and there were occasions when Erasmus did implicitly challenge the accepted orthodoxy of certain beliefs. But for the Dutch scholar it was an attempt to free Christian doctrine of unsound interpretation and unhelpful scholastic accretion; it was an attempt faithfully to reveal the true piety and practical spirituality of the Gospels.

  These letters are also interesting for their passages of cutting irony and sarcasm, typical of More, which on occasions turn into open abuse. At one point he describes Batmanson as an ignorant and unknown little monk who has a foul tongue.26 He also delivers a fierce attack upon the follies of monasticism. It would perhaps be more correct to say that he assaults false monasticism, except that his is almost a general diatribe against those who prefer to stay in one place ‘spongiae’—like a sponge—and look for an escape from the troubles of the world by avoiding ‘negocia’ and ‘laboribus’.27 In fact ‘negocium’ was the word he used for ‘besyness’, which he would later condemn as the work of the devil. But here it is extolled as an alternative to the monk’s sequestered stagnation. He was of course at this period immersed in ‘besyness’ himself, and it is very likely that his assault upon monasticism was a way of affirming or excusing his own commitment to court life.

  Yet, even as he attacked others, he himself was being criticised. The French poet and courtier Germanius de Brie or ‘Brixius’ had been the subject of some unflattering verses by More seven years earlier in which the Englishman had chastised the Frenchman for false heroics in a poem concerning a sea-battle between the two nations. The later publication of these verses in the first edition of More’s Epigrammata (together with the third edition of Utopia) seems to have aroused the fury of Brixius who in the early months of 1520 issued Antimorus. It is a long poem, followed by a prose commentary, in which More’s reputation as grammarian and rhetorician is attacked in the most spirited and venomous terms. Brixius called him a ‘moron’, in the usual pun on his name, as well as bitch and barbarian; in his prose postscript he described in vivid detail the solecisms and faulty metres in More’s Latin verses, with the injunction that he should really try to learn the language properly. It was a strong attack by one courtly humanist upon another, but the most wounding and dangerous assault was upon More’s position rather than his pride. Brixius commented upon More’s celebratory poem on the accession of Henry VIII, and professed astonishment that he should have chosen to denounce the previous king; a son would prefer to hear his father praised, and ‘metuo tibi’ (‘I am afraid for you’).28 If Henry realises what you have written, you are likely to be expelled from England. This could be construed as an attack upon More’s loyalty to the Crown, and More knew it—in what great danger you might have placed me,29 he replied, if Henry had believed you. This was the reason why More wrote at once with a long and bellicose letter to Brixius, in the course of which he exonerates the dead king and pretends that various unnamed councillors took advantage of his sickness. There was no real evidence for this, of course, but it was the best defence he could mount; at the same time he in turn accused Brixius of plagiarism, vainglory, and such obvious fabrication of the truth that he was likely to bring the new learning into disrepute. Brixius was indeed an exponent of that learning and was greatly admired by, among others, Erasmus. So, in an almost technical sense, More lectured Brixius upon his fundamental breach of decorum in using the wrong type of rhetoric for the wrong purpose. If it is a case of one royal servant attacking another, it is also an example of the represe
ntatives of two kings in a form of shadow jousting.

  That is why the letter evinces a sense of purpose, and responsibility, which affords a fresh insight into More’s role. In his letter to Brixius he asserts that, in his advice to the king, he follows the precepts of reason rather than the allurements of flattery; he is intent upon praising true virtue, even if in the process he forfeits the good opinion of ‘vulgi’,30 which can be translated as the people, the masses or the vulgar crowd. It is interesting, then, that More should also regret the publication of some of his earlier verses on the grounds that they were not quite ‘severa’.31 In a letter to another scholar he asks that his correspondence not be published until he has had time to revise it; otherwise his unguarded remarks might be used against him by his critics. Seriousness or gravity was clearly now an important aspect of his public personality, and indeed some poems were excised by him from the edition of Epigrammata that was published by Froben at the end of 1520.

  He also furnished an addition to that volume, by including a verse epistle which he had written to his children. It was a genuine expression of his love for them, and confirms the impression of the letters which he wrote to Margaret while he was absent from home on official duties. He particularly asks about the progress of her studies, and it is again clear that he took great pride in her attainments as well as those of other members of his household. In this period, for example, he employed Nicholas Kratzer to give his children further schooling in astronomy and geometry. But the most agreeable touches are perhaps the most private; when Margaret requested a small loan, for example, he replied that, the more often she asked, the more pleased he became. Even at the height of his ‘besyness’, the family living in Bucklersbury remained close to the centre of his life.