The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The Fool is malleable and can play many parts, as More himself did; he can also speak the truth by means of humour. Henry Patenson was a fool by nature, whereas More was a fool by art. Someone lost a purse and set up a sign in St Pauls, ‘Whosoeuer hath found a purse …’ More saw the notice, and put his own name beneath it. So the man hurried to his chamber and More solemnly took down the details of his name and age. ‘My friend,’ he said then, ‘I am sorry for your loss, but I do not have your purse and I do not know where it is.’

  ‘Why then, if it may please you, did you write your name?’

  ‘So I may know you again another time: for if you cannot keep your own purse, you shall not keep mine.’ He then gave the man forty shillings and dismissed him. The Franciscans wished to be considered as fools; to know oneself to be foolish is to avoid the sin of pride. That is why it is best to deprecate oneself and secretly rejoice that one is ‘laughed down as a fole’. It is a means of avoiding the wrath of God, but it is also a way of displaying the true nature of human beings upon the earth which no furred robe of state or golden chain can conceal. That is why More maintained Henry Patenson as a permanent member of his family in Chelsea—poor Henry, who was reputed to be crazed after a fall from a church steeple. When his fool knek in the chapel with hazel nuts on a string as a rosary, More was no doubt inclined to repeat the words of the epitaph upon one of the king’s own fools named Lobe:

  And Lobe, God have mercye on thy folyshe face;

  And Lobe, God have mercye on thy innocent sowle.35

  There is one last figure in the Holbein drawing which is worthy of notice. The artist has drawn a small monkey, tied to a chain, who seems to be clambering up the dress of Alice More. She is reading her devotional manual, and is so accustomed to the animal’s presence that she pays it no attention. More is known to have kept an entire menagerie, and among his ‘pettis’ were a fox, a weasel, a ferret, and a monkey as well as several rabbits and birds. Erasmus noted how he loved to observe their character and behaviour, and it may be from this habit of close attention that More is able to describe the process of artificial incubation in Utopia; perhaps direct experience prompted his remark that newly hatched chickens follow the nearest human being. He also observed birds, of which he had many breeds, and may have been the source of Erasmus’s phrase in Colloquies that ‘they have their kindnesses and feuds, as well as we’.36 He is without doubt the origin of that scholar’s disquisition on the monkey and the weasel. When the monkey became ill he was taken off his chain, and spent some of his time watching the efforts of the weasel to seize the rabbits in their wooden cage. Finally the weasel managed to prise loose the hutch so that it was open at the back; all at once the monkey ran over to it and, climbing upon a plank, managed to restore it to its former safe position. The story appears in the Colloquies, also, and its lesson of primatial compassion is explicitly set in the household of Thomas More.

  More sometimes employed his animals as metaphors. In particular he chose the image of the monkey to denote the heretic as ‘an olde ryueled ape’,37 the devil’s pet kept on a chain ‘to make hym sporte, with mokkynge and mowynge’.38 Of course More kept his own monkey upon a chain, and at the same time he imprisoned heretics within the gatehouse of Chelsea; the purpose, in both instances, is to keep a tight control of instinct and irrationality as well as evil and folly. The monkey and the fool can also be related, since in both instances More is able to contain unreason within a secure and formal setting. But what if Henry Patenson were to turn truly mad, and the ape to break its chain? This is More’s vision of the world after Luther, a world about to emerge all around him.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  YOU ARE BUT ONE MAN

  HERE was a moment, during certain revels at Cardinal Wolsey’s palace of Hampton Court, when a band of maskers plucked off their visors and revealed their true identity. It was the third day of the new year, 1527, and one of their number was the king. The art of concealment and feigning was a memorable aspect of court entertainments in this period, whether it was expressed in allegory or in real intrigue. Disguising was a device, but it was also a necessity in a world established upon spectacle and appearance. But there was to be a true surprise later in this year, when the dancers of state paused for an instant and took off their masks. One of their company was Anne Boleyn.

  She had been accustomed to such a life since her childhood, having been despatched to the French court at the age of twelve. She had returned to England at the beginning of the war against France and had been, as it were, within the king’s sight for five years. He had been involved in a sexual intrigue with her sister, however, before he turned to her in the early months of 1526. During the summer of that year Catherine of Aragon was becoming apprehensive; by the winter, Henry had decided. Apparently on grounds of religious scruple, in that he had married his dead brother’s wife against the injunctions of Leviticus, he had determined that his marriage should be annulled. Early in the following year Cardinal Wolsey was instructed to begin secret proceedings which would expedite the matter of annulment, but this private legatine court adjourned after two weeks at the end of May without any sentence passed. In the following month Henry approached Catherine herself with the news that they had been unlawfully married for the last eighteen years. It is said that she collapsed in tears, but there are also reports that she knew precisely what had been happening.1 The Imperial ambassador had already been informed and the news passed to her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. It soon emerged, also, that Catherine had been instructed on issues of canon law which could materially serve her cause.

  This is the moment that Thomas More entered the famous arena of the king’s ‘divorce’. Although he was not officially acquainted with Henry’s scruples until the autumn of that year, he was in the confidence of both Wolsey and the king, when very few others were; he himself said, in a letter written at a later date, that he was aware of the king’s reading of Leviticus. He may not have been formally asked to give his attention to the subject, but he knew. Yet someone was also secretly informing and advising Catherine. It may have been John Fisher, who as Bishop of Rochester became her most impressive and outspoken supporter, but it might have been More himself. He was close to her and to her entourage; he admired her piety and applauded her learning. Catherine returned his loyalty and is reported to have often told her husband that ‘of all his councillors More alone was worthy of the position and the name’.2 More knew his ‘bounden duty’ was to the king, however, and he is most unlikely to have acted in a manner which might anger or compromise his master. If his loyalties were divided, no courtier could have guessed the mind’s construction from the face.

  Holbein’s memorable portrait of Thomas More was painted during, or immediately before, these spring and summer months of 1527. He is dressed as a great counsellor and wears the heavy gold chain of Tudor livery over a black velvet cloak which has a brown fur collar; beneath it he wears a doublet of red velvet, while his short dark-brown hair is firmly held within a black cap. The catalogue of the Frick Collection in New York, where the painting now resides, notes that a few strands of grey hair are also visible. On the forefinger of his left hand can be seen a gold ring inset with a bloodstone, while his right hand holds a dispatch or sheet of paper. His right arm lightly rests against a ledge of stone and there is a bright green curtain draped in folds behind him. It is being held partly open by red cords, and there is a glimpse of clear sky—or of an empty space—beyond.

  In certain respects More’s appearance, in this half-length portrait, resembles Erasmus’s famous description of him. His complexion is fair but not pale. Erasmus describes the eyes as ‘subcaesii’ or ‘bluish grey’,3 although in the Holbein portrait they seem closer to a brownish grey; Erasmus also notes that the eyes were flecked or tinted in some way, yet the painting shows him to be clear-eyed. He has a broad forehead and what appears to be a somewhat short or squat neck; an eighteenth-century writer declared that his ‘scull was a small one’,4 perhaps h
aving seen the severed head in its last resting place. He was a man of middle height only—which, by contemporary standards, would make him rather short. There are wrinkles over the bridge of his nose, as well as at the corners of his eyes; surprisingly, perhaps, he has the stubble of a beard of three or four days’ growth. This may be an indication of what Erasmus meant when he said that his friend had been from childhood ‘negligentissimus’ in matters of dress and appearance.5 Erasmus alluded to Ovid’s De Arte Amandi, and in particular to a line which suggests that More’s dress was not always of the cleanest: ‘But let the gowne be well fittynge, and clyne wythout ony spot.’6 Ovid also suggested that the mouth and teeth be clean and the nails without dirt, and it is to be expected that More obeyed at least those injunctions. But he wears his clothes of state with the indifference of an actor. That is why the most striking aspect of the portrait lies within the lucid clearness of the eyes.

  Holbein was aware of the physiognomical aspect of portraiture, and probably was here emphasising More’s acuity and sharpness of judgement. The chin and jawbone signify the active powers of the will, and in the portrait they are somewhat pronounced. The nose is large, while the lips are thin and compressed, which suggests a powerful instinctive passion that is kept in check. A sixteenth-century treatise upon Aristotle’s physiognomical beliefs is also suggestive. A long nose with a tip declining slightly towards the mouth, like that of More’s in the portrait, denotes a ‘secretive, modest and trustworthy’ character; a dimpled chin is also the token of a ‘secretive’ nature.7 Of course Holbein was too great an artist to delineate in so mechanical a fashion the attributes of his sitter; these characteristics are simply the background features which remain thoroughly dependent upon his own interpretation of More. Erasmus once wrote that it would take the skill of another Apelles to do justice to his friend, but it cannot be said that Holbein has failed to do so.

  There are two preliminary sketches for the completed work. In one of them More’s visage is as composed and reserved as that of the portrait, but the second drawing is altogether freer and looser: he has a gentler and more benign countenance, with a slightly mournful but open gaze. There is nothing so wistful or fugitive in the painting itself. More sits in front of the half-drawn curtain, attired as a man of power, but his expression is almost unfathomable. Some have found within it traces of anxiety and sensitivity, as if he might already see his own fate unfolding before him, but others have recognised the essential cheerfulness and conviviality of the man. Some find evidence of imperiousness in the portrait, while others have discovered irony and ingenuity. He might be sad, or simply grave; or, as others have suggested, he might be about to laugh. There may be a hint of that stubbornness and severity which his religious opponents ascribed to him, but this may instead be an indication of that clever sharpness which emerged in his ironic asides. There may also be caution, and frugality, and self-distrust.

  Holbein has fashioned a great portrait precisely because of these unanswered and unanswerable questions. His is a study in ambiguity and detachment, with the inscrutability of More’s expression as a direct representation of his reticence and impenetrability. Holbein did not know that under the gold chain and velvet doublet More wore a hair shirt which chafed and broke his skin. But once it has been imagined there, the true value of the painting emerges. This is the portrait of a private self dressed as a public image, with the contrast between a secret inner life and rhetorical public role creating this enigmatic and inscrutable figure.

  If More played no ostensible part in the matter of the king’s disputed marriage during this period, he was a necessary and visible agent of Wolsey’s diplomacy. The pre-eminence of Charles V had once again forced England into an uneasy embrace with France, and in the early months of 1527 More was one of the central figures in the negotiations for a new treaty. These proved successful, and he was also one of those who signed the document at the end of April. The French envoys were then invited to a tournament, followed by a great banquet and disguising at Greenwich Palace. On that same day of pomp and ceremony, 6 May, imperialist troops entered Rome and wreaked such havoc within the city that the details were not forgotten for a hundred years. Old men were disembowelled and young men castrated, women raped and tortured, children tossed onto the points of swords before being butchered. The corpse of Pope Julius II was dragged from its ornate tomb and paraded through the streets. The living pope fled to the castle of St Angelo, where he remained a prisoner. It would be tempting to dwell upon the extraordinary disparity between the magnificence of Greenwich and the massacre of Rome, but these occasions are related in much more complicated and ambiguous ways. The English king wanted the Pope to grant him an annulment of his marriage; the Pope was imprisoned by the emperor, Charles V; Francis I and Henry VIII had formed an alliance against the emperor. All the fragments of polity were in the air at the same time and Wolsey was supposed to conjure them into a shape pleasing to his master.

  That is why he also needed More’s assistance and counsel. It had been decided that the cardinal, with a great retinue that included More, should travel to France where he would solemnly ratify the treaty with the French king himself. Wolsey rode on a mule out of London, crossing London Bridge at the head of a large concourse before making a stately progress to Canterbury. It was an extraordinarily wet summer, and we may see them proceeding slowly through the rain. He stayed in the town for three days, celebrating Mass for various occasions—the vigil of St Thomas on 6 July and the feast day of the Translation on the seventh—always kneeling on a bench ‘covered with carpets and cushions’.8 In the second week of July they crossed over to Calais. There then ensued the whole panoply of the diplomatic process, which in its essentials was derived from an earlier chivalric age. There were the solemn entries into each town where they were welcomed by persons of ‘rank and distinction’.9 There were the set speeches and the formal presentation of credentials, public processions and ceremonial audiences, all of which were accompanied by Masses as well as more secular festivities. It was not until the beginning of August, therefore, that Wolsey arrived in Amiens, where he was greeted by the French king. Francis also greeted More and, later, Wolsey and More made a ceremonial visit to the queen mother. Two weeks after their arrival the treaty of peace was finally solemnised in the cathedral. (In that church More saw the supposed head of John the Baptist in a crystal case; he did not seem to doubt the authenticity of the relic and noted only the absence of its ‘nether iowe’10 or lower jaw.) The English envoys remained in Amiens until the end of the month, and then began their slow journey home. More himself did not return to England until late September.

  Then Henry approached him. More had repaired to Hampton Court, where the king was staying, at which time ‘sodaynly his Highnes walkying in the galery, brake with me of his great mater’;11 he declared that his marriage to Catherine had been contrary to the laws of the Church, of God and of nature itself. The king ‘layed the Bible open byfore me, and ther red me the wordis that moved his Highnes and diverse other erudite persons so to thinke, and asked me ferther what my selfe thowght theron’.12 The ‘wordis’, in translation, are these: ‘Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness’13 and ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing … they shall be childless’.14 This was the first occasion upon which the matter was directly broached to More. Although he distrusted his ‘pore mynd’, ‘I shewed never the lesse as my dewtie was at his commaundment what thing I thowght vppon the wordis which I there red’.15 His answer could not have been wholly satisfactory, since the king ordered him to ‘commune ferther’ with certain royal advisors and to read a ‘booke’ on the need for an annulment, which was even then being compiled.

  So at the king’s instigation More had become publicly, if indirectly, concerned with the ‘great matter’ which was to dominate policy for the next five years. It involved issues of substance and of interpretation, of theological argument and diplomat
ic manoeuvre; it concerned precedents and statutes and bulls. Had Catherine’s brief marriage to Arthur, the older brother of Henry, been consummated? Was there an ‘impediment’ of ‘public honesty’ which could set aside her union with the king? Was their child, Mary, therefore illegitimate? Was it a question of divine law that could not be altered, or of ‘positive law’ that might be modified? These were grave questions indeed, and More could not have been unaware that there was also the risk of king contending against pope. He said later that ‘I neuer medled’ in the affair, since ‘the mater was in hand by an ordynary processe of the spirituall law, whereof I could litle skyll’.16 But even if he never directly intervened in the legal process, he may have offered informal suggestions and advice. In this context it is also significant that in the autumn of 1527, and again in the following year, More’s friend Juan Luis Vives returned to England in order to support and counsel the queen.

  The scene is worthy of Moliere or perhaps of Marlowe. Henry seems genuinely to have convinced himself that he had incurred divine displeasure by marrying his dead brother’s wife and that as a result he had merited the biblical punishment of conceiving no male issue from the forbidden union. Yet at the same time he was pursuing Anne Boleyn with gifts and letters. It would not take a cynic to suggest that his desire for an annulment was prompted by sexual as well as religious reasons. But this was the point that could never be made in public. Those around Henry, including More, were compelled to enter an unacknowledged pact of silence about his motives. Catherine’s whole life was being betrayed, too, but nothing could be said of that matter. The atmosphere of court had become difficult as well as delicate and those, like More, who supported Catherine of Aragon had to tread cautiously. One of the games being played was that of waiting, since they hoped that the king’s attraction to Anne was nothing more than infatuation. There was, however, one further problem. There is some evidence to suggest that Anne, who had grown up in the society and culture of French humanists, already espoused what could be called a ‘reformist’ attitude towards church matters based upon an intense reverence for the New Testament. She was by no means a Lutheran, and was indeed much closer to Erasmus; but, in the climate of the time, her position was significant.