The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The central theme of the Confutation is that there is only one true Church, the visible and orthodox communion of Catholics. Throughout its history its members have been frail or weak, but that in no way affects its authority as Christ’s mystical body upon the earth. It is the permanent and living sign of Christ’s presence, sustained by inherited custom and maintained by traditional knowledge. It is a visible, extensive and palpable community rather thana few ‘brethren’ gathered in secret rooms. Just as parliament was considering plans for the reformation of abuses among the clergy, More was insisting that the sinfulness or folly of individuals—even the wickedness of a bad pope—in no way affected the divinely instituted sanctitas of the Catholic Church. There were covert messages here to the king as well as to the members of parliament, but no one chose to listen to them.

  A more general interpretation can also be offered. When More writes of ‘one fayth in the howse of god’,77 he is at the same time invoking the medieval society of the household. Among the articles of his creed, in other words, are the precepts of the world in which he grew up—a world where communality and tradition were no less important than external ritual and inherited faith. Indeed they cannot be separated one from another without a general dissolution of ‘the comen knowen catholique chyrch’.78 Yet William Tyndale was possessed by an alternative vision of private belief and individual grace; he made the distinction between ‘an hystorycall fayth’ and ‘a felynge fayth’,79 with all his trust residing within that ‘sure felynge’ which is vouchsafed to those when ‘god shall wryte yt in theyr hertes wyth his holy spyryte’.80 His was a powerful statement of individual redemption, but one that More rejected utterly as the shortest way to pride and anarchy. More was fully acquainted with the frailty of ‘we pore worldely men of mydle erth’,81 therefore, and from this awareness springs much of his irony and humour. From it, too, comes his overwhelming desire for discipline and external authority.

  What if that authority should, then, disappear in some new age of the world? The presiding image of The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer is that of ‘Tyndales great Mayster Antecryste’.82 This was not for More some bugbear to scare children, but a real and pressing threat. Martin Luther had married a Cistercian nun, Katharina Bora, or, in More’s words, ‘toke out of relygyon a spouse of Cryste’83 and it was generally believed ‘that Antecryste sholde be borne betwene a frere and a nunne’.84 So the beast might be about to come forth, and on two occasions More adverts to the approaching horror, when ‘the great archeheretyke Antycryste come hym selfe whyche as helpe me god I fere be very nere hys tyme’85 and ‘now very nere at hande’.86 This was the terror which he was preparing himself to face; he truly believed that Luther and Tyndale were the false prophets or disciples of the great beast. It is now possible, perhaps, to understand the feverish haste and urgency of his work, a clamancy which is not untouched by a sense of weariness and feeling of doom. There are times when More begs his ‘good cristen readers’ not to study any heretical books; he even implores them, in one remarkable passage, not to read his own in case the very mention of false beliefs might contaminate or confound them. This was the pass to which he had come; he abhors the mention of heresy even as he launches a huge barrage of words against it.

  There was another reason for his weariness and sorrow. In the winter of 1530 his father, Sir John More, died; he had not quite reached his eightieth year, according to Erasmus, but until the end had seemed wonderfully alert. Family history reports that he died from eating ‘a Surfeit of Grapes’,87 which does not suggest fading health; on his own epitaph More preferred to believe that his father died ‘having witnessed his son made Lord Chancellor of England’. His son-in-law recalled that, in the moments of his father’s death, More ‘with tears taking him about the neck, most lovingly kissed and embraced him, commending him into the merciful hands of almighty God’.88 This is the first report of More’s tears, which would be plentiful in the years that followed. And then he grew sick. After the death of his father he began to suffer from some disease of the chest;89 he also confessed that he began to feel himself growing very old.90 His was a severe and in a literal sense morbid reaction, yet not perhaps unexpected in a man who used the image or metaphor of ‘the father’ as the token of social order and authority. By strange chance Cardinal Wolsey, under arrest at the king’s command, died within two or three days of John More; in their joint passing we might see the demise of the old order itself.

  More’s father was buried in the church of St Lawrence Jewry, a few yards from the family home in Milk Street, and had asked that his funeral be ‘not to pompiously perfourmed’.91 The coffin was sprinkled with holy water before being lowered into the stone tomb; the mourners, arrayed in special gowns of black, white or russet, held lighted torches at the moment of interment. It was generally believed that thirteen was the optimum number for those present, in commemoration of the last supper, but for so grand a man as Sir John More there may have been many others. There was then a funeral feast, in honour of the living and the dead, as John More entered the great communion of souls. He became a spiritual member of what More, in the fourth book of his Confutation, had called ‘thys great knowen congregacyon’.92 But a great change had come upon More himself when he wrote those words; he had resigned as Lord Chancellor and, in horror at the collapse of the established authority of his Church, he had retreated to Chelsea.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  INFINITE CLAMOUR

  AT three o’clock of a spring afternoon in 1532, Thursday 16 May, Sir Thomas More was admitted to York Place ‘beside the village of Westminster’, as the official report of the ceremony puts it. It had been Wolsey’s home but it now belonged to the king. He was taken to the garden, where the king awaited him. In the presence of the Duke of Norfolk, More then ceremoniously handed to Henry VIII the pouch which contained the Great Seal of England. The king graciously received this symbol of office, and granted More leave to bestow the rest of his life in preparing his soul ‘in the service of God’.1 ‘And for the service which you before have done me,’ Henry went on to say, ‘you will find me a good and gracious lord unto you in any suit which should concern your honour or pertain unto your profit’.2 Yet he bestowed none of the customary honours on the resignation of his chief counsellor. More’s own feelings are not fully known, although at a later date he suggested that if a man ‘seeth the thinges that he shuld set his hand to sustayne, decay thorow his defaut & fall to ruyne vnder hym’ then ‘I in any wise aduise hym to leve of that thing … give it ouer quyte & draw hym selfe aside, & serve god’.3 This is precisely the task which More set himself, as his own world fell ‘to ruyne’.

  The public events leading up to More’s resignation will be familiar to those interested in the progress of the Reformation and the development of England as a commercial nation-state, but in the context of Thomas More’s life they may be seen in a less familiar perspective. On More’s appointment as Lord Chancellor in the autumn of 1529, the king had broached with him his ‘great matter’ of the annulment and had asked him to consult a group of scholars and theologians who were already advancing his cause. Although More was not persuaded by their arguments, his sense of loyalty and perhaps also of prudence was such that he never read any books opposing the king but ‘gladly’ studied many which supported his master’s case. Among the band of committed scholars were Stokesley, Foxe, Lee and Cranmer; they were in no way deterred by More’s refusal to join them, and had indeed already been instructed to gather supporting documents as well as learned opinions favourable to the monarch. The English universities were the first to express their support, in the spring of 1530, but not without much questioning and controversy; Thomas Cranmer, who was in these years rapidly emerging as the king’s most active scholar, had composed a treatise on the subject of the doubtful marriage which was then put to the congregations of both universities. Finally they agreed that it was ‘more probable’4 that the king’s scruples were justified; he should not have been allowed to mar
ry his dead brother’s wife, if it was indeed true that she had been carnally ‘known’. More believed, of course, along with many others, that Catherine’s claims to virginity at the time of her second marriage were true. But he had been chancellor of both universities and knew that bribery and patronage were not unwelcome visitors to academic life.

  The king was not intent on seeking scholarly approval alone and, in the middle of June, he summoned a great meeting of lords and prelates to place their signatures and seals upon a letter to the Pope; this epistle urged Clement to accede to the request for an annulment, but it was couched in so hostile a tone that many of those assembled could not agree to its terms. It is probable that Henry adverted to his belief that he might act without the Pope’s consent. In any event the letter was redrafted and, in more humble words, urged the Pope to ‘declare by your authority, what so many learned men proclaim’.5 This ornate and gilded document was then sent to Rome where it produced little, if any, effect. The most notable name absent from the list of signatories is that of the Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More. Although he may have refused to sign, it is more likely that his opinions were so well known that he was not asked to put his name to the letter; but already it is possible to sense the isolation and exclusion into which he would eventually be drawn. And, where pleading failed, threat might take its place. In the following month fourteen prelates, most of whom had taken Catherine’s part in the great argument, were accused of breaches of praemunire legislation. The charges were ostensibly related to Wolsey’s period of office, but they were clearly directed against the opponents of the king’s ‘divorce’. It was rumoured at the time that More was most unhappy with this legal chicanery and had thought of resigning his post, but for the moment nothing happened. He must have calculated that any abrupt or irreversible decision would hurt the cause of Catherine; so he remained in a position where he might affect, if not make, policy.

  The course of events grew clearer month by month, as the king became informed of his possible legislative and spiritual independence. In the late summer of this year a collection of documents, together with supportive ‘determinations’ from certain foreign universities, was presented to the king. It was known as the Collectanea satis copiosa, and marshalled evidence from the Donation of Constantine to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, from Anglo-Saxon scrolls to conciliar records, in order to suggest that as the ruler of a traditional empire Henry had inherited the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within his domain. It was an ancient argument, concerning the concept of ‘Albion’ and ‘the matter of Britain’, but for Henry it was simply a means of asserting his authority over the Pope. He annotated the various manuscripts delivered to him and over a period of some months seems genuinely to have convinced himself that he was head of the faith in England. More was aware of the course of events, but still he held his ground; Henry was all the while pursuing his case at Rome, and seemed uncertain about the precise direction of his policy. It was More’s duty to wait, and to watch.

  Henry ordered a second round of visits to the universities of France and Italy while at the same time, in mid-September, he issued a proclamation against the entry of any papal bulls detrimental to the king’s concerns. This was a direct assault upon the authority of the Pope, and More openly expressed his disagreement. He was almost dismissed at that point and, according to diplomatic dispatches, the king now began to complain that More had not signed the general petition to the Pope on the subject of the marriage; the Spanish ambassador reported that ‘the Chancellor, I hear, has spoke so much in the queens favour’ that he might be forced to resign.6 There was a further complication, of which More was not unaware. Henry had discovered that the discussions of the Privy Council had ‘got wind’ and were being disclosed to Catherine and her supporters.7 More was nominally the senior member of that council, but is it possible that suspicion fell upon him?

  At a great council in Hampton Court, convened that autumn to discuss the king’s marriage and to prepare for the next parliamentary session, Henry’s proposals on the country’s ecclesiastical sovereignty were not welcomed; a contemporary report discloses that, as a result, ‘the king was very angry, and adopted the expedient of proroguing parliament till the month of February’.8 One of the reasons that More remained in office is because there were still many nobles, lawyers and prelates who shared his beliefs. So parliament was prorogued—in the event only until January—but, before the new session opened, the king took Thomas Cromwell into his service. From this time forward, the conduct of policy became more coherent and skilful, as events drifted away from More. The portrait of Cromwell by Holbein depicts the resolution and pugnacity of the man; he does not possess that mysteriousness which the half-opened curtain behind the image of More seems to imply. The artist has caught the reflection of thought upon the face of his sitter, but there is a determination stamped upon Cromwell’s features which suggests that thought will soon turn into action and practical decision.

  He was born in Putney and his father, according to conflicting and sometimes malicious reports, had been a blacksmith or fuller or even a brewer. Cromwell himself had become a soldier, a banker, a merchant; he was one of those men who seek their fortune in other countries and among alien customs. But the adventurer finally came home and, after marrying an heiress, took up the life of a London banker and merchant. He was a member of the parliament of 1523, when More himself was its Speaker, and at that time he came to the attention of Wolsey; the cardinal recognised in others gifts similar to those he himself possessed, and Cromwell became one of his most trusted and efficient servants. It is also important to recognise that his sympathies were with the ‘newe men’ and the reformers, even though they had to be partly concealed until circumstances were more propitious. There is an illuminating anecdote, told by Wolsey’s servant, of Cromwell’s behaviour after the cardinal’s forced resignation. He found ‘Master Cromwell leaning in the great window with a primer in his hand’.9 He was weeping, with indignation or self-pity, at the prospect that he was likely to descend with his erstwhile master. ‘I cannot tell,’ he said, ‘but all things, I see before mine eyes, is as it is taken.’ By which he meant that the opinions and interpretations of others were paramount. So he had come to a decision. ‘I do intend,’ he added, ‘God willing, this afternoon when my lord hath dined to ride to London and so to the court, where I will either make or mar … I will put myself in the press to see what any man is able to lay to my charge of untruth or misdemeanour.’10 This statement testifies both to his shrewdness and his courage; there is also a perhaps apocryphal story that he recommended that a staunch defender of the ‘old faith’ read Machiavelli rather than old books.

  The fall of the ‘great wether’, as More had called Wolsey, did not in fact affect Cromwell’s career; he had unique powers of organisation and administration which would have been invaluable to any sovereign or great minister. So, by the end of 1530, he had become an important member of the king’s council. Certainly he was actively preparing parliamentary business on an ambitious scale. He is likely to have been the source of Henry’s threat to charge all the English clergy with breach of praemunire, for example, on the ground that their ecclesiastical courts deferred to Rome rather than to England. But Cromwell prepared much more detailed and elaborate proposals which encompassed public, as well as religious, reform. There is a document, dating from this period, that contains draft bills and items of proposed legislation. Many of those measures are clearly designed to curb the power and the abuses of the clergy: a ‘great standyng counsayll’11 is suggested to establish limits on the jurisdiction of church courts, and any attempt to criticise the anticlerical legislation of the last parliamentary session is to be deemed illegal. There are other items of a similar nature, but the author or authors of the document also turn their attention to secular affairs. A scheme of public works is proposed to curb unemployment, for example, and urgent attention is to be paid to the problems of inflation and rural de
cay. It is not likely that More approved of all these plans, but he might well have supported the programme of public renovation. Yet he was no longer in a position to help or to hinder; the initiative had passed to Cromwell, who was indeed the man for a new age.

  There is one recognisable author of this parliamentary proposal, since much of its writing is in the hand of a lawyer named Christopher St German. He had been a member of the Middle Temple, and was now in his seventies; he had also been acquainted with Sir John More and had been published by John Rastell, so he would have been well known to the Lord Chancellor. He was the most eminent legal theorist of his period but, unhappily for More, his principal purpose was to systematise the common law of England and in effect to diminish the jurisdictional powers of the Church. In Doctor and Student, the last part of which was published in the same year as Cromwell entered the king’s council, St German asserted the claims of common law over canon law; property was not a divine gift, for instance, and any disputes over estates or inheritance should be removed from the church courts. His essential argument consisted in the declaration that the law of the realm, rather than ecclesiastical law, should be pre-eminent. This was one of those rare books which appeared at precisely the right moment, and the septuagenarian scholar found himself quickly translated into the councils of state. He may have been present at the meeting in Hampton Court and he was certainly given the task, by Cromwell or by the king himself, to draw up proposals for legislation. In the same year that he drafted these measures to confine the powers of the Church, as well as to check its abuses, he published New Additions to his earlier work which affirmed the sovereignty of the king-in-parliament as ‘the high sovereign over the people, which hath not only charge on the bodies, but also on the souls of his subjects’.12 The fact that St German’s legislative proposals were not enacted in the parliament of 1531 does not detract from their significance. Henry now had legal and constitutional, as well as historical, support in his struggle to assert his throne over the papacy.