The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  The apologye of syr Thomas More knyght provides more than a simple rebuttal of St German. In some of his most artless, or at least plainest, prose he defends his own conduct as a polemicist before delivering a sustained and impassioned warning about the true state of the realm. ‘Good catholyque folke’16 were too complacent or too accommodating, for example, allowing heretics ‘boldely to talke vnchekked’.17 More’s frustration and impatience are everywhere apparent; he believed his ‘good cristen reders’ to be true members of the old faith, but few seemed to be aware of the threat to their practices and beliefs. That is why he still wrote in the vernacular, repeating the same arguments and addressing the same themes, in an exhausting and almost single-handed fight against the ‘bretherne’, as well as against those who supported them for political purposes. He conveys the fear or anger of a man who feels himself to be outnumbered by those, such as Cromwell and St German, who wished to change the nation’s polity. The horror of their enterprise is conveyed by More in his image of a procession at Corpus Christi, bearing the blessed sacrament, being attacked by a gang of villains who ‘cache them all by the heddys, and throw them in the myre, surplyces, copys, sensers, crosses, relyques, sacrament and all’.18 It was in this context that More turned to the arguments of St German, calling him ‘Syr Pacifyer’ in ironic tribute to his efforts to widen the divisions between the people and the clergy. He accused his opponent of wiliness, hypocrisy and wilful imposture in an attempt to subvert the Catholic Church. In one of More’s most unusual pieces of demotic, he writes that the nation ‘maye fall so farre downe downe down downe’19 that it might never rise again.

  The year of More’s resignation, and the submission of the clergy, was a year of omens and of portents. In the spring two giant fish were found in the Thames and were considered to be ‘a prodigy foreboding future evil’,20 and there were in London fourteen suicides within as many days. John Stow reports that two priests of Allhallows in Bread Street fought that summer in the church itself, and wounded each other; whereupon the church was closed for a month and the priests consigned to prison. On three occasions the blessed sacrament was stolen from London churches. Thomas Cranmer, returning from Italy to be installed as archbishop, saw comets each night in the sky and reported how others had seen a horse’s head on fire, a flaming sword, and ‘a blue cross above the moon’.21 Cranmer believed such phenomena to herald some ‘great mutation’. It was at this time that the brothers of the London Charterhouse beheld a huge red globe suspended above their church and there were further sightings of comets casting a strange light upon the sixteenth-century world below.

  There are periods in English history when omens and predictions take on a rare significance and the years of the Reformation, beginning even now, are filled with rumours of legends and ancient prophecies. The prognostications of Bede and the myths of Geoffrey of Monmouth obtained common currency; the legend of Mouldwarp was resurrected, and there was much speculation about the dun cow, the dragon, the wolf and the eagle. Henry would be driven from his kingdom; the priests would rule for three days and three nights; the white lion would kill the king; the Pope would arrive in England.22 This was not some eccentric activity on the margin of events; the Bridgettines of Syon studied the prophecies of Merlin with great attention, while the Spanish ambassador reported that the English might rebel against the established order on the strength of such predictions.23 It is not difficult to understand the connection between prophecy and the old faith; at the time of its greatest trial, the adherents of the Church turned to popular legend and superstition as a way of bolstering their cause. It was the faith of the country, after all, and in its own defence it could invoke the old myths and beliefs of Catholic England.

  There is no better example of the power of this popular belief than the curious career of the young woman known variously as the ‘Holy Maid of Kent’ or the ‘Mad Nun of Kent’. Elizabeth Barton is of significance here, if only because More was suspected of colluding with her against Henry; he was certainly informed about all her activities and he sought her out on at least two occasions for conversation. She might almost be called the unacknowledged partner of his endeavours in maintaining the Church, not least by her formidable defence of the populist and pietistic aspects of the old faith at the time when they were being mocked by the Lutherans as mere superstitions. Her public life began in trance and miracle. She was a seventeen-year-old servant in a Kent household when, succumbing to a serious illness, she began to speak in rhyming prophecies. She was vouchsafed a vision of a chapel, two miles from where she lay; she was taken there, and for seven days lay in a trance before a statue of the Virgin. She prophesied once more, on awakening, and was questioned by a special commission established by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It found no fault with her and her visitations were deemed to be genuine; a thousand people took her in procession to the little chapel, which then became the object of cult and pilgrimage. At her own request she was admitted to a convent in Canterbury, where her visions and clairvoyant trances increased both in number and fervour.

  Elizabeth Barton then became a controversial figure in the history of the period. Her messages and prophecies were conveyed by a group of priests who ministered to her, and soon she ‘was brought into a marvellous fame, credit and good opinion of a great multitude of the people of this realm’.24 This was the description employed in an Act of Attainder eventually brought against her, but she obtained that unhappy fate only because of her opposition to the king. When it became clear that Henry wished to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, and to marry Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth Barton’s visions became more troubled. She prognosticated much evil to the realm, and such was her reputation that she was granted interviews both with Wolsey and the king himself. She warned the cardinal that if Henry abandoned his wife his kingdom would be in great danger. She informed the king, to his face, that he would remain on his throne only seven months after his marriage to Anne Boleyn and that Mary, the daughter he was about to bastardise, would one day reign. The ‘holy maid’ or ‘mad nun’ also had several interviews with Catherine’s courtiers, as well as members of those powerful factions which supported the queen’s cause. She has now almost disappeared from history, but contemporary reports reveal the extent of her significance. Certainly she was considered a great threat to the cause of reform. Cranmer stated that ‘truly, I think, she did marvellously stop the going forward of the King’s marriage by the reasons of her visions’.25 The king was convinced of her influence, and told the French ambassador that she had ‘seduced the Queen and Princess; hence … their disobedience’.26 It was also said, in a later proclamation, that the Pope had been persuaded to oppose the king ‘principally by the damnable and diabolical instrumentality of the said nun and her accomplices’.27 John Fisher wept when he listened to her, because he believed he was hearing the voice of God.

  She first emerges in an unambiguous light at Canterbury itself. In the early autumn of 1532 Henry was once more engaged in those spectacular and flamboyant games of dynastic politics which came so instinctively to him; he was about to travel to Calais and then, on French soil, conclude a set of agreements with Francis I. The English king’s principal purpose was to apply further pressure upon the Pope in the matter of the annulment, and, perhaps to bolster the belief in his case, he travelled in state with Anne Boleyn. He had already taken the precaution of giving her the title of Marquess of Pembroke, in case she should feel inferior to those ‘brave hearts’ of England who also accompanied him. The retinue stopped at Canterbury before travelling to Dover and there, in the walled garden of the abbot of St Augustine’s, the king and Anne Boleyn took their healthful recreation. Elizabeth Barton was revered by the priests and friars of Canterbury, so it was not difficult for her to enter the same garden.

  She came through a back gate and, according to the official account, harangued Henry to the effect ‘that in case he desisted not from his proceedings in the said divorce and separation but pursued the same and ma
rried again, that then within one month after such marriage he should no longer be king of this realm, and in the reputation of God should not be a king one day nor one hour, and that he should die a villain’s death’.28 It is sufficiently dramatic to be apocryphal, but extant documents testify to the essential truth of it; there was, in any event, a tradition of holy women whose sanctity afforded them access to princes or to kings. Yet it was not a tradition which Henry would necessarily wish to continue.

  A few weeks after this brief encounter one of Elizabeth Barton’s circle or entourage, Richard Risby of the Franciscan Observants at Canterbury, stayed at More’s house in Chelsea. After supper, just before he retired to his chamber, Risby spoke to his host of ‘the Nunne, gyvinge her high commendacion of holiness’.29 More knew that she had held, in the past, private conversations with Wolsey and the king; he was also aware that, on one occasion, through the agency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, she had sent to the king a roll of paper containing rhymed prophecies and other such matter. Henry had shown it to More, who, in his customary precise and neutral manner, had declared that this record of her trances showed nothing ‘I coulde eny thinge regarde or esteme’ except as the work of a ‘righte simple woman’. He knew the stories of ‘a myracle … shewed vppon her’ but ‘I durst not nor woulde not be bolde, in iudginge the matter’.30

  Now everything had changed, yet More was as circumspect as before.

  Richard Risby: It is wonderful to see and understand the works that God has wrought in her.

  Thomas More: I am very glad to hear it, and thank God therefor.

  Richard Risby: She has been with Wolsey, in his life, and with the King’s Grace too.

  Then Risby went on to discuss a revelation vouchsafed to her concerning the now deceased cardinal; God placed three swords in his hand ‘which if he ordered not well, God wolde laye it soore to his charge’.31 The third of these swords, according to Risby, concerned the ‘great matter’ of the king’s marriage. At this point More interrupted him.

  Thomas More: I will not hear of any revelation of the king’s matters. I doubt not but the goodness of God shall direct his highness with his grace and wisdom, that the thing should take such end, as God shall be pleased with, to the king’s honour and the surety of the realm.

  Richard Risby: God has especially commanded her to pray for the king. Wolsey’s soul has been saved by her mediation.

  There the conversation concluded and Risby retired to his chamber in More’s house.

  Now that he was away from Westminster, he heard news only from friends and relatives. It is unlikely, for example, that he was aware of the secret marriage of Henry and Anne Boleyn a week before the opening of parliament in February 1533; by then Anne was already pregnant, and there may have been an even shorter and more private ceremony at some point in mid-November of the preceding year. The deed was, at any rate, done; all of the king’s efforts in parliament and convocation were now designed to confirm Anne’s status as wife and queen. In March Thomas Cromwell presented an Act in Restraint of Appeals which ratified the sovereignty and independence of the national Church while declaring, in a preamble, that England was an ancient empire which owed no allegiance to ‘foreign princes or potentates’.32

  Although the English clergy was largely protected from the power of parliament, this Act marked the withdrawal of England from what More had always called ‘the common knowen catholyque church’. He understood this well enough and, from the relative obscurity and powerlessness of his Chelsea retirement, he may have helped to organise the final act of opposition to the king’s will. Certainly those who had already supported Catherine of Aragon’s interests now rallied against this last and latest measure: there is an extant list, in the handwriting of Thomas Cromwell, which notes down the names of those members who opposed the Act. Among them are William Roper and William Dauntsey as well as Sir George Throckmorton and two other members ‘of Chelcythe’ or, in the words of one parliamentary historian, ‘the Chelsea group’.33 So Cromwell considered those associated with More to be an identifiable circle of malcontents. But the Act was passed and the defenders of the old faith were defeated. Cromwell summoned Throckmorton and, in the presence of the king, ordered him to ‘stay at home and meddle little in politics’.34 The More household itself remained active, however, but in another sense. John More, the only son, published two translations of continental works that reaffirmed the unity of the whole Catholic Church and restated the central importance of the holy eucharist in its sacramental life. His was an effort to rebut heresy and schism—with the perhaps oblique reminder, to the king, that they could not be separated. More himself continued his career of frantic polemic with his Apology, containing an attack upon Christopher St German, published at the time parliament was debating the Act of Appeals.

  But his was a lonely voice and, two weeks after Cromwell had presented his Act, Thomas Cranmer was installed as Archbishop of Canterbury. Under his presidency, at the beginning of April, both houses of the convocation of clergy pronounced the marriage between Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to be invalid. Unauthorised preaching was now forbidden and Bishop John Fisher, after his furious attempts to oppose the king’s will, was arrested. Almost immediately Cranmer began to prepare another court hearing, into the validity of the king’s first marriage. But, even before the expected verdict was reached, on ‘the 12 day of Aprill, Anno Domini 1533, being Easter eaven, Anne Bulleine, Marques of Pembroke, was proclaymed Queene at Greenewych, and offred that daie in the Kinges Chappell as Queene of Englande’.35 More and his supporters had lost everything.

  It was, for them, a time of crisis. John Fisher, after being eventually released from custody, sent a secret appeal to the Spanish emperor for an invading force to be dispatched to England. Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador, also urged some form of armed invasion; he told his master that, at this juncture, the people were so alienated from Henry that an attack would easily succeed. It is significant, too, that Fisher and Chapuys had agreed not to speak to or even recognise each other in public. Thomas Cromwell later claimed that there had been a conspiracy against the realm, involving both More and Fisher; in the case of the bishop, he was not far from the truth. In this same period the ‘holy maid’, Elizabeth Barton, secretly met the papal envoy in Canterbury and told him that if Pope Clement agreed to the annulment ‘God would plague him for it’.36 She had already conversed with the papal envoy to Scotland, who, according to later reports, had promised her that Clement would do all he could to drive Henry from his kingdom. In this atmosphere of increasing tension Father Rich, of the strongly Aragonese Friars Observant at Richmond, visited More in Chelsea. Their conversation was later reported by More to Cromwell himself.

  Father Rich: Has Father Risby anything showed you of the holy nun of Kent?

  Thomas More: Yes, and I was very glad to hear of her virtue.

  Rich then made discreet efforts to enlist More in the nun’s cause, but More was fully aware of the dangers of that course. He may not at this time have known of all her activities, but he must have guessed that she was coming close to treason.

  Father Rich: Did he tell you of the revelations that she had concerning the king’s grace?

  Thomas More: No, for sooth, nor if he would have done I would not have given him the hearing. Nor verily no more I would in deed, for since she has been with the king’s grace herself, and told him, methinks it a thing needless to tell the matter to me or any man else.37

  Father Rich then left the house, without staying for dinner, his aims unaccomplished. But the matter did not end there, since More arranged to meet Rich on two other occasions when they discussed the visions and trances of the nun; he also had further discussions with Father Risby. Yet he remained prudent, believing that silence might save him. Of course he refused openly to support the king’s cause and when, in May, Thomas Cranmer pronounced Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn to be valid (and, therefore, that with Catherine of Aragon to be void) More volunteered a character
istic comment to his son-in-law. ‘God give grace, son,’ he said, ‘that these matters within a while be not confirmed with oaths.’38 He was uncannily and unhappily prophetic in this, but he was put to the test much sooner than he expected.

  The day after the marriage had formally been declared lawful, Anne Boleyn was brought by water from the palace at Greenwich to the Tower of London; she sat in a boat of state, followed by the great barges of the City companies festooned with silk and cloth of gold; other boats carried grand effigies, from which issued flames and fireworks. On the king’s own barge were placed the minstrels and the musicians making, in the words of a contemporary report, a ‘marvellous sweet harmony’39 upon the river. Then as the procession of more than three hundred ships turned towards the city, fusillades of shot and cannon sounded from both shores. It was the beginning of four days of splendour, leading to the coronation of the new queen in Westminster Abbey. But Thomas More, still a king’s councillor, was not present at any of the proceedings. This was the point when Henry hardened his heart against him.

  Three erstwhile conservative bishops, among them his old friend and colleague Cuthbert Tunstall, had already written to More and urged him to take his proper place at the coronation. They were so concerned for his attendance that they sent him twenty pounds with which to purchase a new gown for the occasion. They knew the peril in which he now stood and were desperately anxious for him to reach some kind of accommodation with the king. He kept the money, but still he refused to be present at the ceremonies. The true courage and spirit of the man now emerge. His own comments to the bishops also reveal the farsightedness with which he observed the affairs of the nation. He told them, first, a story concerning the emperor Tiberius; he had enacted a law which exacted death for a certain penalty, unless the offender were a virgin. But when a virgin woman did eventually appear on that charge the emperor was unsure how to proceed. Then one of his council proposed the perfect solution. ‘Why make you so much ado, my lords, about so small a matter? Let her first be deflowered and then after may she be devoured!’