The King's Confidante: The Story of the Daughter of Sir Thomas More

by Jean Plaidy

  “And you bear me a grudge for that, eh, my son?”

  “Nay, Father. For, having no money to spend on folly, I must give all my energies to learning; and knowledge is a greater prize than meat for supper—even if it is not always of the law!”

  “Thomas, I understand you not. You are a good son, and yet you are a fool. Instead of giving yourself entirely to the study of the law, what do you do? When that fellow Erasmus came to England you spent much time … discoursing, I hear, prattling the hours away, studying Greek and Latin together … when I wished you to work at the law. And now that you are accounted a worthy and utter barrister, and you are made a burgess, what do you do? You… a humble subject of the King, must arouse the King's wrath.”

  “Father, one day, if I am a rich man, I will repay the hundred pounds.”

  “Pah!” said John More. “If you are a rich man you will hear from the King, and I doubt you would remain a rich man long enough to pay your father that hundred pounds. For, my son… and let us speak low, for I would not have this go beyond us … the King will not forget you. You have escaped, you think. You have done your noble act and your father has paid his fine. Do not think that is an end of this matter.” He lowered his voice still more. “This King of ours is a cold-hearted man. Money is the love of his life; but one of his light o' loves is revenge. You have thwarted his love; you have wounded her deeply. You … a young man, who have, with your writings, already attracted attention to yourself so that your name is known in Europe, and when scholars visit this country you are one of those with whom they seek to converse. You have set yourself up to enlighten the people, and you have done this in Parliament. What you have said is this: ‘The King's coffers are full to bursting, good people, and you are poor. Therefore, as a burgess of your Parliament, I will work to remedy these matters.’ The King will not forget that. Depend upon it, he will seek an opportunity of letting you know that no subject of his—be he ever so learned, and whatever admiration scholars lay at his feet—shall insult the King and his beloved spouse, riches.”

  “Then, Father, I am fortunate to be a poor man; and how many men can truly rejoice in their poverty?”

  “You take these matters lightly, my son. But have a care. The King watches you. If you prosper he will have your treasure.”

  “Then I pray, Father, that my treasures will be those which the King does not envy—my friends, my writing, my honor.”

  “Tut!” said the shrewd lawyer. “This is fools' talk. Learn wisdom with your Greek and Latin. It'll stand you in better stead than either.”

  Jane was frightened. That man with the cruel face hated her husband. She took her father-in-law's warning to heart if Thomas did not.

  Often she dreamed of the hard-faced King, and in her dreams his great coffers burst open while Thomas took out the gold and gave it to the beggars in Candlewick Street.

  She knew she had a very strange and alarming husband; and often, when she wept a little during the silence of the night, she wondered whether it would have been much worse to have remained unmarried all her life than to have become the wife of Thomas More.

  HER POSITION was not relieved by the coming of the man from Rotterdam.

  Jane had heard much of him; and of all the learned friends who struck terror into her heart, this man frightened her more than any.

  He settled in at The Barge and changed the way of life there.

  Sometimes he looked at Jane with a mildly sarcastic smile, and there would be a faint twinkle in his half-closed blue eyes as though he were wondering how such a man as his friend Thomas More could have married the insignificant little wench.

  She learned a good deal about him, but the things which interested her were, Thomas said, unimportant. He was the illegitimate son of a priest, and this seemed to Jane a shameful thing; nor could she understand why he was not ashamed of it. He had become an orphan when he was very young, and when those about him had realized his unusual powers he had been sent into a convent of canons regular, but, like Thomas, he could not bring himself to take the vows. He had studied in Paris, where he had given his life to literature; and although he had suffered greatly from abject poverty and had been forced to earn his bread by becoming tutor to gentlemen, so dazzling was his scholarship that he had drawn the attention of other scholars to himself and was recognized as the greatest of them all.

  Jane, in her kitchen, giving orders to her maids, could hardly believe that she had this great man in her house and that it was her husband with whom he went walking through the streets of London.

  To some extent she was glad of this man's visit; it turned Thomas's attention from herself. They were translating something—to which they referred as Lucian—from Latin into Greek, she believed; they would spend hours together doing this work, disagreeing on many points. It seemed to Jane that learned conversation involved a good deal of disagreement. And so it happened that as Thomas must engage himself in continual conversation with Erasmus, with his work as a lawyer and with his attendances at the Parliament, he had less time to give to the tutoring of his wife.

  But she, since the smile she was sure she had received from the Prince of Wales, began to feel that perhaps she was not so foolish as she had believed herself to be. On looking back, it seemed that that smile of the Princes had held a certain appreciation. She was not so foolish that she did not realize that the Prince would look for other qualities in a woman than did Thomas; yet the approbation of such a Prince gave her new courage and confidence in herself.

  She listened more carefully to the discourses that went on about her; and when they were in English she found that they were not so dreary as she had believed they must be.

  Erasmus disliked the monks; Thomas defended them.

  Erasmus declared his intention of one day laying bare to the world the iniquitous happenings which occurred in some of the monasteries of Europe.

  He had stories to tell of the evil practices which went on in monasteries. Listening, Jane realized that there was much sin in the world.

  In some religious houses, declared Erasmus, lewdness rather than religion was the order of the day. Abortion and child murder prevailed; for how, demanded Erasmus, can these holy nuns account for the children they bring into the world? They cannot. So they strangle them as soon as they are born and bury them in the grounds of the nunneries. There are lusts of an unnatural nature between the sexes….

  Here the men became aware of Jane's attention, and they lapsed into Latin.

  Jane thought: The Prince thought me worth a glance. Perhaps I could learn a little Latin. Though I should never be a scholar I might learn a little, for if I can understand English, why not Latin?

  Erasmus spoke in English of one monastery in which there was a statue of a boy saint, hollow and so light that it could be lifted by a child of five. Yet it was said that only those without sin could lift it. Many came to see the holy statue, and rich men found that they could only lift it when they had paid heavily for the monk's intercession with the saints on their behalf Only when they had given to the monastery as much money as they could be induced to part with were they able to lift the statue. A miracle? In a way. Worked by one of the monks who, remaining out of sight, removed at the right moment that peg which held the statue on the floor. Then there was the case of the phial of blood, reputed to be that of Christ. Only those who were holy enough could see the blood; and it was deemed a sign from Heaven that a man would only be received there if the blood appeared to him. And the blood? The blood of a duck, renewed at regular intervals. And the phial? It was opaque one side. It cost much money to have the phial turned so that the blood was visible to the devout dupe.

  “These practices are wicked,” said Erasmus. “They bring much gain to the monasteries now, but they will eventually bring much loss. I am sure of it.”

  “Is it fair,” asked Thomas, “to condemn all monasteries because of the evildoing of some?”

  “It is well,” said Erasmus, “to put all under susp
icion and let them clear themselves.”

  “But should one be assumed guilty until he fails to prove his innocence?”

  “You are too lenient, friend More. The greed of these monks will prove their undoing. One day I shall show their criminal follies to the world; I shall set it out that all may read. Then, my friend, they will wish that they had led the lives of holy men, which are more comfortable than the lives of the wandering beggars they will become. What say you, Mistress More? What say you?”

  The mildly mocking eyes were turned upon her. Thomas came to her rescue. “Jane will doubtless agree with you.”

  “Then I am glad of that,” said Erasmus. “And I hope one day to convince you also. For it is the duty of us men of letters to show the worlds wrongs to the world.”

  “But we must be sure we have something good to offer in its place, before we destroy that which mayhap could be set to rights.”

  “Ah, you and your ideal state! That is still on your mind, is it? You set too high a standard. You think the world is made up of potential saints and martyrs. Does your husband talk to you, Mistress More, day in, day out, of this wonder world of his?”

  “He talks … a little,” stammered Jane. “But I am not clever. I am far from learned and there is much I do not know.”

  Thomas smiled at her, his eyes telling her not to be nervous. He rose and put an arm about her shoulders.

  “Jane is learning,” he said. “One day she will understand Latin even as you or I.”

  “I fear not,” said Jane. “I am far too foolish.”

  “Why,” said Erasmus, “so he would bother you with lessons, would he? You see, it is what I expect of him. The world is not to his liking, so he would build an ideal world. A woman is … a woman, and he would make a scholar of her!”

  “There is no reason, my dear Erasmus, why women, if taught, should not became every bit as learned as men.”

  “There is every reason.”

  “And what are these?”

  “Women are the weaker sex. Do you not know that? They are not meant to cudgel their brains. They are meant to look to the comfort of men.”

  “Nay. I do not agree. I believe that we are mistaken in not giving our girls an education equal to that which we give our boys. If we did, we should find our women able to converse with us in Latin while they cooked the dinner.”

  “And Mistress More … she is proving as apt a pupil as you once were … as I was?”

  Thomas answered in Latin, because he was aware of Jane's embarrassment. He was always acutely aware of the feelings of others, and suffered their hurt more deeply than he would his own.

  And the two men, having found a subject for discussion, would go on happily until the one led to another.

  It will not always be thus, thought Jane. One day Erasmus will go away; one day we shall visit New Hall; and one day, who knows, I may learn to converse in Latin!

  But that day must be a long way ahead, and meanwhile she must go on trying not to hate her life at The Barge.

  HAD HE been wrong to marry?

  Thomas was unsure. Sometimes he walked alone through the streets of London and his steps invariably took him northward across the City; he would find himself walking up Charter Lane until he came to the great buildings in which he had spent those four years of indecision.

  He would enter the quadrangle, then go to the chapel or the chapter house; and he would think, not without longing, of the life of solitude and meditation, life that was given up to study and contemplation, life that was unharassed by bodily needs, by the great events which were going on in the outside world.

  He thought of the rigorous way of life of the Carthusians, each with his separate house of two rooms, closet, refectory and garden, living his solitary life, speaking to his fellow monks only on feast days, fasting at least once a week, never eating flesh of any sort and thus subduing the appetites of the body; he thought of wearing the hair shirt by night so that sleep did not come easily, until eventually it was possible to indulge in sleep for only an hour each night; using the wooden pillow, dressing in the coarsest clothes to detract from any good looks a man might possess and so subdue his vanity; he thought of shutting himself away from the world, and perhaps by his example helping to lead others to a holier way of life.

  The life of retirement seemed very dear to him when he thought of his home in The Barge of Bucklersbury.

  Was Erasmus right? Was it as difficult to create an ideal woman as an ideal world? Was he a fool to try to educate Jane to his intellectual standard? Was he making an unhappy woman of her as well as a fool of himself?

  This was the state of the marriage of Jane and Thomas More when Jane found that she was going to have a child.

  A CHILD! thought Jane. This would be wonderful. A boy whom his father would make a scholar? That would delight him; that would turn his attention from his poor, simple wife. If he had a boy to whom he could teach the Latin tongue, why should he bother to teach it to Jane? And must he not be grateful to the simple woman who could give him such a blessing in life?

  But, thought Jane, if it is a girl, how happy I shall be, for then he will see that girls should not be made learned. She will teach him what I could not; and she and I will be together; she will love flowers and we will grow them together, and I shall take her to New Hall; and when I show my child to my family, then I shall know that the world was right when it said that the married state is the best state of all.

  So the child could make Jane happy as Thomas never could.

  THOMAS WAS gay.

  A child! That was the meaning of married life. That was what he wanted. What was the life to be lived in Carthusian solitude when compared with the bringing up of a child? The best tutors in England should be procured for young Master More. They would be glad to come. Dr. Lily perhaps? There was the greatest teacher in England. Then there would be Thomas More himself to guide his son.

  Those were happy days—awaiting the birth of the child. A son, of course. The firstborn should be a son. And after that, more sons and some daughters. And the daughters should be treated in the same way as the sons; no matter what Erasmus, Colet, Lily and the rest said, Thomas was convinced that women should not be denied education. His daughters should prove him to have been right.

  But for the present he could dream of his son.

  There was laughter in The Barge; and if Jane did not understand all the jokes, she laughed as though she did. She was happy and Thomas was happy to see her happy.

  Married life was the best state of all.

  HIS FRIENDS were often at the house. Jane did not care. She sat, her needle busy, making clothes for the child. Her body widened and her prestige grew. Who were these scholars? Who was Dr. Colet, with his talk of founding schools for children? It was true that he was no longer a mere vicar of Stepney but had been appointed Dean of St. Paul's itself. But what did she care for him. Who was Dr. William Lily, who had learned Latin in Italy, had traveled widely, had opened a school in London and had, like Thomas, almost become a monk? Who was this Dr. Linacre who had taught Thomas Greek? Who was the great Erasmus himself? Clever they might be, but none of them could bear a child!

  New dignity and confidence had come to Jane. She sang snatches of songs as she went about the house.

  Married life was indeed good and Jane was very happy.

  AND ONE summers day in the year 1505 Margaret came into the world.

  2

  ARGARET WAS FOUR YEARS OLD WHEN SHE FIRST KNEW the meaning of fear. Until then her world had been a merry place, ruled by the person she loved best: her father.

  The only times when she was unhappy were when he was not at home. Then the old house with its dark staircases, its odd nooks and alcoves, seemed a different place. Margaret would sit in the window seat watching for his return, looking out on the shops of the apothecaries and grocers, thinking that they were not quite the same shops which she had passed, her hand in her fathers, while he explained to her the uses of spices and
drugs, the scent of which filled the air. Nothing could be quite right in Margaret's eyes unless her father was with her.

  When she heard his laughter—and she almost always heard his laughter before she heard him speak—she would feel as though she had found the right answer to a problem which had bothered her in her lessons. She would run to him and stand before him, waiting for him to lift her up.

  He would say: “And what has my Meg learned today?”

  Eagerly she would tell him, and draw back to see the effect of her answer. Pleasing him was the most important thing in the world to her. She longed to be able to speak to him in Latin; that, she believed, would please him more than anything she could do.

  “Meg,” he once said to her when an answer she had given him had especially pleased him, “to think that when you were born we hoped for a boy!”

  “And you would rather have me than any boy, would you not, Father?”

  “Rather my girls than any boys in the world.”

  She believed that he meant: rather his Meg than any boys; but he would think of the others—Elizabeth who was three and Cecily who was two—and he would tell himself that it was not right for a father to love one child more than the others. And he was a man who must always do right; she knew that. She was a child and not good like he was; and she could love one member of her family so much that if all the affection she had for the others were rolled into one heap it would be as the moon to the great sun of her affection for him. But she would not ask him if he loved her best; she knew he did; and he knew of her love for him. That was their secret.

  Sometimes she would go into that room in which he sat with his friends, and he would take her on his knee or sit her on the table. Then the old, solemn-faced men would look at her, and her father would say: “Margaret will prove to you that I am right. She is young yet, but you will see … you will see.”

  Then he would ask her questions and she would answer him. They would say: “Can this be a maid so young?”