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

by Jean Plaidy

  Alice worried Thomas when they were alone: “Now that you have such opportunities, you must see to husbands for the girls.”

  “Why, Alice, there are some years to go yet.”

  “Not so many. Mercy, Margaret and my girl are thirteen. In a year or two it will be time to settle them.”

  “Then we may wait a year or two yet.”

  “I know. I know. And by that time who knows what honors will be heaped upon you! It is all very well to be wise and noble and to prattle in Greek, but it seems to me you would be wiser and more noble if you thought a little about your children's future.”

  He was thoughtful, and suddenly he laid his hand on her shoulder.

  “In good time,” he said, “I promise you I will do all that a father should.”

  Those were the happy days, with few cares to disturb the household. They had grown accustomed to Thomas's working with Wolsey now. He came home at every opportunity, and they would laugh at his tales of how he had managed to slip away from the Court unseen.

  At that time the only troubles were petty annoyances. There was an occasion when Thomas went to Exeter to see Vesey, the Bishop, and he came home quite put out; and while they sat at the table he told them why this was so.

  “I had some of your work in my pocket… a little piece from each of you … and the best you have ever done. Well, I could not resist the chance of showing them to the Bishop, and, to tell the truth, it was that which I was longing to do all the time I was with him. So, at the first opportunity I brought out this piece of Margaret's. He read it, and he stared at me. ‘A girl wrote this!’ he said with astonishment. ‘My daughter Margaret,’ I answered lightly. ‘And her age?’ ‘She is just thirteen.’ And, my dear one, like Reginald Pole, he would not have believed me had I not given him my word. He would not hand the piece back to me. He read it through and through again. He walked about his room in some excitement and then unlocked a box and produced this.”

  They crowded round to see what he held up.

  “What is it, Father?” asked Jack.

  “A gold coin, my son, from Portugal”

  “Is it valuable?”

  “It is indeed. The Bishop said: ‘Give this to your daughter Margaret with my compliments and good wishes, for I never saw such work from one so young. Let her keep it and look at it now and then and be encouraged to grow into that great scholar, which I know she will become.’ I begged him to take back the coin. I refused to accept the coin. But the more I refused, the more earnest he became that I should accept it.”

  Ailie said: “But why, Father, did you not wish to take it?”

  “Because, my daughter, I wished to show him the work of the others which I had in my pocket. But how could I show it? He would think I was asking for more gold coins. I have rarely been so disappointed. I felt cheated. I wanted to say: ‘But I have five clever daughters and one clever son, and I wish you to know how clever they all are.’ But how could I?”

  They all laughed, for now he looked like a child—a little boy who has been denied a treat, Margaret told him.

  “Well, here is your coin. Meg, do you not like it?”

  “No, Father. Every time I look at it I shall remember it brought disappointment to you.” Then she put her arms about his neck and kissed him. “Father, you must not be so proud of your children. Pride is a sin, you know—one of the deadly sins. I am going to write some verses for you … about a father who fell into the sin of pride.”

  “Ah, Meg, I shall look forward to hearing them. They will make up for the disappointment the Bishop gave me.”

  In the evenings they would gather together and talk and read; sometimes they would sing. Thomas had taught Alice to sing a little. She had begun under protest. She was too old, she declared, to join his school. And did the man never think of anything but learning and teaching? Latin she would not touch. As for Greek, that was more heathen than anything.

  He would put his arms about her and wheedle her gently: “Come, Alice, try these notes. You've a wonderful voice. You'll be our singing bird yet.”

  “I never heard such nonsense!” she declared. But they heard her singing to herself when she sat stitching, trying out her voice; and they knew that one day she would join in; and she did.

  Margaret felt that with the passing of that year she had grown to love her father even more—so much more, as he had said, that it seemed that previously she could hardly have loved him at all.

  His book Utopia taught her more about him. She understood from it his longing for perfection. She enjoyed discussing it with him. “My pride in you, Father, is as great as yours in your children. Methinks we are a very proud pair. And, Father, there is one thing that pleases me more then any other: That is your tolerance in this matter of religion.” She quoted: “‘King Utopus made a decree that it should be lawful for every man to favor and follow what religion he would, and that he might do the best he could to bring others to his opinion, if he did it peaceably, gently, quietly and soberly, without hasty and contentious rebuking and inveighing against others….’ I like the views of King Utopus on religion. I feel them to be right.”

  “Ah, Meg, what a wonderful world we could have if men could be induced to make it so.”

  On one occason he said to her: “My dearest daughter, there is one matter which I wish to discuss with you. It is something between us two, and I want no other to know of it.”

  “Yes, Father?”

  “You know that at one time I considered taking my vows. Meg, it is a strange thing but the monastic life still calls to me.”

  “What! You would leave us and go into solitude?”

  “Nay, never! For you are dearer to me than all the world… you … you alone—and that is not counting the rest of the family. I once said to Colet, when he was my confessor, that I was a greedy man. I wanted two lives; and it seems I am a determined man, for I want to live those two lives side by side, Meg. While I live here in the midst of you all, while I am happy among you, still I crave to be a monk. While I live with you, I am happy with you, and I believe we are meant to be happy for a saintly life need not be a gloomy one, I still continue those practices which I followed when I was in the Charterhouse.” He undid the ruff about his neck and opened his doublet.

  “Father!” she whispered. “A hair shirt!”

  “Yes, Meg. A hair shirt. It subdues the flesh. It teaches a man to suffer and endure. Meg, it is our secret.”

  “I will keep it, Father.”

  He laughed suddenly. “Will you do more than that? Will you wash it for me … and in secret?”

  “Assuredly I will.”

  “Bless you, Meg. There is none other to whom I could confide this thing and be certain of understanding.”

  “There is nothing you could not confide in me … nor I in you.”

  “Your mother, God bless her, would not understand. She would ridicule the practice. So … I thank you, daughter.”

  When she took the shirt and washed it in secret, she wept over it, seeing his blood upon it. Sometimes she marveled to see him so merry and to know he was wearing that painful thing. But he never gave a sign to the others of the pain he was inflicting on himself. If he was a monk at heart, he was a very merry monk.

  There was great excitement when the Greek Testament, which Erasmus had edited and reconstructed, was received into the Mores' home. Thomas read it aloud to the family. Alice sat listening, although she could not understand it, her fingers busy with her needle.

  Those were happy days. Looking back, a long time afterward, Margaret realized that the change came from an unexpected quarter, as such changes usually do. A German monk named Martin Luther had during that eventful year denounced the practices of the monks and the Catholic Church, as Erasmus had denounced them before him; but whereas Erasmus mildly disapproved, this man was bold and passionate in his denunciation; and whereas Erasmus had taken refuge behind his scholarship and attacked with an almost lighthearted cynicism, the German monk did so with p
assionate indignation; whereas Erasmus had written for the initiated, Luther was fulminating for the multitude.

  The climax came when this man Luther nailed to the door of a Wittenberg church his ninety-five theses against Indulgences. And when he did this he had fired the first shot in the battle of the Reformation which was to shake Europe, divide the Church, and plunge the world which called itself Christian into bloodshed and terror.

  Men and women began to take sides; they were for the Pope or for Martin Luther. Erasmus crept back to his desk; he was no fighter. It was said that he had laid the egg which Martin Luther hatched; but he wished to be remote from conflict; he wished to live peaceably with his books.

  But as Margaret saw it, her father was of a different nature; he was a man with firm opinions. He could agree with much that Erasmus had written, but if it was a matter of taking sides he would be on the side of the old religion.

  But that had not yet come to pass.

  The happy evenings continued, broken only by the shock produced by the death of Dean Colet, who was struck down by the plague. They wept sincerely for the loss of this old friend.

  But, as Thomas said, he had had a good life. He had seen his dearest wish realized—and what more could a man ask? His school was flourishing under the headmastership of William Lily; and his life had not been an idle nor a short one.

  Margaret marveled afterward that she had not paid more heed to the rumblings of that storm, which was breaking over Europe. It was due, of course, to Willam Roper, who was now seeking her company on every occasion, asking her to walk with him alone, for, he declared, conversation between two people could be so much more interesting in private than in a crowd.

  There was a further excitement. One day a very handsome young man came to the house to see Thomas. He was a rich young courtier named Giles Allington, and Ailie, who had received him with her mother, seemed much amused by him, although she did not allow him to know that.

  Ailie, when she wished, could be quite charming. She was the prettiest of all the girls, golden-haired, blue-eyed, tall and graceful. She took great pains to preserve her beauty and was for ever looking into her mirror. In vain had Thomas teased her. Often he repeated to her those epigrams which he had translated with William Lily. The one which concerned Lais, who dedicated her mirror to Venus, was a gentle warning. “For,” said Lais, “the woman I am, I do not wish to see; the woman I was, I cannot.”

  “And that, my dear daughter, is what happens to women who attach great importance to beauty, for beauty is like an unfaithful lover; once gone, it cannot be recalled.”

  But Ailie merely laughed and kissed him in her attractive way. “Ah, dearest Father, but no woman believes her lover is going to be unfaithful while he is faithful; and as you yourself have said, why should we worry about tomorrows evils? Does not the Bible say, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof?’”

  Thomas could not resist her charms, and for all that she set such store by those pleasures which he deemed to hold no real value, for once he found she could score over him with her feminine logic.

  So Ailie continued to make lotions for the freshening of her skin, and kept her hands soft and supple, avoiding any household tasks which made them otherwise. As for Alice, she looked the other way when Ailie refused to do such tasks. If Alice wished to see all the girls married well—which she certainly did—she wished Ailie to make the most brilliant marriage of all.

  So came Giles Allington, heir to a rich estate and title, with the manners of the Court, and jewels in his doublet; and for all that he was a court gallant, he could not hide his admiration for Ailie as she concealed her interest in him.

  “Where she learned such tricks I do not know,” said Cecily wistfully.

  “ 'Twas not in this house,” said Elizabeth.

  “There are some who are born with such knowledge, I believe,” said Mercy. “And Ailie is one of them.”

  So it seemed, for Ailie grew very gay after the visit of Giles Allington, and although she was interested in Master Allington's lands and titles rather than in himself, she grew prettier every day.

  “She blooms,” said Cecily, “as they say girls bloom when they are in love.”

  “She is in love,” said Margaret. “For a girl can be in love with good fortune as well as with a man.”

  Giles Allington came often to the house in Bucklersbury; and Alice and her daughter talked continually of the young man. Alice declared herself pleased that Thomas had won the King's favor and that he was now a man of no small importance. Will Roper was of good family, and he was as a son of the house; John Clement was slowly rising in the service of the Cardinal, and he looked upon this family as his own; and now the handsome and wealthy Giles Allington came to visit them. They were rising in the world.

  Life went on pleasantly in this way for many months.

  When the King and his lords went to France to entertain and be entertained by the French and their King with such magnificence and such great cost that this venture was afterward called “The Field of the Cloth of Gold,” Thomas went with the party on the business of the King and the Cardinal.

  And it was at this time that William Roper declared his feelings for Margaret.

  Margaret was now fifteen—small and quiet. She knew that— apart from her father—she was the most learned member of the family; but she had always seen herself as the least attractive, except in the eyes of her father.

  Ailie was a beauty; Mercy had a quiet charm which was the essence of her gravity, a gentleness, the soothing quality of a doctor—and that was attractive, Margaret knew; Elizabeth, now that she was growing up, showed herself possessed of a merry, sparkling wit which, like her fathers, never wounded; Cecily was pretty and gay; Jack was jolly and full of fun. And I, pondered Margaret, I have none of their charms, for although when I have a pen in my hands, words come quickly, they do not always do so in conversation, except perhaps with Father. I most certainly lack Ailie's beauty; I am solemn rather than gay like Jack, who says things which, by their very simplicity, make us laugh.

  It had always seemed to Margaret, on those rare occasions when her thoughts unwittingly strayed to the subject, that she would never marry. This did not perturb her for she had had no wish to do so.

  And now … William Roper.

  He asked her to talk with him, and they went into Goodman's Fields, where she had so often walked with her father. “It is not easy,” said Will, as they walked through the grass, “to talk in the house.”

  “We are such a big family.”

  “The happiest in London, I trow, Margaret. It was a good day for me when I joined it.”

  “Father would be pleased to hear you say that.”

  “I should not need to say it. I'll swear he knows it.”

  “ 'Tis pleasant for me to hear you say it, Will.”

  “Margaret… tell me this … how do you feel about me?”

  “Feel about you? Oh … I am glad that you are with us, if that is what you mean.”

  “I do, Margaret. Those words make me very happy … happier than if anyone else in the world had said them.”

  She was astonished, and he went on quickly: “You are a strange girl, Margaret. I confess you alarm me a little. You know more Greek and Latin than any other girl in England.”

  She was silent, thinking of Ailie, in a new blue gown, exclaiming at her as she sat over her books: “Latin … Greek … astronomy … mathematics…. There is more to be learned from life, Mistress Margaret, than you can find in those books!”

  Ailie was right. Ailie had been born with that special knowledge.

  “Margaret,” went on Will, “I… I am not so alarmed by you as I once was, for there are times when you seem to me like a very young girl.” He turned to her smiling. “You know what my feelings are for you, Margaret?”

  “Why yes, Will. You like me … you like Father … you like us all.”

  “But I like you better than any of them.”

  “Not b
etter than Father!”

  “Oh sweet Meg, one of the things I love so much in you is your love for your father. I admire him more than any man I know; but Margaret—do not be shocked—I admire his daughter more.”

  She laughed to hide her embarrassment. “That sounds like one of Fathers puns.”

  “I must tell it to him.”

  “Nay, if you do … he will know …”

  “Oh Meg, dost think he does not know already?”

  “But… why should he?”

  “I think I must have made my feelings clear to all except you, so it is high time that you began to understand me. Margaret, I want you to marry me.”

  “But… I am not going to marry.”

  “You are young yet. I doubt your father would think it seemly for us to marry for a while. But you are fourteen…. Perhaps in a year or so …”

  “But, Will, I had decided I should never marry. And you have disturbed me. It seems now that I shall not be able to think of you as I do of the others, like John Clement and Giles Allington.”

  “But I do not wish you to think of me as you think of them. Oh, Margaret, you have not grown up yet. You have been so busy being a scholar that you have not yet become a woman. You could be both. That is what I wish, Meg: for you to be both. Say no more now. Think of this matter—but not too much so that it oppresses you. Become accustomed to the idea of marriage. Think of it, Meg. It is not that I wish to take you from your father. I do not. I would never take you from him, because I have seen that love which is between you, and it is a rare love. I know that. Nay. I am sure he would wish us to live under this roof… here as we do now You would be my wife. That would be the only difference. I beg of you, think of this matter. Promise me you will think of it, Margaret.”

  “I… I will…. But I do not think I shall want to marry.”

  They walked back to the house slowly and thoughtfully.

  THE YEAR 1521 provided a turning point in the lives of Margaret and her father.

  Thomas was drawn more and more into Court business. To Margaret, from whom he hid nothing, he said: “I feel like a fly in a web. Mayhap at one time I might have made a mighty effort… I might have escaped… but now the sticky threads hold me fast.”