Today we know Sir Thomas More primarily as the author of Utopia, and as one of the more famous martyrs of Henry VIII’s reign. The popular image is of a man – principled, steadfast, courageous – who placed his own conscience above his king’s demands.
Yet if you were to ask More’s contemporaries to describe him, their words would be as conflicted and contradictory as the man himself. He was a brilliant scholar of the Renaissance who died rather than betray the Catholic church. As a young man, he seriously contemplated joining the priesthood, only to become one of the most successful politicians of his time. And he was a father who insisted his three daughters have the same education as his son. Perhaps more than any other courtier of Henry’s reign, More embodied the searching, troubled spirit of the early 16th century.
After his death, and for centuries thereafter, Sir Thomas More was known as the most famous victim of Henry VIII’s tyranny. It was More’s execution – far more than those of Anne Boleyn or Thomas Cromwell or Margaret Pole – which established the king’s reputation for capricious cruelty. This was partly due to More’s intellectual prominence; he was perhaps the most famous Englishman on the continent, with a wide and varied correspondence. It was also due to Henry’s deep and unfeigned friendship with More. (We should note, however, that More – brilliant and perceptive – was never especially comfortable in his king’s good graces. “If my head should win him a castle in France,” he told his son-in-law in 1525, “it should not fail to go.”)
More’s beginnings, however, hardly predicted his spectacular career. In Utopia, he identified himself as a “citizen of London”, and it was in London that he was born on 7 February 1477, the only surviving son of John More and his first wife, Agnes Graunger. John More was a successful lawyer who was later knighted and made a judge of the King’s Bench; he was prosperous enough to send his son to London’s best school, St Anthony’s at Threadneedle Street. And he was well-connected enough to later secure his son’s appointment as household page to John Morton, the archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England. There is an apocryphal story that Morton predicted his bright and lively page would grow into a “marvelous man”.
Sir Thomas More
More’s adolescent years were spent under the reign of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. And his patron Morton was infamous as the architect of that king’s very successful – and subsequently very unpopular – tax policy. Morton’s tax philosophy was a marvel of inescapable logic: “If the subject is seen to live frugally, tell him because he is clearly a money saver of great ability, he can afford to give generously to the King. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure.” And while this reasoning worked to replenish the royal treasury for Henry VII, it also provided the second Tudor king with a chance to curry popular favor when he – in one of his first acts as Henry VIII – imprisoned and later executed Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, who were Morton’s (and his father’s) tax collectors.
However, we should not assume that Morton’s politics had any profound impact upon More. Quite the opposite. Both men were enthusiastic Humanist scholars, but they parted ways with regard to the king’s prerogative. In 1504, More was elected to Parliament and one of his first acts was to oppose Henry VII’s request of a “grant” of three-fifteenths. It was More’s impassioned speeches against this large and unjust burden that made the king reduce it by more than two thirds. And the king was not pleased with the young lawyer; he promptly imprisoned More’s father in the Tower until he paid a substantial fine.
That was the beginning of Thomas More’s public career, and it was a telling one. More’s connection to Morton had earlier secured him admittance to Oxford, where he studied for two years, mastering Greek and Latin with “an instinct of genius”, and studying a wide variety of subjects, including music. His father recalled him to London and he trained as a law student at New Inn and later Lincoln’s Inn. The governors of Lincoln admired him enough to appoint him lecturer on law for three consecutive years. More’s brilliance of mind and curious, kindly character gained him many friends and admirers. Yet even as his legal future seemed assured, More was deeply conflicted about his future. He had long felt a calling to the priesthood. Now he decided to seriously test his religious convictions.
He moved into the Carthusian monastery adjoining Lincoln’s Inn and participated in the monks’ way of life as much as he could, while still pursuing his legal career. His father was not supportive, but More was fully prepared to be disowned rather than disobey God’s will. To that end, he spent the next three years in study and prayer, wearing a hair shirt next to his skin (a practice he never abandoned), and struggling to reconcile his genuine religious fervor with the demands of the outside world. In the end, he decided, in the words of his friend Erasmus, “to be a chaste husband rather than an impure priest.”
It should be noted that More’s affinity for the monastic life never left him, despite his later marriages, family, and career. Even as he secretly wore a hair shirt, he openly and consistently fasted, prayed, and maintained a relatively modest household. When he later built his ‘Great House’ in Chelsea, its rooms were specifically designed to encourage quiet study and prayer. More’s piety was the defining aspect of his character; even as the circumstances of his life changed, it remained constant and unyielding.
His decision to become a lay Christian now made, More quickly married. His choice was Jane Colt, the eldest daughter of a gentleman farmer. His son-in-law William Roper, whose biography of More is one of the first biographies ever written, tells us that More chose his wife out of pity: “[A]lbeit his mind most served him to the second daughter, for that he thought her the fairest and best favored, yet when he considered that it would be great grief and some shame also to the eldest to see her younger sister preferred before her in marriage, he then, of a certain pity, framed his fancy towards” Jane. True or not, the marriage proved to be happy and fruitful, though of brief duration. After bearing More three daughters (Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely) and one son (John), Jane died in 1511. More later memorialized her as “uxorcula Thomae Mori”; her gentle personality is attested to by Erasmus’s letters, as he was a frequent visitor to More’s home. The two men had first met in 1497 and remained close friends until More’s death.
More’s wife had been – like most women of her time – ill-educated, and during their brief marriage, he taught her Latin and other subjects. She was an apt enough pupil to later converse with visitors in Latin. And More determined that their daughters would receive the same education as their son. The symbolism and importance of this decision cannot be underestimated. More’s eldest daughter Margaret would become the first non-royal Englishwoman to publish a work in translation.
More was thus in his early thirties, successful, happily married, when the tax collectors Dudley and Empson were beheaded on Tower Hill at the command of the new king, Henry VIII. As a newly elected representative for London in Parliament and an undersheriff in the city, he was deeply involved in public life. He worked eight years as undersheriff and proved himself an impartial judge and able administrator. Contemporary chroniclers often referred to him as a friend of the poor. The one potentially scandalous act of his life was his quick second marriage to a widow seven years his senior, Alice Middleton. They married less than a month after Jane Colt’s death and More had to seek special dispensation from the church. It was granted, and the wealthy widow became stepmother to his four children, and More stepfather to her daughter and son. It proved to be another happy marriage, though More’s friends remarked upon Alice’s sharp tongue and occasionally brusque ways. Perhaps the contrast with the quiet, gentle Jane was too striking. For More’s part, he undoubtedly appreciated his second wife’s superb housekeeping skills for they allowed him the freedom to pursue his increasingly successful career.
It is at this moment that we must step back and consider the England in which More now lived. There was a new king, – a handsome, athletic young man who had once been destined for the church. But his older brother perished and the younger brother was crowned at 18 years old, and quickly wed his brother’s widow. She was the Spanish princess, Katharine of Aragon, one of the daughters of the Catholic rulers of Spain. She was a devout and learned young woman, and though we primarily know her as the older wife who could not bear Henry his desired son and heir, she was once young and pretty and well-liked. Henry VIII’s later statements to the contrary, his marriage to Katharine began happily and continued so for some years. There was a feeling in England that a new era had begun.
Henry VIII was a Catholic ruler, and enjoyed friendly relations with the papacy until he sought to divorce Katharine. But that was years in the future. As a young king, he was named “Defender of the Faith” by the pope for defending the church against Protestant heresy; his Lord Chancellor was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. And because of his early education in religious matters, Henry was no mere spectator in religious debate.
For these reasons, More had no cause to suspect his monarch of anything less than fealty to their shared faith. And as his own reputation grew in London, he attracted the notice of the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey. In May 1515, More was sent to Bruges as part of a delegation arranged by Wolsey to revise an Anglo-Flemish commercial treaty. It was during this trip that he began to write Utopia, his most famous work. It was More who coined the term, a pun on the Greek words for ‘no place’ and ‘good place’. More had already begun writing his History of King Richard III as well; it is considered the first masterpiece of English history and is wholly pro-Tudor. Its influence upon William Shakespeare’s Richard III is immense.
Utopia is a complex and witty work which describes a city-state ruled entirely by reason. It is meant to contrast with the reality of European rule, divided by ideologies and greed and self-interest. More essentially argued that communal life is the only way to end the ill effects of self-interest on politics. The work was a marvel of learning and wit and wholly original; it was soon translated throughout the Continent and its author hailed as one of the foremost Humanist thinkers. It is no exaggeration to state that its publication ensured More a stature that no other Englishman of his time enjoyed.
Cardinal Wolsey – and the king – needed no further reason to bring More into the king’s service. His work at Bruges and, later, Calais, as well as his continuing duties as undersheriff in London, were clear evidence of his skill and popularity. More’s letters indicate that he was not particularly keen to enter royal service. This was not due to any dislike of the king. Rather, he felt that he could be more effective in the city itself, not closeted away amongst the nobles and councilors of Henry’s court. But polite prevarications only worked for so long and soon More was a genuine courtier, with all its attendant duties – and benefits.
He was first appointed a Privy Councilor and accompanied Wolsey to an important diplomatic mission to Europe. He impressed the cardinal enough that he was knighted upon his return and made under-treasurer of the Exchequer. More importantly, he developed a personal relationship with Henry VIII, and because known as the king’s “intellectual courtier”. Soon he was acting as Henry’s personal secretary and adviser, delivering official speeches, greeting foreign envoys, drafting treaties and other public documents, and composing the king’s responses to Wolsey’s dispatches. More also engaged in a public war of words – on the king’s behalf – with Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation.
In April 1523, he was elected speaker of the House of Commons. His position at court meant that he was to be the king’s advocate before parliament. But to More’s credit, he made an impassioned plea for greater freedom of speech in parliament. Such was his reputation that the the great universities – Oxford and Cambridge – made him high steward. His personal life remained placid and content. His eldest daughter Margaret married the lawyer William Roper in 1521, and More continued his practice of prayer and supervision of learning at his home.
His home at Chelsea was as close as Tudor England would come to an 18th century French salon. Intellectuals from England and Europe visited; More was a generous and kind host. He collected books and rare objects, but he gave away his possessions freely as well. He had a true gift for friendship and inspired deep loyalty amongst his family and friends. Among his guests, in fact, was the king himself. He would arrive unbidden, to either eat with the family or walk in the garden with More, his arm slung casually about More’s shoulders.
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