Ten Tudor Statesmen

by Arthur D. Innes

The cause of the resignation was Henry’s ecclesiastical policy; its immediate occasion, the submission of the clergy. The fall of Wolsey was simultaneous with the summoning of the famous “Seven Years” or “Reformation” Parliament of Henry VIII. The king had given no sort of sign of any disposition to relax the severity of his attitude towards heresy; but as the months and years passed, it became increasingly evident that his rigid orthodoxy was to be accompanied by a prolonged anti-clerical and anti-Papal campaign, the meaning whereof was to be revealed only by degrees. A twelvemonth had barely passed when the clergy were suddenly notified that they had as a body been guilty of a breach of Præmunire in accepting the Legatine authority of Wolsey, and this was followed up by requiring Convocation to affirm that the king was sole and Supreme Protector and Head of the Church. No new authority was directly claimed for the Crown—without reading between the lines; though it was tolerably clear that a good deal more might be read into the declaration. The clergy yielded. Then the Commons presented their supplication against the ordinaries. The subsequent operations showed that the Royal Supremacy was to be applied after quite a new fashion. The clergy yielded to the logic of force, and made their “submission.” More, holding that no layman, king or not, could by any possibility be rightfully head of the Church in this new sense, concluded that he had no alternative but to retire into private life.

VI
INDIGNATIO PRINCIPIS

The divorce was Henry’s first objective; it was duly pronounced by the new Archbishop in the following spring. The step, however, was intensely unpopular. The more clearly this was brought home to the king’s mind, the more anxious he became to have the avowed support of every one whose opinion carried weight. Irritation reached its climax over the affair of the “Nun of Kent,” a young woman named Elizabeth Barton, who had for some little time been posing as a sort of prophetess. How far she believed in her own imposture it is not possible to tell, but she was certainly exploited by fanatical adherents of the Papacy, and when she took to denouncing the wrath of God against the king for the divorce, there was a real risk that the superstition of the day would make her ravings dangerous. There were two men whom no persuasions had prevailed upon to pronounce in favour of the Boleyn marriage—Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More. It was found that both had had some sort of dealings with the nun. Henry determined that they should both suffer as her accomplices, unless they would openly range themselves with his supporters. But the case against More was so hopelessly futile that the king’s advisers warned him that the ex-Chancellor’s inclusion in the Bill of Attainder could only result in the Bill itself being thrown out. His name was therefore removed, to the great rejoicing of his friends. More saw farther into the king’s mind than they did. “Quod defertur non aufertur,” he said to his daughter.

He was right. The king and Cromwell were ready to go to the last extremity to force the two recalcitrants into line. An Act had been passed, fixing the succession to the throne on the children of Anne Boleyn. The ratification of the marriage had led him to remark to Roper: “God give grace, son, that these matters be not in a while confirmed with oaths.” The Act of Succession carried with it authority to impose an oath to maintain it; but the oath subsequently formulated was so worded as to bind the subscriber to the admission of the invalidity of the marriage with Katharine, and the denial of the Papal authority. The oath was proffered to More and Fisher; both refused it, though both were ready to maintain the succession. Both were sent to the Tower.

It was in fact more than doubtful whether the Act warranted the imposition of the oath in the prescribed form. The imprisonment of the culprits without trial was in any case illegal, and every attempt to persuade them to yield failed. The King always preferred to have the letter of the law on his side; and it was impossible to pretend that the refusal to subscribe involved treason. To give their destruction a legal colour, a fresh Act of Succession was passed at the end of the year (1534), expressly confirming the form of the oath; and this was accompanied by an Act of Supremacy, making it treason to refuse to affirm the Royal Supremacy. After that, it was simple enough to send More and Fisher to their doom. To deny the Supremacy was one thing; More had abstained from that. To refuse to affirm it was another; More had always done so. He maintained his position, and was condemned to death as a traitor, under the law which had been framed expressly to enmesh him. His defence was only that the law itself was invalid as being against the law of Christendom, and the liberties of the Church as affirmed in Magna Charta; which of course the judges could not admit. A week later, on July 6—the Eve of St. Thomas (of Canterbury)—1535, Sir Thomas More was beheaded.

VII
CHARACTER AND DEATH

Thanks mainly to the charm of the biography by his son-in-law, William Roper, the private life and character of Thomas More are among the most familiar to us in history. It is a life good to dwell upon, sweet and wholesome. Even in its public aspects there is but the single note that jars, his harshness—molestia he called it—towards the heretics, whom he classed with homicides and robbers: in its domestic aspects it is wholly charming. In his private capacity he could love even a heretic. Roper himself, the sympathetic husband of his favourite daughter Margaret, was bitten with Lutheran doctrines, which even the persuasiveness of his revered father-in-law could not induce him to relinquish. To the error, as he deemed it, which was not accompanied by propagandism, More was as tender as could be desired. “Meg,” he said to Mistress Roper, “I have borne long with thy husband; I have reasoned long time with him, and still given him my fatherly counsel; but I perceive none of this can call him home again. And therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, nor yet will I give him over, but I will go another way to work, and get me to God and pray for him.”

There we have the natural Thomas More, obeying the kindly dictates of his own heart, which held no rancour towards any one who had not in some sort constituted himself an enemy of the “weal publick.” Personal hostility to himself he held of no account. Shortly before he was made Lord Chancellor, an old servant of his came to him in great indignation against some merchants who had been “liberally rayling” at More. Would he not, seeing what his favour was with the king, punish these scurrilous people as they deserved? But More’s reply was a very sound piece of philosophy in his usual humorous vein—“Would you have me punish them by whome I receave more benefitt than by you all that be my friends? Lett them a God’s name speake as lewedly as they list of me, and shoote never soe many arrowes at me, so long as they do not hitt me, what am I the worse? But if they should once hitt me, then would it a little trouble me. Howbeit, I trust by Gode’s helpe, there shall none of them all be able once to touch me. I have more cause, I assure thee, to pittie them than to be angrie with them.”

We are told much of his simple piety and faith. The same ardently reverent spirit, which made him cling to the Church and uphold her authority, at one time very nearly sent him into the cloister, and did cause him to retain so much of the ascetic tradition that he wore a hair-shirt next his skin all his days; though it was only by accident that any one save his beloved “Meg,” Margaret Roper, became aware of the fact. His subjugation of the flesh was free from its too common accompaniment of arrogant or morbid austerity. It was little more than an avoidance of insidious and apparently harmless temptations, an appreciation of the unimportance of gratifying physical appetites. He reaped his reward. The sudden descent from ample wealth to a narrow income, involved in his resignation of the Chancellorship, had no terrors for him. He had tried hard fare at Oxford, less hard at New Inn, something better at Lincoln’s Inn. He and his family could very well live by the Lincoln’s Inn standard. If they found that too high for the reduced exchequer, there was the New Inn standard to fall back on, and after that the Oxford standard. And even after that “May we yeat with bagges and walletts go a-begging togither ... and soe still keepe companie merrily together.” A cheery philosophy.

Two of Roper’s anecdotes show, in the dramatic touches which bring a very living Duke of Norfolk before us, how the son-in-law profited by his father-in-law’s example; besides illustrating More’s quaint combination of seriousness and humour. The duke went to see him about his resignation, at Chelsea, and found him singing in the Church choir. “To whome after service, as they went home togither arme in arme, the duke said, ‘God body, God body, my L^d. Chancellor, a parish Clarke, a parish Clarke, you dishonour the King and his office.’ ‘Nay,’ quoth Sir Thomas Moore smilinge upon the Duke, ‘your Grace may not thinke, that the Kinge your Master and myne, will with me for serving God his Master be offended, or thereby count his office dishonoured.’” And again, when he had escaped the Bill of Attainder: “The Duke sayd unto him, ‘By the masse, Mr. Moore, it is perillous strivinge with Princes, and therefore I would wish you somewhat to inclyne to the Kinge’s pleasure. For by Gode’s body Mr. Moore Indignatio principis mors est.’ ‘Ys that all, my Lord?’ quoth he. ‘Is there in good fayth noe more difference betweene your Grace and me but that I shall dye to day and you tomorrow?’”