‘Evil May-day.’
In the spring of 1517, a frenzy more dangerous than that in which the men of Coventry indulged had seized the London apprentices. Not wholly without excuse, they had risen in arms against the merchant strangers, who were very numerous in London, and to some of whom commercial privileges and licenses had, perhaps, been too freely granted by a minister anxious to increase his revenue. Thus had resulted the riots of ‘the evil May-day,’ and More had some part to play in the restoration of order in the city.
More’s embassy to Calais.
Then, in August 1517, he was sent on an embassy to Calais with Wingfield and Knight. Their mission ostensibly was to settle disputes between French and English merchants, but probably its real import was quite as much to pave the way for more important negotiations.
Henry VIII. meditates giving up his French conquests.
No sooner had English statesmen opened their eyes to the fact that Maximilian had been playing into the hands of the French King against the interests of England, than, with the natural perversity of men who had no settled principles to guide their international policy, they began themselves, out of sheer jealousy, once more to court the favour of the sovereign against whom they had so long been fruitlessly plotting. They began secretly to seek to bring about a French alliance with England, which should out-manœuvre the recent treaty of the Emperor with France. Thus, by a sudden and unlooked-for turn in continental politics, was brought about the curious fact that, within a few months of the publication of the ‘Utopia,’ in which More had advocated such a policy, the surrender of Henry’s recent conquests in France was under discussion. By February in the following year (1518) not only was Tournay restored to France, but a marriage had been arranged between the infant Dauphin of France and the infant Princess Mary of England. This of course involved the abandonment, at all events for a time, of Henry’s personal claims on the crown of France.[677] What share More had in the conversion of the King to this new policy remains untold; but it is remarkable that within so short a time his Utopian counsels should have been so far practically followed, and that he himself should have been chosen as one of the ambassadors to Calais to prepare the way for it.
More’s Utopian counsels followed.
It would be impossible here to enter into a detailed examination of the political relations of England; suffice it to say, that a pacific policy seems to have gained the upper hand for the moment, and that even Wolsey himself seems to have admitted the necessity of so far following More’s Utopian counsels as to cut down the annual expenditure of the kingdom, and to husband her resources.[678]
It may have been only a momentary lull in the King’s stormy passion for war, but it lasted long enough to admit of the renewal of the King’s endeavours to draw More into his service, and of More’s yielding at last to Royal persuasions.
More drawn into court.