The century of Columbus

by James J. Walsh

It would seem as though after this there ought to be no difficulty for More. If the bishops and the clergy of the country were willing to accept the King as the head of the Church, why should a layman hesitate? And yet More hesitated. He refused to take the oath of supremacy. It was represented to him that to refuse was dangerous. On the other hand, it was shown to him, and it must have been very clear to himself, that if he took it he would obtain great favor with the King, and that indeed there was almost nothing that he might not aspire to. Lord Chancellor he was, but ennoblement and enrichment would surely come to him. The King had always thought much of him, was now particularly irritated by his refusal, but would be won to him completely if he yielded. It seemed not unlikely that a peerage would be his at once, and [{237}] that higher degrees of nobility were only a question of time. Times were disturbed, and he might be able to do much good, certainly he could not expect that other advisers near the King would do anything but yield to the monarch's whims.

Here was a dilemma. On the one hand, honor, power, wealth and the favor of his King, as well as the esteem of his generation; on the other hand, disgrace, impoverishment of his family by attainder, imprisonment, probably death. More calmly weighed it all and decided in favor of following his conscience, no matter what it might cost him. He did so entirely on his own strength of character and without any encouragement from others. On the contrary, there was every discouragement.

Having made his decision he did not proceed to think that everyone else ought to have seen it the same way, but on the contrary he felt for the others, realized all the difficulties and calmly recognized that they might well be in good faith. When the decision of his judges that he must die was announced to him, he told them very calmly that he thanked them for their decision and said that he hoped to meet them in heaven. The passage is well worth reading in More's own quaint, simple, forcible language.

It is probable that there has never been an occasion in the world's history when the obligation of following conscience has been more clearly seen and more devotedly acknowledged than when More went to death for what was called treason, because he refused to take the oath that the King of England was the head of the Church as well as of the State. Every human motive was urgent against his following of conscience in the matter. He stood almost entirely alone. Bishop Fisher of Rochester, it is true, was with him, but More stated in one of his letters that even had the bishop found some way to compound with his conscience and take the oath as so many other upright and conscientious men, as they thought themselves and others thought them, had done, he did not feel that he could take it.

It was urged upon him that the very fact that he stood alone showed that there must be something wrong about his [{238}] method of reasoning and his mode of coming to a decision in the matter. All the bishops of England had consented to take the oath. Some of them, it is true, had solaced their conscience by putting in an additional phrase, "as far as the law of God allowed," or something of that kind, but most of them had taken it without any such modification, and indeed, as a rule, the Commissioners who had administered the oath refused to accept it unless taken literally and without additions.

Perhaps the hardest trial for More's constancy of purpose came from his own family. When he was imprisoned they were allowed to see him frequently, with the deliberate idea that they would surely break down his scruples. His wife absolutely refused to see why anyone should set himself up in opposition to all the rest of the kingdom and think that his conscience should be followed no matter what happened, though so many other people's consciences were apparently at ease in the matter. As she said to him over and over again, did he think that he was better than the Bishops of England and the priests who had taken the oath, and did he set himself up as the only one who properly understood and could see the right in the question? Some of her expressions are typical of women in her position and show us how little human nature has changed in these four hundred years. More simply laughed at her quietly and gently and, after explaining his position a few times from varying standpoints, refused to argue with her, but occupied the time of her visits with talk about other matters as far as possible. It was not hard to divert her mind, as a rule, to any other subject, for she did not see very deeply into anything and, above all, had no hint at all of the serious condition of affairs in England.

His daughter Margaret, of whom he thought so much, was a much more dangerous temptress than Mistress More, though of course she did not think of herself in any such role. She has told the story in a letter to the Lady Allington, More's step-daughter, for his second wife had been previously married. Lady Allington had written to Margaret a long letter, in which she related an interview that she had had with Audley, the Lord Chancellor, who had promised to help [{239}] More, though he declared that the remedy was in More's own hands, if he would put aside his foolish scruples. Audley had said to Lady Allington that "he marvelled that More was so obstinate in his own conceit in matter that no one scrupled save the blind Bishop [Fisher] and he." Always, when wife or daughter came to see him, they first prayed together, and I may say that the prayers were not short, for they included the Seven Penitential Psalms as well as other formal prayers. When Margaret approached the subject of Lady Allington's letter and how More's obstinacy was alienating his friends, smiling, he called her mistress Eve, the temptress, and asked if his daughter Allington had played the serpent with her "and with a letter set you at work to come tempt your father again and for the favor that you bear him labor to make him swear against his conscience and so send him to the devil."

It was at this time that he emphasized very much the fact that everyone must make up his conscience for himself. We have the verbatim report of one of his conversations with his daughter that emphasized this position very strongly:

"Verily, daughter, I never intend to pin my soul at another man's back, not even the best man that I know this day living. For I know not whither he may hap to carry it. There is no man living of whom, while he liveth, I may make myself sure. Some may do for favor, and some may do for fear, and so might they carry my soul a wrong way. And some might hap to frame himself a conscience, and think that if he did it for fear God would forgive it. And some may peradventure think that they will repent and be shriven thereof, and that so shall God remit it to them. And some may be, peradventure, of the mind that, if they say one thing and think the while contrary, God more regardeth the heart than the tongue; and that, therefore, their oath goeth upon what they think and not upon what they say. But in good faith, Margaret, I can use no such ways in so great a matter."

In spite of this, Margaret still urged that he was not asked to swear against his conscience in order to keep others company, but instructed to reform his conscience by the [{240}] considerations that such and so many men consider the oath lawful, and even a duty since Parliament required it.