SIR THOMAS MORE
(From the Drawing by Hans Holbein.)
SIR THOMAS MORE AND THE
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE 1529–1535.
“Did Nature ever frame a sweeter, happier character than that of More?”—so Erasmus wrote in 1498, when Thomas More was twenty, and Erasmus, recently come to England, some ten years older. It was at the beginning of their friendship, a friendship that was to last unbroken till death,[82] and More had then passed from the household of Cardinal Morton to Oxford, and from Oxford to Lincoln’s Inn, to take up his father’s calling and follow the law as a barrister.
Twenty years later Erasmus, writing at length to Ulrich von Hutten, gives us a portrait of More in full manhood. Temperance, simplicity, human affection, good humour, independence of mind—these qualities are conspicuous.
“I never saw anyone so indifferent about food. Until he was a young man he delighted in drinking water, but that was natural to him. Yet, that he might not seem to be singular or unsociable, he would conceal his temperance from his guests by drinking the lightest beer, or often pure water, out of a pewter vessel.”
“He prefers milk diet and fruits, and is especially fond of eggs. He would rather eat corned beef and coarse bread than what are called delicacies.”
“He likes a simple dress, using neither silk nor purple nor chains of gold—except on state occasions. It is wonderful how careless he is of all that ceremony which most men identify with politeness. He neither requires it from others nor is anxious to use it himself, though when it is necessary, at interviews or banquets, he knows how to employ it. But he thinks it unmanly to waste time over such trifles.”