“He seems born and fashioned for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices will not brook correction, rather than a sudden breaking off, he gradually relaxes the intimacy and quietly drops it. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in behalf of his friends. So polite, and so sweet-mannered is he in company, that no one is too melancholy to be cheered by him. Since boyhood he has always so delighted in merriment that it seems to be part of his nature; yet his merriment is never turned into buffoonery.”
“No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one is less eccentric.”
The friendship of More and Erasmus had ripened in those twenty years. In More’s house, and at his instigation, Erasmus had written the Praise of Folly,[83] and the great scholar watched with warm interest the famous career and the brilliant character of the man he loved so heartily.
More was already high in Henry VIII.’s favour when Erasmus could write that no one was less led by the opinions of the crowd, and more than once his independence and courage of mind had been proved in the twenty years that had passed.
Drawn at first to the monastic life, More had spent four years (1500–1504) with the Carthusians in Smithfield, “frequenting daily their spiritual exercises, but without any vow.” Then it is plain to him that his vocation is not the priesthood, but marriage and public life, and he leaves the Charterhouse, and in 1505 is married and in Parliament.[84] But all his life the devotion to religion, and to the services of the Church, remain in More, and he is ascetic in the mortifications of the body till the spirit and the will ride supreme.
In the House of Commons More stood out against the exactions of Henry VII., and at once fell under the king’s displeasure.
More’s son-in-law, Roper, tells the story:
“In the time of King Henry the Seventh, More was made a burgess of the Parliament wherein was demanded by the king (as I have heard reported) about three-fifteenths, for the marriage of his eldest daughter, that then should be Scottish Queen; at the last debating whereof he made such arguments and reasons against, that the king’s demands were thereby overthrown. So that one of the king’s privy chamber being present thereat, brought word to the king out of the Parliament house that a beardless boy had disappointed all his purpose. Whereupon the king, conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied until he had some way revenged it. And forasmuch as he, nothing have, nothing could lose, his Grace devised a causeless quarrel against his father, keeping him in the Tower till he had made him pay a hundred pounds fine.... Had not the king soon after died, Sir Thomas More was determined to have gone over sea, thinking that being in the king’s indignation, he could not live in England without great danger.”
The grant from parliament to the king was reduced from £113,000 to £30,000 by More’s action; and if this action brought royal anger, it won for More the confidence of his fellow-citizens in London, so that we see him in the second year of Henry VIII. under-sheriff for the city, and according to Erasmus and Roper, the most popular lawyer of the day. With all his legal business, and good income, More is never anxious after money. “While he was still dependent on his fees, he gave to all true and friendly counsel, considering their interests rather than his own; he persuaded many to settle with their opponents as the cheaper course. If he could not induce them to act in that manner—for some men delight in litigation—he would still indicate the method that was least expensive.”[85]
More’s rising reputation was bound to attract the notice of Henry VIII., for the king was alert in the early years of his reign to get good men at the court, and Wolsey, who had become chancellor on Archbishop Warham’s retirement in 1515, was anxious to enlist More in the royal service. The court had no attractions for More, his embassies to Flanders and Calais, to settle trade disputes and difficulties with France, wearied him, and in 1516 he was engaged in finishing his Utopia. According to Roper, it was More’s independence of mind that made the king force office at court upon him. A ship belonging to the pope, which had put into Southampton, was claimed by Henry as a forfeiture. More argued the case so clearly that the commissioners decided in the pope’s favour, and the king at once declared he must have More in his service.