Then for the next twelve years Sir Thomas More enjoyed the royal favour and friendship. His promotion was rapid. Secretary of state, master of requests when the king was travelling, privy councilor, under-treasurer, or chancellor of the exchequer—all these offices were filled. In 1521 More was knighted, in 1523 he was speaker of the House of Commons, and in 1525 chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Erasmus writes to Ulrich von Hutten in 1519 in praise of More’s public work: “In serious matters no man’s advice is more prized, and when the king wishes for recreation no man’s conversation is more entertaining. Often there are matters deep and involved that demand a grave and prudent judge, and More unravels these questions in a way that gives satisfaction to both sides. Yet no one has ever prevailed on him to receive a gift for his decision. Happy that commonwealth where kings appoint such officials! No pride has come to him with his high estate. With all the weight of state affairs he remembers his old friends, and returns from time to time to the books he loves so well. Whatever influence has come to him with his high office, whatever favour he enjoys with his wealthy king, he uses all for the good of the state and for the assistance of his friends. Ever fond of conferring benefits and wonderfully prone to pity, his disposition has grown with his power of indulging it. Some he helps with money, to others he gives protection, and others he recommends for promotion. When he can help in no other way he does it by his advice: no one is sent away dejected. You might well say that he had been appointed the public guardian of the distressed and needy.”
If the cares of state did not cut off Sir Thomas More from assisting old acquaintances, they made great inroads into the home life he loved so well. He had married again on the death of his first wife, and his letters to his children, especially to his “most dear daughter, Margaret”—Roper’s wife—are full of tenderness. He is anxious about the education of his children, and rejoices that his daughter shares his love for books. We find him writing to Margaret Roper just after her marriage in 1522:—
“I am therefore delighted to read that you have made up your mind to give yourself diligently to philosophy, and to make up by your earnestness in future for what you have lost in the past by neglect. My darling Margaret, I indeed have never found you idling, and your unusual learning in almost every kind of literature shows that you have been making active progress. So I take your words as an example of the great modesty that makes you prefer to accuse yourself falsely of sloth rather than to boast of your diligence, unless your meaning is that you will give yourself so earnestly to study that your past history will seem like indolence by comparison.... Though I earnestly hope that you will devote the rest of your life to medical science and sacred literature, so that you may be well furnished for the whole scope of human life, which is to have a healthy soul in a healthy body, and I know that you have already laid the foundations of these studies, and there will be always opportunity to continue the building; yet I am of opinion that you may with great advantage give some years of your yet flourishing youth to humane letters and liberal studies.... It would be a delight, my dear Margaret, to me to converse long with you on these matters, but I have just been interrupted and called away by the servants, who have brought in supper. I must have regard to others, else to sup is not so sweet as to talk with you.”[86]
The close friend of Erasmus and Dean Colet, an accepted champion of the New Learning, More was naturally enthusiastic for education—for girls as for boys. He had written to Gunnell, for a time the tutor of his family:—
“Though I prefer learning, joined with virtue, to all the treasures of kings, yet renown for learning, when it is not united with a good life, is nothing else than splendid and notorious infamy: this would be especially the case in a woman.... Since erudition in woman is a new thing and a reproach to the sloth of men, many will gladly assail it and impute to literature what is really the fault of nature, thinking from the vices of the learned to get their own ignorance esteemed as virtue. On the other hand if a woman (and this I desire and hope with you as the teacher for all my daughters) to eminent virtue should add an outwork of even moderate skill in literature, I think she will have more real profit than if she had obtained the riches of Crœsus and the beauty of Helen.”
In this letter More goes on to speak of the profit of learning and the happiness of those who give themselves to it—“possessing solid joy they will neither be puffed up by the empty praises of men nor dejected by evil tongues.”
“These I consider the genuine fruits of learning, and though I admit that all literary men do not possess them, I would maintain that those who give themselves to study with such views (avoiding the precipices of pride and haughtiness, walking in the pleasant meadows of modesty, not dazzled at the sight of gold) will easily attain their end and become perfect. Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates from those of beasts; both therefore are equally suited for those studies for which reason is perfectioned, and becomes fruitful like a ploughed land on which the seed of good lessons has been sown.”
This strong love for wise learning, laying emphasis on a complete education—the training in virtue no less than the knowledge of letters—had its roots in More’s character. The “genuine fruits of learning” ripen in his life and death. His wide toleration, which will blame no man for not taking the path he trod to martyrdom, is coupled inextricably with a refinement of conscience that cannot be sullied by a denial of his faith. The freedom of conscience Thomas More claimed for himself he most willingly allows to others. Just as the education he valued for himself he extends to all his children.
Standing largely aloof from the violent controversies Luther had started, hating the bitter intolerance and savage abuse of theological strife, refusing to be drawn into the deadly discussion of Henry VIII.’s divorce, Sir Thomas More is content to live in loyal devotion to his religion and to the service of the state, if haply he may. And when this is denied him he is content to die, retaining his tolerant good-humour and the love of his kind to the end, and without resentment at his fate.