The courage of the sage never failed Sir Thomas More in his public work. As “a beardless boy” he had resisted in parliament the king’s extortions, as speaker of the House of Commons he protected the privileges of the commons. Wolsey had come down to the House with all his train to command a subsidy, but no word was uttered in reply to his address. In vain Wolsey appealed for an answer, Sir Thomas More could only declare that the speaker, then the mouthpiece of the commons, had nothing to say till he had heard the opinion of the House. “Whereupon, the cardinal, displeased with Sir Thomas More that had not in this parliament in all things satisfied his desire, suddenly arose and departed.”
High as More stood at that time in the affection of Henry, Sir Thomas knew the king, and the nature of the favour of princes. Roper relates that when he offered his congratulations, at the time of the appointment to the chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, More answered, “I may tell thee I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France (for then was there war betwixt us) it should not fail to go.”
Aware of Henry’s character, More yet had no choice but to accept the lord chancellorship from the king on Wolsey’s fall in 1529. It was no matter for personal satisfaction, and More’s reply to the Duke of Norfolk was substantially the same as his previous answer to Roper: “Considering how wise and honourable a prelate had lately before taken so great a fall, he had no cause to rejoice in his new dignity.” Erasmus wrote, “I do not at all congratulate More, nor literature; but I do indeed congratulate England, for a better or holier judge could not have been appointed.”
On November 3rd, 1529, Sir Thomas More, as chancellor, opened parliament, and in a long speech declared that “the cause of its assembly was to reform such things as had been used or permitted by inadvertence, or by changes of time had become inexpedient.” It was the opening of the seven years’ parliament, and before six years should run, this same parliament would, at the king’s order, condemn Sir Thomas More by act of attainder.
The position of the new chancellor was dangerous from the first. Wolsey had fallen because he had failed to help Henry to a divorce from his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and More had been made his successor because the king had counted on him to accomplish the “great matter.” All that Sir Thomas could hope for was that he might be allowed to do his work as chancellor without being mixed up with divorce proceedings. As long as he was not called upon to declare publicly that the divorce was right, he had no wish to interfere in the matter. First to last no word of approval came from More’s lips to encourage Henry in the divorce, but he was not the man to express judgment on a case that he did not wish brought before him.[87] In the end the chancellor’s very silence turned Henry’s disappointment to active displeasure, and More’s life was taken in savage revenge for non-compliance with the royal will.
Henry’s divorce dates the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in England—of that ecclesiastical revolution in which the supremacy of Rome was rejected, the crown superseded the pope as supreme head of the Church of England, and England was detached from the rest of Roman Catholic Christendom. In the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the revolution proceeded still further, and Catholic rites and doctrines, service books and ceremonies were rigorously cast out of the Church of England, and all who adhered to the old order in religion were punished by law. But those days were far off as yet.
More, at the outset of this revolution, declines to follow the king in the rejection of the old allegiance to Rome. All he asks for is freedom of conscience to remain in the faith of his fathers, to worship as Christians in England had worshipped since the coming of Augustine. To escape death by giving up this freedom is impossible for Sir Thomas More.
The divorce from Queen Catherine is the turning point in More’s worldly fortunes as well as in ecclesiastical affairs in England.
Eighteen years passed from the day of Henry’s marriage to Catherine, on his accession to the throne, before the divorce was mooted. The scruple was that Catherine had been formerly betrothed to his dead brother Arthur; the moving force of Henry’s petition for divorce was the desire to marry Anne Boleyn. Unable to get the marriage annulled at Rome, or to get a favourable opinion from the universities, Henry fell back on Archbishop Cranmer to decree the divorce, and finally this was done in 1533, all appeals to Rome being henceforth forbidden. Henry had already, in 1531, called upon the clergy to acknowledge him as the supreme head of the Church of England, and the following year they were required to surrender the ancient right to meet and enact canons.[88]
In these four years the chancellor had kept out of political life as far as he could, and had given his attention to his judicial work. But in May, 1532, he resigned the great seal into the king’s hands, “seeing that affairs were going badly, and likely to be worse, and that if he retained his office he would be obliged to act against his conscience, or incur the king’s displeasure as he had already begun to do, for refusing to take his part against the clergy. His excuse was that his salary was too small, and that he was not equal to the work. Everyone is concerned, for there never was a better man in the office.”[89]