"So after six and thirty thousand year All things shal be the same which once they were; After the Golden came the Silver age: Then came the Brass, and Iron the last stage. The Golden age is revolv'd to your reign: I now conceive that Plato did not feign."
From that time began the prosperity of More; but his previous life had been both happy in a domestic capacity, and remarkable in a literary point of view. He had already been an ascetic, a husband, and a poet. As Disraeli remarks, "More in his youth was a true poet; but in his active life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination."
Whether in poetry or in prose, More was to fulfil Cardinal Morton's observation, that "The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man." It was at the archbishop's that More won his first spurs in wit, devising pageants and allegories. But while his airy character early manifested itself, his early poems also reflect a vein of ascetic thoughtfulness; as in the Ruful Lamentacion he wrote on the death of Queen Elizabeth, mother to King Henry VIII:
"O ye that put your trust and confidence
In worldly joy and frayle prosperite,
That so lyve here as ye should never hence,
Remember death, and joke here uppon me.
Ensaumple, I thinke there may no better be.
Yourself wotte well that in this realme was I
Your quene but late, and lo, now here I lye.
"If worship myght have kept me, I had not gone;
If wyt myght have me saved, I neded not fere;
If money myght have helpe, I lacked none.
But, good God, what vayleth all this gere?
When deth is come, thy mighty messengere,
Obey we must there is no remedy.
Me hath he summoned, and now here I ly.
"Yet was I late promised otherwyse,
This yere to live in welth and delice.
Lo, whereto cometh thy blandishyng promyse,
O false astrology and devynatrice,
Of Goddes secrets makyng thyselfe so wyse.
How true is for this yere thy prophecy—
The yere yet lasteth, and lo, nowe here I ly."
Rhenanus, Brixius, Erasmus, commended his early poems; he was admitted among the brotherhood of those who cultivated lettered lore. This was a period of general renovation throughout Europe. For good or for evil, the torch of knowledge had been lighted. Vocabularies and lexicons had reached a fearful multiplication in Germany and Italy toward the close of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century. Nuremberg, Spires, Basil, teemed with rudimentary treatises, dictionaries, and grammars; men were feeding on Latin and Greek, studying eight or ten hours at a stretch. England and Italy surpassed France in the literary movement; and Budé complained that, in his countrymen's estimation, philological studies were the hobbies of a few monomaniacs. More began his contributions to the learning of the age by translating Lucian and Augustine's City of God. Erasmus, in a letter to Hutten, described him as a unique genius in England. But he gave his attention to religion no less than to literature. "Erudition," Stapleton quaintly remarks, "however varied and extensive, is, without piety, like a golden ring in the nostrils; there is nothing more absurd than to set a precious jewel in a decaying piece of wood. Knowledge is ill suited to a corrupt breast." To knowledge without goodness, Plato had denied the name of wisdom, and given the inferior designation of cleverness. But the youthful More was no less eager to attain piety than to become proficient in learning. He manifested these aspirations according to the tenets of his creed; he wore a hair-shirt, he slept on the bare floor, his head resting on a wooden block; he restricted his hours of rest to four or five at longest; acquainted with watchings and fastings, he nevertheless made no ostentatious display of these and similar austerities—often, on the other hand, concealing them under as conventional an appearance as it was possible to bear.
Finding it useful to have some great man as an ideal, he translated Pico della Mirandola's life. At that time, Colet, dean of St. Paul's, was preaching in London; More derived much comfort from his friendship, and compared himself to Eurydice following Orpheus, but in danger of falling back into the realms of darkness. In a letter to the dean he thus expatiates upon the annoyances of life in London: "The roofs intercept a great portion of the light, and do not allow a free view of the sky. The air is not bounded by the circle of the horizon, but by the housetops. Therefore I the more willingly bear with you for not repenting of your residence in the country, where you see good people around you, void of the cunning of towns; where, whithersoever you turn your eyes, the bland face of the earth delights you. There you see nothing but the benignant gifts of nature, and, as it were, the sacred vestiges of innocence." As for his literary study, Lilly and Tonstall were his associates—Linacre and Grocinus his tutors. Now began that series of friendships which he was through life always willing to contract with educated men, such as Crooke, or Croke, one of the greatest students of the sixteenth century, who wrangled at Leipzig, "de dogmatibilitatibus" and other long things—schools then disputed on the weight of Hercules's club and the size of Diogenes's tub—who taught Greek to Henry VIII., and succeeded Erasmus in the chair of Greek at Cambridge; Lee, who wrote against Erasmus; Fisher, who wrote sturdily against reformers; Dorpius, who was shocked at the new classical studies, hearing people swear "by Jove," and was desirous of limiting Grecian studies to the works of Chrysostom and the Eastern fathers; Goclenius, who professed for twenty years; Cornelius Crocus, who wrote Latin with Terentian elegance, and became a Jesuit when fifty years old; Grynaeus, who taught Greek, who, although a reformer, never insulted his antagonists and discovered six books of Livy; Peter AEgidius, or Giles, whom Erasmus called a most agreeable host, and who wrote a Greek lexicon while Luther was bewailing his sins in a convent cell; Paulus Jovius, who spent twenty-seven years in writing his Latin history, was esteemed by Leo. X. above Livy, and wanted a great lady to send him some jam from Naples, because he was getting sick of new-laid eggs; Vives, who was one of the literary triumvirs of the age, and who, at his lectures at Corpus Christi College, was often applauded by Henry and Queen Catherine. In the mean while he had, in a more practical sphere, taken the virile gown, before practising as a barrister, and at twenty-eight years of age been elected to the office of perpetual "shyrevus" or sheriff. His business was to "administer justice" for the subordinate sheriffs, "pro istis shyrevis" (Stapleton,) who were incompetent in matters of law. While he was filling this office, a riot took place in the city. For several years past there had been a great increase of foreign workmen, to the great annoyance of the native working classes. A popular preacher of the day, Dr. Bell, preached a sermon, in which he urged the people to expel the foreign usurpers. Apprentices and artisans, therefore, agreed that on the first of May, after business, there should be a massacre of the foreigners. This trades' demonstration, however, was baffled through the foresight of More. He issued an edict, enjoining all well-disposed persons to stay within doors after nine o'clock on the first of May. On that day there was no disturbance. A few days after, however, several riotous crowds of working-men gathered in their thousands, rushed to Newgate, and set free some tiny minorities of swains who had been locked up for robbing, murdering, or otherwise annoying the foreigners. Hour by hour they mustered in huger strength; angry shouts in homeliest Saxon rang through the air; the whirligig was getting louder and louder to one's ears. It seemed at one time rather hard to say how all this would end. More, being loved by the town mob, tried to speak to the crowd of small boys, big men, and roughs. Was it a Saturday night, that there should be such noise in the streets? Did the working-men forget their duty? They did; and it was at last needful to send for the red coats, who, with queer-looking harquebuses, soon put the mob to flight. Thirteen ringleaders were arrested and condemned to death; one only, however, was executed, the others being saved through the intercession of three queens and the influence of More.
In 1503 he was made a member of Parliament, and opposed a grant of money to Henry VII. That monarch, who has been compared to Louis XI. of France, was not to be bearded in this manner, and More was obliged to fly to the continent. But when Henry VIII. began his reign, More became the object of royal favor. His literary talent and jovial mood were qualities too valuable not to be appreciated by the king, who was surrounding himself with all varieties of genius. Like Gargantua, the young king was athirst of all that could adorn his court; More was therefore bound to the court by a golden chain. He was made a knight, and one of the privy council. In return for the royal favor he had to enliven the king with witty sayings, until this yoke became almost too heavy for him. He had scarcely any time left for his home enjoyments and his literary pursuits. In self-defence he was at last driven to a kind of stratagem; he affected dulness, and tried as much as he possibly could to become a bore. At last he succeeded and was allowed more freedom and privacy.
At that period he resided in Chelsea, then a fashionable suburb. There Sir Thomas lived in a semi-patriarchal fashion. So strict was he in religious observances in his family that his house has been compared to a kind of convent or religious abode. Meekness, order, industry characterized the inmates. He set every one an example of gentleness and wisdom. Roper says that, during sixteen years spent with Sir Thomas, he never saw the latter in a "fume." A young lady who had been brought up in the family used to behave badly for the sole purpose of being chid by More, whose gentle pity and gravity were delightful to observe. In his second wife, Mrs. Alice Middleton, who had an acrid and disagreeable temper, he had an opportunity for taming a shrew, and had performed that feat with more credit to his skill and patience than pleasantness to himself. He used to give his wife and children plenty of sound ethical advice: "It is now no mastery (difficulty) for you children to goe to heaven," he would say, "for everybody giveth you good counsel and good example. You see virtue rewarded and vice punished, so that you are carried up to heaven as it were by the chins." He would encourage them to bear diseases and afflictions with patience, and to resist the devil, whom he would compare to an ape—"for as the ape, not well looked to, will be busie and bold to do shrewde turnes, and contrarily being spyed and checkt for them, will suddenly leap back and adventure no further; so the devil," etc. Thus at dinner and supper did he entertain his family with high moral purpose; he allowed them, for their recreation, to sing or to play on "violes." Some biographers allege that he once cured his daughter of the sweating sickness. Ellis Haywood published at Florence a little book called "Il Moro," in which many details are given respecting the home life of More. Thus he is represented as entertaining six guests at dinner. After the meal the party ascend the mound in the garden, and, sitting on a greensward, they admire the meanderings of the river, the hills undulating on the horizon, the turf and flowers of the river side. His establishment, in its simplicity, greatly contrasted with Wolsey's household, and its five hundred dependents, chancellors, chaplains, doctors, ushers, valets, and others. More, however, a jester, the middle-ages custom of keeping a "fool" not yet having been discontinued. Henry VIII. had his Somers, Wolsey his Path, and More his Patterson.
Sir Thomas was desirous of appropriating his leisure to the production of some notable work. Already, while still unnoticed by Henry, he had written a History of Richard III., in which he gave the following portrait of that king:
"Ill fetured of limmes, croke backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage ... he was malicious wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth, ever frowarde. ... Hee was close and secrete, a deepe dissimuler, lowlye of countenance, arrogaunt of heart, outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kisse whome hee thoughte to kyll; dispitious and cruell, not for evill well alway, but after for ambition, and either for the suretee or encrease of his estate. Frende and foo was muche what indifferent, where his advantage grew; he spared no man's deathe whose life withstoode his purpose. He slewe with his owne handes King Henry the Sixt, being prisoner in the Tower, as menne constantly saye."