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Authors: Michael Foss
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irrevocably under the monarchy, and his subjects would have to acquiesce or suffer the consequences of disobedience. More’s policy was to keep as quiet as possible, never offering an opinion and answering questions as carefully as he knew how. The campaign against him began with an attempt to implicate him with the Maid of Kent, a nun who made wild prophecies against the King. More barely escaped from this danger. The King was outraged at More, and demanded that his name appear on the Bill of Attainder; but the Lords, knowing there was no evidence, begged on their knees for him and Henry relented. The hunt was close now, and Norfolk came to give him a friendly warning. ‘I would wish you’, he said, ‘somewhat to incline to the King’s pleasure; for by God’s body, Master More, Indignatio principis mors est .’ More knew the danger and was resolved to meet it. ‘Is that all, my lord?’ he replied. ‘Then in good faith there is no more difference between your grace and me, but that I shalldie today and you tomorrow.’
In March 1534 the Act of Succession was passed, and the time arrived that he dreaded, when he must take the oath before the commissioners at Lambeth. On the evening of 12th April he pulled the wicket gate shut at Chelsea and sadly took the river to Lambeth. He could not take the oath in the form in which it was tendered, as it contained a denial of the papal supremacy and an admission of the invalidity of the marriage of Catherine. He was committed to the Tower for misprision of treason. For the rest of the year he remained in prison while his friends and even his favourite daughter, Margaret, tried to make him change his mind. He refused and the example of his intransigence—and that of Bishop Fisher, his fellow prisoner—was an embarrassment to the government. At the end of the year an Act of Supremacy was passed; non-compliance was high treason for which death was the penalty. A commission came to sound out More on the new Act, but he would give no opinion. ‘I do nobody no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm’, he told Cromwell, ‘but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.’ In June 1535 Fisher was condemned and executed. On 1st July More was brought to trial in Westminster Hall. The indictment was long, but though More was ill and weak from his time in the Tower he defended himself with all the agility of his long legal experience. He was finally convicted on the perjury of Richard Rich, the King’s solicitor; the jury returned the verdict of guilty in under fifteen minutes. The verdict was no surprise. In his youthful Book of Fortune More had written:
The head that late lay easily and full soft,
Instead of pillows, lieth after on the block.
On 6th July he was led out to die, and he went firmly with a ready answer for those he met on the path. At the foot of the scaffold he had a jest with the lieutenant of the Tower; he spoke pleasant words to the executioner and, as he had promised, made only a short speech to the crowd. He tucked his beard out of the way, laid his head on the block and died, as he protested, ‘the King’s good servant but God’s first’.
History has dressed Thomas More in numerous, different resplendent robes, none of which quite seems to fit. He was so obviously an extraordinary being that all parties are eager to claimhim as their own, and censure him when he lapses from their ideal. Was he liberal or reactionary? Wise or foolish? Humble or proud? A benefactor or a persecutor? More was not inconsistent. He was always an orthodox Catholic, a robust, humorous Londoner, conventional in the best sense. A plain, honest man, he was caught in a break in history; he might have reconciled the best of the old with the best of the new, but new passions in religion and politics overthrew him. It was the age that was inconsistent. When he was young the ideal of Christendom still had some force, the Christian
In March 1534 the Act of Succession was passed, and the time arrived that he dreaded, when he must take the oath before the commissioners at Lambeth. On the evening of 12th April he pulled the wicket gate shut at Chelsea and sadly took the river to Lambeth. He could not take the oath in the form in which it was tendered, as it contained a denial of the papal supremacy and an admission of the invalidity of the marriage of Catherine. He was committed to the Tower for misprision of treason. For the rest of the year he remained in prison while his friends and even his favourite daughter, Margaret, tried to make him change his mind. He refused and the example of his intransigence—and that of Bishop Fisher, his fellow prisoner—was an embarrassment to the government. At the end of the year an Act of Supremacy was passed; non-compliance was high treason for which death was the penalty. A commission came to sound out More on the new Act, but he would give no opinion. ‘I do nobody no harm, I say none harm, I think none harm’, he told Cromwell, ‘but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.’ In June 1535 Fisher was condemned and executed. On 1st July More was brought to trial in Westminster Hall. The indictment was long, but though More was ill and weak from his time in the Tower he defended himself with all the agility of his long legal experience. He was finally convicted on the perjury of Richard Rich, the King’s solicitor; the jury returned the verdict of guilty in under fifteen minutes. The verdict was no surprise. In his youthful Book of Fortune More had written:
The head that late lay easily and full soft,
Instead of pillows, lieth after on the block.
On 6th July he was led out to die, and he went firmly with a ready answer for those he met on the path. At the foot of the scaffold he had a jest with the lieutenant of the Tower; he spoke pleasant words to the executioner and, as he had promised, made only a short speech to the crowd. He tucked his beard out of the way, laid his head on the block and died, as he protested, ‘the King’s good servant but God’s first’.
History has dressed Thomas More in numerous, different resplendent robes, none of which quite seems to fit. He was so obviously an extraordinary being that all parties are eager to claimhim as their own, and censure him when he lapses from their ideal. Was he liberal or reactionary? Wise or foolish? Humble or proud? A benefactor or a persecutor? More was not inconsistent. He was always an orthodox Catholic, a robust, humorous Londoner, conventional in the best sense. A plain, honest man, he was caught in a break in history; he might have reconciled the best of the old with the best of the new, but new passions in religion and politics overthrew him. It was the age that was inconsistent. When he was young the ideal of Christendom still had some force, the Christian
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