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Authors: Michael Foss
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commonwealth that united all people under God; when he died each country frankly admitted its nationalism, living for itself alone.
He was born in the dying light of the Middle Ages, his education was medieval, and medieval ways stamped his life and work. His writings, especially his English writings, have all the marks of the Middle Ages: the wordiness, the lack of form, the coarseness, and most of all the irrepressible humour. More can never resist a ‘merry tale’; even in his noble Dialogue of Comfort, written in the Tower under the shadow of the axe, comedy is always at his elbow, waiting to slide boisterously on to the page. And his life was equally bound to the past as he showed in his devotion to the Church, his ascetic self-discipline, and most of all his care for the community. He had none of the ruthless self-interest of the new age; he was implacably against the new reign of money which sought to enrich the individual at the expense of the poor and the unfortunate. The anonymous playwrights of Sir Thomas More saluted his memory as ‘the best friend that the poor e’er had’, and that tribute from his fellow Londoners would have pleased him as well as any.
But More also became, by his own efforts, a humanist. He was a scholar, a critic, a teacher, a supporter of reform. No work illustrates Renaissance wit and intelligence better than Utopia , so deftly handled, so imaginative, so penetrating in its critical view of society, so entertaining in the airy fantasy of Nowhere. The humanist More turned his children’s schoolroom into a ‘Christian academy’, defended Erasmus against Catholic criticism, detested the ambitious and warlike actions of the papacy, and spoke out against the corruption of the English clergy. He hoped to make the new critical temper of the Renaissance enliven the old ideals of the Middle Ages; he wished to reform, not change, to renew, not destroy.
When the triumph of new religion and new policy came, he found he could not live in the new secular world. More was a patriot; in the early days of Henry’s reign he vigorously defended the honour of the English navy against the attacks of the French scholar Brixius. But everything he believed, and everything he lived for, was a denial of Tudor nationalism. Since he was a resolute man, he chose to fight for faith and principles. He put aside the urbanity of the humanist and battled his opponents in the old uncompromising, abusive manner. He did not expect to win. In the Tower he wrote with a coal:
Eye-flattering fortune, look you never so fair,
Nor never so pleasantly begin to smile,
As though thou wouldst my ruin all repair,
During my life thou shalt not me beguile.
Trust I shall God, to enter in a while
His haven of heaven, sure and uniform;
Ever after thy calm look I for a storm.
He went to his death as a man whose life had been justified.
1 More called for a bible in English, but he was opposed to unauthorized translations. He suggested a translation by approved scholars which would be printed and distributed at the bishops’ expense.
2 More’s brother-in-law, the printer John Rastell, was associated with Lutherans and was for a time, it seems, an agent for Thomas Cromwell. William Roper, his son-in-law, had a bout of Lutheran enthusiasm while living in More’s house.
3
Robert Kett
T HE HARVEST FAILED in 1527. Wheat rose from six to thirteen shillings a quarter, and the price of rye doubled. The next year was also poor, bringing in a bad decade, the weather hard, the crops thin. Fifty years of abundant yields and cheap prices were at an end. Farmworkers, labourers, all the poor but especially those in the countryside where there were few people and no industry, faced bad days. A solitary fine harvest in 1547, the first year of Edward’s reign, brought hopes of relief, but very soon prices went upwards once more. By 1549, the year of Kett’s rebellion, wheat stood at sixteen shillings a quarter, barley at eleven, and
He was born in the dying light of the Middle Ages, his education was medieval, and medieval ways stamped his life and work. His writings, especially his English writings, have all the marks of the Middle Ages: the wordiness, the lack of form, the coarseness, and most of all the irrepressible humour. More can never resist a ‘merry tale’; even in his noble Dialogue of Comfort, written in the Tower under the shadow of the axe, comedy is always at his elbow, waiting to slide boisterously on to the page. And his life was equally bound to the past as he showed in his devotion to the Church, his ascetic self-discipline, and most of all his care for the community. He had none of the ruthless self-interest of the new age; he was implacably against the new reign of money which sought to enrich the individual at the expense of the poor and the unfortunate. The anonymous playwrights of Sir Thomas More saluted his memory as ‘the best friend that the poor e’er had’, and that tribute from his fellow Londoners would have pleased him as well as any.
But More also became, by his own efforts, a humanist. He was a scholar, a critic, a teacher, a supporter of reform. No work illustrates Renaissance wit and intelligence better than Utopia , so deftly handled, so imaginative, so penetrating in its critical view of society, so entertaining in the airy fantasy of Nowhere. The humanist More turned his children’s schoolroom into a ‘Christian academy’, defended Erasmus against Catholic criticism, detested the ambitious and warlike actions of the papacy, and spoke out against the corruption of the English clergy. He hoped to make the new critical temper of the Renaissance enliven the old ideals of the Middle Ages; he wished to reform, not change, to renew, not destroy.
When the triumph of new religion and new policy came, he found he could not live in the new secular world. More was a patriot; in the early days of Henry’s reign he vigorously defended the honour of the English navy against the attacks of the French scholar Brixius. But everything he believed, and everything he lived for, was a denial of Tudor nationalism. Since he was a resolute man, he chose to fight for faith and principles. He put aside the urbanity of the humanist and battled his opponents in the old uncompromising, abusive manner. He did not expect to win. In the Tower he wrote with a coal:
Eye-flattering fortune, look you never so fair,
Nor never so pleasantly begin to smile,
As though thou wouldst my ruin all repair,
During my life thou shalt not me beguile.
Trust I shall God, to enter in a while
His haven of heaven, sure and uniform;
Ever after thy calm look I for a storm.
He went to his death as a man whose life had been justified.
1 More called for a bible in English, but he was opposed to unauthorized translations. He suggested a translation by approved scholars which would be printed and distributed at the bishops’ expense.
2 More’s brother-in-law, the printer John Rastell, was associated with Lutherans and was for a time, it seems, an agent for Thomas Cromwell. William Roper, his son-in-law, had a bout of Lutheran enthusiasm while living in More’s house.
3
Robert Kett
T HE HARVEST FAILED in 1527. Wheat rose from six to thirteen shillings a quarter, and the price of rye doubled. The next year was also poor, bringing in a bad decade, the weather hard, the crops thin. Fifty years of abundant yields and cheap prices were at an end. Farmworkers, labourers, all the poor but especially those in the countryside where there were few people and no industry, faced bad days. A solitary fine harvest in 1547, the first year of Edward’s reign, brought hopes of relief, but very soon prices went upwards once more. By 1549, the year of Kett’s rebellion, wheat stood at sixteen shillings a quarter, barley at eleven, and
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