The Life of Thomas More

by Ackroyd, Peter

  THE WEEPING TIME

  N the first week of April 1534, More travelled on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Willesden; it was a church favoured by Londoners, and was well known to him. He stayed at the house of Sir Giles Alington, husband to his stepdaughter, and from there wrote to his secretary concerning changes to A Treatise on the Passion; ‘thus much is perplex enough,’ he concluded. He was concerned at this time to put his life in order and, a week before, he had arranged ‘a conveyance for the disposition of all his lands’ on his decease;1 two days after the first conveyance, he bequeathed to the Ropers a portion of his estate. Evidently he was trying to protect the interests of his family, and no less clearly was he preparing for his own death. All the members of parliament had taken the oath of succession at the end of March, and More realised that soon he would be invited to follow their example. On 12 April, Low Sunday, he attended Mass in St Paul’s; after it had been celebrated he left the church and walked to his old house in Bucklersbury where John and Margaret Clement now lived. But, on this occasion, he was being followed. He had been observed in St Paul’s, and an official of the council tracked him down. Even while he remained in these familiar surroundings, he was handed a summons directing him to appear at Lambeth Palace on the following morning and there to take the oath of succession.

  The moment, so long feared, had come. He returned at once to Chelsea and acquainted his family with the unwelcome but not unanticipated news. Then he spent most of the night in prayer. Early the next morning he attended Mass in the village church and was given holy communion; before he left his house for ever, he walked with his family in the garden. He told them that he was likely to be imprisoned and took his leave of them there; he would not allow them to accompany him to the landing stage where his boat was waiting, but closed the wicket gate and ‘shut them all from him’.2 Only William Roper was allowed to stay with him and, as his servants rowed them down the Thames to Lambeth, More remained deep in thought. Eventually he roused himself and whispered, ‘Son Roper, I thank our Lord the field is won.’3

  ‘Sir, I am thereof very glad.’

  Roper later admitted that he did not know what his father-in-law had meant, and it is indeed a somewhat cryptic remark. It is susceptible of at least two interpretations. He had managed to conquer his natural feelings for his family, so that he would not be tempted to betray his conscience for their sake; the gesture of shutting the gate behind him is indicative of this. But he had also won the field on his own behalf; as the events of succeeding weeks will testify, he had managed largely to conquer his own anxieties and had determined how to conduct himself in all dealings with his adversaries. And so his boat came up to the landing stairs at Lambeth, next to the horse ferry; forty-four years before, More had come here with his father on entering the service of Archbishop Morton. The elaborate gateway to the palace had not then been finished, but now More passed through it in his last act of freedom. Other people had already assembled there to take the oath of succession before the king’s commissioners, but Thomas More was the first to be called. He also noticed that he was the only lay person present, which must have suggested to him the importance that was being attached to his decision.

  He was led before Cromwell, Cranmer, Audley and William Benson, the Abbot of Westminster. They asked him if he was now ready to swear the oath and he expressed a wish to see it; a small slip of parchment, beneath the impress of the Great Seal, was handed to him and he read it carefully. Then he requested a copy of the Act of Succession itself, which was given to him in the form of a ‘printed roll’.4 He read this, too, and in his precise way he compared the oath to the Act. The commissioners were waiting impatiently for his answer and, finally, after detailed consideration of both documents, he spoke out. ‘My purpose is not to put any fault either in the Act or any man that made it, or in the oath or any man that swears it, nor to condemn the conscience of any other man. But as for myself in good faith my conscience so moves me in the matter, that though I will not deny to swear to the succession, yet unto the oath that here is offered to me I cannot swear, without the jeoparding of my soul to perpetual damnation.’ It may be supposed that this statement, constructed in the manner of a lawyer to avoid prejudice, had been rehearsed during More’s sleepless nights. All along he had known the opinion of his family. His wife had told him that ‘God regardeth’ the heart rather than the tongue and that the meaning of the oath thereby ‘goeth vpon that they thinke, and not vpon that they say’.5 But More was not capable of such dissimulation. Instead he made a careful point to the commissioners. ‘If you doubt whether I do refuse the oath only for the grudge of my conscience, or any other fantasy, I am ready here to satisfy you by my oath. Which, if you do not trust it, why should you be the better to give me any oath? And if you trust that I will herein swear true, then I trust of your goodness you will not move me to swear the oath you had offered me, perceiving that for to swear it is against my conscience.’6 So he was invoking the dictates of his conscience for his refusal, but at no stage did he explain what they were.

  Lord Chancellor Audley then replied to him. ‘We all are sorry to hear you say thus, and see you refuse the oath. On our faith you are the first that has ever refused it, and it will cause the King’s highness to conceive great suspicion of you and great indignation toward you.’ He then showed More a printed roll, with the signatures of the Lords and Commons inscribed upon it, but More simply reiterated his first statement. ‘I myself cannot swear, but I do not blame any other man that has sworn.’ He was then silent, and was asked to walk down into the garden for further reflection or meditation. But it was a hot day and he decided to rest in ‘the olde burned chamber’ on the first floor, which overlooked the garden and the river; this was a ‘waiting’ room, next to the guards’ chamber, that had suffered a fire in the time of Archbishop Warham. As he lingered there he saw Hugh Latimer walking with some of the Lambeth clergy; Latimer was laughing and joking with the chaplains, putting his arm around the shoulders of one or two of them ‘that if they had been women, I wolde haue went he had been waxen wanton’.7 Latimer was of strongly Lutheran tendencies, and had been continually under threat of imprisonment because of his beliefs; but he was laughing now, in the knowledge that half of his cause was won. More looked on and perhaps raised his eyes to the ever-flowing river.

  A fateful spectacle was then played out before him. Dr Nicholas Wilson, a scholar and divine, was escorted from the interview chamber; he was ‘brought by me’, according to More, ‘and gentilmanly sent straight vnto the Towre’.8 He, too, had refused to swear the oath; he had been ‘brought by’ More as living proof of what would happen to all recusants. There was, for them, only one ultimate destination. More later learned that John Fisher had also been taken before the commissioners and dispatched to the Tower for the same reason. The anxiety and threat were too great for some to endure and the vicar of Croydon, Rowland Phillips, well known for his orthodox opinions and his devotion to the old faith, swore to the oath and signed his name. More heard that he had then gone down to the ‘buttry barre’ and ordered drink ‘either for gladnes or for drines [dryness], or else that it might be sene’.9 He might also have called for drink, of course, as a way of slaking his conscience as well as his thirst. In a description of the scene to his daughter More used a phrase from the gospel of St John, with the clear implication that he himself was in the position of St Peter just before he denied Christ. Yet there would be no denial from him. More called all these events a ‘pageant’, and indeed it might have been devised as a theatrical scenario for the state of the realm—a reformer rejoicing, an orthodox cleric bowing to the king’s will and a defiant scholar sent to the Tower.

  It was at this point that he was once again led before the commissioners. They revealed to him the number of the London clergy who had sworn the oath that day, even as he had waited in the burned chamber, but he still would not be drawn. He simply repeated his position that he could not join them in their assent. They asked what particul
ar aspect of the oath disturbed him. More replied that he had offended the king already, but ‘if I should open and disclose the causes why, I shall therewith but further exasperate his Highnes, which I will in no wise do, but rather will I abide all the danger and harm that might come toward me than give his Highnes any occasion of further displeasure.’10 His was a subtle strategy of silence and non-compliance, but it had its dangers. The commissioners immediately accused him of stubbornness and obstinacy, but More knew the law better than any of them. ‘But yet it thinketh me,’ he told them, ‘that if I may not declare the causes without perill, than to leaue them vndeclared is no obstinacy.’11 No man is obliged to condemn himself. Cranmer then intervened. More had agreed that the swearing of the oath was ‘vncertain and doubtfull’,12 precisely because his own conscience did not match that of others; but since it was his certain duty to obey his prince, why not take the less doubtful course and swear? More saw the force of the argument and could reply only that ‘in my conscience the trouth seems on the tother side’. The Abbot of Westminster then asked him to estimate the weight of his conscience, when opposed by so many of the clergy and the parliament, but More answered that he could claim in his support ‘the generall counsail of Christendome’. This was his central argument; the derivation of ‘conscience’ suggests knowledge-with-others, which for More included the communion of the dead as well as the living. It was this understanding which afforded him the strength and confidence to continue what seemed, to almost everyone, a foolish and futile struggle.

  Thomas Cromwell, recognising More’s position to be unalterable, swore ‘a gret oth’ that he would rather have seen his own son beheaded than be a witness to More’s refusal. The mention of a beheading here was surely significant. Cromwell went on to suggest that the king would now ‘conceiue a great suspicion’ against More, and that in particular the machinations of the Nun of Kent would be blamed upon him. Their conference ended soon after, with More apparently conceding that he might swear to the succession if the oath was differently framed. He did not elaborate upon the necessary alterations, but once more invoked the principle of human conscience and finally declared that ‘me thinketh in good faith, that so were it good reason that euery man should leaue me to myne’.13

  He was now, effectively, a prisoner. He had rejected the oath and was therefore to be charged with ‘misprision of treason’. But he had refused to give his reasons for his fatal decision and, at this moment, he entered silence. Or, rather, silence entered him. In a sense it was no longer his own choice; he ceased to be aware of himself, and at this level of conscience or knowledge he became part of the larger world of faith and spirit. He had always followed the imperatives of duty and service, but now that duty had turned irrevocably from his society to his God. If the will of heaven is vouchsafed to a human being in a wholly private way, demanding an act of faith as it had once been demanded of Abraham, then he cannot speak to the world. The world will not understand.

  But if he did not explain the specific legal reasons for refusing the oath of succession, it is perhaps possible to reconstruct them. He told his daughter later that he had refused the oath because it was ‘not agreeable with the statute’;14 by which he meant that, in his careful consideration and rereading of the two documents, he had realised that the oath itself went far beyond the matter of the royal succession. It required obeisance not only to the Act of Succession itself, in other words, but also to ‘all other Acts and Statutes made since the beginning of the present Parliament’.15 This included all the antipapal legislation within the Acts of Annates, of Appeals, of Dispensations, and of Peter’s Pence. If More had sworn the oath, as presented to him with this wording, he would have concurred in the forcible removal of the Pope’s jurisdiction and the effective schism of the Church in England. This he could not do, even at the cost of his life. He might have been willing to swear to a differently phrased oath, as he had suggested, as long as it did not include any other matters.

  After the formal interrogation was over More was delivered into the custody of the Abbot of Westminster, under whose supervision he remained for the next four days. The truth was that no one knew precisely what to do with him; his case was not like that of John Fisher, who had formally been ‘attainted’ through his association with the Nun of Kent, and there was some discussion among the king’s commissioners about the proper course of action. Cranmer wrote to Cromwell suggesting that More (and also Fisher) should be asked to swear only to the Act of Succession itself, thereby avoiding all the problems of acceding to the other Acts; he also suggested that their compliance, if it came, ‘should be suppressed’ or concealed until the right moment for its publication. Their oath of loyalty to the new royal family would be advertised, in other words, for the maximum possible effect upon the king’s opponents. The importance being attached to More, in particular, was clear. But when Cromwell put Cranmer’s arguments to the king, Henry refused to countenance any such compromise; he argued, with some justification, that it might act as a precedent. What if any others refused to swear to the entire oath?

  So More’s last hope of freedom was gone. On 17 April he was sent by river from Westminster to the Tower of London. He was wearing his gold chain of livery, as a solemn token of his service to the king, and he was advised to deliver it into the safekeeping of his family; but he refused, with a characteristic piece of irony: ‘For if I were taken in the field by my enemies, I would they should somewhat fare the better by me.’16 The boat steered its course towards Traitor’s Gate, where a great oaken wicket was opened to receive the prisoner. The wooden gate may be taken as an image for a subsequent conversation.

  More: Well met, my lord, I hope we shall soon meet in heaven.

  Fisher: This should be the way, Sir Thomas, for it is a very strait gate we are in.17

  At the landing stage beneath St Thomas’s Tower More was met by the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edmund Walsingham, and by the porter of the wicket. It was an old custom for the porter to request the ‘upper garment’ of any new prisoner. More proffered him his hat and explained that ‘I am very sorry it is no better for you’.

  ‘No, sir,’ came the reply, ‘I must have your gown.’18

  More would have known perfectly well the tradition of handing the man his gown, and his offering of the hat may be construed as an example of that humour which always emerged in the most grave situations. Sir Edmund Walsingham led him up the narrow spiral stairway, with its thick stone and worn steps, the darkness punctuated briefly by slits carved in the massive outer wall. It was fortunate, perhaps, that Walsingham was a ‘good friend and old acquaintance’ of More’s;19 he took him to his cell, or chamber, and ‘desired him that he would accept in such cheare as he was able to make hym’.20 His famous prisoner replied that ‘if any here like it not, turne hym out of dores for a churle’.21 If I complain, in other words, then eject me from the Tower. It is not at all certain in which part of the building More was imprisoned, but it seems most likely to have been within the Bell Tower or the Beauchamp Tower. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that he was moved during the period of his imprisonment.

  He was taken to one of those apartments which were reserved for the more influential or privileged ‘guests’ of the lieutenant. His was a pentagonal stone chamber, with a vaulted ceiling; it was some nineteen feet in height, with a floor space of approximately eighteen feet by twenty feet. The walls themselves were between nine and thirteen feet thick, the floor flagged with rough and uneven stone, the windows merely arrow-slits or ‘loops’.22 More’s furnishings were of the simplest; they included a table and chair as well as a ‘pallet’ bed. There was a small brick stove, to heat this cold room, and More arranged for mats of straw to be placed upon the floor and against the walls. He described it as ‘metely feyre’ and ‘at the lest wise it was strong ynough’;23 indeed he would not have necessarily been uncomfortable. His old servant, John a Wood, was allowed to attend him; board and lodging, for both of them, amounted to fifteen shilli
ngs a week, which was more than adequate for food and clothing.

  Wood remained his faithful servant through the entire period of More’s imprisonment and might himself, if anything else were known of him, provide an interesting study in loyalty and affection. But he is only ever mentioned as a silent attendant upon his unfortunate master. When Wood and More were first shown the prison chamber by Walsingham, for example, More insisted that his servant swear an oath to the effect that if he, More, ever said anything to the king’s detriment then Wood must report his comments to the lieutenant of the Tower. His master was not held with any strict discipline, however; it was appropriate for a prisoner of his rank to be given permission to walk within the ‘liberties’ of the Tower and to stroll in its gardens. More’s fascination for animals was such that he perhaps visited the royal menagerie, where he might refresh his memory of the lions which ‘in the night walken’. Much more importantly, however, he was allowed to attend Mass each day to pray for his own salvation and for the spiritual comfort of those close to him.

  He wrote to his daughter, Margaret, soon after his arrival in order to calm her fears. ‘I am in good health of body, and in good quiet of minde,’ he told her, and beseeched their creator to ‘make you all mery in the hope of heauen’.24 This letter was written ‘with a cole’, or piece of charcoal, because More then had no other pen. He wished to console them because he knew in what desperate need of comfort they stood; the house in Chelsea was searched on more than one occasion, and in a dialogue he composed in his cell a young man described how ‘our pore famely be fallen into suche dumpes, that scantly can any such comfort as my pore wyt can give them, any thyng asswage their sorow’.25 They spoke of More constantly, as Margaret told her father later, and repeated to each other the proverbs and dicta by which he had tried to fortify them.