Sir Thomas More (1478-1535): Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Erasmus’ intellectual sparring partner, Tyndale’s trenchant critic, the author of the dreamy Utopia (1516), canonised by Pope Pius XI and declared the patron saint of statesmen and politicians by Pope John Paul II. Described by Robert Whittington in his Vulgaria (1520) as ‘a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning’, a man of ‘gentleness, lowliness and affability’, and ‘a man for all seasons’ – but, in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009), told over Thomas Cromwell’s shoulder, there is ‘something sly in More’: the policeman in a hair-shirt, the spiritual detective, the heretic-hunter.
I. Merchants
London. Spring 1517. Impoverished English artisans are convinced that their Flemish and Lombard counterparts, trading silks and spices from ‘liberties’ (areas inside the City of London’s walls but outside its control), are making money at their expense. Tensions rise. Intelligence finds its way to Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Chancellor, that violence is imminent. On May Day’s Eve, in breach of the curfew imposed by anxious aldermen, a crowd of apprentices with sticks and clubs maraud through the City of London. They break open Newgate Prison and arrive, eventually, at St Martin’s-le-Grand, just off Cheapside. They want the ‘aliens’ expelled. Thomas More, an under-sheriff, not yet knighted, is there to meet them. According to Act II of The Book of Sir Thomas More (c. 1590-1610), More asks them what it would mean if ‘Authority’ were rendered ‘quite silent’ by their ‘brawl’:
‘What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another…’
More’s message is clear: if lawlessness prevails, expect no protection later if others, convinced of their own cause, ‘shark on you’. His audience was unconvinced: in The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York (1548), the lawyer Edward Hall describes how they ‘ranne to the dores and wyndowes of saynct Martyn, and spoyled all that they found, and cast it into the strete’.
The provenance of The Book of Sir Thomas More is itself mysterious. Written by Anthony Munday, best known for plays about Robin Hood, somewhere between 1590 and 1610; revised by four other playwrights; and, eventually, suppressed by Edmund Tilney, the (misleadingly named) Master of the Revels, who feared that its performance would incite unrest. Scholars argue that three of these playwrights wrote for the Admiral’s Men, but one did not. Identified by the distinctive style, the spelling of certain words, and a comparison of the handwriting with six signatures (on four legal documents) now known to be his, this last playwright is Shakespeare – and the three pages which include the passage above the only surviving piece of a play in his own handwriting.
II. Spy
William Roper. Barrister. Married to More’s daughter, Margaret. Law runs in the family: his father was Henry VIII’s attorney general. In Robert Bolt’s play A Man For All Seasons (1960), Roper implores More to arrest Richard Rich. More asks on what basis. Alice, his wife, says that he is ‘dangerous’; Roper that he is a ‘spy’; Margaret that he is ‘bad’. More’s gentle reply is that no law forbids this. Alice, exasperated, points out that Rich is leaving and any chance of action will be lost:
‘More And go he should if he was the Devil himself until he broke the law!
Roper So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!
More Yes. what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — Man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.’
Bolt’s More, like Shakespeare’s, pleads for government by law. The alternative is defencelessness in the face of tyranny. As it happens, Rich is already feeding Cromwell information, and Cromwell is endeavouring to find a legal basis – in a country ‘planted thick with laws from coast to coast’ – to bring about More’s demise.
III. Silence
On 1 July 1535, More sits (after a lengthy incarceration in the Tower of London, he can no longer stand) in Westminster Hall. A lengthy indictment, probably prepared by Cromwell, charges him with numerous counts of treason (the trial records survived in the Baga de Secretis, the ‘bag of secrets’ reserved for state matters). 1534 has seen the passing of three statutes:
- The first Act of Succession (25 Hen. VIII c. 22): it is ‘misprision of treason’ to challenge the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s marriage in 1533 to Anne Boleyn or to ‘obstinately refuse’ to swear an oath confirming the effects of the statute. The penalty is imprisonment and deprivation of property.
- The first Act of Supremacy (26 Hen. VIII c. 1), declaratory in nature (it makes no provision for adverse consequences if someone speaks against it), makes the king ‘Only Head of the Church of England on Earth so far as the Law of God allows’.
- The Treasons Act 1534 (26 Hen. VIII c. 13): it is ‘high treason’ to ‘maliciously wish, will, or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king’s most royal person, the queen’s, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates…’. The penalty is death.
Staring down at More now are twelve councillors, including the Chancellor (Sir Thomas Audley) as well as Anne Boleyn’s father (Thomas Boleyn), brother (George Boleyn), and uncle (Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk); a ‘quorum’ of seven judges presides with them, including Sir John FitzJames, the chief justice of the King’s Bench.
The treason alleged against More includes his refusal to take the oath of supremacy. Part of More’s defence is founded on the civil maxim qui tacet consentire videtur: he who is silent is taken to agree. The response is given to Bolt’s Cromwell in Act II of A Man For All Seasons:
‘Norfolk But he makes no noise, Mr Secretary; he’s silent, why not leave him silent?
Cromwell Not being a man of letters, Your Grace, you perhaps don’t realise the extent of his reputation. This “silence” of his is bellowing up and down Europe!’
The trial lasts a day. Roper’s suspicion is well founded: Rich testifies against More, giving false evidence. Establishing how each count on the indictment is disposed of is not straightforward (there is disagreement about whether some of More’s legal arguments succeed). The jury of twelve men convict More of treason: he is beheaded six days later, on 6 July 1535.
IV. Voices
More chastised his children with a peacock feather and taught them to read Greek and Latin by affixing letters to an archery board and encouraging his pupils to fire arrows at them. In the island of Utopia the meanest objects were made of silver and gold and children were given precious gems as toys. Ambassadors unaware of Utopia’s customs arrived with golden chains and were mistaken for slaves. More’s point is plain: the influence of government on the character of the people.
Whether More had an ‘angel’s wit’ or ‘something sly’ about him, his most memorable statements are often articulated by others’ voices (Shakespeare’s, Bolt’s, even Cromwell’s) rather than his own, but the message of these three Mores is consistent, its impact as real in the twenty-first century as in the sixteenth. The law must not yield to individual will, even amongst the powerful; when it does, ‘the laws all being flat’, its protection can no longer be invoked when it is needed; all people deserve the same rights, and even a bad person may have a good cause; the greatest enemies of happiness are ignorance, inequality, cruelty, and tyranny; and no servant, however loyal, can serve a despotic master who gives to no-one ‘the benefit of law’.
