The Life of Thomas More (56 page)

John Fisher, the devout Bishop of Rochester who was denounced as a traitor by Henry VIII. He was created a cardinal but ‘the head was off before the hat was on’. (
Illu. 26.4
)

Below:
Thomas Cromwell, the king’s abetter in the destruction of the monasteries. He is recorded as saying, ‘I will either make or mar’. (
Illu. 26.5
)

Martin Luther, the greatest exponent of the Protestant conscience, who compared himself to ‘ripe shit’. (
Illu. 26.6
)

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, the able, amiable and ambitious proponent of the king’s ‘great matter’. (
Illu. 26.7
)

John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s and the founder of St Paul’s School; he had a reputation for contentiousness and, like many of More’s London friends, was somewhat theatrical in manner. (
Illu. 26.8
)

Thomas Wolsey, the brilliant and resourceful cardinal who became More’s greatest patron. ‘Neuer,’ More wrote after Wolsey’s death, ‘was he saciate of heryng his own prayse.’ (
Illu. 26.9
)

The sanctified image of King Henry VII; his legacy of authoritarian and overwhelming power helped to bring More to the scaffold. (
Illu. 26.10
)

The burning of William Tyndale, the pious and learned translator of the Bible whom More described as ‘a beste’ with a ‘brutyshe bestely mouth’. This was the fate to which More consigned several heretics. (
Illu. 26.11
)

King Henry VIII, painted the year after More’s execution. ‘If my head could win him a castle,’ More had said, ‘it should not fail to go.’ (
Illu. 26.12
)

The first session of this parliament was actually more notable, and more notorious, for its secular legislation. Its most urgent business was concerned with the cancellation of the king’s debts, raised in past years by various levies and exactions, but the measure was passed only after much argument and complaint in the Commons. There were also proposals which bear the direct impress of More’s legal acumen; a very complex piece of legislation on the inheritance of land known as ‘the statute of uses’, for example, was discussed but eventually deferred. Instead More reached an agreement with the peers which simplified the law while at the same time protecting the king’s financial interests. Yet he also looked further ahead and, in the opening speech to parliament, generally remembered only for its ritual attack upon Wolsey, he denounced various ‘
erroribus et abusibus’
existing within current secular and spiritual legislation.
¹⁶
Of course he was particularly dismayed by the spread of heretical literature, but he was also likely to have entertained the possibility, at least, of legislation designed to reform certain aspects of the Church itself. There is a petition to the king, drawn up by Thomas Darcy, in which complaints about the power of the clergy are said to be upheld by ‘your Chancellor’.
¹⁷
In subsequent articles promulgated against Wolsey, of which More was the chief signatory, it is claimed that the cardinal suffered the ‘great pox’ but had nevertheless blown upon the king ‘his perilous and ineffective breath’. After the forced departure of Wolsey, More was intent upon reform which would improve both the spiritual health and economic fortunes of the nation. The younger man who wrote
Utopia
, with its preliminary discussion of good and bad government, survived still. More’s ambitions were large, as his speech to the parliament suggests, and the years of his chancellorship might indeed have been marked by the emergence of a reformed Catholic nation. But if that was his aim, the time was against him; his distance from the king on the ‘great matter’, in particular, would lead to a diminution of his power.

The beginning, however, was auspicious. More was instrumental in passing an Act which restored the judicial capacities of the Star Chamber in the interests of equity. He sat in that court even while parliament was in session, and there is a record of his committing a man to prison
‘for his obstinacy’.
¹⁸
Throughout this period, indeed, he was busily engaged in all the affairs of state. In the first week of December, for example, while parliament was still sitting, he was involved in hard negotiations with the Spanish ambassador on matters of trade; More, as usual, prevailed. In that same week he had also signed the bill against Wolsey, entreating the king to act so firmly that the cardinal could never ‘vex and impoverish’ the nation again.
¹⁹
The regal decision upon Wolsey’s future had yet to be made but the fact that the petition was also signed by Lord Mountjoy, another ‘humanist’ from the early days of the century, suggests that there was a genuine belief in the possibility of reform under the new Lord Chancellor’s guidance. At a great dinner to commemorate the feast of St Simon and St Jude, in the court of the Lord Mayor of London, More was listed first in the order of precedence. He sat beneath a rich cloth of arras; he was alone at the head of the table, with the great dukes and lords of the land sitting below him. Here, in striking form, is the measure of his new authority.

For thirty-one months Thomas More embodied the law of England. He was the presiding figure in Chancery and in the Star Chamber; he was known as ‘the keeper of the king’s conscience’ and, in that capacity, he was permitted to apply equity and moral judgment to the strict application of the law. William Roper depicted him as so practical and energetic a judge that the entire ‘backlog’ of cases from Wolsey’s administration was cleared; apparently he was so assiduous that there were days when there were no cases remaining for him to investigate. The reality was more complicated and more interesting.

The distinction between the Courts of Chancery and of Star Chamber was a nice one; both dealt with civil actions, largely involving disputes over property and contracts, but the Star Chamber was primarily concerned with cases where criminality was also being alleged. Hearings in Chancery, however, reveal the very fabric of Tudor life. Robert Farmer, a London seller of leather, tricked a young man into the poor purchase of worsted cloth; Robert Eland was forcibly removed from the manor of Carlinghow by a rival claimant to the property; Richard Fisher complained that he had been illegally ‘bound’ to a London draper; Richard Boys, a skinner of London, was about to be falsely imprisoned for debts; John Parnell, a draper of the city, refused to deliver cloths and woad for which payment had already been made. More listens intently.