The Life of Thomas More (7 page)

So in 1490, after his five years of schooling, More crossed the river to Lambeth—if he had taken the wherry, among the cockle boats and sixoared
barges, it would have cost him a penny. He came up by the gateway of red brick which was still being finished, together with its three-light perpendicular window above the arch itself and two great square towers of five storeys on either side. Until recent years there hung outside the arch a leaden water-pipe with Morton’s
rebus
, a pictorial pun on his surname, embossed upon it. Many of the young More’s most important duties were to take place in the Great Hall, which was to the right of the courtyard as he entered through the arch. The boy had already passed a winding stone staircase in the eastern tower that led to the place of imprisonment; forty-four years later he would cross the Thames again and climb that staircase as a free man for the last time in his life. It might be said that his public career began and ended on this small spot of Lambeth ground.

He had become a member of a large permanent staff which included ushers, yeomen of the chamber, grooms, butlers and others under the administration of a steward and a treasurer. More was one of the ‘Children for household offices’,
²
whose duties were multifarious but well defined. He lived according to a simple but not harsh regimen; the pages slept on straw mattresses or truckle beds within one chamber; cleanliness was an important consideration for those who served food in the Great Hall, and on one side of the room was a long and low stone sink with pitchers of water beside it. It is sometimes assumed that the late medieval body remained entirely unwashed (if on occasions anointed with perfume), but sweet grey soap and white soap known as ‘Castell’ were widely available. The apparel of the fashionable page included hose and a doublet edged with fur, and on ceremonial occasions he would don Archbishop Morton’s livery.

Morton seems to have been so impressed by the cleverness and quickness of the boy, according to William Roper, More’s son-in-law and earliest biographer, that it is possible he soon ‘attended’ the archbishop in his
sanctum
in the western tower of the palace, or in the audience chamber of polished oak adjacent to it. But his primary duties were of a more basic kind. The pages were obliged to act as ‘principall servitours’
³
at the great feasts in the Hall, and as a result More became part of an elaborate ceremonial which began when the ‘ewerer’ brought in the table cloths upon his left shoulder and the ‘panter’ carried the ‘principall salte’ and loaves of bread (each one two inches broad and
seven inches long) with a towel partly draped over his left arm. The prime duty of the page was to serve, and stand, and wait, ready to pass a pewter plate or a silver goblet; he was ready, also, to take a whispered message from one guest to another or to run an errand within the palace. The feasts were remarkable for their order and variety, with each item being served to guests according to their rank. There was a first course of beef and mutton, swan or geese, followed by a second course which might contain no less than thirty differernt kinds of meat, among them crane, heron and curlews; eventually came the cheese, ‘scraped with sugar and sauge levis’,
⁴
together with the various fruits of the season.

At the end of the meal More helped to place a double towel along the whole length of the tablecloth, so that after grace each guest might wash in the bowls of hot and cold water which had been put upon it. The tables and trestles were then ‘voyded’ of any remaining food, with the broken pieces of bread and meat collected for the ‘alms vessel’, and the pages escorted the guests to their chambers, where they ensured that the bed was covered ‘with pylowes and hed shetys, in case they wolle rest’,
⁵
as well as such ‘neweltees’ as cherries, green ginger and sweet wine. Only then were they given their own supper, together with that weak beer which was the staple beverage for children and invalids.

But if Thomas More was a ‘servitour’, he was also still a scholar. At Lambeth Palace there was at least one chaplain or clerk in minor orders who acted as a schoolmaster and supervised the
domestica schola
or private school for the boys within Morton’s household. A contemporary of More’s who had also been enrolled as a page, within the less influential household of the Bishop of Winchester, recalled how the prelate ‘delighted in hearing the boys repeat to him in the evening what they had learned that day from the schoolmaster. And in this examination he who did well was nicely complimented, and given something he wanted.’
⁶
It is not known if Morton had time to play so benevolent a role, but such an early recognition of More’s intelligence would explain his praise for the boy, ‘In whose witt and towardenes’ he much delighted. ‘The Cardinal …’, wrote William Roper, forgetting for the moment that Morton was given the red hat after More’s departure from Lambeth, ‘would often say of him [More] vnto the nobles that divers tymes dined with him: “This child here wayting at the table, whosoeuer
shall liue to see it, will proue a mervailous man”.’
⁷
How much credence can be given to this anecdote is open to question, but it exemplifies the archbishop’s reputation for shrewdness as well as More’s own evident cleverness.

In a household such as this, among boys of gentle and noble birth, the education would take certain prescribed forms. More soon acquired a reputation for skill in theatrical oration and disputation, and there is no reason to doubt that his formal education in rhetoric continued at Lambeth. He would by now also be instructed in the arts of
suasoriae
and
prosopopoeia.
One was concerned with the construction of convincing arguments for both sides of a debating topic, the other with the assumption of a character—fictional or real—to create a fluent and persuasive discourse.

There were more particular lessons in the Lambeth household, however. Books ‘of Curteyse’ or ‘Books of Nurture’ were texts for juvenile training in the manners of courtly and social life. These included practical, and often intricate, lessons in etiquette and general decorum. It was of primary importance, for example, that the page should know by heart the differences of estate and degree among the guests (one book lists thirty-six ranks), how to seat them and how to address them appropriately. The page must not pick his nose or teeth, ‘cough not, ner spitte’;
⁸
he must not lean against the wall, nor scratch himself. At all times he must remain mild and cheerful, replying to any remarks ‘wyth softe speche’,
⁹
and always bow to his lord when answering him. It is significant that some manuals then conclude with the need to serve the principal ‘Lord’ in Heaven. Questions of manners were also involved in the larger duty to ‘reverence, honour and obey’
¹⁰
lawful superiors—this was the advice given by the Earl of Arundel to his son who had just entered the household of the Bishop of Norwich. Another obligation imposed upon a boy of respectable birth was for him, in the phrase of the period, to ‘keep countenance’. It was his duty to preserve the dignity and demeanour proper to his rank and degree, to be civil to his inferiors and respectful to his superiors, to retain his ‘temper’ in every sense—the term suggesting not only moderation, calmness and a middle course, but also, according to one dictionary, the ‘due mixture of contrary qualities’.
¹¹

Thomas More’s later praise of Morton, as a man both politic and
wise, indicates the extent to which he was influenced by him; from the evidence of his
Utopia
and
The History of Richard III
, Morton is one of the most imposing figures of the period. In the register of his routine episcopal business, there are reports of his threatening excommunication against various ‘sons of iniquity’ who had robbed a priory, and of his ordering general processions ‘with chanting and mass if possible’ to petition God’s favour on behalf of the king and granting indulgences to those who participate in them.
¹²
In 1491, the year of Prince Henry’s birth, the archbishop was relieved from his duty of visiting the Pope every three years, largely because of his secular business as Lord Chancellor, and a proctor took his place on these obligatory missions to the apostolic see. The affairs of the Church and of the kingdom were united in his person; Morton was the latest in a long tradition of powerful clerics who served their sovereign as well as God. There was no necessary disparity between these roles, of course, since the divine laws of order and authority were thereby being maintained. In More’s later account of a conversation at Lambeth, when such matters as judicial punishment and land enclosure were discussed, the archbishop orchestrates a debate between a lawyer, idealist, friar, and fool; even in table talk there was a set of unwritten but acknowledged rules which Morton himself gently imposed upon his guests. It is not hard to imagine the admiration, even awe, which he instilled in the young page.

At the time when More first encountered him, the archbishop was the single most important example of the new unity and stability which the burgeoning Tudor dynasty had brought to the throne. Morton had managed to serve under both Yorkist and Lancastrian sovereigns, earning plaudits on both sides for his integrity, and by almost single-handedly arranging the marriage between Henry VII and Elizabeth of York he brought to an end those dynastic struggles which had threatened the peace and good government of England. During More’s tenure as a page at Lambeth there were already reports of the impostor Perkin Warbeck’s attempts to claim the throne, but these only heightened Morton’s preoccupation with maintaining the balance and firm order of the country.

The nature of Morton’s career is important in one other respect, since it may help to solve the mystery of More’s later relations with Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII. Morton was both cleric and lawyer, spiritual
and secular officer, whose capacities were rewarded with a number of lucrative ecclesiastical benefices and administrative posts. He was known by diplomats to be one of the principal architects of foreign policy, but acquired an altogether less satisfactory reputation for his conduct in domestic affairs. It was he who is said, perhaps inaccurately, to have invented the fiscal policy known as ‘the fork’; it was a device for collecting new revenues for the king, and was best described as ‘perswading prodigals to part with their money because
they did spend it most
, and the
covetous
because
they might spare it best
; so making both
extreams
to meet in one
medium
, to supply the king’s necessities’.
¹³
As a result he seems to have been disliked and feared by many who were not always impressed by the king’s ‘necessities’. Francis Bacon describes him as ‘a wise man and an eloquent’ but ‘in his nature harsh and haughty … envied by the nobility and hated of the people’.
¹⁴
The fact that this was the man whom Thomas More praised for his
prudentia
(judgement) and
auctoritas
(authority and prestige) raises interesting questions about More’s scale of values.

It has often been suggested, for example, that Thomas More despised or distrusted Cardinal Wolsey’s uses of power and displays of pomp. But in neither respect was Wolsey departing from the essential roles promulgated by Morton or his predecessors. Morton, too, loved pomp and circumstance—or, rather, he understood its importance in a culture irradiated by spectacle and display. The performance might sometimes be of a severe kind. In preparation for his installation as Bishop of Ely, he walked bare-legged and bare-footed from Downham to Ely with a rosary in his hands. But when he was to be installed as Archbishop of Canterbury he rode from London with a vast retinue, ‘greatly accompanyde with lordes espirituels and temporels’ and with an estimated cavalcade of a thousand horse in a grand progress that took six days. On his visitations to various of his dioceses in 1490 and 1491—on which occasions it is possible that the young More was in attendance—he insisted upon proceeding in ‘great state’,
¹⁵
with an imposing cross carried before him and a vast retinue behind him. This was the man whom More praised for possessing
prudentiam rerum
,
¹⁶
or one skilled in human affairs. Is it likely, then, that More would have any principled objections to Cardinal Wolsey’s similar use of magnificence and power?

It is important to remember that, for most of his life, More was a
lawyer and a public administrator; he was not a visionary or a scholarly humanist, however much he celebrated men such as Pico della Mirandola and Desiderius Erasmus. That is why he particularly admired in Morton his ‘great experience the verye mother & maistres of wisdom’;
¹⁷
he believed that experience in the practical business of the world led to prudent deliberation and good judgement. It also becomes clear from his history of Richard III, in which Morton plays a prominent part, that reason or theory does not prevail in human affairs; the wise man is Morton, who manages to guide events with diplomacy and rhetoric. More’s admiration for Morton was based upon that prelate’s astuteness and efficiency, which were precisely the characteristics that More was to display in all the affairs of his life.

After the meal was over in the Great Hall, there were occasions when players stepped forward to engage in dialogues and dramatic disputations, often accompanied by music and song; it was the natural entertainment for a group of people accustomed to debate and oratory. In one of those cultural transitions which can only be observed in distant retrospect, formal debate was turning into more informal drama; the theatrical world of Marlowe and Kyd is in turn connected with medieval rhetoric. The young More was present at some of these performances, and his son-in-law records that ‘thoughe he was younge of yeares, yeat wold he at Christmas tyde sodenly sometimes steppe in among the players’
¹⁸
and would then improvise a part so skilfully that he excelled all the other actors. This cannot literally be true, since the decorum and propriety imposed upon a junior member of the household would prevent him from ‘sodenly’ doing anything, but it may be that Archbishop Morton, recognising the boy’s ‘witt and towardeness’,
¹⁹
asked him to take on a role in the Christmas interlude. Certainly we know what kind of drama would have been prepared for the occasion. Morton’s chaplain by the year of More’s entry into service, Henry Medwall, was a skilful dramatist who supplied material both for professional actors (the
mimus
or the
histrio
) and occasional players. At least two of his works survive and one of them,
Fulgens and Lucrece
, has been dated with reasonable certainty to the time of More’s sojourn at Lambeth Palace.