Read The Life of Thomas More Online
Authors: Peter Ackroyd
The Life of Thomas More (76 page)
In his cell he had no proper writing materials, but he had been given an ‘algorism stone’ or slate upon which he could write; this had probably been brought to him by Dorothy Colley, Margaret Roper’s servant, who had been granted permission to visit him each day. At some point he composed a final prayer which is likely to have been copied down by Margaret at a later date; in this last devotion he laments his sinful life ‘euen from my very childhed’
7
and aspires to being with God ‘not for thauoiding of the calamyties of this wretched world’ as ‘for a very loue to the’.
8
He had been condemned on Thursday, and on Monday he was visited by his wife; the nature of their last conversation upon earth is not known, although its tenor may perhaps be guessed from More’s usual attempts at comfort and consolation. He gave into Alice More’s
keeping his hair shirt and scourge, as well as the algorism stone, for which he had no further need. He also composed a letter with a piece of charcoal; it was addressed to Margaret, but within it he blessed his family and exhorted them to pray for his soul. This final epistle is unfinished; the likeliest explanation must be that Dame Alice, having been granted the customary right of visiting the condemned man, was asked to leave before the letter could be completed.
It is not at all clear when More learned that his sentence had been commuted from disembowelment to beheading; the king was graciously pleased to grant this last favour because of More’s long service at court, and the decision may have afforded some natural human relief to More. This can only be surmised, however, as it is at least possible that he had set his mind and soul even beyond the worst pains of this world. He still did not know what day had been appointed for his death but in his letter he had told his daughter he wished to die on that following day, Tuesday, because of its coincidence with the vigil of the translation of the relics of St Thomas Becket. In this, at least, he was granted his wish. On the dawn of the following morning he was visited in his prison chamber by Sir Thomas Pope, a representative of the king’s council, who informed him that he must die at nine o’clock of that day.
Thomas More
: Master Pope, for your good tidings I heartily thank you. I have always been much bounden to the king’s highness for the benefits and honours that he hath still from time to time most bountifully heaped upon me. And yet more bound am I to his grace for putting me into this place, where I have had convenient time and space to have remembrance of my end. And so help me God, most of all, Master Pope, am I bound to his highness that it pleases him so shortly to rid me out of the miseries of this wretched world. And therefore will I not fail earnestly to pray for his grace, both here and also in another world.
Sir Thomas Pope
: The king’s pleasure is further, that at your execution you shall not use many words.
Thomas More
: Master Pope, you do well to give me warning of his grace’s pleasure, for otherwise I had purposed at that time somewhat to have spoken, but of no matter wherewith his grace, or any other, should have had cause to be offended. Nevertheless, whatsoever I intended, I am readily obediently to conform myself to his grace’s commandments.
9
Sir Thomas Pope, More’s ‘singular friend’, then broke down and wept before leaving the cell. Yet perhaps most poignant, in retrospect, is the readiness and willingness of More to ‘conform’ himself to the demands of the king. He remained a model of obedience; both in his life and at his death, he carried out the duties allotted to him with every possible care.
He dressed in the finest clothes left to him, but then Sir Edmund Walsingham warned him that after his death they would be given to a ‘javel’ or rogue of an executioner. ‘What Master Lieutenant,’ More is reported to have answered, ‘shall I accompt him a javel that shall do me this day so singular a benefit?’ He was persuaded to change into a plainer gown, but insisted upon sending his executioner a golden coin. A little before nine o’clock, he left his cell and passed under the Middle Tower in his journey of two hundred yards to Tower Hill. His face was now gaunt from debility or sickness, and his beard unkempt; the haggard and unshaven prisoner held before him a roughly made cross which had been painted red as an emblem of Christ’s passion. Yet there was another form of symbolism that would not have escaped More, or any spectator aware of well ordered imagery: the prisoner wore a coarse gown of servitude, but he carried the red cross of knighthood. He was going to that place where the hierarchies of the world would be transcended. He was about to die only a mile from his birthplace in Milk Street, but now he was leaving London for eternity.
A large crowd had assembled to watch this death, and More’s earliest biographers record some of the remarks of those who taunted or questioned him. Certain of these shouted words were also reported by one contemporary witness, but at this late date they cannot be verified. They serve, however, to emphasise the noise and tumult which would have accompanied More’s short pilgrimage to the scaffold. One called out that, when Lord Chancellor, he had been unjust to her. ‘Woman,’ he replied, ‘I remember well the whole matter. If now I were to give sentence again, I assure thee, I would not alter it.’ Someone offered him a cup of wine as he made his way, but he declined to drink from it saying ‘My master had vinegar and gall, not wine, given him to drink.’
10
A woman shouted out that he still had ‘evidences’ of her which she required. ‘Good woman,’ he is supposed to have answered, ‘have patience a little while, for the king is good unto me that even within this
half hour he will discharge me of all my business and help thee himself.’
11
Yet no doubt most of the crowd said nothing and stared upon the scene with no particular emotion except that, perhaps, which More described in his history of Richard III. ‘And so they said that these matters bee Kynges games, as it were stage playes, and for the more part plaied vpon scafoldes. In which pore men be but ye lokers on. And thei that wise be, will medle no farther.’
12
When More had left the jurisdiction of the Tower he was given to one of the sheriffs of London, Humphrey Monmouth, who escorted his prisoner to the steps of the scaffold. Monmouth was one of those ‘newe men’ who had been interrogated and confined in the Tower by More himself. So the world had turned. More’s family had not been given permission to witness the execution and he was, in everything other than the literal sense, alone. He had sought solitude, whether in the Charterhouse or in his private chapel, and his death was a mirror of his life. Yet he had always subdued his sense of self to the demands and rituals of the public world, and this final journey to his execution was as much part of his duty as his acceptance of high office. He went to a death determined by the law he had served, thus signifying his final obeisance to those forces which had shaped and determined his life. Yet, in this very last act, he had also transcended them. Those twin poles of his life, public service and private spirituality, were finally put aside when his soul left his body.
The steps of the scaffold were not firm and one of the officers present steadied him as he climbed to the block. ‘When I come down again,’ More is supposed to have said, ‘let me shift for myself as well as I can.’ His words to those assembled have been variously reported but it is known that, according to the king’s will, he spoke only briefly. He asked the crowd ‘to bear witness with him that he should now there suffer death in and for the faith of the Holy Catholic Church’, according to William Roper; but a contemporary account suggests that ‘Only he asked the bystanders to pray for him in this world, and he would pray for them elsewhere. He then begged them earnestly to pray for the King, that it might please God to give him good counsel, protesting that he died the King’s good servant but God’s first.’
13
He knelt down before the block and recited the words of the psalm which begins ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness’.
Then he rose and, according to custom, the executioner now knelt to beg his pardon and his blessing; characteristically the ‘headsman’ wore a close-fitting robe of scarlet wool, with a mask and ‘horn shaped hat’
14
of the same vivid colour. More kissed him, and is reported to have said, ‘Thou wilt give me this day a greater benefit than ever any mortal man can be able to give me. Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short: take heed, therefore, thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.’
15
These last words are not necessarily apocryphal, since More spoke loudly enough that those around him might hear what he said; his sense of drama did not desert him, indeed his journey to Tower Hill resembles that of a performer in a mystery play who walks across the plateau to another scaffold. Edward Hall was one of the under-sheriffs of the City in this year and, in his
Chronicles
, he adds the incident in which Thomas More asked the executioner not to sever his beard; if Hall was present on this occasion, as seems likely, then we may consider this to be an authentic detail. Hall’s concluding remark, ‘thus with a mock he ended his life’, may not, however, fully comprehend More’s irony in the face of death.
More knelt down and the executioner offered to bind his eyes; but he refused and covered his face with a linen cloth he had carried with him. Then he lay down with his neck upon the block, his arms stretched out before him. He was killed with one stroke of the axe and, when the head had fallen into the straw, the executioner picked it up and displayed it to the crowds with the shout ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ The corpse was taken to the church of St Peter ad Vincula within the Tower, where, in the presence of some of the family, it was interred. His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr.
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