Part 12

Cade alone hesitated. What if parliament should disavow these “pardons,” and the commons be treated as the peasants were treated when they trusted a king’s word? He asked for the endorsement of his own pardon, and the pardons of his followers, by parliament before his army dispersed. Chancellor Kemp explained that this was impossible, because parliament was dissolved. The people were satisfied with the cardinal’s word. The rising was at an end.

The following day the bulk of the commons departed from Southwark for their farms and cottages in Kent and Surrey and Sussex. Cade watched them go. His own mind was made up. Not till parliament should give him a pardon of indisputable legality would he lay down his arms. With a small band of followers he set off for Rochester, sending what goods and provisions he had by water.

The rising was at an end, and nothing more was heard in parliament, or elsewhere, of the famous charter of “complaints” and “requests.”

With the break-up of the insurgent army, the government woke to activity. Alexander Iden was appointed sheriff of Kent, and marrying Crowmer’s widow, subsequently gained considerable profit. Within a week the king’s writ and proclamation, declaring John Cade a false traitor, was posted throughout the countryside, and Cade, defeated in an attempt to get possession of Queenborough Castle, was a fugitive with the reward of 1,000 marks on his head, alive or dead, and with Sheriff Iden in hot pursuit.

Near Heathfield, in Sussex, Iden came up with his prey, early on Monday, July 13th.

Cade died fighting. A broken man, worn and famished, friendless and alone, he still had his sword. The spirit of Mortimer, Captain of Kent, flickered up in the presence of his enemies--it were better to die sword in hand fighting for freedom than to perish basely by the hangman. So Cade fought his last fight in the Sussex garden, and fell mortally wounded, overpowered by the sheriff and his men.

In all haste Iden sent off the dead body to London; it was identified by the hostess of the White Hart, and three days later the head was stuck on London Bridge. The body was quartered and portions sent to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury, and Gloucester, for public exposure. The sheriffs of London, upon whom the gruesome task fell of despatching these remains, complained bitterly of the cost of this proceeding, “because that hardly any persons durst nor would take upon them the carriage for doubt of their lives.”[81]

Iden got his 1,000 marks reward, besides getting the governorship of Rochester Castle, at a salary of £36 per annum.

Cade was “attainted of treason” by act of parliament, and all his goods, lands, and tenements made forfeit to the crown. A year later another act of parliament made void all that had been done by Cade’s authority during the rising.

In January, 1451, Henry VI. went into Kent with his justices, and this royal visitation was known as the harvest of heads; for in spite of Cardinal Kemp’s pardons, twenty-six men of Canterbury and Rochester implicated in the rising were hanged.

So the last echoes of the rising died away, and corruption and misgovernment remained. But the commons of Kent and their captain had done what they could, and in the only way that seemed possible, to get justice done, and their failure was without dishonour.

Sir Thomas More and the Freedom of Conscience

1529–1535

AUTHORITIES: William Roper--_Life of Sir Thomas More_, 1626; Harpsfield--_Life of More_ (Harleian MSS.); Stapleton--_Ires Thomæ_, 1588; Cresacre More--_Life of More_, 1627; Erasmus--_Epistolae_ (Leyden, 1706); Sir James Mackintosh--_Life of More_, 1844; Campbell--_Lives of the Chancellors_; Foss--_Lives of the Judges_; _Calendar of State Papers--Henry VIII._, edited by Dr. Brewer and Dr. Gairdner (Rolls Series); _More’s English Works_, edited by William Rastell; Rev. T. E. Bridgett--_Life of Blessed John Fisher_, and _Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More_, 1891.

SIR THOMAS MORE AND THE FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

1529–1535.

“Did Nature ever frame a sweeter, happier character than that of More?”--so Erasmus wrote in 1498, when Thomas More was twenty, and Erasmus, recently come to England, some ten years older. It was at the beginning of their friendship, a friendship that was to last unbroken till death,[82] and More had then passed from the household of Cardinal Morton to Oxford, and from Oxford to Lincoln’s Inn, to take up his father’s calling and follow the law as a barrister.

Twenty years later Erasmus, writing at length to Ulrich von Hutten, gives us a portrait of More in full manhood. Temperance, simplicity, human affection, good humour, independence of mind--these qualities are conspicuous.

“I never saw anyone so indifferent about food. Until he was a young man he delighted in drinking water, but that was natural to him. Yet, that he might not seem to be singular or unsociable, he would conceal his temperance from his guests by drinking the lightest beer, or often pure water, out of a pewter vessel.”

“He prefers milk diet and fruits, and is especially fond of eggs. He would rather eat corned beef and coarse bread than what are called delicacies.”

“He likes a simple dress, using neither silk nor purple nor chains of gold--except on state occasions. It is wonderful how careless he is of all that ceremony which most men identify with politeness. He neither requires it from others nor is anxious to use it himself, though when it is necessary, at interviews or banquets, he knows how to employ it. But he thinks it unmanly to waste time over such trifles.”

“He seems born and fashioned for friendship, and is a most faithful and enduring friend. He is easy of access to all; but if he chances to get familiar with one whose vices will not brook correction, rather than a sudden breaking off, he gradually relaxes the intimacy and quietly drops it. He abhors games of tennis, dice, cards, and the like, by which most gentlemen kill time. Though he is rather too negligent of his own interests, no one is more diligent in behalf of his friends. So polite, and so sweet-mannered is he in company, that no one is too melancholy to be cheered by him. Since boyhood he has always so delighted in merriment that it seems to be part of his nature; yet his merriment is never turned into buffoonery.”

“No one is less led by the opinions of the crowd, yet no one is less eccentric.”

The friendship of More and Erasmus had ripened in those twenty years. In More’s house, and at his instigation, Erasmus had written the _Praise of Folly_,[83] and the great scholar watched with warm interest the famous career and the brilliant character of the man he loved so heartily.

More was already high in Henry VIII.’s favour when Erasmus could write that no one was less led by the opinions of the crowd, and more than once his independence and courage of mind had been proved in the twenty years that had passed.

Drawn at first to the monastic life, More had spent four years (1500–1504) with the Carthusians in Smithfield, “frequenting daily their spiritual exercises, but without any vow.” Then it is plain to him that his vocation is not the priesthood, but marriage and public life, and he leaves the Charterhouse, and in 1505 is married and in Parliament.[84] But all his life the devotion to religion, and to the services of the Church, remain in More, and he is ascetic in the mortifications of the body till the spirit and the will ride supreme.

In the House of Commons More stood out against the exactions of Henry VII., and at once fell under the king’s displeasure.

More’s son-in-law, Roper, tells the story:

“In the time of King Henry the Seventh, More was made a burgess of the Parliament wherein was demanded by the king (as I have heard reported) about three-fifteenths, for the marriage of his eldest daughter, that then should be Scottish Queen; at the last debating whereof he made such arguments and reasons against, that the king’s demands were thereby overthrown. So that one of the king’s privy chamber being present thereat, brought word to the king out of the Parliament house that a beardless boy had disappointed all his purpose. Whereupon the king, conceiving great indignation towards him, could not be satisfied until he had some way revenged it. And forasmuch as he, nothing have, nothing could lose, his Grace devised a causeless quarrel against his father, keeping him in the Tower till he had made him pay a hundred pounds fine.... Had not the king soon after died, Sir Thomas More was determined to have gone over sea, thinking that being in the king’s indignation, he could not live in England without great danger.”

The grant from parliament to the king was reduced from £113,000 to £30,000 by More’s action; and if this action brought royal anger, it won for More the confidence of his fellow-citizens in London, so that we see him in the second year of Henry VIII. under-sheriff for the city, and according to Erasmus and Roper, the most popular lawyer of the day. With all his legal business, and good income, More is never anxious after money. “While he was still dependent on his fees, he gave to all true and friendly counsel, considering their interests rather than his own; he persuaded many to settle with their opponents as the cheaper course. If he could not induce them to act in that manner--for some men delight in litigation--he would still indicate the method that was least expensive.”[85]

More’s rising reputation was bound to attract the notice of Henry VIII., for the king was alert in the early years of his reign to get good men at the court, and Wolsey, who had become chancellor on Archbishop Warham’s retirement in 1515, was anxious to enlist More in the royal service. The court had no attractions for More, his embassies to Flanders and Calais, to settle trade disputes and difficulties with France, wearied him, and in 1516 he was engaged in finishing his _Utopia_. According to Roper, it was More’s independence of mind that made the king force office at court upon him. A ship belonging to the pope, which had put into Southampton, was claimed by Henry as a forfeiture. More argued the case so clearly that the commissioners decided in the pope’s favour, and the king at once declared he must have More in his service.

Then for the next twelve years Sir Thomas More enjoyed the royal favour and friendship. His promotion was rapid. Secretary of state, master of requests when the king was travelling, privy councilor, under-treasurer, or chancellor of the exchequer--all these offices were filled. In 1521 More was knighted, in 1523 he was speaker of the House of Commons, and in 1525 chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Erasmus writes to Ulrich von Hutten in 1519 in praise of More’s public work: “In serious matters no man’s advice is more prized, and when the king wishes for recreation no man’s conversation is more entertaining. Often there are matters deep and involved that demand a grave and prudent judge, and More unravels these questions in a way that gives satisfaction to both sides. Yet no one has ever prevailed on him to receive a gift for his decision. Happy that commonwealth where kings appoint such officials! No pride has come to him with his high estate. With all the weight of state affairs he remembers his old friends, and returns from time to time to the books he loves so well. Whatever influence has come to him with his high office, whatever favour he enjoys with his wealthy king, he uses all for the good of the state and for the assistance of his friends. Ever fond of conferring benefits and wonderfully prone to pity, his disposition has grown with his power of indulging it. Some he helps with money, to others he gives protection, and others he recommends for promotion. When he can help in no other way he does it by his advice: no one is sent away dejected. You might well say that he had been appointed the public guardian of the distressed and needy.”

If the cares of state did not cut off Sir Thomas More from assisting old acquaintances, they made great inroads into the home life he loved so well. He had married again on the death of his first wife, and his letters to his children, especially to his “most dear daughter, Margaret”--Roper’s wife--are full of tenderness. He is anxious about the education of his children, and rejoices that his daughter shares his love for books. We find him writing to Margaret Roper just after her marriage in 1522:--

“I am therefore delighted to read that you have made up your mind to give yourself diligently to philosophy, and to make up by your earnestness in future for what you have lost in the past by neglect. My darling Margaret, I indeed have never found you idling, and your unusual learning in almost every kind of literature shows that you have been making active progress. So I take your words as an example of the great modesty that makes you prefer to accuse yourself falsely of sloth rather than to boast of your diligence, unless your meaning is that you will give yourself so earnestly to study that your past history will seem like indolence by comparison.... Though I earnestly hope that you will devote the rest of your life to medical science and sacred literature, so that you may be well furnished for the whole scope of human life, which is to have a healthy soul in a healthy body, and I know that you have already laid the foundations of these studies, and there will be always opportunity to continue the building; yet I am of opinion that you may with great advantage give some years of your yet flourishing youth to humane letters and liberal studies.... It would be a delight, my dear Margaret, to me to converse long with you on these matters, but I have just been interrupted and called away by the servants, who have brought in supper. I must have regard to others, else to sup is not so sweet as to talk with you.”[86]

The close friend of Erasmus and Dean Colet, an accepted champion of the New Learning, More was naturally enthusiastic for education--for girls as for boys. He had written to Gunnell, for a time the tutor of his family:--

“Though I prefer learning, joined with virtue, to all the treasures of kings, yet renown for learning, when it is not united with a good life, is nothing else than splendid and notorious infamy: this would be especially the case in a woman.... Since erudition in woman is a new thing and a reproach to the sloth of men, many will gladly assail it and impute to literature what is really the fault of nature, thinking from the vices of the learned to get their own ignorance esteemed as virtue. On the other hand if a woman (and this I desire and hope with you as the teacher for all my daughters) to eminent virtue should add an outwork of even moderate skill in literature, I think she will have more real profit than if she had obtained the riches of Crœsus and the beauty of Helen.”

In this letter More goes on to speak of the profit of learning and the happiness of those who give themselves to it--“possessing solid joy they will neither be puffed up by the empty praises of men nor dejected by evil tongues.”

“These I consider the genuine fruits of learning, and though I admit that all literary men do not possess them, I would maintain that those who give themselves to study with such views (avoiding the precipices of pride and haughtiness, walking in the pleasant meadows of modesty, not dazzled at the sight of gold) will easily attain their end and become perfect. Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates from those of beasts; both therefore are equally suited for those studies for which reason is perfectioned, and becomes fruitful like a ploughed land on which the seed of good lessons has been sown.”

This strong love for wise learning, laying emphasis on a complete education--the training in virtue no less than the knowledge of letters--had its roots in More’s character. The “genuine fruits of learning” ripen in his life and death. His wide toleration, which will blame no man for not taking the path he trod to martyrdom, is coupled inextricably with a refinement of conscience that cannot be sullied by a denial of his faith. The freedom of conscience Thomas More claimed for himself he most willingly allows to others. Just as the education he valued for himself he extends to all his children.

Standing largely aloof from the violent controversies Luther had started, hating the bitter intolerance and savage abuse of theological strife, refusing to be drawn into the deadly discussion of Henry VIII.’s divorce, Sir Thomas More is content to live in loyal devotion to his religion and to the service of the state, if haply he may. And when this is denied him he is content to die, retaining his tolerant good-humour and the love of his kind to the end, and without resentment at his fate.

The courage of the sage never failed Sir Thomas More in his public work. As “a beardless boy” he had resisted in parliament the king’s extortions, as speaker of the House of Commons he protected the privileges of the commons. Wolsey had come down to the House with all his train to command a subsidy, but no word was uttered in reply to his address. In vain Wolsey appealed for an answer, Sir Thomas More could only declare that the speaker, then the mouthpiece of the commons, had nothing to say till he had heard the opinion of the House. “Whereupon, the cardinal, displeased with Sir Thomas More that had not in this parliament in all things satisfied his desire, suddenly arose and departed.”

High as More stood at that time in the affection of Henry, Sir Thomas knew the king, and the nature of the favour of princes. Roper relates that when he offered his congratulations, at the time of the appointment to the chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, More answered, “I may tell thee I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France (for then was there war betwixt us) it should not fail to go.”

Aware of Henry’s character, More yet had no choice but to accept the lord chancellorship from the king on Wolsey’s fall in 1529. It was no matter for personal satisfaction, and More’s reply to the Duke of Norfolk was substantially the same as his previous answer to Roper: “Considering how wise and honourable a prelate had lately before taken so great a fall, he had no cause to rejoice in his new dignity.” Erasmus wrote, “I do not at all congratulate More, nor literature; but I do indeed congratulate England, for a better or holier judge could not have been appointed.”

On November 3rd, 1529, Sir Thomas More, as chancellor, opened parliament, and in a long speech declared that “the cause of its assembly was to reform such things as had been used or permitted by inadvertence, or by changes of time had become inexpedient.” It was the opening of the seven years’ parliament, and before six years should run, this same parliament would, at the king’s order, condemn Sir Thomas More by act of attainder.

The position of the new chancellor was dangerous from the first. Wolsey had fallen because he had failed to help Henry to a divorce from his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and More had been made his successor because the king had counted on him to accomplish the “great matter.” All that Sir Thomas could hope for was that he might be allowed to do his work as chancellor without being mixed up with divorce proceedings. As long as he was not called upon to declare publicly that the divorce was right, he had no wish to interfere in the matter. First to last no word of approval came from More’s lips to encourage Henry in the divorce, but he was not the man to express judgment on a case that he did not wish brought before him.[87] In the end the chancellor’s very silence turned Henry’s disappointment to active displeasure, and More’s life was taken in savage revenge for non-compliance with the royal will.

Henry’s divorce dates the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in England--of that ecclesiastical revolution in which the supremacy of Rome was rejected, the crown superseded the pope as supreme head of the Church of England, and England was detached from the rest of Roman Catholic Christendom. In the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth the revolution proceeded still further, and Catholic rites and doctrines, service books and ceremonies were rigorously cast out of the Church of England, and all who adhered to the old order in religion were punished by law. But those days were far off as yet.

More, at the outset of this revolution, declines to follow the king in the rejection of the old allegiance to Rome. All he asks for is freedom of conscience to remain in the faith of his fathers, to worship as Christians in England had worshipped since the coming of Augustine. To escape death by giving up this freedom is impossible for Sir Thomas More.

The divorce from Queen Catherine is the turning point in More’s worldly fortunes as well as in ecclesiastical affairs in England.

Eighteen years passed from the day of Henry’s marriage to Catherine, on his accession to the throne, before the divorce was mooted. The scruple was that Catherine had been formerly betrothed to his dead brother Arthur; the moving force of Henry’s petition for divorce was the desire to marry Anne Boleyn. Unable to get the marriage annulled at Rome, or to get a favourable opinion from the universities, Henry fell back on Archbishop Cranmer to decree the divorce, and finally this was done in 1533, all appeals to Rome being henceforth forbidden. Henry had already, in 1531, called upon the clergy to acknowledge him as the supreme head of the Church of England, and the following year they were required to surrender the ancient right to meet and enact canons.[88]

In these four years the chancellor had kept out of political life as far as he could, and had given his attention to his judicial work. But in May, 1532, he resigned the great seal into the king’s hands, “seeing that affairs were going badly, and likely to be worse, and that if he retained his office he would be obliged to act against his conscience, or incur the king’s displeasure as he had already begun to do, for refusing to take his part against the clergy. His excuse was that his salary was too small, and that he was not equal to the work. Everyone is concerned, for there never was a better man in the office.”[89]

Nothing is known of Sir Thomas More’s work in the chancery except his integrity and his despatch. “When More took the office there were causes that had remained undecided for twenty years. He presided so dexterously and successfully that once after taking his seat and deciding a case, when the next case was called, it was found that there was no second case for trial. Such a thing is said never to have happened before or since.” (Stapleton.)

For nearly two years More lived unmolested after his resignation of the chancellorship; but he had incurred the enmity of the king and the hatred of Anne Boleyn, and Henry was swiftly driving at certain changes in religion that were to bring Sir Thomas More to the Tower and the block, and many another honest Christian to the prison and the gallows of Tyburn.

In June, 1533, after Cranmer had duly pronounced Henry’s marriage with Catherine void, came the coronation of Anne Boleyn, and Sir Thomas More declined an invitation from some of the bishops to be present at the celebration. He knew that his absence would be marked unfavourably by the king, and was ready to pay the penalty; but his care in avoiding the expression of any disapproval of Henry’s proceedings required an equal care that no approval should be expressed. To have been present at the coronation of Anne would have been, for More, to condone the divorce.