Part 7

Viewed even exclusively as a religious movement, Luther’s revolt would not have attracted More’s sympathies. He had never doubted any of the dogmas of the Church, though he had a plentiful contempt for many prevailing corruptions which were recognised as such by men to whom heresy was never imputed by their bitterest enemy. He believed with conviction a great deal that Erasmus accepted merely _pro forma_. Luther not only propounded views on specific dogmas which More regarded as heretical, he challenged the whole authority of Rome; and More believed in the authority of Rome. But beyond all this the Lutheran revolt was very soon followed by the German Peasant revolt, which deluged half Europe with blood. The Peasants’ War was completely misapprehended in England, where the agricultural troubles, bad as they were, could bear no comparison with the oppression from which the German peasants suffered; but its leadership fell, naturally enough, into the hands of men as fanatical in their zeal for religious as for social reform. The overthrow of all authority and the universal triumph of sheer anarchy appeared to be their goal; and the world believed, or was taught to believe, that it was Luther who had started the conflagration. The heretical pamphlets which issued from Germany and Switzerland--lumped together, by those who did not know the facts, as Lutheran--gave colour to this belief by the virulence of their attacks on the Papacy and the clergy; and it is small wonder that many of the most liberal-minded men could anticipate nothing but stark ruin, the coming of chaos, unless the torrent were stayed. The threatening crash of all reverence, of all authority save such as could be enforced by push of pike, seemed to be brought measurably closer, when, in 1527, the Imperial armies sacked Rome in emulation of Alaric, and the representative of St. Peter was held a prisoner by the representative of Caesar Augustus.

In the abstract, and under Utopian conditions, More was singularly alive to the beauty of the principle of practically universal toleration. But Europe and England were presenting a problem which could never have arisen in Utopia at all. Even in Utopia, it was recognised that certain negations were directly anti-social, and that the propagation of them must be repressed. Here in Europe, it seemed as if every negation of a received dogma was to be turned into an anti-social engine. Under the conditions, the toleration of any heresy, certainly of all such as palpably involved an attack on authority, tended to anarchy. The conclusion that what was good unreservedly in Utopia would not be good in England is obvious. We can all see now, of course, that More misinterpreted the facts. The anarchism was an accident of the religious movement, which it shed of itself, not an inherent part of it: the Church lost as much ground by the action of her own zealots as by the attacks of her most fanatical opponents. But for a man who interpreted the facts as More did, there was nothing inconsistent in declaring for toleration in Utopia, but in England repression.

There is another point, too, which is generally unnoticed. The Utopians arrived at their religion by reason; they had no way of ascertaining truth except through reason; hence, for one man to condemn another for holding a different “doxy” would be in itself irrational. Christendom, in More’s view, was in a different position. It had received Truth by direct Revelation, and an Exponent of Truth by Divine appointment. What the Church had definitely pronounced to be heterodox was to be regarded finally and conclusively as false. To permit the preaching of doctrine known to be false was quite different from permitting the discussion or inculcation of divergent opinions on which there was no authority qualified to pronounce absolutely. Even at the moment when More was describing the religion of Utopia, before he had ever heard the name of Luther, he might with perfect consistency have held that heresy ought to be repressed in Christian countries. The argument, of course, has nothing to do with the wisdom or unwisdom of a repressive policy; it is concerned merely with the “inconsistency” of More’s Utopian theory and his Catholic practice. Those who found the Divine Revelation not in the voice of the Church but in the text of Scripture, were equally convinced that deviation from indisputable Truth should be punished by the strong hand.

Broadly, the suggestion here put forward is that the Utopian religions are philosophies: that all philosophies are matter of argument; that intolerance of opinions which are matter of argument is irrational. On the other hand (to More), Catholic Christianity is not a philosophy, but is revealed truth; not therefore matter of argument, except so far as details have not been defined; that suppression of doctrines subversive of Catholic truth is certainly legitimate, and may be necessary.

However that may be, it is undeniable that More appears in the least favourable light as a Catholic controversialist; losing balance and tone, he writes _currente calamo_, without restraint, with lapse of dignity, and with only an occasional redeeming turn of humour. That is to say, he drops to the normal level of contemporary controversialists on both sides, instead of abiding in that serene atmosphere which otherwise distinguishes him. The aggressive bellicosity of princes grieved him, and the king’s divorce business vexed him: but the spread of heresy was the one thing which upset his equanimity. “I pray God,” said he to Roper, “that some of us, as heigh as we seeme to sitt upon the mountaines, treadinge heretickes under our feete like annts, live not the day that we gladly would wish to be at leagge and composition with them, to let them have their Churches quietly to themselves; soe that they would be content to lett us have ours quietly to our selves.”

Similarly, the one and only ground of reproach against his conduct in any public matter is that as Chancellor he may have sanctioned putting heretics to the torture, and did during the last six months of his office--not before--send certain heretics to the stake. It is true that the only men in England, in those days, who, having the opportunity, did not send a single heretic to the fire, were the much-abused Protector Somerset and the still more abused Wolsey. But we would fain have had Thomas More an exception. Still, it can at least be affirmed positively that the penalty was only inflicted when all hope was over of persuading the “heretics” to recognise their error, and save their bodies as well as their souls; and that every effort was made to give them the opportunity of doing so. Given More’s premises, the conclusion that their death would tend to the salvation of other souls was irresistible.

It was towards the end of 1529 that Wolsey was struck down, and More, very much against his will, was elevated to the Chancellorship. For a commoner and a layman to receive the appointment was almost revolutionary--at least it was a very signal mark of the depression of the nobility, although it was many a year since any but an ecclesiastic had held the office. In everything, More proved himself a notably admirable occupant of the post, dealing out justice with unprecedented despatch; not only without allowing himself to be corrupted, in which he was not unique, but also without accepting those substantial compliments from suitors which less rigidly scrupulous judges were in the habit of profiting by, even when they did not allow their decisions to be affected. No personal or professional considerations were ever permitted by him to interfere with the ends of justice, the most exact that it was in his power to achieve. But his tenure of the Chancellorship was brief. More was unique in many respects, and in his own day he was unique in refusing to retain office when he could no longer do so without violating his conscience--without making himself a party to a policy which he held to be wrong. Other men shifted the responsibility on to the king; More felt that the responsibility could not be shifted, and in 1532 he resigned.

The cause of the resignation was Henry’s ecclesiastical policy; its immediate occasion, the submission of the clergy. The fall of Wolsey was simultaneous with the summoning of the famous “Seven Years” or “Reformation” Parliament of Henry VIII. The king had given no sort of sign of any disposition to relax the severity of his attitude towards heresy; but as the months and years passed, it became increasingly evident that his rigid orthodoxy was to be accompanied by a prolonged anti-clerical and anti-Papal campaign, the meaning whereof was to be revealed only by degrees. A twelvemonth had barely passed when the clergy were suddenly notified that they had as a body been guilty of a breach of _Præmunire_ in accepting the Legatine authority of Wolsey, and this was followed up by requiring Convocation to affirm that the king was sole and Supreme Protector and Head of the Church. No new authority was directly claimed for the Crown--without reading between the lines; though it was tolerably clear that a good deal more might be read into the declaration. The clergy yielded. Then the Commons presented their supplication against the ordinaries. The subsequent operations showed that the Royal Supremacy was to be applied after quite a new fashion. The clergy yielded to the logic of force, and made their “submission.” More, holding that no layman, king or not, could by any possibility be rightfully head of the Church in this new sense, concluded that he had no alternative but to retire into private life.

VI

INDIGNATIO PRINCIPIS

The divorce was Henry’s first objective; it was duly pronounced by the new Archbishop in the following spring. The step, however, was intensely unpopular. The more clearly this was brought home to the king’s mind, the more anxious he became to have the avowed support of every one whose opinion carried weight. Irritation reached its climax over the affair of the “Nun of Kent,” a young woman named Elizabeth Barton, who had for some little time been posing as a sort of prophetess. How far she believed in her own imposture it is not possible to tell, but she was certainly exploited by fanatical adherents of the Papacy, and when she took to denouncing the wrath of God against the king for the divorce, there was a real risk that the superstition of the day would make her ravings dangerous. There were two men whom no persuasions had prevailed upon to pronounce in favour of the Boleyn marriage--Fisher of Rochester and Sir Thomas More. It was found that both had had some sort of dealings with the nun. Henry determined that they should both suffer as her accomplices, unless they would openly range themselves with his supporters. But the case against More was so hopelessly futile that the king’s advisers warned him that the ex-Chancellor’s inclusion in the Bill of Attainder could only result in the Bill itself being thrown out. His name was therefore removed, to the great rejoicing of his friends. More saw farther into the king’s mind than they did. “_Quod defertur non aufertur_,” he said to his daughter.

He was right. The king and Cromwell were ready to go to the last extremity to force the two recalcitrants into line. An Act had been passed, fixing the succession to the throne on the children of Anne Boleyn. The ratification of the marriage had led him to remark to Roper: “God give grace, son, that these matters be not in a while confirmed with oaths.” The Act of Succession carried with it authority to impose an oath to maintain it; but the oath subsequently formulated was so worded as to bind the subscriber to the admission of the invalidity of the marriage with Katharine, and the denial of the Papal authority. The oath was proffered to More and Fisher; both refused it, though both were ready to maintain the succession. Both were sent to the Tower.

It was in fact more than doubtful whether the Act warranted the imposition of the oath in the prescribed form. The imprisonment of the culprits without trial was in any case illegal, and every attempt to persuade them to yield failed. The King always preferred to have the letter of the law on his side; and it was impossible to pretend that the refusal to subscribe involved treason. To give their destruction a legal colour, a fresh Act of Succession was passed at the end of the year (1534), expressly confirming the form of the oath; and this was accompanied by an Act of Supremacy, making it treason to refuse to affirm the Royal Supremacy. After that, it was simple enough to send More and Fisher to their doom. To deny the Supremacy was one thing; More had abstained from that. To refuse to affirm it was another; More had always done so. He maintained his position, and was condemned to death as a traitor, under the law which had been framed expressly to enmesh him. His defence was only that the law itself was invalid as being against the law of Christendom, and the liberties of the Church as affirmed in _Magna Charta_; which of course the judges could not admit. A week later, on July 6--the Eve of St. Thomas (of Canterbury)--1535, Sir Thomas More was beheaded.

VII

CHARACTER AND DEATH

Thanks mainly to the charm of the biography by his son-in-law, William Roper, the private life and character of Thomas More are among the most familiar to us in history. It is a life good to dwell upon, sweet and wholesome. Even in its public aspects there is but the single note that jars, his harshness--_molestia_ he called it--towards the heretics, whom he classed with homicides and robbers: in its domestic aspects it is wholly charming. In his private capacity he could love even a heretic. Roper himself, the sympathetic husband of his favourite daughter Margaret, was bitten with Lutheran doctrines, which even the persuasiveness of his revered father-in-law could not induce him to relinquish. To the error, as he deemed it, which was not accompanied by propagandism, More was as tender as could be desired. “Meg,” he said to Mistress Roper, “I have borne long with thy husband; I have reasoned long time with him, and still given him my fatherly counsel; but I perceive none of this can call him home again. And therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, nor yet will I give him over, but I will go another way to work, and get me to God and pray for him.”

There we have the natural Thomas More, obeying the kindly dictates of his own heart, which held no rancour towards any one who had not in some sort constituted himself an enemy of the “weal publick.” Personal hostility to himself he held of no account. Shortly before he was made Lord Chancellor, an old servant of his came to him in great indignation against some merchants who had been “liberally rayling” at More. Would he not, seeing what his favour was with the king, punish these scurrilous people as they deserved? But More’s reply was a very sound piece of philosophy in his usual humorous vein--“Would you have me punish them by whome I receave more benefitt than by you all that be my friends? Lett them a God’s name speake as lewedly as they list of me, and shoote never soe many arrowes at me, so long as they do not hitt me, what am I the worse? But if they should once hitt me, then would it a little trouble me. Howbeit, I trust by Gode’s helpe, there shall none of them all be able once to touch me. I have more cause, I assure thee, to pittie them than to be angrie with them.”

We are told much of his simple piety and faith. The same ardently reverent spirit, which made him cling to the Church and uphold her authority, at one time very nearly sent him into the cloister, and did cause him to retain so much of the ascetic tradition that he wore a hair-shirt next his skin all his days; though it was only by accident that any one save his beloved “Meg,” Margaret Roper, became aware of the fact. His subjugation of the flesh was free from its too common accompaniment of arrogant or morbid austerity. It was little more than an avoidance of insidious and apparently harmless temptations, an appreciation of the unimportance of gratifying physical appetites. He reaped his reward. The sudden descent from ample wealth to a narrow income, involved in his resignation of the Chancellorship, had no terrors for him. He had tried hard fare at Oxford, less hard at New Inn, something better at Lincoln’s Inn. He and his family could very well live by the Lincoln’s Inn standard. If they found that too high for the reduced exchequer, there was the New Inn standard to fall back on, and after that the Oxford standard. And even after that “May we yeat with bagges and walletts go a-begging togither ... and soe still keepe companie merrily together.” A cheery philosophy.

Two of Roper’s anecdotes show, in the dramatic touches which bring a very living Duke of Norfolk before us, how the son-in-law profited by his father-in-law’s example; besides illustrating More’s quaint combination of seriousness and humour. The duke went to see him about his resignation, at Chelsea, and found him singing in the Church choir. “To whome after service, as they went home togither arme in arme, the duke said, ‘God body, God body, my Ld. Chancellor, a parish Clarke, a parish Clarke, you dishonour the King and his office.’ ‘Nay,’ quoth Sir Thomas Moore smilinge upon the Duke, ‘your Grace may not thinke, that the Kinge your Master and myne, will with me for serving God his Master be offended, or thereby count his office dishonoured.’” And again, when he had escaped the Bill of Attainder: “The Duke sayd unto him, ‘By the masse, Mr. Moore, it is perillous strivinge with Princes, and therefore I would wish you somewhat to inclyne to the Kinge’s pleasure. For by Gode’s body Mr. Moore _Indignatio principis mors est_.’ ‘Ys that all, my Lord?’ quoth he. ‘Is there in good fayth noe more difference betweene your Grace and me but that I shall dye to day and you tomorrow?’”

But in the last days, the never-failing humour has an exquisitely pathetic setting.

The worthy wife, “somewhat worldlie too,” comes to see her husband in the Tower; she cannot understand why he is so silly as to stop there, when he might so easily recover the king’s goodwill by doing “as all the Busshopps and best learned of this realm have done.” He listens placidly to the outburst, then: “I pray thee, good Mistress Alice, tell me one thing: is not this house as nighe heaven as mine own?” We are reminded of the last words Humphrey Gilbert was heard to utter before the _Squirrel_ foundered: “We are as near God by sea as by land.” But there was no one to reply to Gilbert as “shee, after her accustomed fashion, not likeinge such talke, answeared _Tille valle, tille valle_.” The good soul has no patience for such incomprehensible folly. Margaret Roper visits him, the darling daughter, of all his children the likest to him in wit and in person; with her he is sure of perfect sympathy. She knows that his doom is absolutely certain, nor is she one to dissuade him from following the dictates of his conscience. After the sentence in Westminster Hall, she is waiting at the Tower wharf for the last fond farewell, the parting blessing. Heedless of spectators, she darts through the press of halberdiers guarding the prisoner, to fling herself on his neck, pour out her tears and her love on his breast. He soothes her with words of tender counsel and affection. At last she tears herself away, but overcome with the passion of devotion, “suddenlye turned back againe, and rann to him as before, tooke him about the necke, and divers times togeather most lovingely kissed him, and at last with a full heavie harte was fayne to separate from him: the behouldinge whereof was to manye of them that were present thereat soe lamentable that it made them for very sorrow to mourne and weepe.”

Shall we wonder at such love for the man who on receiving sentence could say to his judges, as reported by Anthony St. Leger, “I verily trust and right heartily pray that though your lordships have now in earth been Judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to our everlasting salvation”; whose spirit was so imperturbable in its serenity, that it looked upon death as a mere casual episode which in no wise ruffled his habitual humour. “I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant,” he said, with his foot on the scaffold, noticing how ill it had been put together, “see me safe up. For my coming down, let me shift for myself”: and as he laid his neck on the block, moving his beard aside, “Pity that should be cut; it hath committed no treason.”

His head, according to custom, was set on Temple Bar, but Margaret Roper, she “who clasped in her last trance her murdered father’s head,” was allowed to obtain possession of it, and preserved it in spices till her own death. The news of the execution was conveyed to Charles V. His comment is endorsed by posterity--“If we had been master of such a servant, we would rather have lost the best city of our dominions than have lost such a worthy Councillor.”

THOMAS CROMWELL

I

THOMAS CROMWELL

For six years, Thomas Cromwell was palpably and unmistakably the ruler of England--subject to the approval of the king. For the four years preceding, it is practically certain that he both suggested and organised Henry’s policy. England has never known a statesman so irresistible, so relentless, while his power lasted; nor one whose downfall was more sudden or so universally applauded. He is the most terrifying because he is the most passionless figure in our history. He wrought like fate, with a perfect disregard of all human sentiment and emotion; a scourge of God. Not, however, a mere scourge like the earthquake and the pestilence; not a mere destroyer; for, while he shattered, he built. But for Cromwell, it may be doubted whether Elizabeth’s England could have come into being.

For a second time Henry VIII. found the man most consummately fitted to minister to his own ambition; to plan, to organise, to smite--and to be smitten. As Wolsey, having accomplished his work, fell because he failed to engineer his master’s matrimonial projects, so Cromwell, having accomplished his work, fell in attempting to engineer a matrimonial project which displeased his master. Both the great ministers were men of humble birth at the best: popular report gave out that the father of the one was a butcher, that of the other a blacksmith. The one mounted to power, the last and perhaps the greatest product of the old relation between Church and State; the other was the first layman who, lacking even gentle blood, achieved the highest position in the State, and shattered her old relation with the Church. The reign of Henry VIII. abounds in huge ironies: it is not perhaps the least of them that the Hammer of the Monks passed into the service of the king from the service of the Cardinal.