found for Wolsey, More was raised to the chancellorship. The selection was justified by More’s high reputation, but it was also significant of the modification which the policy of the court was then undergoing. It was a concession to the rising popular party, to which it was supposed that More’s politics inclined him. The public favour with which his appointment had been received was justified by his conduct as judge in the court of Chancery. Having heard causes in the forenoon between eight and eleven, after dinner he sat again to receive petitions. The meaner the suppliant was the more affably he would speak to him and the more speedily he would despatch his case. In this respect he formed a great contrast to his predecessor, whose arrears he soon cleared off. One morning being told by the officer that there was not another cause before the court, he ordered the fact to be entered on record, as it had never happened before. He not only refused all gifts—such as had been usual—himself, but took measures to prevent any of his connexions from interfering with the course of justice. One of his sons-in-law, Heron, having a suit in the chancellor’s court, and refusing to agree to any reasonable accommodation, because the judge “was the most affectionate father to his children that ever was in the world,” More thereupon made a decree against him.
Unfortunately for Sir Thomas More, a lord chancellor is not merely a judge, but has high political functions to perform. In raising More to that eminent position, the king had not merely considered his professional distinction but had counted upon his avowed liberal and reforming tendencies. In the Utopia, which, though written earlier, More had allowed to be printed as late as 1516, he had spoken against the vices of power, and declared for indifference of religious creed with a breadth of philosophical view of which there is no other example in any Englishman of that age. At the same time, as he could not be suspected of any sympathy with Lutheran or Wickliffite heretics, he might fairly be regarded as qualified to lead the party which aimed at reform in State and Church within the limits of Catholic orthodoxy. But in the king’s mind the public questions of reform were entirely sunk in the personal one of the divorce. The divorce was a point upon which Sir Thomas would not yield. And, as he saw that the marriage with Anne Boleyn was determined upon, he petitioned the king to be allowed to resign the Great Seal, alleging failing health. With much reluctance the royal permission was given and the resignation accepted, on the 10th of May 1532, with many gracious expressions of goodwill on the part of the king. The promise held out of future bounty was never fulfilled, and More left office, as he had entered it, a poor man. His necessitous condition was so notorious that the clergy in convocation voted him a present of £5000. This he peremptorily refused, either for himself or for his family, declaring that he “had rather see it all cast into the Thames.” Yet the whole of his income after resigning office did not exceed £100 a year.
Hitherto he had maintained a large establishment, not on the princely scale of Wolsey, but in the patriarchal fashion of having' all his sons-in-law, with their families, under his roof. When he resigned the chancellorship he called his children and grandchildren together to explain his reduced circumstances. “If we wish to live together,” said he, “you must be content to be contributories together. But my counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first: we will not, therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will begin with Lincoln’s Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of great account and good years do live full well; which if we find ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then we will in the next year come down to Oxford fare, where many great learned and ancient fathers and doctors are continually conversant; while if our purses stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their charity.”
More was now able, as he writes to Erasmus, to return to the life which had always been his ambition, when, free from business and public affairs, he might give, himself up to his favourite studies and to the practices of his devotion. Of the Chelsea interior Erasmus has drawn a charming picture, which may vie with Holbein’s celebrated canvas, “The Household of Sir Thomas More.”
“More has built, near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion. There he lives surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son, and his son’s wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposition that whatsoever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done. In More’s house you would see that Plato’s Academy was revived again, only, whereas in the Academy the discussions turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief care of piety. There is never any seen idle; the head of the house governs it not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place, performing his duty with alacrity; nor is sober mirth wanting.”[1]
But More was too conspicuous to be long allowed to enjoy the happiness of a retired life. A special invitation was sent him by the king to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, accompanied with the gracious offer of £20 to buy a new suit for the occasion! More refused to attend, and from that moment was marked out for vengeance. A first attempt made to being him within the meshes of the law only recoiled with shame upon the head of the accusers. They were maladroit enough to attack him on his least vulnerable side, summoning him before the privy council to answer to a charge of receiving bribes in the administration of justice. One Parnell was put forward to complain of a decree pronounced against him in favour of the contending party Vaughan, who he said had presented a gilt cup to the chancellor. More stated that he had received a cup as a New Year’s gift. Lord Wiltshire, the queen’s father, exultingly cried out, “So, did I not tell you, my lords, that you would find this matter true?" “But, my lords,” continued More, “having pledged Mrs Vaughan in the wine wherewith my butler had filled the cup, I restored the cup to her.” Two other charges of a like nature were refuted as triumphantly. But the very futility of the accusations must have betrayed to More the bitter determination of his enemies to compass his destruction. Foiled in their first ill-directed attempt, they were compelled to have recourse to that tremendous engine of regal tyranny, the law of treason. A bill was brought into parliament to attaint Elizabeth Barton, a nun, who was said to have held treasonable language. Barton turned out afterwards to have been an impostor, but she had duped More, who now lived in a superstitious atmosphere of convents and churches, and he had given his countenance to her supernatural pretensions. His name, with that of Fisher, was accordingly included in the bill as an accomplice. When he came before the council it was at once apparent that the charge of treason could not be sustained, and the efforts of the court agents were directed to draw from More some approbation of the king’s marriage. But to this neither cajolery nor threats could move him. The preposterous charge was urged that it was by his advice that the king had committed himself in his book against Luther to an assertion of the pope’s authority, whereby the title of “Defender of the Faith” had been gained, but in reality a sword put into the pope’s hand to fight against him. More was able to reply that he had warned the king that this Very thing might happen, that upon some breach of amity between the crown of England and the pope Henry’s too pronounced assertion of the papal authority might be turned against himself, “therefore it were best that place be amended, and his authority more slenderly touched.” “Nay,” replied the king, “that it shall not; we are so much bound to the see of Rome that we cannot do too much honour unto it. Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth that authority to the utmost; for we have received from that see our crown imperial,” “which,” added More, “till his grace with his own mouth so told me
- ↑ Ep. 426, Appendix.
