The Life of Thomas More (49 page)

He was a frequent and active member of the little congregation, taking part in the processions and performing as an altar-server at the Mass. It seems that he even donned a surplice and sang in the choir; when the Duke of Norfolk berated him for performing such a humble role, he is reported to have replied, ‘My master the King cannot be displeased at the service I pay to his master God.’
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It may be apocryphal, but it neatly summarises the hierarchical order which he served. It is even reported that he sometimes kept the king waiting until the Mass was completed; such piety was formidable indeed. There is a story of his walking the bounds of the parish on foot, together with the rest of the congregation; he was offered a horse because of his rank as knight, but he is supposed to have answered, ‘My Lord went on foot. I will not follow him on horseback.’
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There were also occasions when, in processions, ‘he would carry the cross’.
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He walked, too, on pilgrimages to the shrines outside London; that of Our Lady of Willesden was held by him in particular veneration.

His daily routine at Chelsea did not differ significantly from that of Bucklersbury. He retired to bed at nine o’clock, and rose at two in the morning; he worked and prayed until seven o’clock in the morning, when he heard Mass before embarking upon the duties of the day. This energetic regime was sometimes mitigated by after-dinner slumber—dinner being customarily eaten at midday—but, as he wrote in the dramatic guise of one of his dialogues, ‘you wote well I am not wont at after none to slepe long, but evyn a litle to forget the worlde’.
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His diet was not so heavy, either, but consisted of the plainest fare with water; he was accustomed to eat the first dish placed before him, and nothing else. He favoured ‘powdered biefe or some such like salte meate’
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and did not, in the manner of his contemporaries, gorge upon a variety of meats and puddings, though Erasmus suggests that he did on occasions enjoy a dish of eggs or fruit. On Fridays and holy days, according to his early biographers, he spent the entire day abstaining within his private
chapel. A great deal of his time was spent with the king and council, however, and the rigours of his life at Chelsea must be seen as a retreat from the cares of the world that otherwise surrounded him. His entire household joined him when he returned home to his devotions; he led them in morning and evening prayers, which included the penitential psalms and the litanies of the saints. During their meals one of the family would read a passage from the Scriptures, which would then become the subject of general conversation. If it sounds altogether pious, it should not be forgotten that the earthly mishaps of the widow Edith also occurred within the Chelsea household.

So More lived on a grand scale appropriate to his rank and position, withdrawing himself regularly in order to engage in private prayer and mortification. He described his own position accurately, when he wrote of a man ‘that hath unto riches no love, but having them fall abundantly upon him, taketh to his own part no great pleasure thereof, but, as though he had it not, keepeth himself in like abstinence and penance privily’;
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such a man will employ his wealth in maintaining a true Christian household and in ‘setting other folk a work’.
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If he does this with a clear conscience and good heart, he is to be praised as much as the man who forsakes his wealth. Certainly More performed charitable works. He is reported to have visited the poorer inhabitants of the village, and given liberally of his money; when his official duties prevented him from dispensing alms, he instructed other members of the family to take his place. If he heard of a neighbouring woman beginning her labour, he would kneel down in prayer until the moment of delivery. He often invited those in need to join his family at dinner, and he brought the sick or the dispossessed into the shelter of his house. He maintained a poor widow, Paula, for example, who had lost everything in the law courts of London. It is likely that news of his charitable endeavours spread further than Chelsea: one of his earliest biographers, Thomas Stapleton, described how More eventually established a separate house for the poor, the infirm and the elderly, which in his absence was supervised by his daughter Margaret.

It was his solemn duty to act in this manner—all aspects of his life were matters of obligation. But a more private note emerges in a letter which he wrote to his wife, from the king’s court, on hearing news that his barns and part of the house itself had been accidentally destroyed by
fire. He resigned himself to God’s will and was ‘bounden not only to be content but also to be glade of his visitacion’;
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this was cold comfort, perhaps, for Alice More, who had to deal with the situation. He instructed her to take the entire household to church, ‘and ther thanke God’.
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But he also offered more worldly advice. ‘I pray you to make some good enserche what my poore neyghebors have loste’ and promise to reimburse them, since ‘I shuld not leve my selff a spone[;] there shall no poore neghebore of myne berre no losse by eny chaunce hapned in my howse’.
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His farm had suffered severe damage from the fire, but he ordered Dame Alice not to discharge any workers there until they had found new masters—‘I wolde not that eny man were sodenly sent away he wote nere whyther.’
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More sits with his family, in the Holbein drawing, his somewhat ugly hands hidden by the sleeves of his furred robe. But it is not just the portrait of a single family; it also affords a glimpse of a great network of money, patronage and power. In 1516 Alice More’s daughter (and therefore More’s only stepdaughter) had married a wealthy landowner, Thomas Elrington, who happened to be a cousin of More’s first wife; he owned properties in Kent and Middlesex, Yorkshire and Hertfordshire, and his grandfather had been a central member of the court of Edward IV. But he was not so wealthy that he did not desire a royal appointment, and Thomas More arranged for him to be granted a position in the Treasury at the time he himself was under-treasurer. Elrington died at the end of 1523, transforming his wife into a very rich widow; in the following year she married another landowner, Sir Giles Alington, for whom Sir John More had been a trustee until he came of age. So the family associations and mutual bonds were maintained.

It was in Alington’s private chapel, also, that the next set of alliances was formed. At a service in Willesden, More’s two younger daughters were married in a double ceremony, for which a special dispensation had been granted; Elizabeth was joined to William Dauncey, whose father had been ‘general surveyor’
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and then a member of the king’s treasury, while Cicely married Giles Heron, whose father had been the king’s ‘treasurer of the chamber’.
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Heron, also, had been a ward of More. Some of the principal members of the royal household were, in other words, allying themselves in a formal manner. After his marriage to Elizabeth, William Dauncey even advanced in royal favour; he was
granted two leases within the Duchy of Cornwall, under More’s direct control, and in 1528 he became ‘one of the tellers of the Exchequer … with the usual fees’.
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In the following year both Dauncey and Heron were returned as members of parliament for Thetford; interestingly this was the only occasion in the king’s reign when Thetford was represented in the Commons and, equally significantly, Thetford was part of the Duchy of Cornwall. Thomas More had simply arranged their election with the assistance of the Duke of Norfolk.

His other son-in-law, William Roper, also managed to be elected to that parliament, as a member for Bramber in Sussex. Roper was not overtly connected to the royal household, but instead he represents that other network of posts and preferments which the More household controlled; he was a lawyer, and the editor of Spelman’s legal reports has described the process by which the More household and its dependants transformed the King’s Bench into ‘virtually a family business’.
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John Roper and Sir John More had worked closely together in the past and, on his father’s death, William Roper succeeded him as ‘Protonotary’ or clerk of the pleas of the King’s Bench. This was an eminent and well-rewarded position, which in turn William Roper bequeathed to his own son. Primogeniture is the key to a hierarchical society. William Roper was also the grandson of Sir John Fineux, who had been until November 1525 Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, and Roper’s sister eventually married another Chief Justice. Other of More’s relations, including the Rastells and the Heywoods, were also involved in the administration of the King’s Bench. There is nothing sinister about these arrangements, however, since the King’s Bench remained an authoritative and highly regarded source of law. The Ropers and the Heywoods and the Rastells, who can properly be described as ‘the second More circle’, were excellent lawyers and administrators who had—in the circumstances of the period—quite naturally come together and aligned themselves one with another. So at the king’s court, in parliament and in the law courts Thomas More had taken up a central and highly influential role. It was said, by Erasmus, that no one became a member of the household without attaining good fortune. More also looked after his extended family in direct ways; he leased Bucklersbury to his adopted daughter Margaret Giggs, after her marriage to John Clement, and gave Butclose to the Ropers.

What, then, might they have said to one another as they posed for the Holbein drawing? Only Margaret Giggs appears to be talking in the work itself, although Sir John More is ignoring her. Anne Cresacre seems to be looking on with a faint expression of disapproval. More himself is the most calm and benign figure among them, yet his reported conversations with the members of his family were not necessarily benevolent. He was not averse to mocking the size of his wife’s nose, for example, although his own was not inconsiderable. There was also the occasion when Anne Cresacre asked for a pearl necklace, and subsequently More presented a box to her. ‘I haue not forgotten,’ he said.
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Inside there were no pearls, however, only a string of garden peas; it was clearly designed to instruct his daughter-in-law on the themes of pride and vanity. She ‘allmost wept for very greefe’
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but it was ‘so good a lesson’ that she never forgot it. The story may not be reliable, since Anne Cresacre is wearing a necklace of real pearls in the Holbein sketch, but it is certainly very like More’s manner in the world. He instructed his children ‘to take vertue for their meate, and play for their sawce’.
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One of his favourite phrases in the Chelsea house, at a time of misfortune or sickness, was ‘we must not looke to goe to heauen at our pleasure and on fotherbeds’,
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to which, perhaps, he appended his customary phrase, ‘I assure you’. But such composure could not always be maintained; when his eldest daughter was visited by the sweating sickness he wept and prayed and vowed that, if she had died, he would ‘never have meddled with worldly matters after’.
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His love for Margaret was the most profound and significant passion of his life. He watched her grow into the most erudite woman of her age; he educated her and he trained her in virtue. He truly nurtured and cherished her female nature; there are occasions, as at the time of her sickness, when they seem even to share the same identity. Behind the calm and ironic demeanour of the man, there was a capacity for powerful and morbid feeling.

There are some other figures in the Holbein drawing who have yet to be mentioned. The briefest outline of a man can be seen in an adjoining room; he is sketched as if seated, with a window behind him, and can be taken to represent More’s secretary. John Harris played the role of a confidential clerk; he took down letters to More’s dictation, vetted his manuscripts and generally assisted him in the affairs of the world. According
to Cresacre More, More would ‘for the most parte in his greatest affaires and studies ask his man Harris his aduise and counsell; and if he thought the contrarie better, he would willingly submit to his opinion’.
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John Harris read aloud passages of scripture during meals on holy days, and on occasions acted as his master’s agent. More had an additional servant, John à Wood, who took care of personal dress and private needs. Once when Harris berated More for the state of his shoes, he replied, ‘Ask my tutor to buy me a new pair.’ The ‘tutor’ was John à Wood, and it seems that More also valued his advice highly in matters besides his appearance. He in turn looked after Wood and Harris with affection and consideration—‘we be bounden to loke to them & prouide for their nede’, he wrote of his household servants, and look after them ‘yf they fall sik in our seruice’.
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There is also the story of a former servant who overheard some merchants ‘slander and raile against his old maister’, and immediately travelled to Chelsea in order to inform him of their false reports. More only smiled, however, and said that their arrows were of no consequence—‘so none hit me, what am I the worse for that?’
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Henry Patenson, the fool, is dressed fashionably in cap and robe; he has an open benign face and is gazing thoughtfully into the middle distance. His is almost a medieval presence in this modern household, since the post of resident fool dates from the twelfth century. Henry VIII had his own fool, Will Somers, whose jests and adventures are recorded in various dialogues; he called his master ‘Harry’ and, having made the king laugh, happily laid ‘doune among the spaniels to sleep’.
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Nothing can be further from the modern imagination than the idea of retaining a ‘simple’ or ‘folysh’ man for the amusement and edification of a family. Yet it was a role of much subtlety, since the fool was considered to be divinely blessed; in the words of St Paul, ‘the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God’.
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Erasmus, in his
Praise of Folly
, had already made it plain that the foolish are indeed wise compared to the ordinary wisdom of the world, and More seems to have been delighted when he was chided for his ‘folly’ by the Duke of Norfolk and ridiculed as a ‘fool’
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in Coventry. He was a fool as Socrates, and Lucian, were fools; they were the true scholars of humanity, who in their folly refused to countenance the follies of the age. When Richard Pace was criticised for wearing a fool’s coat at a masquerade More is supposed
to have replied, ‘No, no. Excuse him. It is less hurtful to the commonwealth when wise men go in fools’ coats in jest, than when fools go in wise men’s in earnest.’
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