The Life of Thomas More (50 page)

The Fool is malleable and can play many parts, as More himself did; he can also speak the truth by means of humour. Henry Patenson was a fool by nature, whereas More was a fool by art. Someone lost a purse and set up a sign in St Pauls, ‘Whosoeuer hath found a purse …’ More saw the notice, and put his own name beneath it. So the man hurried to his chamber and More solemnly took down the details of his name and age. ‘My friend,’ he said then, ‘I am sorry for your loss, but I do not have your purse and I do not know where it is.’

‘Why then, if it may please you, did you write your name?’

‘So I may know you again another time: for if you cannot keep your own purse, you shall not keep mine.’ He then gave the man forty shillings and dismissed him. The Franciscans wished to be considered as fools; to know oneself to be foolish is to avoid the sin of pride. That is why it is best to deprecate oneself and secretly rejoice that one is ‘laughed down as a fole’. It is a means of avoiding the wrath of God, but it is also a way of displaying the true nature of human beings upon the earth which no furred robe of state or golden chain can conceal. That is why More maintained Henry Patenson as a permanent member of his family in Chelsea—poor Henry, who was reputed to be crazed after a fall from a church steeple. When his fool knek in the chapel with hazel nuts on a string as a rosary, More was no doubt inclined to repeat the words of the epitaph upon one of the king’s own fools named Lobe:

There is one last figure in the Holbein drawing which is worthy of notice. The artist has drawn a small monkey, tied to a chain, who seems to be clambering up the dress of Alice More. She is reading her devotional manual, and is so accustomed to the animal’s presence that she pays it no attention. More is known to have kept an entire menagerie, and among his ‘pettis’ were a fox, a weasel, a ferret, and a monkey as well as several rabbits and birds. Erasmus noted how he loved to observe their character and behaviour, and it may be from this habit of
close attention that More is able to describe the process of artificial incubation in
Utopia
; perhaps direct experience prompted his remark that newly hatched chickens follow the nearest human being. He also observed birds, of which he had many breeds, and may have been the source of Erasmus’s phrase in
Colloquies
that ‘they have their kindnesses and feuds, as well as we’.
³⁶
He is without doubt the origin of that scholar’s disquisition on the monkey and the weasel. When the monkey became ill he was taken off his chain, and spent some of his time watching the efforts of the weasel to seize the rabbits in their wooden cage. Finally the weasel managed to prise loose the hutch so that it was open at the back; all at once the monkey ran over to it and, climbing upon a plank, managed to restore it to its former safe position. The story appears in the
Colloquies
, also, and its lesson of primatial compassion is explicitly set in the household of Thomas More.

More sometimes employed his animals as metaphors. In particular he chose the image of the monkey to denote the heretic as ‘an olde ryueled ape’,
³⁷
the devil’s pet kept on a chain ‘to make hym sporte, with mokkynge and mowynge’.
³⁸
Of course More kept his own monkey upon a chain, and at the same time he imprisoned heretics within the gatehouse of Chelsea; the purpose, in both instances, is to keep a tight control of instinct and irrationality as well as evil and folly. The monkey and the fool can also be related, since in both instances More is able to contain unreason within a secure and formal setting. But what if Henry Patenson were to turn truly mad, and the ape to break its chain? This is More’s vision of the world after Luther, a world about to emerge all around him.

CHAPTER XXIV
YOU ARE BUT ONE MAN

HERE was a moment, during certain revels at Cardinal Wolsey’s palace of Hampton Court, when a band of maskers plucked off their visors and revealed their true identity. It was the third day of the new year, 1527, and one of their number was the king. The art of concealment and feigning was a memorable aspect of court entertainments in this period, whether it was expressed in allegory or in real intrigue. Disguising was a device, but it was also a necessity in a world established upon spectacle and appearance. But there was to be a true surprise later in this year, when the dancers of state paused for an instant and took off their masks. One of their company was Anne Boleyn.

She had been accustomed to such a life since her childhood, having been despatched to the French court at the age of twelve. She had returned to England at the beginning of the war against France and had been, as it were, within the king’s sight for five years. He had been involved in a sexual intrigue with her sister, however, before he turned to her in the early months of 1526. During the summer of that year Catherine of Aragon was becoming apprehensive; by the winter, Henry had decided. Apparently on grounds of religious scruple, in that he had married his dead brother’s wife against the injunctions of Leviticus, he had determined that his marriage should be annulled. Early in the following year Cardinal Wolsey was instructed to begin secret proceedings which would expedite the matter of annulment, but this private legatine court adjourned after two weeks at the end of May without any sentence passed. In the following month Henry approached Catherine herself with the news that they had been unlawfully married for the last eighteen years. It is said that she collapsed in tears, but there are also
reports that she knew precisely what had been happening.
¹
The Imperial ambassador had already been informed and the news passed to her nephew, the Emperor Charles V. It soon emerged, also, that Catherine had been instructed on issues of canon law which could materially serve her cause.

This is the moment that Thomas More entered the famous arena of the king’s ‘divorce’. Although he was not officially acquainted with Henry’s scruples until the autumn of that year, he was in the confidence of both Wolsey and the king, when very few others were; he himself said, in a letter written at a later date, that he was aware of the king’s reading of Leviticus. He may not have been formally asked to give his attention to the subject, but he knew. Yet someone was also secretly informing and advising Catherine. It may have been John Fisher, who as Bishop of Rochester became her most impressive and outspoken supporter, but it might have been More himself. He was close to her and to her entourage; he admired her piety and applauded her learning. Catherine returned his loyalty and is reported to have often told her husband that ‘of all his councillors More alone was worthy of the position and the name’.
²
More knew his ‘bounden duty’ was to the king, however, and he is most unlikely to have acted in a manner which might anger or compromise his master. If his loyalties were divided, no courtier could have guessed the mind’s construction from the face.

Holbein’s memorable portrait of Thomas More was painted during, or immediately before, these spring and summer months of 1527. He is dressed as a great counsellor and wears the heavy gold chain of Tudor livery over a black velvet cloak which has a brown fur collar; beneath it he wears a doublet of red velvet, while his short dark-brown hair is firmly held within a black cap. The catalogue of the Frick Collection in New York, where the painting now resides, notes that a few strands of grey hair are also visible. On the forefinger of his left hand can be seen a gold ring inset with a bloodstone, while his right hand holds a dispatch or sheet of paper. His right arm lightly rests against a ledge of stone and there is a bright green curtain draped in folds behind him. It is being held partly open by red cords, and there is a glimpse of clear sky—or of an empty space—beyond.

In certain respects More’s appearance, in this half-length portrait, resembles Erasmus’s famous description of him. His complexion is fair
but not pale. Erasmus describes the eyes as
‘subcaesii’
or ‘bluish grey’,
³
although in the Holbein portrait they seem closer to a brownish grey; Erasmus also notes that the eyes were flecked or tinted in some way, yet the painting shows him to be clear-eyed. He has a broad forehead and what appears to be a somewhat short or squat neck; an eighteenth-century writer declared that his ‘scull was a small one’,
⁴
perhaps having seen the severed head in its last resting place. He was a man of middle height only—which, by contemporary standards, would make him rather short. There are wrinkles over the bridge of his nose, as well as at the corners of his eyes; surprisingly, perhaps, he has the stubble of a beard of three or four days’ growth. This may be an indication of what Erasmus meant when he said that his friend had been from childhood
‘negligentissimus’
in matters of dress and appearance.
⁵
Erasmus alluded to Ovid’s
De Arte Amandi
, and in particular to a line which suggests that More’s dress was not always of the cleanest: ‘But let the gowne be well fittynge, and clyne wythout ony spot.’
⁶
Ovid also suggested that the mouth and teeth be clean and the nails without dirt, and it is to be expected that More obeyed at least those injunctions. But he wears his clothes of state with the indifference of an actor. That is why the most striking aspect of the portrait lies within the lucid clearness of the eyes.

Holbein was aware of the physiognomical aspect of portraiture, and probably was here emphasising More’s acuity and sharpness of judgement. The chin and jawbone signify the active powers of the will, and in the portrait they are somewhat pronounced. The nose is large, while the lips are thin and compressed, which suggests a powerful instinctive passion that is kept in check. A sixteenth-century treatise upon Aristotle’s physiognomical beliefs is also suggestive. A long nose with a tip declining slightly towards the mouth, like that of More’s in the portrait, denotes a ‘secretive, modest and trustworthy’ character; a dimpled chin is also the token of a ‘secretive’ nature.
⁷
Of course Holbein was too great an artist to delineate in so mechanical a fashion the attributes of his sitter; these characteristics are simply the background features which remain thoroughly dependent upon his own interpretation of More. Erasmus once wrote that it would take the skill of another Apelles to do justice to his friend, but it cannot be said that Holbein has failed to do so.