The Life of Thomas More (65 page)

Thomas More
: Yes, and I was very glad to hear of her virtue.

Rich then made discreet efforts to enlist More in the nun’s cause, but More was fully aware of the dangers of that course. He may not at this time have known of all her activities, but he must have guessed that she was coming close to treason.

Father Rich
: Did he tell you of the revelations that she had concerning the king’s grace?

Thomas More
: No, for sooth, nor if he would have done I would not have given him the hearing. Nor verily no more I would in deed, for since she has been with the king’s grace herself, and told him, methinks it a thing needless to tell the matter to me or any man else.
³⁷

Father Rich then left the house, without staying for dinner, his aims unaccomplished. But the matter did not end there, since More arranged to meet Rich on two other occasions when they discussed the visions and trances of the nun; he also had further discussions with Father Risby. Yet he remained prudent, believing that silence might save him. Of course he refused openly to support the king’s cause and when, in May, Thomas Cranmer pronounced Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn
to be valid (and, therefore, that with Catherine of Aragon to be void) More volunteered a characteristic comment to his son-in-law. ‘God give grace, son,’ he said, ‘that these matters within a while be not confirmed with oaths.’
³⁸
He was uncannily and unhappily prophetic in this, but he was put to the test much sooner than he expected.

The day after the marriage had formally been declared lawful, Anne Boleyn was brought by water from the palace at Greenwich to the Tower of London; she sat in a boat of state, followed by the great barges of the City companies festooned with silk and cloth of gold; other boats carried grand effigies, from which issued flames and fireworks. On the king’s own barge were placed the minstrels and the musicians making, in the words of a contemporary report, a ‘marvellous sweet harmony’
³⁹
upon the river. Then as the procession of more than three hundred ships turned towards the city, fusillades of shot and cannon sounded from both shores. It was the beginning of four days of splendour, leading to the coronation of the new queen in Westminster Abbey. But Thomas More, still a king’s councillor, was not present at any of the proceedings. This was the point when Henry hardened his heart against him.

Three erstwhile conservative bishops, among them his old friend and colleague Cuthbert Tunstall, had already written to More and urged him to take his proper place at the coronation. They were so concerned for his attendance that they sent him twenty pounds with which to purchase a new gown for the occasion. They knew the peril in which he now stood and were desperately anxious for him to reach some kind of accommodation with the king. He kept the money, but still he refused to be present at the ceremonies. The true courage and spirit of the man now emerge. His own comments to the bishops also reveal the farsightedness with which he observed the affairs of the nation. He told them, first, a story concerning the emperor Tiberius; he had enacted a law which exacted death for a certain penalty, unless the offender were a virgin. But when a virgin woman did eventually appear on that charge the emperor was unsure how to proceed. Then one of his council proposed the perfect solution. ‘Why make you so much ado, my lords, about so small a matter? Let her first be deflowered and then after may she be devoured!’

Thomas More
: And so, though your lordships have in the matter of
the matrimony kept yourselves pure virgins, yet take good heed, my lords, that you keep your virginity still. For some there be that by procuring your lordships first at the coronation to be present, and next to preach for the setting forth of it, and finally to write books to all the world in defense thereof, are desirous to deflower you; and when they have deflowered you, then will they not fail soon after to devour you. Now, my lords, it lieth not in my power but that they may devour me. But God, being my good Lord, I will provide that they shall never deflower me!
⁴⁰

This apt speech may have been partly rewritten by his son-in-law, in his biography, but the classical allusion and the resonance of deflower/devour are characteristic of More. He knew, by this stage, the power and the danger of the forces opposing him; ‘they’ are Cromwell and his agents, with the monarch in the recesses beyond, but More speaks of them here in the terms he usually reserved for heretics and ‘demones’; is it possible he believed that the agents of the council were indeed devils sent to inaugurate the reign of Antichrist?

A month after the coronation, Thomas More decided to pay a visit to Elizabeth Barton, who was then residing at Syon Abbey. The Bridgettine fathers there had promised More that they would notify him of her next visit and there is a strong suggestion that this meeting with the ‘holy maid’ was of some urgency. They spoke alone, in a small private chapel. Did the nun reveal to him further prophecies about the downfall of the king and the reign of Queen Mary? Was he now inclined to believe her? More’s own account, written later to exculpate himself, is circumspect. He stated that he introduced himself as one who did not wish to hear her revelations but, rather, ask for her prayers. He had heard of her virtue and in turn the nun replied ‘that of me she had manye suche thinges harde, that allredy she prayed for me, and ever wolde’.
⁴¹
They discussed a woman from Tottenham who had been troubled by visions, which Elizabeth Barton had persuaded her to be false. Then the ‘holy maid’ or ‘mad nun’ told More of her own visitations from the devil, who had appeared ‘in likenes of a bird … fleeinge and flickeringe about her in a chambre, and suffered hyme self to be taken’.
⁴²
The devil was much on More’s mind at this time and there is no reason to suppose that he disbelieved her.

As a young scholar and as a lawyer, he had displayed no real interest
in the paraphernalia of popular piety; he seems to have had no extravagant devotion to the saints and no particular fondness for relics, but he had instead practised a Christological devotion. In the altered circumstances of the time, however, he had acquired a love and reverence for all the customs of the old faith. He and the nun were now in affinity, and did indeed need to pray for one another. Yet More remained cautious in his letter to Cromwell, insisting that ‘we talked no worde of the Kinges Grace or anye great personage ells, nor in effecte, of anye man or woman but of her selfe, and my selfe’.
⁴³
Herself and myself, both growing increasingly isolated in a world which had little place for them. At the end of their interview, More gave her a double ducat and asked her to pray for him.

Yet not all was as it seemed. After her interview with More, the holy nun had ridden to the mansion of the Exeters in Surrey. They urgently wished to hear her prophecies because they touched directly upon the fate of the Lord Marquess, Henry Courtenay. He believed himself to have good title to the throne, and it can be supposed that he wished to have the nun’s support. It was declared, in later evidence to Thomas Cromwell, that she had fallen into a trance and in that condition given a term to the king’s life; she was questioned by Lady Exeter and replied that ‘in so many months that her husband should reign’.
⁴⁴
This was very close to treasonable talk.

It is clear that More knew of the nun’s departure and journey to Surrey, if only because he wrote a curious letter to her touching on the matters which she was discussing with the Exeters. He addressed her as ‘Good Madam and My Righte Dearlie Beloved Syster in our Lorde God’, and then humbly begged her to consider his advice in a particular matter; but before he delivered his ‘poore mynde’ he asked her to recall that ‘I shewed you that I neither was, nor wolde be, curious of eny knowledge of other mennes matters, and lest of all of eny matter of princes or of the realme’.
⁴⁵
More kept his own copy of the letter, and this inserted ‘remembrance’ seems to have been written for the eyes of any future investigator rather than the nun herself. But then he came to the point; some of her admirers ‘happe to be curiouse and inquisitive of thinges that litle perteine vnto theire partes: and some mighte peraduenture happe to talke of suche thinges, as mighte peraduenture after turne to muche harme’. If his meaning was not already clear enough, he recalled
the fate of the Duke of Buckingham, who, after being persuaded by a monk of his royal destiny, had been executed for treason. He then concluded by advising her once more of the dangers involved in talking ‘with any persons’ on ‘suche maner thinges as perteyne to princes’ affeirs’.
⁴⁶
He had issued a specific warning, therefore, against her collusion or association with the Marquess of Exeter, who might, in turn, invite the fate of Buckingham.

It has sometimes been suggested that he was being less than candid in his assertion that he never discussed the ‘matter of princes’ with Elizabeth Barton. One member of the Syon Community, who later gave evidence against the nun, declared that More had spoken to her ‘divers times’ about her revelations concerning the king.
⁴⁷
His evidence is tainted, however, to the extent that it is exactly the kind of thing Thomas Cromwell wished to hear. A biographer of Father Richard Reynolds, also of Syon, claims that More spoke to the nun on two separate occasions; this is not difficult to believe, but it does not necessarily suggest any collusion between them. A member of the More household gave evidence to the effect that Elizabeth Barton came twice to see him; she conversed with Margaret Roper and Giles Heron on those occasions, since More himself ‘would not speak with her at neither of both times’.
⁴⁸
The most plausible interpretation of these reports is that More no longer wished to speak to her: he realised that she had gone too far in her talk of the king’s deposition or death, and he kept away from her. He did not wish to be implicated in any religious or political conspiracy. Yet he had another reason for concern; the nun was a defender of the old faith and, if she were compromised, the cause itself would be placed in jeopardy.

In the summer of this year Cromwell wrote to the king about the ‘holy maid’; Henry had asked for her activities to be investigated and Cromwell promised that with Cranmer he would test the ‘dissymuled holyness and supersticious demeanoures of the Ipocryte Nunne’.
⁴⁹
He also reported that two Friars Observant had been arrested, after secretly visiting Catherine of Aragon, and he suggested that they be put on the rack to discover their secrets. At this time More made another visit to Syon, where, discussing Elizabeth Barton with the fathers, he gave a highly ambiguous and complicated description of her revelatory claims: ‘I assure you she were likelie to be verye bad, if she seamed good, erre I
shoulde thinke her other, tyll she happed to be proved naughte’.
⁵⁰
But his discretion did not free him from suspicion; even as Cromwell investigated Elizabeth Barton, so he also pursued Thomas More. His agent, Stephen Vaughan, had returned to Antwerp in order to learn more about the activities and supporters of two Franciscans who had fled London: Father Peto, who had once preached so vociferously in the king’s presence, and Father Elstow were busily engaged in promoting works favouring the cause of Catherine of Aragon. They were compiling their own Latin treatise on the validity of her marriage and acted as distributors for books of a similar kind. Their work was in turn being financed and supported by sympathisers in London. ‘They be so much helpen out of England with money,’ Vaughan reported to Cromwell, ‘but I cannot learn by whom.’
⁵¹
He did have suspects, however.

Fisher’s tract against the annulment was to be found in Antwerp and ‘if pryvey searche be made and shortly, peradventure in the howse of the same Busshop shalbe founde his first copie’. One of the friars helping to support Peto and Elstow was being financed by a certain merchant residing in London. Vaughan did not name him but it is at least possible that this merchant was Antonio Bonvisi, the close friend of More who most recently had been a sponsor at the baptism of John More’s second child. The investigations were coming closer. ‘Maister More hathe sent often tymes, and lately bookes unto Peto in Andwerp, as his book of the confutacion of Tyndale, and Frythe his opynyon of the sacrament, with dyvers other bookes. I can no further lern of More his practises, but if you consider this well, you may perchance espye his crafte.’
⁵²

Then came upon More various torments and fears of the night, ‘forecasting all such peryls and paynfull deathes, as by any maner of possibilitie might after fall vnto me’.
⁵³
As he lay in the dank sweat of his ‘nightes feare’ where fantasy ‘dowbleth … feare’
⁵⁴
he envisaged torture upon the rack and terrible pain inflicted by more ingenious instruments; he envisaged death by disembowelling, his heart torn out of his body and shown to him while he was still alive. He quotes from the words of the psalm, which he recited at the time. ‘Thow hast good lord set the darknes, & made was the night, & in the night walken all the bestes of the woodes[,] the whelps of the lions roryng & calling vnto god for their meate.’
⁵⁵

CHAPTER XXIX
THE WRATH OF THE KING MEANS DEATH