Saint Thomas More and the Princes in the Tower

My local PBS station is airing episodes of Lucy Worsley Investigates and I watched the first installment on the Princes in the Tower Sunday night. The Princes in the Tower are of course King Edward V of England and Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, the sons of King Edward IV.

Saint Thomas More's History of King Richard III was rather important to her investigation of the mystery: did Richard III order their murder? did Thomas More have good reason to name the murderers? or did Henry VII murder the princes after he defeated Richard III on Bosworth Field? were the two Pretenders (Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck) really the Princes?

Partisans for and against Richard III offer their opinions and Worsley tries to find documentation and evidence about the mystery.

I don't want to give away her conclusions, except to say that she does not agree entirely with Josephine Tey!

But Travis Curtright provides us with free resources, should you want to read a student edition of More's Richard III and a study guide.

One of the vignettes of this episode included her visit to Buckfast Abbey to view the hair shirt of Saint Thomas More, displayed there for public veneration since 2016. She questioned the authenticity of this relic, and Abbot David Charleswell, who had escorted her to the side altar, provided some explanation, but this blog gives much more detail:

In the century after More’s death a few competing stories sprang up about the hair shirt, and these are what I’m trying to unpick at the moment. One tradition has it that More sent the hair shirt to his daughter, the extraordinarily learned Margaret More Roper (1505–1544), who gave it to her equally learned sister by adoption, Margaret Giggs Clement (1508–1570), who later went into exile with her family to practice her faith, reportedly taking the hair shirt and other More relic-objects with her. Other traditions hold that Thomas More sent it to Giggs rather than Roper, who kept it until her death. Still other traditions state that he sent it to Giggs, who gave it to Roper, who returned it to Giggs, while another source claims that he sent it to his wife Alice. In any case, the hair shirt ultimately passed to Giggs Clements’ youngest daughter, Prioress Margaret Clement (1539–1612), a nun of the English convent of St Monica’s, founded in Louvain during the period when it was illegal to practice Catholicism in England. The nuns of St Monica’s claim to be More’s spiritual heirs through Margaret Giggs and her daughter Margaret Clement.

The hair shirt remained in Prioress Clement’s community and the communities descended from St Monica’s up until the 1980s, by which time most of the exiled English convents had returned to England. When I first began my doctoral studies in 2010 the exact whereabouts of the hair shirt were not clear. I recently discovered that when the modern-day St Monica’s convent closed, the hair shirt went to the Diocese of Plymouth for safe keeping. In 2011 it was transferred to Buckfast at the request of Abbot David Charleswell who arranged for it to be put on public permanent display at Buckfast starting in 2016.

So this first episode of Lucy Worsley Investigates provides almost as much information about St. Thomas More as it does about Richard III and the Princes in the Tower! It's interesting, also, that she finds more evidence about St. Thomas More than she does about the mystery she investigates.

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Picture credit (Public Domain): The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais, 1878, part of the Royal Holloway picture collection. Edward V at right wears the garter of the Order of the Garter beneath his left knee.

St. Thomas More to his Daughter Margaret

Margaret More Roper received this letter from her father, written on July 5, 1535 before his execution:

Our Lord bless you good daughter and your good husband and your little boy and all yours and all my children and all my godchildren and all our friends. Recommend me when you may to my good daughter Cecily whom I beseech our Lord to comfort, and I send her my blessing and to all her children and pray her to pray for me. I send her an handkercher and God comfort my good son her husband. My good daughter Daunce hath the picture in parchment that you delivered me from my Lady Conyers, her name is on the back side. Shew her that I heartily pray her that you may send it in my name to her again for a token from me to pray for me.

I like special well Dorothy Colly, I pray you be good unto her. I would wit whether this be she that you wrote me of. If not, I pray you be good to the other as you may in her affliction, and to my good daughter Joan Aleyn to give her I pray you some kind answer, for she sued hither to me this day to pray you be good to her.

I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry, if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is Saint Thomas' Even and the Utas [Octave] of Saint Peter and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God, it were a day very meet and convenient for me. I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath not leisure to look to worldly courtesy.

Fare well my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven. I thank you for your great cost.

I send now unto my good daughter Clement her algorism stone and I send her and my good son and all hers God's blessing and mine.

I pray you at time convenient recommend me to my good son John More. I liked well his natural fashion. Our Lord bless him and his good wife my loving daughter, to whom I pray him be good, as he hath great cause, and that if the land of mine come to his hand, he break not my will concerning his sister Daunce. And our Lord bless Thomas and Austin and all that they shall have.

The little boy More refers to is Thomas Roper, who was born in 1533. Cecily More was his third daughter by Jane Colt, married to Giles Heron. His "good daughter Daunce" was Elizabeth, who was married to William Daunce. Dorothy Colly or Colley was Margaret's maid; Joan Aleyn attended the school More had for his daughters and son at Chelsea. "St. Thomas's Even" refers to the vigil of the feast of the transfer of St. Thomas a Becket's body to Canterbury Cathedral; the feast of Saint Peter was on June 29, so July 26 was the last day of the Octave of that feast. Margaret Giggs Clement was another of the wards Thomas More educated; she would witness his execution. John More, his only son, was 26 years old.

When he writes "I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath not leisure to look to worldly courtesy", More is referring to how Margaret embraced him as he was going back to the Tower of London after being condemned--she forced through the guards, kissed him, and held on to him. 

What a letter to receive from your father the night before he died!

There are varying accounts of how the family received St. Thomas More's hair shirt before he died: some that he sent it to Margaret with this letter, some that Margaret Giggs Clement received it from him. We do know for certain that the family took the hair shirt with them into exile into what is now Belgium, in Mechelen and Louvain. As this blog explains:

In any case, the hair shirt ultimately passed to Giggs Clements’ youngest daughter, Prioress Margaret Clement (1539–1612), a nun of the English convent of St Monica’s, founded in Louvain during the period when it was illegal to practice Catholicism in England. The nuns of St Monica’s claim to be More’s spiritual heirs through Margaret Giggs and her daughter Margaret Clement.

The hair shirt remained in Prioress Clement’s community and the communities descended from St Monica’s up until the 1980s, by which time most of the exiled English convents had returned to England.

St. Thomas More's hair shirt is publicly displayed in a side chapel--of the Holy Cross--at Buckfast Abbey!

St. Thomas More, pray for us!

Buckfast Abbey on the BBC

Buckfast Abbey was featured on the BBC's Choral Evensong programme last week and the Vesper service is still on-line today. It was recorded for the Feast of the Transfiguration:

Choral Evening Prayer from Buckfast Abbey, Devon during the 2014 Exon Singers’ Festival – recorded Thurs 31st July (rpt Sun 10th Aug)

Introit: An Introit for Transfiguration (Robin Holloway) (First performance)

Responses: Plainsong

Office Hymn: O vision blest of heavenly light (Coelestis gloriae)

Psalms: 97, 121 (Plainsong; Robin Holloway)

First Lesson: 2 Peter 1 vv16-19

Anthem: Christus Jesus splendor Patris (Massaino)

Second Lesson: Matthew 17 vv1-9

Homily: The Rt Revd David Charlesworth, Abbot of Buckfast

Canticle: Magnificat quarti toni (Palestrina)

Lord’s Prayer (Toby Young ) (First performance)

Motet: Ave Maria (Josquin)
Final Hymn: ‘Tis good, Lord, to be here (Carlisle)

Organ Voluntary: Hymne d’Actions de graces: “Te Deum” (Langlais)

Richard Wilberforce (Music Director)

Jeffrey Makinson (Organist) 

Buckfast Abbey was founded first in the 11th century as a Benedictine abbey, and then Cistercians took over. They surrendered the abbey in 1540 and it was used as a quarry after Thomas Cromwell's Court of Augmentations granted it to  Sir Thomas Dennis of Holcombe Burnell. French Benedictines returned to the site in 1882 and built a new abbey, officially opened in 1902, with the abbey church pictured above (from Wikipedia Commons) completed in 1938. Buckfast Abbey sells a tonic wine and raises bees to be self-sufficient.

More information about the Exon Singers' Festival here.