More Kaufman on Augustine and More

As a quick follow-up to my review of Peter Iver Kaufman's Incorrectly Political: Augustine and Thomas More, I wanted to let you know that there's more.

The University of Richmond Scholarship Repository provides links to many articles by the same author, including several on Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas More.

There's an essay on "Augustine's Dystopia", for example, from Augustine's City of God: A Critical Guide, 55-74. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012 and one on "Augustine and Corruption".

In addition to several articles on Thomas More, including one on Margaret Roper and the famous Alington Letter on conscience and "Good Company" and a response to Wolf Hall ("Dis-Manteling More"), Kaufman has also written articles on various issues in Elizabethan England and on Shakespeare's plays.

Enjoy browsing. I have not explored beyond Kaufman's works yet, but according to the website:

The University of Richmond's Scholarship Repository brings together and provides open access to the intellectual content of its faculty, students and many centers and programs. The repository includes a broad spectrum of materials and formats, including written scholarship by faculty and students.

UR Scholarship Repository is an open-access compliant institutional repository, with content freely accessible to the world and searchable via Google Scholar and other search engines.

All current and emeritus faculty and staff can deposit their work in this repository into their communities (their home departments) by contacting their respective library. Published and unpublished works of current and emeritus faculty and staff may be uploaded into the repository. Images, video and audio may be uploaded as well.

Meeting Arthur and Honor: The Lisle Letters

Arthur Plantagenet was a bastard son of Edward IV, acknowledged and raised at his father's Court. He was Elizabeth of York's half-brother and thus related to Henry VIII who appointed him as the King's Deputy at Calais, England's last holding in France after all the battles and claims of the Hundred Year's War. We have no verified image of Arthur Plantagenet, but reports indicate that he resembled his father (portrait at right), said to be one of the handsomest men of his time.

He married twice: first to Elizabeth Grey (who had been married first to Edmund Dudley, one of Henry VII's counselors beheaded at the orders of Henry VIII after he succeeded to the throne) and then to Honor Grenville, the widow of Sir John Bassett. Arthur had children with Elizabeth; Honor had children with John; Arthur and Honor did not have any children together. Arthur received the title of Viscount Lisle through his first wife, whose father was Edward Grey.

Arthur was close to Henry VIII, serving as Privy Councilor, Vice-Admiral of England, and attending The Field of the Cloth of Gold. As Deputy of Calais he represented his majesty's interests and served his nephew. Of course, he had money problems since payment did not come with that service, and so he was always looking for ways to develop more income.

We know this because of "the Lisle Letters", the correspondence of the Lisle family, which were seized when Arthur was arrested on suspicion of treason. This correspondence, with exchanges both official and personal, is still on file in the Public Records Office. Arthur and Honor wrote to each other, to John Husee, their agent, to Thomas Cromwell, to their children, to other friends at Court, etc. The letters contain details about their efforts to arrange the education of their children, their gifts to friends and family, information about the conflicts between France and the Holy Roman Empire, etc, etc.

Muriel St. Clare Byrne edited the Lisle Letters in six volumes for the University of Chicago Press (published in 1981) and then her friend Bridget Boland edited a selection in an abridgment published by the same press in 1983. Muriel St. Clare Byrne was a friend of Dorothy L. Sayers and studied at Somerville College. Bridget Boland wrote the screenplays for Anne of the Thousand Days, The Prisoner (the 1955 movie about a cardinal on trial in a Communist country), This England, and the original Gaslight (not the Charles Boyer/Ingrid Bergman MGM version). She also wrote a novel, The Wild Geese, about religion in Ireland during the penal years.

What interested me in reading the abridgment of the letters (in a used Penguin edition) was, of course, the religious issues as Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell set out to remake religion in England with the Church of England as a state church led by the monarch as Supreme Head and Governor. People had to be careful when writing about the momentous events of those days: the executions of the Carthusian monks, Bishop John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, etc. The Dissolution of the Monasteries provoked only Arthur's efforts to reap some of the spoils and the Pilgrimage of Grace comes and goes. 

Then there are the Sacramentalist preachers who begin to teach in Calais about Holy Communion and the Real Presence (denying the Real Presence, which was not what Henry VIII believed), connections to Reginald Pole, another Plantagenet cousin, Honor Lisle's Catholic devotions--the letters and St. Clare Byrne's notes demonstrate what a briar patch religion and politics were in Henry VIII's reign. Arthur Plantagenet got caught up in the conflict between Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Norfolk over control of Henry VIII's last years on the throne. He survived Cromwell but died on March 3, 1542 after being held in the Tower of London for almost two years. Henry had decided to release his uncle but Arthur had a heart attack--"this King's Mercy was as fatal as his Judgements", one chronicler opined.

One of Honor's sons, St. Clare Byrne notes in the Epilogue, James Bassett, married St. Thomas More's granddaughter Mary, Margaret and William Roper's scholarly daughter:

Bassett’s marriage to Mary Roper drew him into the circle of friends and kinsmen of Sir Thomas More. Like most of her relations she was a learned lady, ‘very well experted in the Latin and Greek tongues’, who had translated Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, as well as other works of the early Fathers. Rastell’s edition of More’s English works, published in 1557, included her translation of her grandfather’s Treatise on the Passion. Bassett himself, despite the vicissitudes of his early education, was a fluent linguist, and a contemporary considered him endowed with ‘all spiritual and bodily gifts’, so they were probably well-matched.

Bassett was a servant of Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, and survived Edward VI's reign to thrive during Mary I's reign with Court appointments and property. Sadly, according to his parliamentary biography:

The marriage was short-lived, however. Bassett was only just over 30 when he made his will on 6 Sept. 1558. He bequeathed his ‘dear and well-beloved wife’ jewels, half his goods, his house in Chelsea and a life interest in his lands. He left small gifts to three of his sisters, lamenting that his ‘ability’ was ‘now but small’, and that if his debts had not been so great he would ‘better have remembered them’. To his unborn child (Charles) he left the lease of his house near the Savoy. Except for £20 to the Black Friars [sic] of Smithfield and provision for his servants, he ordered the residue of his goods, together with the wardship of his nephew and all his leases in Devon, to be sold to pay his debts. He appointed his father-in-law, William Rastell and Ralph Cholmley as his executors, and his nephew James Courtenay (his fellow-knight in November 1554) and the dean of St. Paul’s as overseers. Bassett died on 21 Nov. 1558 and was buried five days later at Blackfriars, Smithfield, hardly living to see the new reign which could have brought for him only renewed exile or imprisonment, as it did for his two sons.

His sons were Philip and Charles (the latter born posthumously). Charles was associated with St. Edmund Campion and Father Robert Persons and suffered imprisonment for it before going to Rome to study at the English College. He died in Rheims in 1583. His older brother Philip followed his maternal grandfather's career path as a lawyer but was expelled from Lincoln's Inn and spent the fortune left by his father on recusancy fines.

480 Years Ago Today: St. Thomas More to his Daughter Meg

Thomas More wrote to his daughter Meg on June 3, 1535 describing the latest interrogation he'd been called to in the Tower of London. He had not been questioned about his response to the Succession and Supremacy since late April 1535 (he wrote to Meg on May 2). Cromwell and the others wanted him to reveal why he wouldn't swear the oaths:

To this it was said by my Lord Chancellor and Master Secretary both that the King might by his laws compel me to make a plain answer there­to, either the one way or the other. 

Whereunto I answered I would not dispute the King's authority, what his Highness might do in such case, but I said that verily under correction it seemed to me somewhat hard. For if it so were that my conscience gave me against the statutes (wherein how my mind giveth me I make no dec­laration), then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against the statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruc­tion of my body. 

Cromwell tried to compare More's conscience to the consciences of the heretics which More had investigated as Chancellor:

To this Master Secretary said that I had before this when I was Chan­cellor examined heretics and thieves and other malefactors and gave me a great praise above my deserving in that behalf. And he said that I then, as he thought and at the leastwise Bishops did use to examine heretics, whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the Church and used to compel them to make a precise answer thereto. And why should not then the King, since it is a law made here that his Grace is Head of the Church, here compel men to answer precisely to the law here as they did then concerning the Pope. 

I answered and said that I protested that I intended not to defend any part or stand in contention; but I said there was a difference between those two cases because at that time, as well here as elsewhere through the corps of Christendom, the Pope's power was recognized for an undoubted thing which seems not like a thing agreed in this realm and the contrary taken for truth in other realms. Whereunto Master Secretary answered that they were as well burned for the denying of that as they be beheaded for deny­ing of this, and therefore as good reason to compel them to make precise answer to the one as to the other. 

Whereto I answered that since in this case a man is not by a law of one realm so bound in his conscience, where there is a law of the whole corps of Christendom to the contrary in matter touching belief, as he is by a law of the whole corps though there hap to be made in some place a local law to the contrary, the reasonableness or the unreasonableness in binding a man to precise answer, standeth not in the respect or difference between beheading and burning, but because of the difference in charge of con­science, the difference standeth between beheading and hell. 

This is crucial to our understanding of More's integrity, as Richard Rex noted in his chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas More: when More investigated charges of heresy, Rex notes, he referred to the egotism of the heretic, interpreting The Holy Bible idiosyncratically and ignoring the authority of the Church. He was acting upon his conscience as formed by the Church, not his own view and interpretation. The Acton Institute blog offers another summary of this distinction, commenting several years ago on The Last Letters of Thomas More edited by Father Alvaro De Silva:

Whereas modern doctrines of conscience characteristically emphasize the self-sufficiency of the individual’s judgment, More stresses its communal nature. More, to be sure, recognized the uniqueness of the individual conscience. More was, after all, imprisoned precisely because he could not, in good conscience, swear allegiance to Henry VIII’s oath. But in contrast to the modern claim that the individual can create his own moral values, More saw the “formation of conscience” as “the fruit” of an education “in the truth.” Far from being the arbitrator and creator of its own moral order, the human conscience is in need of conforming to the truth. For More, the formation of conscience is the result of a long process in which one discovers a preexisting created moral order. This was, in some sense, the issue in More’s dispute with Henry. Henry sought to substitute his own law for the “higher law of God and Christ’s Church.” Nothing underscores the profound differences between More’s and the modernist’s understanding of conscience more than this fact: Whereas modern thought views the individual’s conscience as being above all other authorities, More’s conscience testifies to the superiority of the church’s authority to his king’s. More’s refusal to take Henry’s oath was not an act of civil disobedience but, rather, of obedience to truth and thus, in his view, an act of “genuine liberty.”

More makes this point in a long, artful letter in which he relates to his daughter the story of “Company.” The letter opens with Margaret urging her father to take Henry’s oath in order to regain his freedom. More proceeds to tell her about Company, “an honest man from another quarter,” who cannot agree with the questionable verdict rendered by his fellow eleven jurors. Angered that Company is stubbornly getting in the way of their decision, the eleven urge him to be “Good Company” and agree with their verdict. Open to the possibility of correction, Company says that while he already has considered the matter, he would like the eleven “to talk upon the matter and tell him … reasons“ he should change his mind. After the jury declines his offer, Company decides to keep to his own company; otherwise, ”the passage of [his] poor soul would passeth all good company.“ As More reminds Margaret, he himself ”never intended (God being my good lord) to pin my soul to another man’s back … for I know not whether he may hap to carry it."

More would again explain his views on conscience when at trial on July 1, 1535.

480 Years Ago: St. Thomas More Writes to His Daughter Meg

While I am teaching about The Real St. Thomas More this morning at the Spiritual Life Center here in Wichita, I'll be sure to highlight the appropriateness of holding such a class on this date.

On April 30, 1535, Thomas More was called out of his cell in the Tower of London to be presented with the opportunity to swear the new Oath of Supremacy under the threat of the Treason Act. He learned that the Carthusian Priors and Richard Reynolds had been found guilty and were condemned to death. He would see them leave the Tower for Tyburn on May 8, 1535. These events took place 480 years ago. He wrote to his daughter, Margaret Roper, on May 2 to describe the discussion he and Thomas Cromwell had regarding his refusal to take this new Oath (when he had refused to take the former Oath of Succession in 1534, more than a year before).

More argued that he was doing nothing to oppose Henry VIII and that Henry VIII knew it:

I answered that in good faith I had well trusted that the King's Highness would never have commanded any such question to be demanded of me, considering that I ever from the beginning well and truly from time to time declared my mind unto his Highness, and since that time I had, I said, unto your Mastership Master Secretary also, both by mouth and by writing. And now I have in good faith discharge my mind of all such matters, and neither will dispute King's titles nor Pope’s, but the King’s true faithful subject I am and will be, and daily I pray for him and for all his, and for you all that are of his honorable Council, and for all the realm, and otherwise than thus I never intend to meddle. 

More writes to Margaret how they tried a different tactic with him to persuade him to swear and how he replied:

I am, said I, the King’s true faithful subject and daily beadsman and pray for his Highness and all his and all the realm. I do nobody harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith, I long not to live. And I am dying already, and have since I came here been divers times in the case that I thought to die within one hour, and I thank our Lord I was never sorry for it, but rather sorry when I saw the pang past. And therefore my poor body is at the King’s pleasure; would God my death might do him good. 

More then went back to his cell. When he wrote to Margaret on May 2, he was preparing his family for what was was coming.

Whereupon I was delivered again to Master Lieutenant, which was then called in, and so was I by Master Lieutenant brought again into my chamber, and here am I yet in such case as I was, neither better nor worse. That which shall follow lies in the hand of God, whom I beseech to put in King’s Grace’s mind that thing that may be to his high pleasure, and in mine, to mind only the weal of my soul, with little regard of my body. 

 And you with all yours, and my wife and all my children and all our friends both bodily and ghostly heartily well to fare. And I pray you and all them, pray for me, and take no thought whatsoever shall happen me. For I verily trust in the goodness of God, seem it never so evil to this world, it shall indeed in another world be for the best. 

More remained in his cell until June 3, 1535, when he was questioned again--and then went to trial on July 1 and to Tower Hill for execution on July 6. My publisher, Scepter, has this book  (see the cover above) of selected letters of St. Thomas More in their catalog--fewer than 200 copies are in stock--that provides brief introductions to each of the letters in the book. It's an excellent resource.

Portrait of St. Thomas More's Meg, in Miniature

In The Wall Street Journal, Barrymore Laurence Scherer (I love that name!) writes about an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on miniatures, and comments on Hans Holbein's portraits of William and Margaret Roper:

Two of the show's finest miniatures are also its earliest ones: a pair by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543) depicting the wealthy lawyer and parliamentarian William Roper and his wife, Margaret. Holbein, celebrated for his Tudor court portraits in oils, had studied this diminutive art with England's first miniaturist, Lucas Horenbout, and during the last decade of his life produced a series of circular miniatures that set a standard for his successors.

As in Holbein's full-size portraits, these two are persuasively lifelike in their sobriety, with details that add to our understanding of each sitter's character. There is no sense that Holbein attempted to idealize Roper's heavy-lidded eyes and protruding lower lip or Margaret's long nose and gaunt features. Both portraits are inscribed with the respective sitter's age in Latin—Roper looks his 42 years, but Margaret looks rather elderly for 30 until you realize that this eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More had seen her father made Lord Chancellor of England by Henry VIII only to be persecuted and finally executed when he opposed Henry's schism with the Roman Catholic Church and repudiation of papal supremacy.

Not to mention rescuing her father's head from Tower Bridge!

Unlike most of the bust-length portraits in this show, these two include the sitters' hands. Roper clasps the edges of his fur-lined cloak with both hands, showing off his large ring while suggesting that he is about to address a jury. Margaret, wearing a magnificently embroidered English hood, holds a finely bound book with gold clasps. Her left thumb marks her place, pointedly suggesting actual reading. This is a significant gesture because—unusual for the period—More gave all his daughters the same Classical education that he gave his son. Margaret herself was noted for her learning.

She even corrected Erasmus.

St. Thomas More to His Daughter Meg

Beyond his martyrdom and his status as a patron saint, Thomas More provides us with such examples of humanity that tear the veil between us and the past. On July 5, 1535, the day before his execution, he wrote to his daughter Margaret, commenting on their last meeting as he left Westminster Hall for the Tower of London:

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 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. 

He enclosed his hair shirt with this letter, written in charcoal. June 29 was, at that time, the Feast of St. Peter (now the Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul) and July 7, the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas a Becket's relics! Thus, St. Thomas More remembered two martyrs before he died--and they were two martyrs with tremendous significance for the English Reformation era. St. Peter because Henry VIII was tearing England away from the successor of St. Peter as Pope, and had ended the long English tradition of St. Peter's Pence (in 1533/4); St. Thomas a Becket because Henry VIII would destroy (in 1538) the very shrine to which St. Thomas a Becket's relics were translated in 1220. 

William Roper, RIP

St. Thomas More's son-in-law and biographer William Roper died on January 4, 1578. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Biographer of St. Thomas More, born 1496; died 4 January, 1578. Both his father and mother belonged to distinguished legal families. He was educated at one of the English universities, and received his father's office of clerk of the pleas in the Court of King's Bench. He held this post till shortly before his death. When he was about twenty-three he seems to have been taken into Sir Thomas More's household, and he married Margaret, Sir Thomas's eldest daughter, in 1521. Erasmus who saw much of the More family describes him as a young man "who is wealthy, of excellent and modest character and not unacquainted with literature". He became fascinated, however, by the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, and professed his heresy so openly as to be summoned before Wolsey. Sir Thomas frequently reasoned with his son-in-law: "Meg", he said to his daughter, "I have borne a long time with thy husband; I have reasoned and argued with him in these points of religion, and still given to him my poor fatherly counsel, but I perceive none of all this able to call him home; and therefore, Meg, I will no longer dispute with him, but will clean give him over and get me to God and pray for him". To these prayers Roper attributed his return to the Faith; henceforth he was an ardent Catholic. He sat in four of Mary's parliaments, twice as member for Rochester and twice as member for Canterbury. His Catholicism got him into difficulties with the Government under Elizabeth and he was summoned before the Council in 1568; in the following year he was bound over to be of good behaviour and to appear before the Council when summoned. He does not seem to have been troubled further. His reminiscences of Sir Thomas More were written in the time of Queen Mary nearly twenty years after the events with which they deal, but his relations with his father-in-law had been so close and the impressions he received in that delightful household so vivid, that these rather disjointed notes form a most attractive biography. Roper's "Life" was not printed till 1626, but it was used by the earlier biographers of More, and is the chief authority for his personal history.

Corin Redgrave played William Roper in the the Zinneman production of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. The video above contains his two great scenes: when More refuses his hand for daughter Margaret "as long as you're a heretic" and when Roper wants to cut down all the laws in England.

St. Thomas More's Last Letter

Beyond his martydom and his status as a patron saint, Thomas More provides us with such examples of humanity that tear the veil between us and the past. On July 5, 1535, the day before his execution, he wrote to his daughter Margaret, commenting on their last meeting as he left Westminster Hall for the Tower of London:

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 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.

He enclosed his hair shirt with this letter, written in charcoal. June 29 was, at that time, the Feast of St. Peter and July 7, the Feast of the Translation of St. Thomas a Becket's relics! Thus, St. Thomas More remembered two martyrs before he died.

The Trial of St.Thomas More

St. Thomas More was brought to Westminster Hall for trial on July 1, 1535. Those set to try him were: Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, Sir Richard Leicester, Thomas Duke of Norfolk, Sir John Port, Sir John Fitz-James, Sir John Spelman, Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Baldwin Sir Walter Luke, and Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert. Like St. John Fisher, he was very weak after his long imprisonment in the Tower of London and was allowed to sit at his trial. Those set to judge him as his jury were: Sir Thomas Palmer, KNT., Falper Leake, Gent., Sir Thomas Peirt, Knt. William Browne, Gent., George Lovell, Esq; Thomas Billington, Gent.,Thomas Burbage, Esq; John Parnel, Gent., Geoffry Chamber, Gent. Richard Bellame, Gent., Edward Stockmore, Gent. George Stoakes, Gent.--and after hearing the evidence against More, which was mostly Sir Richard Rich's perjury, they found him guilty within 15 minutes!

Perhaps the most interesting part of the trial--and certainly one of most amazingly convoluted sentences ever spoken--came when Audley started to pronounce sentence and More had to remind him of proper procedure, that he should have an opportunity to state why Judgement should not be declared against him. Audley wanted to get this trial over, I'm sure, because the former Chancellor had already presented an excellent defense against Richard Rich's perjury (and Rich's other witnesses would not back him up), but More presented another dilemma to the justice of this court:

For as much as, my Lords, this Indictment is grounded upon an Act of Parliament, directly repugnant ,to the Laws of God and his Holy Church, the Supreme Government of which, or of any part thereof, no Temporal Person may by any Law presume to take upon him, being what right belongs to the See of Rome, which by special Prerogative was granted by the Mouth of our Savior Christ himself to St. Peter, and the Bishops of Rome his Successors only, whilst he lived, and was personally present here on Earth: it is therefore, amongst Catholic Christians, insufficient in Law, to charge any Christian to obey it. And in order to the proof of his Assertion, he declared among other things, that whereas this Kingdom alone being but one Member, and a small part of the Church, was not to make a particular Law disagreeing with the general Law of Christ's universal Catholic Church, no more than the City of London, being but one Member in respect to the whole Kingdom, might enact a Law against an Act of Parliament, to be binding to the whole Realm: so he shewed farther, That Law was, even contrary to the Laws and Statutes of the Kingdom yet unrepealed, as might evidently be seen by Magna Charta, wherein are these Words; Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit, & habet omnia jura integra, & libertates suas illcesas: And it is contrary also to that sacred Oath which the King's Majesty himself, and every other Christian Prince, always take with great Solemnity, at their Coronations. So great was Sir Thomas's Zeal, that he further alleged, that it was worse in the Kingdom of England to rest1se Obedience to the See of Rome, than for any Child to do to his natural Parent: for, as St. Paul said to the Corinthians, I have regenerated you, my Children, in Christ; so might that worthy Pope of Rome, St. Gregory the Great, say of us Englishmen, Ye are my Children, because I have given you everlasting Salvation: for by St. Augustine and his followers, his immediate Messengers, England first received the Christian faith, which is a far higher and better Inheritance than any carnal Sather can leave to his Children; for a. Son is only by generation, we are by Regeneration made the spiritual Children of Christ and the Pope.

Here the Lord Chancellor took him up and said; that seeing all the Bishops, Universities, and the most learned Men in the Kingdom had agreed to that Act, it was much wondered that he alone should so stiffly stickle, and so vehemently argue there against it.

HIS Answer was, That If the Number of Bishops and Universities were so material as his Lordship seemed to make it; then, my Lord, I see no reason why that thing should make any Change in my Conscience: for I doubt not, but of the learned and virtuous Men now alive, I do not speak only of this Realm, but of all Christendom, there are ten to one of my mind in this matter;  if I should take notice of those learned Doctors and virtuous Fathers that are already dead, many of whom are Saints in Heaven, I am sure there are far more, who all the while they lived thought in this Café as I do now. And therefore, my Lord, I do not think my self bound to conform my Conscience to the Counsel of one Kingdom, against the general Consent of all Christendom.

Here it seems the Lord Chancellor, not willing to take the whole Load of this Condemnation up­on himself, asked In open Court the Advice of Sir John Fitz-James, the Lord Chief Justice of England, Whether the Indictment was valid, or no? Who wisely answered thus: My Lords all, By St. Gillian (for that was always his Oath) I must needs confess, that if the Act of Parliament be not unlawful, then the indictment is not in my Conscience invalid. Some have wrote, That the Lord Chancellor should hereupon say, Quid adhuc desideramus testimonium, reus est mortis, and then presently proceeded to give Sentence to this effect:

That he should be carried back to the Tower of Lon­don, by the Help of William Kingston, Sheriff, and from thence drawn on a Hurdle through the City of London to Tyburn, there to be hanged till he should be half dead; that then he should be cut down alive, his Privy Parts cut off, his Belly ripped, his Bowels burnt, his four Quarters sit up over four Gates of the City: and his Head upon London-Bridge.

"I must needs confess, that if the Act of Parliament be not unlawful, then the indictment is not in my Conscience invalid." -- the grammatical convolutions of this sentence, with the double negatives, all center on that word "if" which Audley dared not investigate further. Thomas More left Westminster Hall to return to the Tower of London: his son John and daughter Margaret were there to see his progress. Margaret pushed past the guards twice to embrace her father, actions he would later commend her for with great affection.

John Rogers Herbert and St. Thomas More

Thanks to this blog, I have discovered John Rogers Herbert of the Royal Academy, who depicted the famous episode of St. Thomas More standing at the window of his cell in the Tower of London on May 4, 1535 and seeing the five protomartyrs of the English Reformation led out to Tyburn and their brutal executions:

[His daughter] Margaret visited him on May 4 for the last time, and from the window of his cell they watched three Carthusian priors and one Bridgittine [plus the parish priest John Haile], who would not acknowledge a civil supremacy over the Church, go to their execution. "Lo, dost thou not see, Meg," he said, "that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage? . . .Whereas thy silly father, Meg, that like a most wicked caitiff hath passed the whole course of his miserable life most sinfully, God, thinking him not worthy so soon to come to that eternal felicity, leaving him here yet still in the world, further to be plagued and turmoiled with misery." A few days later Cromwell with other officials questioned him again and taunted him for his silence. "I have not," he said gently, "been a man of such holy living as I might be bold to offer myself to death, lest God for my presumption might suffer me to fall."

Since three more of the Carthusians, the successors in leadership to St. John Houghton and his companions, were executed on this date in 1535, it seems appropriate to remember how much the Carthusians influenced St. Thomas More:

More was seriously perplexed as to his vocation. He was strongly attracted by the austere life of the Carthusian monks, and had some leaning too towards the Friars Minor of the Observance; but there seemed to be no real call to either the monastic life or the secular priesthood. Though he remained a man of the world, he kept throughout life certain ascetic practices; for many years he wore a hair shirt next his skin, and followed the rules of Church discipline for Fridays and vigils; every day he assisted at a Mass and recited the Little Office of Our Lady.

John Rogers Herbert was influenced by his friend A.W. Pugin to convert to Catholicism in 1840, and from then on, Catholic and religious subjects dominated his ouevre:

Herbert had been childhood friends with architect A.W. Pugin, and the two men were very close. Pugin, who was co-architect for the New Palace of Westminster, was a convert to Catholicism and had an influence on Herbert's decision to join the Catholic Church, which happened around 1840. It was in 1840 that Herbert painted his first 'Catholic' picture, Boar Hunters and Pilgrims of the 15th Century Receiving Refreshments at the Gate of a Convent. Herbert's conversion to the Catholic faith is a defining point in his career. His art gains a deeper purpose and becomes much more personal.

When joining the Catholic church creates a change in an artist's creative output, I think that's evidence of true dedication and devotion.

Happy Birthday to Thomas More

Thomas More was born in London on February 7, 1478; he was educated at St. Anthony's School and then lived in the household of John Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England from 1490-1492. Archbishop Morton arranged for his admittance to Canterbury College at the University of Oxford, where More studied classicial literature. He was a pupil of Linacre and Grocyn, but left Oxford after only two years in 1494 because his father, successful lawyer Sir John More wanted him to study law and become a lawyer.

He studied law at the Inns of Chancery and the Inns of Court and was called to the bar in 1502. From 1503 to 1504 More lived near the Carthusian Charterhouse outside the walls of London. According to Erasmus, he even thought of becoming a monk.

In 1505, Thomas More married Jane Colt and again, Erasmus is our source for the detail that More began to teach his young wife about music and literature. They had four children--three girls and one boy: Margaret, Elizabeth, Cecily, and John. Just as he cared for his wife's education, More made sure that his daughters were well-educated. John Guy wrote a great study of Thomas More's special relationship with his daughter Margaret (Meg), A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg, which I reviewed in 2009 on amazon.com:

There have been attempts to besmirch the reputation of Sir (Saint) Thomas More--unsubstantiated and denied rumors of torture, inflated numbers of executions for heresy under this administration as Chancellor, and emphasis on the more colorful language in his polemics against Luther and Tyndale. All are cited as unworthy of a canonized saint, either reflecting confusion about historical accuracy or what it means to be a saint.

In this book, John Guy describes the relationship between Thomas More and his dearest daughter, Margaret Roper. It is a loving relationship, demonstrating the richness of character and integrity of both father and daughter. Guy highlights Thomas More's progressive educational program for all his children, including his daughters, uncommon at the time, with the highest standards of contemporary humanism. Erasmus of Rotterdam found in Margaret More Roper a critical and discerning reader who could appreciate his efforts and correct his Latin.

Crucially, John Guy emphasizes that Thomas More had completely integrated the sacred and the secular in his way of life and yet steadfastly kept the public and the private aspects of his life separate. When he was with his family, or when he wrote to them when he was away from them, he did not discuss the efforts, burdens or issues of his working life, as lawyer, member of Parliament, ambassador, or Chancellor. It was only when he knew that public life was going to intrude violently and with deadly force on his private life that he gave his family a sign of what was to come: a brutal knock at the door, interrupting the family gathered at meal and a preemptory summons to answer charges of treason.

Also crucially, Guy highlights the ferocious will to power of Henry VIII once he knew what he wanted and experienced the satisfaction of obtaining it. Henry was then insatiable and only those who bowed utterly to his desire could hope to survive, and even they faced the danger of his changing mood and will. Thomas More tried to warn Thomas Cromwell (as depicted in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days") never to let the king focus on what he could do, but only on what he should do. More followed his own advice and was executed; Cromwell did not follow that advice and was still executed.

Margaret was one of the few who knew her father wore a hair shirt; she would thus be the only one who knew how to sustain him during his imprisonment in the Tower, engaging him with both intellectual diversion and prayer. She would be his champion after his execution, rescuing his head from its place in the row of traitors and preserving all his works, including the letters and treatises he wrote in the Tower, so that they could be published during the reign of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's surviving child and the first Queen Regnant of England, Ireland and Wales.

A sad and final irony I gained from the story of this relationship was an inkling of what might have been: if Henry VIII could have had the same respect and love for his daughter Mary, he could have fulfilled his early promise as a Renaissance prince. If Henry had seen Mary as the gift she was, with her intellect, her musical talent, and the same desire that Margaret had to please her father, what might have been? But then, we might not have the works Thomas More wrote in the Tower, when he put polemics aside and contemplated Jesus in His Passion, the soul facing comfort and tribulation, and that loving last letter to Margaret, praising her for her demonstration of love as he returned to the Tower of London after his trial.

John Guy has given us the great gift of this book, clarifying many aspects of Thomas More's life, including his relationships with his second wife Alice and his great friend Erasmus, who both sadly abandoned him when he faced the trials of the Tower. The supporting materials (illustrations, family trees, and bibliography) are great.

St. Thomas More to His Daughter Meg

St. Thomas More, former Chancellor of England was beheaded on July 6, 1535. The Church of England honors More and St. John Fisher on this date, while the Catholic Church honors both martyrs on the date of Fisher's execution, June 22. I cannot resist highlighting the tender note St. Thomas More wrote to his daughter Margaret after receiving the sentence of death after his trial on July 1 in Westminster Hall.

She had met him on the way from Westminster Hall to the Tower of London and pressed forward to embrace him.

He wrote to her: 'I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last, for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell 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'.

Margaret had been allowed to see him in the Tower only because she took the Oaths her father would not take; he had endured her attempts to persuade him with patience. That last embrace was certainly precious.

As at his trial, Thomas More continued to display his wit and humanity on the scaffold facing execution. In his Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, written while in the Tower, More wrote:

When we feel us too bold, remember our own feebleness. When we feel us too faint, remember Christ's strength. In our fear, let us remember Christ's painful agony that himself would for our comfort suffer before his passion to the intent that no fear should make us despair. And ever call for his help such as himself wills to send us. And then need we never to doubt but that either he shall keep us from the painful death, or shall not fail so to strengthen us in it that he shall joyously bring us to heaven by it. And then doeth he much more for us than if he kept us from it. For as God did more for poor Lazarus in helping him patiently to die of hunger at the rich man's door than if he had brought to him at the door all the rich glutton's dinner, so, though he be gracious to a man whom he delivereth out of painful trouble, yet doeth he much more for a man if through right painful death he deliver him from this wretched world into eternal bliss.

As John Guy describes in A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg, Margaret would retrieve her father's head from its place above Tower Bridge a few days after his execution and would work, while living on the Continent, on publishing his works. When she died, she willed his hair shirt to Margaret Giggs Clement, who died on July 6, 1570, the 35th anniversary of his martyrdom.