A Telling Detail: St. Thomas More's Chain of Office

From Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal analysis of Margaret Thatcher's funeral comes this telling detail:

Thatcher's funeral was striking in that it was not, actually, about her. It was about what she thought it important for the mourners to know. The readings were about the fact of God, the gift of Christ, and the necessity of loving your country and working for its betterment. There were no long eulogies. In a friendly and relatively brief address, the bishop of London lauded her kindness and character. No funeral of an American leader would ever be like that: The dead American would be the star, with God in the position of yet another mourner who'd miss his leadership.

The pageantry, for an American, was most moving. The English as always do this brilliantly but I wonder if they understand—they must, but it's not something they acknowledge—that when they bring out and put forward their splendor they are telling the world and themselves who they are and have been. Leading the procession into St. Paul's was the lord mayor of London, in velvet coat, breeches and buckled shoes. On his coat he wore Sir Thomas More's gold chain of office, taken from him before he was killed in the Tower (sic). Imagine a nation that puts such a man to death, contemplates it, concludes in the end it was wrong, and now proudly displays the saint's chain at its greatest events. When I saw it I thought of a recent trip to the Vatican. Touring its archives, we were shown one of its proudest possessions: a letter from Galileo.

Things change. Time changes them. Great nations, and institutions, rethink. But only if they're great.

The chain of office Noonan refers to is the Collar of Esses, which in the detail of the Holbein portrait from this site, you can see is a chain of "S" linked with a Tudor Rose hanging from it. This article has some more detail about the Lord Mayor's Chain of Esses, noting that it is not completely original, and that Henry VIII gave these collars out as rewards for faithful service:

The merciless punishments Henry VIII meted out to his enemies have been well documented. Less is known about how, on the rarer occasions when the king was happy with the service of his courtiers or the country's most eminent noblemen, he liked to give them a golden livery collar or heavy chain as a token of his gratitude.

Henry VIII only awarded around 20 of the chains. They were all engraved with the characters SS, referring to the Latin religious creed, Spiritus Sanctus (Holy Spirit), though none were believed to have survived in their entirety. [I'm not sure what the author is refering to here--the Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Holy Trinity; Spiritus Sanctus is just the Latin for Holy Spirit.]

Now, however, the first complete "collar of the Esses", as they were known, has been discovered in the family home of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The collar was presented to Edward Montagu, the then Lord Chief Justice, by King Henry in the 1540s.

It is understood that the extraordinary find is to be sold in December at Christie's auction house in London, where it is expected to fetch up to £1m.

The only other Esses collar known to be in existence, which is owned by the Lord Mayor of London, is believed to contain just 20 per cent of the original craftmanship, while the new discovery has much more of its original design intact.

A number of silver collars of the Esses, which were handed out to queens and courtiers, survive today, including one on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum. But a gold version of the livery chain was far rarer to behold in Henry VIII's day.

The gold collar famously features in the portrait of Sir Thomas More painted by Hans Holbein, which was used as a background for credits in the television series, The Tudors.

Although the English nation may regret the execution of Sir Thomas More, we know that it has had greater difficulty with acknowledging the truth about the English Reformation--that's been a regular theme of this blog and my book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. As recently as last year, Eamon Duffy stated:

For five centuries England has been in denial about the role of Roman Catholicism in shaping it. The coin in your pocket declares the monarch to be Defender of the Faith. Since 1558 that has meant the Protestant faith, but Henry VIII actually got the title from the Pope for defending Catholicism against Luther. Henry eventually broke with Rome because the Pope refused him a divorce, and along with the papacy went saints, pilgrimage, the monastic life, eventually even the Mass itself – the pillars of medieval Christianity.

To explain that revolution, the Protestant reformers told a story. Henry had rejected not the Catholic Church, but a corrupt pseudo-Christianity which had led the world astray. John Foxe embodied this story unforgettably in his Book of Martyrs, subsidised by the Elizabethan government as propaganda against Catholicism at home and abroad. For Foxe, Queen Elizabeth was her country’s saviour, and the Reformation itself the climax of an age-old struggle between God, represented by the monarch, and the devil, represented by the Pope. . . .

It is time to look again at the Reformation story. There was nothing inevitable about the Reformation. The heir to the throne is uneasy about swearing to uphold the Protestant faith, and it seems less obvious than it once did that the religion which gave us the Wilton Diptych and Westminster Abbey, or the music of Tallis, Byrd and Elgar, is intrinsically un-English. The destruction of the monasteries and most of the libraries, music and art of medieval England now looks what it always was – not a religious breakthrough, but a cultural calamity.

How a nation deals with its past, especially the dark periods of its past, is, as Noonan indicates, an important test of its honesty and humility. The United States certainly has periods it has to deal with honestly and forthrightly, and England, like any other nation, has others to deal with other than the English Reformation. Perhaps this detail of Sir Thomas More's Chain of Esses--which was not really taken from him, but which he surrendered upon his resignation as Lord Chancellor, when he saw the dark era England was about to enter--could be a sign that England has faced the injustice of his execution and acknowledged it. Let's hope so!

Lady Margaret Thatcher, RIP

Paul Kengor writes about the Iron Lady, Lady Thatcher in The Catholic World Report:

Margaret Thatcher, one of the greatest leaders of the Cold War, of the 20th century, and of British history, has died at the age of 87.

I’ve referred to her as one of my Cold War seven: Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin, and Margaret Thatcher. They were the seven figures who dissolved an Evil Empire, and only Walesa and Gorbachev still remain with us.

The world dubbed her the Iron Lady, a title that duly fits. Many, however, mistake the Iron Lady moniker as referring solely to her strength in the Cold War. There was much more to it. Consider:

Margaret Thatcher is arguably the most complete British leader of the last 100 years, surpassing even Winston Churchill. Like Churchill, she was tough and successful in foreign policy, taking on and vanquishing totalitarian evil. Churchill warned the world as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Decades later, the world celebrated as the Iron Lady helped break the Iron Curtain.

But unlike Churchill, Margaret Thatcher had enormous domestic successes that Churchill couldn’t touch, and didn’t dare try to touch. When World War II closed, the British people booted Churchill from the prime ministership in preference of Labour leader Clement Attlee, who gave the British populace Keynesian socialism. The masses wanted their welfare state, and Attlee, equipped with promises of “change” and “forward,” gave them a fundamental transformation. In no time, Attlee’s party was spending money unlike anything Britain had ever seen, nationalizing everything under the sun, including with the progressive left’s coup de grace: government healthcare. It was a giant government binge that would bury Britain for decades.

John O'Sullivan titled his 2006 book about the triumvirate of Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World. The American Spectator has this 2007 review in its archives:

OTHER WRITERS HAVE NOTED the timely emergence of an American president, a Polish pope, and a British prime minister in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their critical role in leading the West to a peaceful resolution of the Cold War. But it has remained for the Anglo-American journalist and editor John O’Sullivan to write the definitive history of how Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher worked together, openly and not so openly, to bring about what most experts agreed was impossible — the swift dissolution of the Soviet Union and Marxism-Leninism.

To write such a multi-faceted story, you would want a polymath: an American familiar with Reagan’s special genius for combining principle and pragmatism, a Brit who could explain how Thatcher became the first woman prime minister in British history, and a Roman Catholic who understood why the Soviets were so worried about the impact of a Polish pope on their empire. You would seek someone with a keen historical sense and a flair for biography — and the ability to integrate smoothly the myriad accomplishments of three major figures of our times. If this paragon also had a smooth, accessible writing style, that would be a heaven-sent bonus. It would be impossible, of course, to find someone who could do all of the above-unless you could persuade John O’Sullivan to write The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister, his first but not I hope last book.

O’Sullivan begins his admirable study by making the arresting point that the times seemed to have by-passed Reagan, Thatcher, and Karol Wojtyla, who embodied such seemingly “fading” virtues as faith, self-reliance, and patriotism. But the unexpected death of the Italian John Paul I led to the election of the Polish John Paul II in 1978; Jimmy Carter’s monumental ineptitude at home and abroad prepared the way for a conservative alternative in Reagan in 1980; and Britain’s accelerating economic decline coupled with a series of often violent strikes in the winter of 1978-79 brought the country to the edge of anarchy. Thatcher offered a strong purgative — economic liberty, traditional Christian values, patriotism, and a strong attachment to the United States and like-minded nations — and in May 1979 was elected prime minister. . .

In summing up the individual and collective achievements of the president, the pope, and the prime minister, O’Sullivan states that Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot; revived the U.S. economy, which went on to enjoy more than 20 years of consecutive economic growth; restored the spirit of America; and established a “new conservative dominance in American politics” based on small government and low taxes.

John Paul II, besides helping bring down the Soviet empire, bequeathed to Pope Benedict XVI a Catholic Church that was large, growing fast (particularly in the Third World), and becoming more orthodox. According to O’Sullivan, Thatcher’s reputation is higher in the rest of the world than in Britain, but even in her native land the Iron Lady’s policies that defeated inflation, restored British industry, and helped win the Cold War are “almost universally regarded as correct.” Still she bears the burden of the vehement opposition and even hatred they aroused, especially among the liberal intelligentsia.

I heard an interview with O'Sullivan on the Son Rise Morning Show yesterday, and he emphasized that President Reagan was the link between Pope John Paul II and Prime Minister Thatcher: she did not deal as directly, or as often with the Pope as Reagan did. He also commented that Lady Thatcher was an Anglican much influenced by Methodism, in which she was raised. In 1978, Lady Thatcher talked to the editor of The Catholic Herald about her religious practice:

“Methodism isn’t just a religion for Sundays – no faith is only a faith for Sundays. There were a lot of things during the week which one attended. Methodism is a pretty practical faith; there were the mothers’ sewing meetings and the guilds for young people.

“It’s also evangelical, and does a lot of missionary work overseas. The visiting missionaries, some of them from South America, some from Africa and India, would come back and tell you of the kind of work they were doing.

“I must say I was very much attracted to the work they did because they really could see results.”

Although she was married to Denis Thatcher 27 years ago in Wesley’s own chapel in the City of London, she has since moved towards Anglicanism and I asked her about this shift.

“You know, John Wesley would of course say that he was a member of the Church of England, and the service he believed in was the Church of England service; but it was too high for the kind of evangelical work he was doing.

“Methodism is the most marvellous evangelical faith and there is the most marvellous love and feeling for music in the Methodist Church which I think is greater than in the Anglican Church. But you sometimes feel the need for a slightly more formal service and perhaps a little bit more formality in the underlying theology too.

“So throughout my life I have felt the need for both things, to some extent for the informality, for the works you do; but always I found myself groping out for more of the actual teaching of the religious basis. As I say, I went for something a little more formal. I suppose it’s first one’s belief and then one’s background.”

May she rest in peace.