Church's doctrine and practice on the invocation
of saints, pilgrimages, miracles and so on, and
prove that she alone is the infallible interpreter
of Holy Writ. In the third he attacks Tindale's
translations of the New Testament as heretical and
untrustworthy. He points out the heretical bias
with which the Reformer has adopted new renderings
of words for the purpose of concealing the meaning
1 Hutton, p. 203. - Ibid. p. 210.
L
i62 BLESSED THOMAS MORE
of the originals. Thus for "priest " he substituted
"senior," for the " Church " the "Congregation;"
" confession " became " knowledge," and " penance "
" repentance." " He changeth * grace ' into ' favour,' ^
whereas every favour is not grace in English, for in
some favour there is little grace. . . . ' A contrite
heart ' he changeth into 'a troubled heart,' and many
more things like and many texts untruly translated
for the maintenance of heresy."
Some of the " unco' guid " professed to be
scandalized at the lightness of Sir Thomas's style,
and it must be owned that his controversial works
are full of amusing illustrations and merry tales, but
he wittily rejoined: "As Horace saith, a man may
sometimes say full sooth in game ; and one that is
but a layman as I am, it may better haply become
him merrily to tell his mind than seriously and
solemnly to preach. And over this, I can scant
believe that 'the brethren' find any mirth in my
books, for I have not much heard that they very
merrily read them."
We can only briefl}' mention the martyr's other
controversial writings, and must refer our readers
to Father Bridgett, who gives a full and excellent
account of them, illustrated by striking extracts ;
and to Dom Gasquet's Eve of the Reformation. In
1529 appeared an answer to Simon Fish's libellous
pamphlet Supplication for the Beggars.^ This
^ " Hail thou that art highly favoured " is still the Anglican mis-
representation of Ave gratia plena.
- Reprinted in E.E.T.S. (Extra Series) 1871, edited by
Dr. F. J. Furnivall.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 163
scurrilous writer struck at the Church through the
clergy, whom in language of extreme violence he
accused of being " stordy lobies " and "holy idle
thieves " and demanded that they should be " tied to
the carts to be whipped naked through every market
town till they will fall to labour." In reply More pro-
duced his beautiful and pathetic Supplication of Souls,
in which he pleads in the name of the holy souls in
Purgatory against the Protestants who sought to
deprive them of the Masses and suffrages of the
faithful, by abolishing the chantries and other pious
foundations founded for their relief. Mr. Hutton
admits that " in exposing the extravagant follies of
such a work as that of Fish, More is at his best,
clear, trenchant and exhaustive," and that he
completely defeats his adversary. " There is a
pathos worthy of the writer in the passage where
the suftering souls plead their membership in the
Catholic Church, their claim on the prayers of the
faithful, and their right to the compassion which by
their benefactions they had shown to those on
earth." ^ It seems, however, somewhat strange to
find the holy souls debating the law of mortmain,
the value of the currency, and still more when they
begin to relate merry tales and make jokes ! '
In 1531 appeared Tindale's reply to the
Dialogue, and in the following year appeared Sir
Thomas's Confutation of Tindale's answer, or rather
the first part of it. This, the most voluminous
of all his works, ^ was written while he was
^ Hutton, p. 215. - Fish recanted his errors before his death.
* It would fill three octavo volumes. (Bridgett.j
BLESSED THOMAS MORE
burdened with the immense cares of the Chancellor-
ship. The first three books appeared in 1532, the
second part, containing the next five in 1533, and
the ninth book was first published in the collected
edition of his English works. In the eighth book,
More dealt with the writings of Robert Barnes.^
In the same year (1532) he wrote a short letter
on the Catholic doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament
against a young man named Frith who had written
against that august mystery. " It is pleasant to
find him here writing in a tone of tender remon-
strance rather than of indignant denunciation."^
The letter consists of about a dozen folio pages.
Also in 1532, after the resignation of the Chancellor-
ship, More wrote his Apology, which is a defence
of his former writings and an answer to a treatise
called The Pacifier, written by a lawyer named
Saint-German, The principal objections against his
writings were their undue length and the opprobrious
words he used against his opponents. It must be
admitted that there was some ground for the first
objection, but Sir Thomas, according to his wont,
answers it very wittily.
"The most foolish heretic in the town may
write more false heresies in one leaf than the wisest
man in the whole world can well and conveniently
by reason and authority confute in forty. But
greatly can I not marvel, though these evangelical
' " It is interesting to notice that in the course of his arguments,
More enunciates the dog-ma of the infallibility of thePope." (Hutton,
p. 225.)
- Hutton, ibid.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 165
brethren think my works too long. For everything
think they too long that aught is. Our Lady's
psalter^ think they too long by all ihe Ave Marias
and some good piece of the Creed too. Then the
Mass think they too long by the Secrets, and the
Canon, and all the Collects wherein mention is
made either of saints or souls. Instead of a long
porteus,- a short primer shall serve them ; and yet
the primer think they too long by all our Lady's
Matins. And the seven psalms think they long
enough without the litany; and as for dirge or
commemoration for their friends' souls, all that
service think they too long by altogether."^
As to the charge against the freedom of speech,
he owns he cannot " find good names for evil
things," and cannot "call a fool but a fool, nor a
heretic but a heretic."' He then points out that
Tindale and Barnes and their brethren were
constantly pouring out the foulest abuse against the
whole Catholic Church, which they " damned to the
devil," and accused of foul idolatry for the last
eight hundred years, yes, and blasphemed, "with
villainous jests and railings, against all that good
is, saints, ceremonies, service of God, the very
sacraments and all, and most against the best, that
is, to wit, the Precious Body and Blood of our
Saviour Himself in the holy Sacrament of the
Altar," As to their personal abuse of himself.
More cared not a jot. " For the pleasant oil
^ The rosary. - Breviary.
^ English Works, pp. 847, 848, apud Bridgett, p. 294, n.
1 66 BLESSED THOMAS MORE
of heretics cast upon mine head, can do my mind
no pleasure but contrariwise, the worse that such
folk write of me, for hatred that they bear to the
Catholic Church and faith, the greater pleasure,
as for my own part, they do me. . . . Howbeit
utterly to match them herein I neither can though
I would, nor will neither though I could ; but
am content, as I needs must, to give them therein
the mastery, wherein to match them were more
rebuke than honesty."^
In fact, as Mr. Hutton says: "It is easy for
one who is not moved to preserve a calm balance
of language ; but to More the religious questions
of the day were matters of life and death, and he
could not restrain his fears for the result of the
struggle."-
The main thesis of the Apology, as of More's
following work,^ is that heresy being a great crime
against God and His Church deserved a severe
punishment from the secular power ; Saint-German
("the Pacifier," as he called himself, or " Sir John
Somesay," as More styled him) having made a
severe attack on the clergy for their treatment of
this class of offenders.
1 English Works, p. 865.
- Hutton, p. 228.
' The Debellation 0/ Salem and Bizanee (1533), a rejoinder to Saint-
German's reply tothe Apology. In the same year appeared the last
of his controversial works, an answer to a book called The Supper of
the Lord, written either by Tindale, or, more probably, by George
Jay or Joye. Only the first part appeared, which is in five books,
and is mainly a Scriptural exposition of the sixth chapter of
St. John's Gospel.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 167
And here it will be convenient to consider
somewhat at length More's conduct towards
heretics, as he was accused by Tindale,. Foxe, and
others, as having been a "bloody persecutor of
the people of God." In our own day Mr. Froude
has taken up the cry and re-echoed Burnet's
charges against the man whom he presumes to
call "a merciless bigot."
Such extravagant accusations may be left to
refute themselves, but the more moderate indictment
proposed by Mr. Sidney Lee,i is not unworthy of
consideration. Mr. Lee has enumerated the events
of More's life with great conciseness, completeness
and accuracy, and as a chronicler he has been
frequently followed in these pages. But it is in
no friendly spirit that he describes More as a
judge of heretics. For though he does not believe
all that Foxe and Tindale wrote against our
martyr, when this is refuted by other evidence on
other occasions, and especially in those mentioned
below, he does not hesitate to prefer their word
to More's. Even so, the indictment is not very
severe.
" More admitted [in his Apology] that he had
caused the officers of the Marshalsea and other
prisons to use with severity persons guilty of what
he deemed to be sacrilege, and that he had kept
heretics in safe custody at Chelsea. But in only
two cases did he admit that he had recom-
mended corporal punishment : he had caused a boy
1 Dictivnury uj National Biography, p. 436.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE
in his service, who taught heresy to a fellow-servant,
to be whipped, and a madman, who brawled in
churches and had been committed to a mad-house,
was tied to a tree and beaten into orthodoxy by his
orders.^ He is known to have personally searched
for heretical books the house of John Petit, a friend
of his in the city, and committed him to prison,
where he soon died, before any distinct charge
had been formulated against him.- Of John Tewkes-
bury, an inoffensive leather - seller, of London,
who was burnt on December 20, 1531, More
wrote: 'There was never a wretch, I vvene, better
worthy,'^ and the enormities practised in the case
of James Bainham must be largely laid to More's
charge."
Before going further, let us recall the principles
on which Sir Thomas acted. In the first place we
should notice that what he hated was the heresy
itself, not the persons of its professors, " and very
fain would I that the one were destroyed and the
other saved." Next we see that he fully approved
of the laws, both ecclesiastical and civil, which
^ Cf. English Woi-ks, p. 901. Mr. Gairdner says that More
himself states " the boy had previously been placed in the service
of an immoral priest, and had begun to corrupt another child with
the lessons that he had unhappily learned there." And the madman
had committed "acts of the grossest indecency in church," of
which More's neighbours had complained to him. This puts a very
different complexion on the charges. (A History of the English
Church in the Sixteenth Century, p. 132.)
2 Nichols, Narrative of the Reformation, Camden Soc. pp. 26, 27.
' English Works, p. 348 ; Foxe, iv. 683, seq. Cf. Letters and Papers,
vi. p. 448.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 169
then existed in England against heresy, and he
maintained in his Apology that these laws had
been administered with the utmost leniency, and
indeed with a dangerous laxity. He looked upon
the Lutheran doctrines with indignation and
horror, as tending to the denial of everything that
Christians hold most dear and sacred, and to the
uprooting of the very bases of morality. He was
the chief magistrate of a Catholic country hitherto
in perfect peace and unity in matters of religion.
His acute mind foresaw the utter confusion and
misery which would overwhelm "Our Lady's Dowry"
if heresy were allowed to spread unchecked. The
miserable state of Germany, plunged into civil
and religious anarchy, devastated by the excesses
of the so-called Reformers, was an object-lesson
which made him shudder. As to the punishments
enacted by the State against hardened and relapsed
heretics, More says that " it was the violent cruelty
tirst used by the heretics themselves against good
Catholic folk that drove good princes thereto, for
preservation not of the faith only, but also of peace
among the people." He enters fully into the history
of the treatment of heretics. The Church, he
maintains, had in no age punished them by death.
The State had done it in self-defence, and had
called on the Church to define heresy, to judge the
fact and deliver the relapsed heretic into the hands
of the civil power. The State (he maintains) only
did this when it had attained peace and unity by
means of the Church, and when it was found
by experience that heretics ever stirred up sedition
BLESSED THOMAS MORE
and rebellion, and if allowed to spread brought
about division and ruin.^
Such were More's theories. What was his per-
sonal practice ? The charges brought against him
rest mainly on the authority of Foxe, a universally
discredited witness, who wrote thirty years after
Sir Thomas's martyrdom. Foxe has been proved
to have mixed up together the cases of Tewkesbury
and Bainham, and the story of their torture in
More's garden has been denied beforehand by the
martyr himself, whom we prefer to believe rather
than a proved liar such as Foxe. In his Apology
Sir Thomas refers to some such lies then in
circulation. " Divers of them have said that of
such as were in my house while I was Chancellor,
I used to examine them with torments, caused
them to be bound to a tree in my garden and there
piteously beaten. . . . What cannot these brethren
say, that can be so shameless as to say thus ? "
In crediting such witnesses Mr. Lee is not
fair to the martyr. He speaks of his punishing
with severity " what he deemed to be sacrilege,"
whilst what More refers to is " a great robbery or
a heinous murder, or sacrilege in a church, with
carrying away the pix with the Blessed Sacrament,
or villainously casting it out." We cannot well
expect a non-Catholic to realize the horror and
indignation which fill the soul of the Catholic
at such outrages against the Sacrament of Love,
but still all must agree that such a crime was no
1 Bridgett, pp. 263, 264. The whole chapter should be carefully-
read.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 171
m
ere case of theoretical false doctrine, but one
that really deserved punishment. That a boy
should get a good whipping for trying to corrupt
another, or that a madman who had committed
acts of gross indecency during public service
should suffer a like penalty, may shock some
of our hypersensitive humanitarians, but sensible
people will probably agree with Sir Thomas.
In any case, we thoroughly believe his solemn
asseveration, when after recounting these cases,
he declares : " And of all that ever came in my
hand for heresy, as help me God, saving (as I
said) the sure keeping of them, had never any
of them any stripe or stroke given them, so much
as a fillip on the forehead." ^
As Sir James Mackintosh says, such a public
defence made after his fall from power, challenged
denial, and would have been rather a proof of
insanity than of imprudence, if the facts had not
been indisputably and confessedly true,- and his
latest Protestant biographer has shown that " not
only did he keep strictly within the limits of his
duty, and do no more than he was legally bound
to do, but that he took especial pains — and for
^ English Works, p. 268.
- Life of More, p. loi. The holy martyr's defence has lately been
taken up by Mr. Gairdner in his History of the English Church in the
Sixteenth Century from Henry VIII. to Elizabeth, already referred to.
In discussing the charges he writes: "More was undoubtedly
a great enemy to heretics. . . . He considered them dangerous
to society, as indeed they were to the whole framework of society
in those days ; and it is hard to deny that the break-up of that old
framework after his death was extremely demoralizing, first to the
national life of England, and afterwards to the whole Christian life
172 BLESSED THOMAS MORE
some time successfully — to avoid the infliction
of the extreme penalty."^
" The law provided," he proceeds to explain,
" that if a heretic, arretted and examined by the
Bishops, refused to recant, he should be burnt. The
decision once made and sentence passed, the end
could not be avoided. But by the proclamation of
1529, power was given to the Bishops to imprison,
at their discretion, both before and after conviction.
Thus, to More in the execution of his office, the
only escape from his clear legal obligation to
destroy the heretics was by advising the Bishops
to use the power committed to them. By the
exercise of this power many were saved who must
otherwise have been burnt ; and there can be
little doubt that those whose petitions to the Crown
after More's resignation have caused much of the
blame that has been attached to him would, but
for his intervention, have suffered death."
" It was not till within the last nine months
of his tenure of the seals that any execution took
place. Bilne}^ Bayfield, Tewkesbury, and Bainham,
who had previously abjured, relapsed into heresy.
of Europe. But More gave effect to his enmity in methods strictly
legitimate, and nothing that he ever did was tainted with in-
humanity. The charges, indeed, have been repeated again and
again, though they rest on no better authority, after all, than the
malice of some contemporaries, and the credulity of a very one-
sided historian. But if they be accepted they destroy More's
character, not for humanity alone, but for honesty and truthfulness
as well. For we must not overlook his own very explicit statement
in answer to these libels." (p. 131 )
1 Hutton, p. 217.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 173
In such cases the law was explicit. The Chancellor
had no power to save, . . . and he can with no
more justice be considered responsible for the law
he carried out than the many judges who in this
century condemned men to death for forgery and
theft. He is thus without doubt legally absolved.
The stories of his cruelty to these prisoners rest
only on the unreliable assertions of Foxe."
To sum up, with Father Bridgett : " He held
strongly that the dogmatizing heretics of those
days, in the then circumstances of England and
Christendom, should be forcibly repressed, and
if necessary punished even by death, according
to the existing laws. Yet in the administration
of those laws he was not only rigidly upright, but
as tender and merciful as is compatible with the
character and office of a judge. ' What other
controversialist can be named,' asks Sir James
Mackintosh, ' who having the power to crush
antagonists whom he viewed as the disturbers of
the quiet of his own declining years, the destroyers
of all the hopes which he had cherished for mankind,
contented himself with severity of language ? ' "i
The clergy naturally felt great gratitude to Sir
Thomas for his writings in defence of the faith,
and they determined to express their gratitude
in a practical way. Knowing that he was a com-
paratively poor man (as he had ever consistently
refused to take advantage of the opportunities
of enriching himself which his high position and
* Bridget!, pp. 271, 272.
174 S LESS ED THOMAS MORE
the King's favour afforded him), they determined
in Convocation to make him a present of a sum
of at least four or five thousand pounds, which they
had raised by voluntary contributions.
" Whereupon," says Roper, " Doctor Tunstall,
of Durham, Clarke, Bishop of Bath, and, as far
as I can call to mind Vasty, ^ Bishop of Exeter,
repaired unto him declaring how much thankful
they were for his travails to their discharge in
God's cause bestowed, for which they reckoned
themselves bounden to consider him. And that
albeit they could not to his deserts so worthily
as they would requite him therefore, but must
refer that only to the goodness of God, yet for
a small part of that recompense in respect of
his estate, so unequal to his worthiness, in the
name of their Convocation they presented unto
him that sum which they desired him to take
in good part. Who forsaking it, said, that like
as it was no small comfort unto him that so wise
and learned men so well accepted his simple
doings, for which he never intended to receive
a reward but at the hands of God only, to whom
was the thank thereof chiefly to be ascribed : so
gave he most humble thanks unto their Honours
all for their so bountiful and friendly considera-
tion. When they, for all their importunate pressing
upon him (that few would have thought he could
have refused) could by no means make him to take
it, then besought they him that he would yet be
1 Veysey.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE 175
contented that they might bestow it on his wife
and children. ' Not so, m}- Lords,' quoth he,
' I had rather see it cast in the Thames than either
I or any of mine should have thereof the worth
of a penny. For although your offer, my Lords,
be indeed very friendly and honourable, yet set
I so little by my profit, and so much by my pleasure,
that I would not, in good faith, have lost the
watching of so many nights for much more than
your liberal offer. And yet wish would I for all
that, upon condition that all heresies were sup-
pressed, that all my books were burned and my
labour lost.' Thus departing were they fain to
restore to every man his own again." ^
More was indeed as incorruptible as he was
fearless.
"Far more," writes Canon Dixon,- "than the
prison and the stake his enemies dreaded the
caustic scorn which refuted their cavillations,
unmasked their motives, and not unfrequently
exposed their characters. The boldest of them
only uttered with bated breath the ready imputa-
tion that the champion of the Catholic Faith was
the hireling of the Bishops. His spotless integrity
was proved by the poverty into which he retired
after innumerable opportunities of enriching hiniself
amid the universal example of corruption."
We must now turn once more to our martyr's
public life, and witness him generously suffering
^ Roper, pp. 60 — 62. "^ History nf the Church of England, i. p. 142.
176 BLESSED THOMAS MORE
for the faith which he had hitherto defended so
successfully.
In 1527 he accompanied Wolsey on an embassy
to France, leaving London on Wednesday, July
the 3rd. Thursday night was spent at the Bishop
of Rochester's palace. '* We know," writes Father
Bridgett, " of the long interview in which Wolsey
tried to over-reach the holy Bishop with regard
to the question of the King's marriage,^ which had
just then been secretly mooted before the two
Archbishops, but we have no record of the cordial
embraces between Fisher and More, the two loving
friends so soon to be brother-martyrs. Their
conversation would have been about the captivity
and danger of the Holy Father Clement VII., then
besieged in his Castle of St. Angelo, while Rome
was given up to the most cruel and brutal outrages
ever recorded in history. Before leaving home
More had gone with his family to take part in the
solemn supplications for the Pope in his parish
church. On leaving Rochester he joined Wolsey
and Warham in the Cathedral Church of Can-
terbury in similar devotions." -
More did not return from his embassy till
September. In July, 1529, he again crossed the
Channel, this time in company with Tunstall, then
Bishop of London, in order to sign the Treaty of
Cambray.
It was before going to France with Wolsey, in
' He pretended that the matter had been first suggested by the
Bishop of Tarbes.
2 Bridgett, p. 201.
BLESSED THOMAS MORE
177
1527, that the King first mentioned to his favourite
the question of the divorce. Into this much vexed
question it is fortunately unnecessary here to enter
in detaih Suffice it to say, that More's early
biographers are known to have been mistaken in
ascribing the blame of originating the idea to
Cardinal Wolsey. It is also untrue that the first
notion of it was suggested to the King by a doubt
thrown out by the French Ambassador, the Bishop
of Tarbes, as to the legitimacy of Princess Mary,
although Henry and Wolsey afterwards conspired
to throw the blame upon him. We now have