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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Thomas More was a man of letters and reason, a virtuous thinker, humanist and writer whose book Utopia, some believe, is the blueprint for an ideal society. He also harboured a deep hatred of heretics to the extent that it was rumored he had them tortured in his own house. So who was the real Thomas More? In this Life of the Week episode, Kev Lottchen speaks to historian and biographer Dr. Joanne Paul to unpick one of Tudor England's most inscrutable characters.
- [00:41]
B
Joanne, welcome to the History Extra podcast. Great to have you here today.
- [00:44]
A
Oh, thank you. It's so good to join you.
- [00:45]
B
I wonder if we could start by talking about the two versions of Thomas More that history gives us. There's the kind of the man of conscience who we see in a man for all seasons, but then there's also that kind of zealot bigot that gets sent to us from, say, Wolf Hall. And I was interested in whether both of these ideas, where they come from and whether they're really coming from after his life and how much of that is weaponized history.
- [01:12]
A
I think you've got it exactly right. It is weaponized history. That's not to say that it doesn't come from the period of his own life. However, his reputation was already being used in all sorts of ways while he was alive, especially towards the end of his life, as he was getting caught up in debates and conflicts that we now know as the Reformation. And so he himself is starting to respond to some of these characterizations of him in his own works. But there are these two versions of more. One, as you say, is this more saintly More. That's the one that is taken up by the Catholics. It's taken up by his family. It's taken up by those around his family, Catholic, like exiles, especially in the reign of Edward VI and then Elizabeth I. And so we get this story of who he was, and then the more zealous persecutor is the one presented to us by the Protestants both in his own time and after. Particularly, it's immortalized in John Fox's Book of Martyrs, as it's known, which is spread all across Elizabethan England, and then becomes a very important source for later historians as well. And then we get these fictionalized portrayals in the 20th and 21st centuries, which are both drawing on 16th century sources. They're both drawing on sources near to or just after Thomas More's life, but they're completely divergent.
- [02:41]
B
You've written this amazing biography of Thomas More. But there's something you write right at the beginning that I wanted to ask you about. And you say that one spectacular thing we can say with certainty is that Thomas More did nothing to change the course of Inger's history, which is a huge statement because he's such a familiar name.
- [02:57]
A
I do slightly qualify that statement. Please make it you're not wrong. But I do slightly qualify it, which is that he did nothing to immediately change English history. And I think that's important because of course there are things that he does that he writes which become very influential and have all sorts of knock on effects. But this really came out of a discussion with my editor when we were thinking about the biography, and she said, well, in order to frame this, especially for people who maybe don't know as much about More, as much about the Tudor period, what. What do we say that he did? Right, what about English history is different because of Thomas More? And I sat there and I sat there over my lunch and I went. It's hard to point to one single thing, and it's hard to point to something really concrete and immediate. As I say, unlike someone with Cranmer or Cromwell, for instance, we can point to things that are immediately different because of their intervention. We don't get that with Thomas More. His legacy is more complicated, I think, and has a lot, as you say, to do with his reputation as opposed to the things that he actually said or did or wrote.
- [04:08]
B
He's a really complicated man. So we're going to try and unpick some of what makes him that we're going to talk about some of his writings as well. First, you could take us back into his early years, where he grew up, his background, what kind of education he had, and how he's getting to become the man we think we know.
- [04:25]
A
This is an interesting one because if anyone has ever gone walking in Cheapside in London, you may have passed through Milk street, which was part of the sort of market complex of medieval London, and there's a plaque on a wall that says Thomas More was born near this spot, I'm paraphrasing, in 1478. Now they're right about the date. He was born actually, in the conflict that we know of, the wars of the Roses, a bit of a lull in the wars of the Rose, a short lived one. And so I think that has something to do with his later outlook. But the plaque, I believe is wrong. I don't think he was born near Cheapside. Cheapside at the time was a very fashionable District. It was full of well to do merchants, well to do lawyers, city officials and so on. And when Thomas More was born, his family had nothing like that sort of standing. His father was a young lawyer, but his father had been a baker. So there wasn't this sort of lineage of the law running through the family. And everything that we can find points to, in fact, a residence just outside of the London wall, which was not nearly as fashionable. It's often where people who plied more smelly trades tended to be, which made sense because Thomas More's grandfather was a tallow chandler, which is a very smelly job indeed. And I think that gives us a different understanding of Thomas More's upbringing. He wasn't brought up in the shadow of the Guildhall amongst all of these merchants. He wasn't raised in poverty either. But there is this outsiderness to him that I think we don't quite grasp unless we understand that he really grew up in these less well to do suburbs. He went to the only free grammar school in London, which again gives us an indication that they probably didn't have the money to pay fees elsewhere. He did well there, best we can tell. And then something really phenomenal happens to Thomas More. All of a sudden, he's thrust into the orbit of the court and he enters the household of the Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury, John Morton, and he goes to serve at Lambeth Palace. He may have served at table, he may have had a less illustrious job, we're not qu quite sure. But it's probably then Morton who pays again his fees to go to the University of Oxford. And it's that point that we can start to understand Thomas More as operating in a circle of scholars, operating in networks that would connect him to the court.
- [07:07]
B
So it's a story of social mobility both within his own life and generational social mobility as well, to end up where he does end up, in the court of Henry VIII as Lord Chancellor. For now, he is a student at Oxford.
- [07:21]
A
He starts at Oxford fairly young by our standards, probably about the age of 14, and leaves Oxford about the age of 16, at which point he returns to London. So he doesn't quite finish his degree. That's fairly typical in the 15th and 16th centuries to get enough of a basis in scholarship and then go on to pursue something else, usually the law, which is what Thomas More does. He becomes a student of the law, first at the Inns of Chancery and then at the Inns of Court, and begins to practice the law. And it's not long after that, that, yes, he gets married and has his four children.
- [07:58]
B
He's fairly famously regarded for ensuring that his daughters are educated as well, which is something that marks him out as individual in his time.
- [08:07]
A
He's very dedicated to educating his daughters. As you say, he has three daughters and then his youngest child is a son and especially the eldest, Margaret is known for her scholarship, but all three of them were known at the time. They even disputed, sort of engaged in a debate before the King. And everyone wrote home about, wow, you know, these women, they can, they can speak, they know things. And this was very exciting and, and controversial and influential at the time. It was a broad education. We know that they studied everything from philosophy to medicine to astronomy. It included not only those three daughters, but other women in his household as well that he had essentially sort of adopted, brought in to his family. And they were known for their education as well. The real limitation on saying that it was an equivalent education, well, first of all, it wasn't in an institution, it wasn't at the University of Oxford. It was dependent on him bringing in scholars, which he did to his home, who were very well regarded, but it still wasn't the same as that sense of studying at an institution, the access to those materials and so on. The other thing to say is that he did see the purpose of the education as different from his own. He didn't see this education as preparing them for a public life. This wasn't meant to set them up to be politicians, statesmen, lawyers, what have you, doctors. It was to make them better wives and mothers, essentially it was to prepare them for the domestic duties that they would have. And so when we start to talk about Thomas More as this sort of feminist, proto feminist and so on, yes, he was doing something and arguing for something very controversial at the time. Yes, it did have this influence, but there were limitations on it.
- [10:04]
B
When do Thomas and Henry VIII first meet each other?
- [10:09]
A
Much earlier than I think most people expect. They meet in 1499. So Henry is 8 years old. Thomas is, I think, 21. He's still a very young lawyer. I think he's passed the bar, but just barely. Prince Henry is not heir to the throne. His elder brother Arthur is still alive and holding his own sort of household at Ludlow. And Thomas is brought in alongside the Dutch scholar Erasmus to meet Henry and his siblings, Margaret, Mary and the young and unfortunately short lived Edmund. And he prepares a piece of writing. We don't have it, but probably praising the young prince and his father, Henry vii. And certainly they seem to make enough of an impression on each other. But what's really important out of that meeting is the friendship that emerges between Erasmus and Thomas More, which is a very enduring friendship. They actually don't like each other that much when they first meet. It's a kind of meet cute enemies to friends sort of story. But they, of course, remain very close friends throughout both their lives. Thomas More dies the year before Erasmus does, and it's in large part thanks to Erasmus that we have some of More's humanist texts, like Utopia.
- [11:27]
B
Could you just contextualise that a little bit for us as to what humanism is and what the significance of that relationship between Erasmus and More is?
- [11:35]
A
More is introduced to this new form of learning while he's at Oxford and really immerses himself in it when he returns to London, which we know as humanism. And this often gets, I think, conflated with a more modern kind of humanism, which is associated with atheism. This is not quite that. This is still very, very Christian, as Thomas More, of course, was. But what it is is a study of particular ancient texts, particularly often very republican ancient texts, an advocation for education with a sense of public duty. Young men like Thomas More would receive this education and then they had a duty to sort of act on it, to do something with it. And it was presented in contrast to a more ivory tower kind of scholarship that they saw as navel gazing and generally unhelpful. Quince is the place to go to build a timeless wardrobe that's made to last. They're really all about having elevated essentials that feel effortless. And so each piece is designed for layering and mixing. They're the kinds of styles that you'll wear again and again, season over season. And they've got wardrobe staples with quality that's made to last, like 100% organic cotton sweaters, premium denim that's made with stretch for all day comfort. They have luxe cotton cashmere blends that are perfect for changing seasons. I've been wearing my Mongolian cashmere turtleneck sweater non stop. It's so soft, so comfy and so warm, but also helps me look put together so it's really the perfect wardrobe staple. And Quince works with safe, ethical factories, cutting out the middlemen. So you're not paying for brand markup, you're just paying for high quality clothing. Everything is built to hold up season after season. The stitching, the fit, the fabrics, they're pieces that you'll want to reach for over and over. And you can, because they're made to last. So if you're ready to refresh your wardrobe with Quince, go to quince.comhistoryextra for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q U I-N-C-E.comhistoryextra to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.comhistoryextra. you didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting sky high sales stacking champion at checkouts.
- [14:18]
B
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- [14:20]
A
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- [14:59]
B
And then Erasmus is his correspondent on the continent. Just sharing these kind of views.
- [15:05]
A
Yeah. Erasmus is often considered to be the leading light of the northern Renaissance humanist movement. He was kind of a celebrity of his age. He spent a lot of time in England, often with Thomas More, and helped really connect many of these different scholars all around Europe, and created a sense of what they refer to as the Republic of Letters, this sense of a community of scholars stretching across the continent. Certainly Thomas More, the humanist, the Renaissance scholar as we know him, wouldn't have emerged, I think, without this friendship with Erasmus. It's Erasmus who helps him produce his best known work, Utopia. That word, even that title seems to have come from Erasmus and not from Thomas More himself. But what's interesting is that Thomas More the statesman, may have existed independently of that. And Erasmus, various points, seems frustrated with More for the extent of his political engagement. And for instance, they don't exchange a single letter while Thomas More is Lord Chancellor. They seem to have sort of had a bit of a break in their relationship and we don't get any correspondence during that time that we're aware of at least. And so that side of him is obviously very informed by his humanist scholarship, but in some ways exists independently to it.
- [16:31]
B
You mentioned Utopia There, that sounds like a good moment to bring that in.
- [16:34]
A
Yeah. He writes it in 1515, publishes it in 1516. Utopia exists in two parts. The second part is really the bulk of it, and that's the description of, of this ideal impossible island, which is really captured in the play on words that is Utopia. Utopia means both no place and best place. And so again, it already, just from the word, just from the title itself, it already has this puzzle to it. Is it the best place? Maybe. But if it can't exist, can it possibly be that good? And so that's part of the puzzle of Utopia. And then the first part, I think is also really interesting, BioGR. Because it's this debate about whether one has a duty to give one's service to a monarch, especially as an educated, experienced individual, as Thomas More himself was at the time. I think it's quite striking and immediately gets taken up partly because it's seen as this entry into this larger discussion, these larger social reforms that the humanists are advocating for at the time. It is very critical of particular monarchs at the time, without naming them. And I think it was very striking and popular at the time for the same reason that it is today, which is that it's inherently enigmatic. It's about this ideal impossible island. It's about the best life, whether that's an active life of service or a life of contemplation and scholarship. But it's also very much about death. One of Thomas More's most important arguments, the one he keeps returning to, sort of the moral, the lesson of a lot of his ideas, ideas and writings, is that death is an equalizer and that death reminds us of the falsities of the world, those things that we see as so important, like social standing, money, property, all of that disappears with death. And Moore uses that idea to show, to highlight their artificiality, that these things aren't real, that they're made up. And Utopia, this made up, false world, doesn't have any of those things. And so you're left with, at the end of it, wondering which world is more real, the obviously made up one or the one which is full of obviously made up things. Right? Like kingship, like property, like money. Right. A social hierarchy.
- [19:08]
B
Yeah, there's loads to drill into with Utopia. And you can read more of Joanne's thoughts on that book and how it would have been viewed by Thomas More's contemporaries in my beyond the podcast pick. You'll find a link to that in the episode description below. But for now, Joanne, how does he get from being here to being Lord Chancellor and becoming very much more within Henry's orbit.
- [19:29]
A
It all comes back to the diplomatic mission where Thomas More has written a Utopia in 1515. He is able to go on this trade negotiation because of some of the work that he had done in London. He was starting to become known in certain circles as the useful lawyer, a useful negotiator, someone who was very proficient in Latin. And his participation in this negotiation of 1515 on the continent really brings him to the attention of men like Cardinal Wolsey, who is of course Henry VIII's right hand man and perhaps even the King himself. And so certainly By March of 1518 he is sworn in as a counselor and is acting as a secretary of the king. His primary role really is as a go between for the king and Wolsey. And we have so many letters of him from this period, largely written to Wolsey, saying what the king had said in response to something that Wolsey had said. And we know that he was often at the king's side, sort of following him in the court around, often with piles of papers to try to get him to sign. And the king would go, oh I, I don't feel like it, I'll do it tomorrow. And it was Thomas's job to try to keep getting him to sign things. What propels him into the position of Lord Chancellor, which is the highest political position under the king, is Wolsey's fall. Part of the reason that Wolsey falls is because of a larger anti clerical sentiment in England at the time. People are suspicious of Woolsey and they're suspicious of other high ranking clergymen because of their loyalty to the Pope, to what's perceived as a foreign power. And Thomas More, although he's deeply religious, although he's a scholar, he's not a clergyman. And I think he's positioned as Lord Chancellor largely because he can be trusted at that level.
- [21:34]
B
So it's a historically unusual appointment that he's not a clergyman, but one that's perhaps, perhaps predictable for the circumstances in which he finds himself elevated.
- [21:44]
A
There's very few Lord Chancellors who aren't members of the clergy for hundreds of years before Thomas More is. They exist, but there's not many of them and they don't tend to last very long, largely because it was the clergy who were educated, the clergy who could be trusted in that sort of role. And the role has certain implications in terms of the conscience of the realm as well. So clergymen made sense, but at that point in time There was, as I said, a deep suspicion, a deep resentment of clerical authority. I think Thomas More has also maneuvered into that position because of his humble backgrounds, because he doesn't have standing beyond that which is given to him. I think he's seen as someone who can be easily controlled or if not controlled, done away with. And so I think he makes a lot of sense at the time. But it's also a radical re understanding of the role of Lord Chancellor. And really, if you look at Lord Chancellor's from More onwards, they don't have that level of authority and importance that Wolsey, for instance, had had.
- [22:54]
B
Presumably this is the high point of his relationship with Henry. Before we get too deep into the Great Matter, do you have any sense, from the research you've done, More on what their relationship was like?
- [23:05]
A
We often get presented this image of More and Henry as friends. Henry VIII did not really have friends. Friendship implies a sense of equality. I don't think he thought anyone was his equal. And where he did have something that we could call friendship, it was with people like Charles Brandon, who were of a much higher standing, who liked jousting and carousing and all that sort of stuff. Thomas More was a servant of the king. I think he was trusted in a sense. I think his opinion was valued in as much as the king was going to agree with it anyway. But they weren't friends. What's interesting about More's appointment as Lord Chancellor is that Henry had already asked him about the Great Matter two years before and More had told him that he didn't agree with him. We don't know exactly what he said, but we know that Henry told him to go home and read some More and talk to some people who agreed with the king and think about it. And shortly after More is appointed as Lord Chancellor, Henry has this conversation with him again, clearly expecting that Thomas More now does agree and he didn't. And so Henry finds himself in the position of having just appointed someone who disagrees with him on what he considers to be the most important matter of policy and personal life and everything else that he has at the time. It's known as the Great Matter for a reason. And More finds himself in this position of what should be authority, but actually having to exclude himself from much of the mechanism of government because he won't participate in anything to do with the Great Matter. So whereas Woolsey fell because he failed to get the divorce, Thomas More was never even gonna try.
- [25:05]
B
Was that the only motivation for Thomas versus Did he have any sympathy that we know of Catherine of Aragon.
- [25:11]
A
More had always admired Catherine. It's fascinating, actually, they both sort of burst onto the English historical record at about the same moment because. Because Thomas More's first letter that we have of his describes Catherine's entry into London in 1501 to Mary Arthur, Henry's elder brother. More had always spoken very highly of Catherine. From that first moment all through the records that we have, he was considered to be a friend, a defender of Catherine. In the period of the late 1520s into the 1530s, when the great Matter was occupying the minds of the court, particularly the imperial ambassador considered him to be a friend and a defender of Catherine, to the point where Thomas More had to take the imperial ambassador aside and say, stop it, please stop talking about me this way. In particular, the ambassador Chapuys had a letter from Catherine's nephew, Charles V, praising More for being such a servant to the emperor. And More had to be like, you can't give me this, right, because as soon as you do, I have to report it. And then I think the words that Chapuise used was More said that there would be an ill conversation that would need to happen after this. He'd be in a lot of trouble. And so More says, if you want me to continue speaking on behalf of the Queen, you've got to tone this down. Right? And I think that speaks very much to More's whole perspective on the Great Matter. He wanted to have his influence rather than speaking out in such a way that would cast him out of the inner circle. And so he actually largely stays silent on the matter and tries to get on with other things. We can talk about what those other things were, but he tries to get on with other things and not involve himself with the Great Matter. And I just want to pick up on one other point as well, because I think a lot of the time, in addition to it being his loyalty to Catherine, it's often thought that More had a loyalty to the Pope. And that's really not what it was about for Thomas More. In fact, in all of his writings on the Reformation, he's actually fairly equivocal on the importance, the primacy of the Pope. He often refers the reader to other people's writings, says that he's dragged to talking about it. He doesn't really want to, and in the end, really just says that, well, Christendom, the Catholic Church, has always said that the Pope is in charge, so I guess that's fine. But he's not really that interested in the Pope. He has a Much more sort of republican view of the Church, where the people are represented by something called the General Council, in the same way that he saw the power of the realm being held in the people who are represented by Parliament. So I think we have to be careful sometimes in making it about the Pope, because he saw the Pope like the King and actually not as important as the people I loved.
- [28:31]
B
In the middle of that, the little bit of understatement that came in about like, oh, yes, it would have been if I'd shown this letter. It would be, what was it?
- [28:38]
A
An ill, ill conversation.
- [28:41]
B
An ill conversation. Was he typically a man of understatement in his writing?
- [28:44]
A
He could be. He could be a man of overstatement in his writing as well. I think he was someone who liked a witty turn of phrase. I think he was like somebody who liked irony. He was a very funny man and I think it depended on what he was trying to accomplish. Of course, in some of his religious polemics, he could be quite scatological.
- [29:11]
B
I was wondering if we get to this point.
- [29:12]
A
Yes, he gets quite scatological. Thomas More is responding to Luther and really actually defending the king at this point. He hadn't wanted to get involved in the debates over the Reformation. He frankly said he was just too busy to occupy himself with it. But then Luther attacks the king. Someone has to stoop to Luther's level and the king can't do that. And so Thomas More agrees, it seems to do that. And he engages in language that we might not consider to be particularly saintly. He refers to Luther as having a, excuse me, but shitty mouth. Not that understated, not at all.
- [29:56]
B
He really knew when to rein it in and when to dish it out.
- [30:00]
A
But this was all part of the language that was used at the time. I mean, I think Thomas More perhaps used more of these expletives and this very, I think, visual language than others. But Luther had engaged in this sort of talk in his attack on the king and used very violent language as well, talking about how the king should have his tongue and his hand cut off and burned at the stake, and so on and so forth. And so More is trying to engage with him on that rhetorical level.
- [30:31]
B
And if I'm right in thinking this all stems from initially Henry writes his defence of the Seven sacraments. Do we get a sense that maybe Thomas More had some ghost writing in that?
- [30:42]
A
I don't think that Henry viii, scholar that he was, wouldn't have availed himself of the resources around him. Let's put it that way, there were all sorts of very intelligent minds kicking around his court. Why wouldn't you get them at least to pass an editorial lie over your work, especially when you can still claim it as your own? So I think, certainly he did that. Most scholars, I think, would agree that. That Thomas More's voice does not really come through Henry's work that others do more strongly. And More himself said that he read it and gave the King advice on it. And his advice, actually was to tone down the praise of the Pope and the arguments for the Pope's primacy, just in case he and the Pope ever got into trouble later. Now, that is written with some awareness of what happens in the 1530s, but it does also ring true with the arguments that More himself makes much earlier. So that may have indeed been his advice to the King, is be careful in building up the Pope.
- [31:50]
B
And one thing you said there was that he was doing other things instead of pursuing the great matter. The other things, to put it as neutrally as I can, was engaging in the pursuit of heretics.
- [32:00]
A
Absolutely. As Lord Chancellor, he was keeper of the soul of the realm, essentially the King's conscience, and that meant the pursuit of heresy. Now, on one level, that had always been the case. The Lord Chancellor was responsible for ensuring that heresy was prosecuted. But, of course, it takes on a new meaning in the 1530s, in the opening decades of the Reformation. And because with Thomas More, we also have his religious polemical writings, we are given, I think, a greater insight into his view on heresy and on heretics. I think I have to be careful here, because his role in pursuing heretics has often been overstated. But at the same time, I don't want to come across like I am defending what he does do. And so I think we have to be measured and a bit cautious in dealing with it. Six heretics are killed, are executed. During his chancellorship, he has contact with three of them. The other three are executed in other parts of the realm and has little to do with it. At no point does he have any jurisdiction to convict heretics or to oversee their executions. And there's no evidence that he does. What he does do, and he does have the purview to do is to hold them and question them. And this he does do. At his gatehouse in Chelsea. Again, this would not be seen as an overreach. He would have done the same with various people who are seen as criminals, for whatever reason, as a significant landowner and statesman. According to him, while he held them, they were treated well, aside from, you know being imprisoned and that he earnestly entreated them in as hearty, loving a manner as he could to renounce their heresies. Others said then as now that he tortured them. There is no real evidence either way. More cites the example of one of the heretics who actually escapes the gatehouse. He has to scale a wall to get out. That will clearly he wasn't tortured because he scales a wall. That's sort of as much evidence as he is able to give on that. There are testimonies on the other side. We won't ever really know. Once he has entreated them, interrogated them, questioned them, he handed them over to the authorities who proceeded with sentencing and execution. He, as I said, had no part in that. And we don't have any evidence, for instance, that he attended. He certainly wasn't lighting py, I think is often represented, but he did think that that was the right thing to do. He had some very choice words for heretics who were burned, that they were worthy of that, that they were wretches and so on. And so I think that that obviously can make us and should make us feel very uncomfortable. What I think is important is not just these bare facts, although they are, but More's motivations, because More was in all sorts of ways a brilliant, intelligent, reasonable man. His scholarship speaks for itself in terms of his intelligence. And as we've said, in many ways he was before his time. He was forward thinking, he was a reformer. And so these two things can often be seen as contradictory, as evidencing sort of almost even a split personality. But I think it's important for us to see that this was the same person and that he reasoned his way into this hatred, this violent hatred of heretics. He saw in their ideas and their beliefs a threat to everything he held dear. He saw in their theology an anarchism of violence, an immorality. And I say this not as a sort of justification, but as a way to understanding how that kind of fear can lead to hatred and persecution, even in what we consider to be a very reasonable mind. I think if we don't understand this, it's hard to understand how people can be led to violence and bigotry even today. This is not something alien. This is not something that we need to extract from the mind of Thomas More to understand him better. This was fundamental to his worldview. And that complexity is part of what being human is.
- [36:47]
B
And to add another facet as well, is he something of an ascetic as well? Because you have the mythos of the hair shirt and that he's a flagellant. Do we have evidence that that is a truth, or is that another part of the legend of Thomas More that.
- [37:03]
A
Does all come from material produced after his death. In particular, there's a letter from his former priest when he was living in London, who's writing just after Moore's execution, and tells the story of the hair shirt and his knowledge of this secret hair shirt that More was supposed to have worn under all of his clothes. And then that gets picked up, of course, in the more hagiographical writings, these biographies, which are really designed in the hopes that he will be canonized. And there's a real sort of campaign that takes place. And. And he's put very much and very obviously in a sort of succession from Thomas the Apostle, Thomas Becket, Thomas More. And it is something that we also see in the legend of Thomas Becket that after his death, apparently the secret hair shirt is discovered. For those reasons, I think a healthy level of skepticism makes sense, that this is something that was traditionally a part of these stories that were told about men who were thought to be martyrs and who were being presented as martyrs as Thomas More was. There is a relic that is held that is meant to be the hair shirt that Thomas More wore and might very well be. But as a historian, I think we have to contextualize what we're told and think about what is at stake and what the intentions of that writing is. And I think when it comes to the hair shirt, it makes sense in a longer tradition of martyrologies and as part of a Catholic attempt to have him canonized.
- [38:54]
B
So he's Lord Chancellor. He's engaging with the pursuit of heretics. He's not engaging with the great matter. Where does it start to go wrong for him?
- [39:04]
A
In many ways, it went wrong from the moment he became Lord Chancellor. He probably shouldn't have been put in that position. I think Henry VIII regrets it immediately. And very early on, you get reports, particularly from Chapuys, of More being in trouble, and he was of him provoking the wrath of the king, and he. He did of his exclusion. And not long after that, you get reports that he's looking for a way out, that he wants to resign his position. And there are sort of rumblings of this for a little while. He's only Lord Chancellor for really a short while, from the end of 1529 to the beginning of 1532. And what really is the line in the sand for him is the submission of the clergy to Henry viii and to his headship of the English Church. And it's the day after that, more formally resigns. Now, he makes all sorts of noise about this being because of his health and he may, in fact have been in poor health. There's some evidence to support that, probably largely due to stress. I mean, you think about what he has to put up with and you go, yeah, fair enough. He makes all sorts of noise about it being due to ill health and not being a sort of political protest, but it was.
- [40:26]
B
Everyone knew, right, everyone knew.
- [40:28]
A
Well, and the timing. He knew what he was doing, everyone else knew what he was doing, but he was trying to protect himself and his family by saying it's because of his poor health. He resigns and essentially decides to become just a private citizen. He holds no public office whatsoever from that point onward and focuses on his writing.
- [40:50]
B
Is it the writing that gets him into trouble later on?
- [40:52]
A
It may have been at least partly the writing that gets him into trouble, yes. And again, we return to Thomas More's consistency, really. I mean, he's saying the same things that he had since he had defended the king against Luther's attacks a decade before. But everything has shifted around him. And the people that he's arguing with are no longer enemies of King. Some of them are his friends. And the arguments that he's making are no longer royal policy. In some sense, they are counter to it. And so he continues in his views, but everything else moves around him. He never directly contradicts royal policy. He never speaks out against the new marriage, for instance, and in fact says that he accepts the marriage between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, which I think, legally, at least, he does. He thinks that Parliament has the right to decide the heir to the throne, and if they decide that it's Anne's daughter Elizabeth, then so be it. But his real issue is with the.
- [42:01]
B
Royal Supremacy, and this is coming to the oath on the act of Succession. And that's where it really gets sticky.
- [42:08]
A
For him, as it's intended to do. I mean, the oath on the act of Succession is designed to root out those who might disagree, not only with the succession, but also with the Supremacy. It's a cudgel to beat many of the clergy with. And Thomas More gets hauled in essentially with the clergy to take the oath because he is seen as someone who might disagree and needs to get in line. And we know that they're coming for him because there are various events beforehand. His nephew's press is searched, for instance, where Thomas More has been churning out a lot of his works for seditious writing, he is included on an act of attainder for the Nun of Kent and has to defend himself and sort of pull in some favours to get himself out of that. And then finally we have the oath, and his refusal to swear to the oath lands him in the Tower of London. And then there are various attempts to get him to take the oath. At one point, essentially he says, well, I'll swear just to the succession and not to the Supremacy. And there's a suggestion that maybe this would be okay. Cranmer in particular kind of goes, could we do this? But Henry VIII says, absolutely not. He has to. Has to swear to both the succession and the Supremacy.
- [43:27]
B
And to clarify that particular point, the Supremacy is acknowledging Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. So replacing the Pope, essentially.
- [43:34]
A
Replacing, yes. And More's objection to this seems to not be so much about the Pope, the idea that a. That a layman could be head of the Church. Right. Henry VIII is not a cleric in any way, and so how could he be head of a Church? And second, that surely that's a decision that needs to be made not just within England. England does not have the jurisdiction, the English Parliament does not have the jurisdiction to decide something like that. And it really all comes back to legalities for Thomas More. Parliament can decide who, who the heir might be. They can't decide who the head of the Church is. That's just beyond them. And so More does not think it's right, does not think it's legal, does not think it's conscionable for this to happen. And so he just, he can't agree to it.
- [44:24]
B
And so he ends up in the Tower. Tower of London. How is he treated? What's life like from there?
- [44:29]
A
It was probably fairly comfortable. It's worth remembering that prisoner paid for their own imprisonment. For most of his time in the Tower, he's allowed his writing materials. And so he produces not only a great many letters, but some religious works as well, that we still have some poetry. And so it's generally fairly comfortable. It becomes less so as time goes on. And the famous moment that is used as evidence in his trial comes when his writing materials are taken away. And so whether there is a lapse of judgment because of the emotion involved in that moment, or whether it was just an unfortunate conversation that gets spun in such a way that condemns him, it's probably a little bit of both.
- [45:20]
B
What did he say in that conversation? What was the slip up?
- [45:23]
A
So this is a conversation between Thomas More and Richard. Richard, who of course is very important in something like Man For All Seasons, as the sort of Judas who betrays Thomas More on behalf of Thomas Cromwell. And they engage in something known as a pudding of cases, which is a sort of legal hypothetical game that lawyers like to do where you'd explore a legal topic by coming up with hypothetical cases to sort of find the limits of the case. And so Rich, who is also a lawyer, does that. This with More asking that if Parliament said that Richard Rich was king, would he not accept that? And he says, yeah, sure, absolutely. But if Parliament said that God were not God, surely you'd not accept that? And Rich says, no, no, if Parliament said that God would not God, then I wouldn't accept that. And so Thomas More says, well, no more then can Parliament make a man head of the Church, that is to say, Pope. So Thomas More does not deny the Supremacy, but he suggests that Parliament can't make someone Pope. I'm paraphrasing some of this conversation. Obviously, Richard Rich writes up this conversation as he had been asked to do, and hands it to Cromwell. And he does so, signing off essentially saying that Thomas More has maintained his silence. He says that he should be prosecuted for his silence, but he says that he's maintained it. So Richard Rich doesn't think that Thomas More has broken his silence on the Supremacy. Cromwell, however, it seems, is the one who figures out that these words can be spun, that if you get rid of the hypothetical legality of it, nobody knows what putting of cases is outside of lawyers anyway. And if you take those last words and make them just head of the Church or head of the English Church, it starts to mean something different. And so this is the only evidence that is presented at Thomas More's trial. Richard Rich is the only witness at the trial. And in fact, the two other men who had been stacking up and putting away Moore's books and papers while this conversation happens at the trial go, oh, I didn't really hear anything. I don't really know. So this, this is the only piece of evidence that's given and it is enough to convict him.
- [47:44]
B
You make it sound like Richard Rich is kind of scapegoated to be the Judas of a man of all seasons, because it's really Cromwell in the background saying, ah, I've got a plan.
- [47:51]
A
It is really Cromwell. I mean, who's behind Cromwell, though The real problem here, as always, is Henry viii, because the trial actually meant almost nothing. It was completely a show trial. Before the trial takes place about A week before Henry VIII issues a writ declaring Thomas More to be a traitor and saying that anyone who defends him or says that he isn't could be subject to punishment. So, of course, the jury returns a verdict in 15 minutes. Of course, that verdict is guilty. Henry VIII has essentially made it illegal to say anything else.
- [48:26]
B
15 minutes sounds fast. Is it fast for the time?
- [48:28]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. It shocked people at the time how quickly? Most would take about an hour.
- [48:34]
B
Oh, my gosh. So that's it for Thomas. He is executed with the benefit of all, you know. Now do you see that there was ever any way out of it for him beyond maybe just capitulating on his beliefs?
- [48:47]
A
Yeah, I think he could have capitulated absolutely at any of those points before he becomes Lord Chancellor, after. Even after his arrest. I think that probably would have saved him, but he did not consider that the savings that he wanted. He was not willing to sacrifice the salvation of his soul to save his body. And that's what he saw at stake in that choice, that what really mattered to him was eternal life, not worldly life. Death was inevitable anyway. And he writes a great deal about this in the Tower and something called the Dialogue of Comfort. That what is a comfort to people in his position, and he doesn't talk specifically about himself, but people in his position is that death might come in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years anyway, and then you will have sacrificed your eternal life for something that's not going to last that long. And that was essentially the math that he was doing.
- [49:51]
B
That's a really interesting way to frame him at the end. And I wonder if I can ask you, we've got these two polarities of Thomas More, if you like, where do you feel you believe he sat on that spectrum? And I'd be also interested to know, what is the one thing that you would like people to kind of come away with for a man who is a very complicated figure to understand in.
- [50:13]
A
Terms of those two presentations of Thomas More, I mean, I think the answer is both, and neither. He was neither of those characters in isolation. And I think both of those portrayals in the 16th century as now, were fictionalized for particular purposes. You know, if you look at man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt, who of course wrote the play that became the film, needed a figure who would stand up to state authority and actually stand up for a sort of individualism, an individual conscience, which Thomas was more abhorred. The idea of that was not who Thomas More was or what he was doing, but Bolt needed that at that time. In that context, just as the Catholics who were being persecuted and exiled needed someone to be a martyr for their cause, needed a figurehead, needed a saint, when you look at Mantell and Wolf hall, she needed someone who would represent religious zealotry and persecution so that Cromwell could stand as this more, almost more secular figure. And he does articulate views that are very modern, I think, in Wolf hall, in that way, just as the Protestants needed someone to pin it on who wasn't Henry viii, who was the father of Elizabeth, they needed to find other evil characters to attribute the persecution too. And so these fictions served a purpose. There are elements of them that absolutely are true to the historical record and true, I think, to the historical more. But what we miss in these dual presentations is the fact that they are representations of a single person and that he was complex, that he was someone who was both incredibly intelligent, caring, a social reformer, and someone who believed that burning people at the stake was the right thing to do in those circumstances. And again, I think understanding how we get from one to the other helps us understand how that can happen to people in the past and today, how it could even happen to ourselves if we're not on guard against it. That was Joanne Paul speaking to Kev Lotchen. Joanne is Honorary Associate professor in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex and the author of the biography Thomas A Life and Death in Tudor England, the paperback version of which is set to be released in the UK in March.