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Not Just the Tudors
Rise of Thomas More
00:43:34
Saintly man of conscience or stubborn zealot? Professor Suzannah Lipscomb and Dr. Joanne Paul investigate.
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- [00:00]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit With a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward/subscribe.
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Dr. Joanne Paul
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- [02:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. There are two versions of Thomas More in popular culture. There's the More of Conscience that we find in A Man for a Season, and there's More, the bigot that we find in Wolf Hall. The origin myth for both versions of More can be traced back to the 16th century. In writings after More's death. We find the More of a man four seasons in William Roper, who was eulogizing his late father in law as a saint. We find the More of Wolf hall in John Fox, who castigated Moore as the burner of saints. So who was the real Thomas More? Who, as my guest today asks, was Thomas More before fame and the fires of faith consumed him? In today's episode, we'll explore how this grandson of a humble baker rose to become the author of Utopia and Lord Chancellor in Henry VIII's England. My guest is Dr. Joanne Paul, Honorary Associate professor in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society who was awarded the Sir John Neale Prize in Tudor History by the Institute of Historical Research. She's the author of the acclaimed the House of A New History of Tudor England, and her latest book is Thomas A Life and Death in Tudor England. She is no stranger to this podcast, and it is a delight to welcome her back to discuss her fabulous new biography of this divisive character. Hello, I'm Professor Suzanne Lipscomb, and this is not just the Tudors from History Hit. Jo, welcome back.
- [04:34]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Thank you so much for having me on. Again.
- [04:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
When it comes to thinking about Thomas More, people have fairly fixed ideas about him. Whether they call him Sir Thomas More or St. Thomas More is the first place to start. Perhaps the cult of Thomas More, the man of singular virtue, as I just mentioned, was continued by the famous play that many people have been to see in man for All Seasons and the castigation of him as that kind of persecutor of those of the true faith. Both of these ideas began in the years immediately after his death and have continued since. What do you think we should make of this mixed legacy? What does it tell us about More?
- [05:12]
Dr. Joanne Paul
I think it tells us that he died in a time of intense religious conflicts. I mean, we know this. But he gets used and picked up by both sides. He gets weaponized. His legacy is weaponized in a way by both sides. To the Catholics, particularly, starting with his family, their circle, he becomes this saintly figure. There is an effort to have him canonized very quickly after his death. That's the source of a lot of the early biographies that we have of him. And that gets picked up and carried well through into the 20th and 21st centuries. And that is particularly the case under Queen Mary I. As a Catholic monarch, she fosters these circles. A lot of them had been exiles under Edward VI and come home under Mary. She, of course, is followed by Elizabeth I, who persecutes Catholics. And under her we see especially the martyrology of John Fox. And it's there that Moore is really portrayed as this heresy hunter, as this very cruel man towards God's people. And that gets picked up and carried as well. So we see these two strains follow through the centuries and then immortalized in things like A Man For All Seasons and indeed Wolf Hall. I think, though, what I've been trying to do is to get underneath thistle, to get at the man before this split, this divide, this conflict happens over his legacy, because he was a man, he was a complicated man, but he wasn't either, I think, the saintly hero or this cruel villain. I think that there is something more complex, deeper about who he was as a person. And that's what I've been trying to get to.
- [07:14]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Okay, so let's try and get at that together as well. Let's talk about who Moore was by his family, what sort of people did he come from, how was he educated, and what sort of qualities do we see developing in him as a young boy and young man?
- [07:32]
Dr. Joanne Paul
So he was born in London, just outside the London wall. Best I can tell, many of you will be aware, just off Cheapside, there's a plaque for his birthplace on Melk Street. I don't think that's actually where he was born. That's something that comes from those early biographies and has been picked up and repeated. I think, actually he was born just outside the London wall, in Cripplegate, without, very near the parish of St. Giles. And he was born to, I suppose, a middling sort of family. His father was a lawyer, as he became, but his father, in turn had been a baker who had died when Thomas More's father was just 16. And so there is this precarity to the family. More's mother was the daughter of a tallow chandler of some standing. They were known within their guilds. They had various positions within their communities, their parishes, their guilds, their companies, and some standing within the London government as well, sort of civic standing, but they were certainly not noble. They weren't rich merchants or anything else. And the area that he grew up in was slightly up and Coming. But it was also known as a place of lawlessness. It was sort of a dumping ground for trades and for waste that you didn't want within the city wall. So anything that sort of stank went outside to this area. And so I think this idea that sometimes we're presented with, of Thomas More being born with a sort of silver spoon in his mouth is not quite right. He was educated at the only free grammar school in London, because his parents couldn't afford the fees anywhere else in the SUST, St. Anthony's Threadneedle Street. And he was raised in a fairly traditional medieval education of rote learning of Latin grammar. One of the things I think that he really took from this was, of course, the knowledge of the Latin language, which is so essential to any position in the 15th and 16th centuries, but also the art of rhetoric and disputation, which, of course, he employs to great effect later in his career as well.
- [09:44]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And at the age of 12, he's apprenticed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, John Morton. What did that mean for his life?
- [09:52]
Dr. Joanne Paul
It was a huge boost. I don't think we'd be talking about Thomas More today without that placement. It's secured by his father through his legal connections. He clearly thought that his son deserved a place in the world and probably Thomas Morehead earned it as well. He talks about Morton sort of testing people through rhetorical questioning. And we can imagine that he and or his father had to go through something like this to earn that place. But he was a servant, he wasn't a ward or have any privileged position like that. He served possibly at table. If so, then he would have encountered some of the leading men in Henry VII's court and may have overheard things, may have picked up things about the politics, and he continued his education there as well. I think the really key thing that he gets from his time with Morton at Lambeth palace is where he moves on to next, and that's the University of Oxford. Without that Oxford education, without those Oxford connections, certainly the humanist Thomas More that we know so well, he wouldn't have picked up what he needed to pursue that sort of scholarship without his time at Oxford. And it's Morton who secures him a place there and pays for it.
- [11:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And you mentioned his sort of humanist outlook, one of his great friends throughout his life, although there are periods where they're not in great correspondence. But is Erasmus one of the leading thinkers of the time, who is of course, a humanist? How do they become friends?
- [11:26]
Dr. Joanne Paul
There's a famous meeting between Thomas More Erasmus and indeed the young Henry viii at the time the second son of the king, Prince Henry. That takes place in the summer of 1499. And I think it gets a lot of attention, as it should in a way, because there's these three very important men meeting and they meet each other all for the first time as well. Both More and Erasmus are there on the invitation of Baron Mountjoy, who had been a student of Erasmus and a great patron of humanism. And he invites More along to meet Erasmus and then they all go off to meet Henry and indeed his younger siblings at the palace at Eltham. It's an interesting. It's sort of a meet cute in a way. They don't get along at first. More has prepared a piece of writing. We don't know exactly what to give to Prince Henry, which is very common for scholars to do when meeting nobles and members of the royal family. And Erasmus hadn't been prepared. He didn't have anything to give to the young prince, which angers the young prince. And he sends a note sort of during the meal saying, you know, I really do expect something from you, Erasmus. It's worth remembering that Henry is, I think, eight at the time, his young precocious prince demanding something from this scholar. And apparently Erasmus is so embarrassed and frustrated by the situation that, as he says, he sort of draws blood from More in a debate at dinner. He's very rude to him at dinner. A few months later, though, the. The two seem to have recovered from that. And Erasmus speaks, as he often does, in very effusive terms about Mor, that he love him unto death and so on, and spends a lot of effort to secure More's scholarly reputation and to see his works through the press. Although he disapproves of him at various points, which perhaps he'll come to, their friendship does last until the end of their lives. And indeed Erasmus dies a year after Moore's death, almost to the day.
- [13:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It is interesting, isn't it, the tone of communications at the time. There is that kind of passionate nature of how people talk of their friends in the early 16th century, which is a quality we've sort of lost. But Erasmus absolutely speaks of More in semi romantic tones. But one of the questions that humanists, and I've learned this from you and your work, are grappling with, is the question of how much, as a man of letters, and it is, and really chiefly at this time, one has to embrace the active life. It's the choice between the active and the contemplative life. Otium and negotium. Tell me about this question and how More grappled with.
- [14:20]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Was both a theoretical question, something they'd inherited from the ancients. The active life was often seen through the works of, in the life of Cicero, the contemplative life through Plato. So it was very much sort of a Greek versus Roman question as well. It was something that also appeared in Christian writings whether it was better to live a godly life in a monastery, for instance, cut off from the world, or to live in the world of men and serve God in that way through marriage and children and business and politics and everything else. And so by the time you get to the Renaissance, it carries both of these traditions with it. And humanists, as Christian neoclassical scholars essentially like to play with these questions, but they also took them seriously in terms of what choices they would make in their own lives. And More is very aware of these traditions, engages with the authors who write about them and has to make those decisions for himself. Erasmus, in many ways at least likes to present himself as someone who lives a contemplative life, though if you have a look at any of his letters, he's constantly chasing pensions and promotions and everything else. More advocates for and lives a sort of active life, though I think he would have described it more as a mixed life. He was very much an admirer of a church father who talked about living as a monk within a marriage, which is not, of course to say celibacy, but to have that sort of ritualistic, godly approach to marriage and to having children, that that is a service to God as well. So More marries, he takes on, as we know, various positions. He has a sense of ambition about him, but he would at least suggest that there is contemplation in that. There is service to God and there is service to truth.
- [16:19]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And so what is his position and his status at the time that Henry VIII comes to the throne? 1509, and how does he react to this king he's met 10 years earlier as an 8 year old, now being on the throne.
- [16:33]
Dr. Joanne Paul
In 1509, more is, well, frankly, not that important. He attends the coronation, but in the stands essentially, he's not a part of it. He's a lawyer, full lawyer by that point. He studied at the Inns of Court and this began practicing. He's a freeman of the City of London, so he's a member of the Mercer's Company, which is arguably the most powerful, wealthy company in London at the time. So he's done very well there. He's married, he has Children. He's living in a home that he gets from the mercers, essentially, which is a place called Buckler's, very near Cheapside and St. Paul's so he's in the center of it all, and he's really about to launch a civic career as well within the city. So he's very much a London boy and beginning a path of his career. We're almost certain he attends the coronation because he writes about it. He is one of the accounts that we use for the coronation, because he writes a coronation ode that he then has written out in a very fine manuscript that we still have today, with illumination and everything else. And he presents it to Henry viii. It is very laudatory, flattering to Henry and to his queen Catherine, of whom More had long been an admirer. It, however, does contain seeds of warning and expectation as well, which was common to these sorts of texts. Erasmus was sort of the leader on this, of writing praise and flattery that also set certain expectations and contain certain warnings. And so he talks about power being corruptive, for instance. He talks about the expectation that Henry will foster scholars, that he will protect his realm and that they will have many, many children. One of the things I think is important to remember, and especially about his upbringing, is that he was born in the wars of the Roses, in a lull in the wars of the Roses, but not a very long one. He was five years in 1483, the year of three kings. He had just started school at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. So this is very present to him and to all of his contemporaries that they could slip back in to civil war again. So More is in all of his writings, I think, very keen to ensure authority, continuance, tradition, to avoid the context from which they had just emerged.
- [19:13]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I suppose you're saying there's a sense that the praise is prescriptive, it's saying what he should be rather than what he is.
- [19:21]
Dr. Joanne Paul
I think that's a great way of putting it. I think there's a recognition of what he is, the potential, I guess, that he has. Henry was very learned. He had been educated by people that More and Erasmus knew and respected. He had been in correspondence with Erasmus and others of that circle. There's a sense in which they had molded this prince, probably because they thought that he would be a fantastic duke who would be a great patron for them. I don't think that they expected he'd turn out to be King of England, but, hey, they'll make the most of it. And so you know, they really expected him to particularly foster scholarship, by which, of course, they mean pay them and give them position. And there was every reason to think that that would be the case. A lot of the praise, too, was simply true. He was tall, he was handsome. Moore, too, talks about a sort of fire in his eyes, which I think is something that would make sense for Henry viii, both based on descriptions of him and his portraits. So there's a truth to everything he says, but there is also, as you say, a prescriptive element and expectation.
- [20:38]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And so Moore, at the time he's writing this, you've said as a scholar, he's a lawyer, it's not a big deal just yet, but he's just on the cusp of a series of appointments and responsibilities, including being appointed as a representative for the Company of Merchant Adventurers to go over to Antwerp to negotiate over terms of trade. What do you think that appointment and the others around this time tell us about more in terms of his character and his growing reputation.
- [21:09]
Dr. Joanne Paul
For the most part, these appointments that happen sort of in the 1510s, he is appointed because of his Latin skill, because of his ability with rhetoric, but also because he's amiable. Erasmus describes him as getting along with everyone. Of course, there's that famous phrase, a man for all seasons. He is someone that everyone can sort of talk to. And so we often find him in roles of negotiation, of advice giving, because people were willing to talk to him, I think, on that level. And he also had the legal and Latin skill to back it up. So he gets his first crack at negotiating, as you say, on behalf of the merchant adventurers. The mercers really use him a very great deal for various things. He's also essentially a judge at this point, as undersheriff, so he's overseeing cases and he's really starting to make connections as well. There's an opening for a Member of parliament at Henry VIII's first parliament, and he picks that up very quickly and is part of the 1510 parliament. And so we can see someone who's using the connections that he has. A lot of them are scholarly as well. There is quite an intermeshing of scholarly and London connections that he's able to use to find himself. Positions that then get him noticed and noticed and sort of moving higher up, up the hierarchy, as it were, but still very London based. There's no indications that he has his eyes on the court, for instance, at this stage.
- [22:46]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But then in the midst of this rise and everything going so well, we get in 1511, this devastating illness, the sweating sickness, not as bad as it had been some years earlier. We now understand this, don't we, with COVID a little bit, how things become less deadly, but deadly enough. And this is a year of tragedy. Tell us what happened and what you make of what More does afterwards.
- [23:11]
Dr. Joanne Paul
His wife dies in 1511. He'd been married since something like 1504, 1505, to a woman named Jane Colt Moore. And we think she's taken away by the sweating sickness. We're not quite sure. She dies in that year and is very young. So it seems possible at the very least, she had been mother to his four children, three girls and one boy. And he writes of the devastation and the sadness of her death. It's the sort of first point of controversy, or one of them at least with Thomas More, that he then pursues a marriage very, very, very quickly after Jane's death. Scandalously quickly, certainly for the time as there is in the church today, there's a process that has to take place before a marriage can be approved. Banns being read out and more, using his connections and a little bit of cash, dispenses with all that and marries again very, very quickly, a woman named Alice. It has been suggested that this has to do with some sort of rapacious sexual appetite or with some desire for her connections and standing. She's a very well off widow herself. I think we also have to consider though that he's a very busy man with four children under, I think the age of six at this point, a very busy household. Alice had been known to him, perhaps had been a friend for some time. She had two children of her own. Unfortunately, one of her daughters dies and so she knows how to manage a household. And his friends later on describe her as someone with mother wit. This idea that she's very, very good, very, very intelligent about managing a household and children and everything else. And so he marries her very quickly, I think because of the need for someone, the need for motherwit in his household.
- [25:27]
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Dr. Joanne Paul
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- [26:23]
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- [27:37]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So he's married to Alice, and in the subsequent years, one of the things he does is he's still negotiating. In this case, he goes to the low countries in 1515 and is there for an unexpectedly long period of time. And it's there that he conceives perhaps the most famous thing to do with Thomas More. There's quite a lot, which is his book Utopia. Almost every undergraduate who studies philosophy or politics or history, possibly of English as well, has to read it. Tell us about Utopia and I'm going to put to you the classic undergraduate question about Utopia, which is this idealistic blueprint or biting satire. Which is it?
- [28:17]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Utopia is. It's a witty, lovely little text. For those of you who haven't read it, I recommend that you do. It's fabulously funny, insightful, reflexive, telling of the time, and yet something timeless about it. I highly recommend that you pick it up it's in two parts. It's the second part that he writes while he's on the continent, while he's in a break from these negotiations that he's participating on. And that's the description of this island of Utopia, in which there's no private property, no social hierarchy, none of the things that really define his contemporary world. And the joke, of course, is in the name itself. Utopia means both best place and no place. So it is an impulse possible, ideal island. It's always the first part, though, that I find most interesting. And it's a debate between two figures, one of which carries his own name. Thomas more and more or less represents the author himself. And that's a debate actually about the active and contemplative lives and whether one ought to enter the service of a king. And so it's often been read in this autobiographical way that More himself is debating these questions. And that might or might not be true in terms of the question of whether it's a blueprint or a satire. It is certainly a satire. There's no question that that is the case. He's taken shots at everybody in that way. It's a lot like his friend Erasmus, Praise of Folly, which is a wonderful satire of everyone in 16th century society. And Utopia does something similar. It's not intended, I think, and intention is important here. It's not intended as a blueprint for a new society. What I think it is, though, is a critique of the society in which he lives and the way in which artificial things are valued more than real, natural things. So those things that don't exist in Utopia, private property, it's a fiction, right? It's not real. There's nothing real about owning something. Social hierarchy, right status, there's nothing real about that. And so it's an impossible, ideal, imagined fictional place, but in some ways is more real than the world in which we live in, which is full of things that are completely fantastical and imagined.
- [30:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
That's such a trenchant description of it. What a lovely way of describing property and hierarchy as being fictional. There's an epigram in his final published version of Utopia, which I'm going to give him full because it's so wonderful. Moore writes, you often boast to me that you have the king's ear and often have fun with him freely and according to your whims. This is like having fun with tamed lions. Often he roars in rage for no known reasons, and suddenly the fun becomes fatal. Given that he thought this, it's addressed to a Courtier. Why then, in his 40th year, does Thomas More trade his role in the city of Lond for one, in the lion's den itself at Henry VIII's court?
- [31:39]
Dr. Joanne Paul
We don't have a perfect answer to that question. I'm sorry to report. He doesn't write down exactly why. So we have to surmise a little bit. But that's what we do as historians, so that's okay. Certainly in Utopia he talks about a duty to the Commonwealth. And if you have all this learning and experience and expertise, you have a duty to apply that to the well being of your community, essentially of whatever political community you happen to live in. And so I think that's part of it. I think that he believes that. I think that he attempts to do that first in London and then has this invitation to sort of increase his sphere of influence, I suppose to be that presence in the court. Someone who ideally at least pursues things like virtue and truth and, and can speak for humanism and humanists and for peace and everything that they believed in. I think he is ambitious. I think he doesn't mind the idea of making some money and taking care of his family. I think that he has no problem throughout his life accepting all of these positions. And of course, as we know, he rises very high indeed. And there are reasons, I think, that drive him away from his place in the city which have to do with something that very closely precedes his appointment to the King's council, which is in 1518. And that's the 1517 evil May Day riots. I think the aftermath of that really shakes him and makes him think about his position in London. Because as he tells Erasmus, that's why he doesn't take the position at first, is because he would never be able to retain the trust of London citizens if he took any money from the court. There's such a division between these two. And so something makes him not care anymore about his place in London.
- [33:41]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
What is that, do you think? What has pushed him with those evil mayday riots?
- [33:45]
Dr. Joanne Paul
The evil mayday riots occur on the evening before May Day in 1517. There are xenophobic riots aimed at foreigners. There had been many months of stirring up xenophobic feeling against foreigners. Essentially they're taking our jobs, they're, you know, starving our children and stealing our lives. All of that stuff that gets dredged up every once in a while. They were pretty tame. There is very little property damage. No one dies, few people are injured. Thomas More is involved in trying to put down the riots. He Rides out to maintain a curfew, he fails. The riots happen anyway, but they sort of dwindle out by 2 or 3am but what is really important about them, I think for more and for our understanding of the time, is the way that Henry VIII reacts to them. He becomes very paranoid, very concerned about the maintenance of his authority. And instead of treating it as a riot, which it was, he treats it as a rebellion. And instead of punishing those involved as rioters, which would be a bit of time in the stocks, some fine light imprisonment, he treats them as traitors and they are subject to a full traitor's death. What's more is that these gallows are set up within the confines of London at central meeting points. And those punished, many of whom are young men, apprentices, teenagers in our terms, when they're hang, drawn and quartered, their bodies are set up at these meeting points in London. And for decades, London citizens talk about remembering them. And so it's a very traumatic moment for London as a whole. And I think we can read into it given Moore's involvement. And he had involvement afterwards as well, investigating the May Day riots. He had a role as under sheriff in prosecuting those involved. I think for Moore there may have been a real shift that took place for him at that time.
- [36:07]
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Dr. Joanne Paul
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- [37:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It'S really interesting and you describe the atrocities so well. If that couldn't be a way of describing atrocities, you make the horror of it very vivid. So there's this sense that he's moving into a situation in which he feels he can do good. And actually also along the way, just one thing we must note about more Is as a man of learning, he also equips his daughters to be women of learning. How unusual was this?
- [37:38]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Very unusual. There was a bit of a debate at the time whether or not girls, women should be educated. For the most part, people came down on the side of absolutely not. Why would you try to do that? No good would come of trying to do that. Moore, however, really leads the charge in terms of saying no girls can and should be educated. And he does that by educating his own daughters. And we have this wonderful letter from him to his children's tutor where he says that both women and men, girls and boys, are equally suited for the knowledge of learning by which reason is cultivated. He does know that this is a controversial point. He says that the controversy comes from the fact that it. It will be a reproach to the sloth of men that women will start to match and even outmatch them because men are often lazy and they'll show them up. And that's why men are going to try to dissuade people from educating women, which I think is a really fun and maybe very accurate take on things. And so he educates them to a very high standard. They dispute in front of the king. His eldest, Margaret, publishes the sort of. The other side to this is that he is very clear that their education is to cultivate womanly virtues. That doesn't mean that they, like him, should pursue a place in the courts, legal courts, royal courts, anything like that. It's to ensure that they can be good wives and mothers. So he's not, you know, a 20th, 21st century feminist by any stretch, but he does educate them, and this is, according to Erasmus, taken up by many others who then go on to educate their daughters thanks to his example and his intervention.
- [39:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
One of the ways that he serves Henry viii, having joined his court, is through this learning. There's this extraordinary war of words in Latin between Henry VIII and Luther. And some looking at some of it in your book, it explains why Henry hates Luther qu much as he does. Among the marvellous things that Henry gets called is a stupid king. How is more involved in this battle of words?
- [40:00]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Henry writes this defense of the seven sacraments in 1521, after Luther has been condemned by the Catholic Church. In part, Henry writes it because he wants special recognition from the Pope. But he gets. He becomes defender of the faith. And he probably doesn't write this book by himself. Why would he? He's a king, he's very busy and he's got all sorts of very scholarly sorts running around his court, one of whom is Thomas More. Thomas More later claims that he didn't have anything really to do with the writing of the Assertio, other than giving it a bit of an edit and advising the king actually to tone down the importance he places on the Pope, just in case he and the Pope ever come into conflict. Now, More says that very later on. And so whether or not that's true, it's hard to say. Certainly More himself always downplays the importance of the Pope in the Catholic Church. So it's hard to say, but he may have had a hand in it, at least. What is certainly the case is after Luther responds. And that's a very gentle term for what Luther does. After Luther responds to Henry viii, and in addition to calling him stupid king, he calls him strumpet, like, suggests that his hands and his tongue should be cut out, suggests that he should be burned at the stake. He's not subtle about it. Henry can't stoop to his level. He can't respond to that. He's a king of England, and so he needs someone to do so. And Thomas More is the perfect candidate. He's educated, he's a lawyer. He knows how to argue. He's. He's got enough theology to engage with him. He's at this point in the service of the king, so he can be trusted. And so it's out of this that he writes his first volley into the debates of what we now know as the Reformation.
- [42:05]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's striking in More's response to Luther that he moves into what we can only really describe as a kind of more vulgar register. I mean, the way that he writes is. Is the way that Luther does, actually, which is insults. It's all in Latin, of course, but they're pretty graphics often scatological insults, aren't they?
- [42:25]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Yeah. I'm surprised you have a quoted from it.
- [42:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I think you should feel free.
- [42:32]
Dr. Joanne Paul
That's all right. I don't know if we have to beep it out or anything. Yes, scatological is the word. He is not, I think, as violent in his language as Luther had been with Henry. But there is a lot of use of the word, if I may shit, and is used very creatively, I would say, throughout the text. So, yes, when we say he stoops to Luther's level, he more sort of squats there. And it's surprising, I think, when most people encounter this because he is a saint. And even if people don't subscribe to that belief, you know, he's this author of this Great text, Utopia and A Servant of the King and everything else. But I think first of all, it was answering Luther, who doesn't avoid that sort of language at all. But it was also just common of polemics at the time, not even religious ones necessarily. It was used in humanist polemics all the time. So there is a sort of larger context for it. But it is rather shocking.
- [43:40]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
His rise continues in the 1520s, and by this point, Moore's household is growing and it's moving. What's happening?
- [43:47]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Yeah, he's got a very large household by this point, all tucked into tenements in essentially central London. At the home called the Barge in Bucklersbury, he has four children, as I said. He also takes other children in as wards, as sort of, we might call them now, adopted children, really. He's also various young people are sort of joining the school, coming on as servants, as tutors, as secretaries and so on. His children start having children of their own. He also has a stepdaughter who is having children and has to come home for a while. And so the household is just growing and growing until it bursts. And so in the 1520s, More finds a home in Chelsea. Very famously, if you go there now, there's a big statue to Thomas More in front of Chelsea Old Church, and he buys various lands there, builds as well. He builds something called the New building, which is the place he can kind of go to study and to reflect. He builds on to the church, adds a chapel there. And I think there's a real association between Moore and Chelsea. He had a lot of land there. They could go walking in the gardens. And we have this famous image from his son in law, who had also joined the household, William Rover of More, walking in the gardens with Henry viii, with Henry's arm about his neck. And it's this sort of idyllic, almost pastoral vision of More.
- [45:17]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And it's in this period where he has this extended family that he becomes one of the first English patrons to the great artist Hans Holbein the Younger. Tell me about Holbein's portraits of More and his family and what we can learn from them.
- [45:34]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Holbein had been sent to England with a recommendation from Erasmus, and More said he'd do his best to secure Holbein position and patronage in England, and he follows that through by commissioning two portraits from Holbein himself. It's worth just mentioning as well that Hans Holbein's elder brother, who had died by this point, Ambrosius Holbein, had produced the Map of utopia in the 1518 version. So there's a longer relationship with the Holbeins by this point. One of the two portraits that More commissions is a fairly standard Tudor portrait. Head and upper and shoulders of More wearing his furs and his chain of office with a Tudor rose on it. The other, I think, far more interesting portrait. It's a family portrait. It adorns countless books about the Renaissance, about the Tudor period, because it's just such a fascinating portrait. It's More in the center of his family. So he's there, his father is there, his wife is there, his children are there, and even some of his extended family, the daughters he's essentially adopted are there as well. And the women are reading. They're also pregnant. They're reading. They have books in front of them, classical books. There's a servant in the doorway about to call Thomas More away. It's a portrait of family life and it's a portrait of what More has achieved, his standing in the world at his 50th birthday.
- [47:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we're going to leave him there on his 50th birthday, having risen up in the world, having become a great scholar, a lawyer and entered Henry VIII's court. And is there in all this glory that we see him depicted as by Holbein. And next time, I hope that you'll talk to me a bit more about some of More's reputation, both as a saint and as a persecutor of heretics. And when we consider his fall, Dr. Joan Paul, thank you so much for your time.
- [47:52]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Speak to you soon.
- [47:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thomas More seemed to rise and rise. But on the 6th of July, 1535, he would be led out to a higher place yet, and an undesirable one. Tower Hill. On the day before the feast day of St. Thomas Beckett, to whom many would compare him, he would be beheaded for treason. Do join me and Dr. Joanne Paul in the next episode to discuss the fall of Thomas More, the necessity of obeying his conscience that brought him to that desperate point. Thanks for listening to Not Just the Tudors and to my researcher, Alice Smith and my producer, Rob Weinberg. And do join me, Professor Susannah Lipscomb next time for another episode of Not Just the Tudors From History.
- [48:40]
Dr. Joanne Paul
Hit.
- [48:52]
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