Sir Thomas

“ Sir Thomas is a complete Englishmen, worthy, hospitable, open-hearted, up to the eyes in county politics, and when the affairs of this wider range are so balanced as not to call forth the extent of his powers, the parish cabals supply an under plot, which is sure to keep them in full practice for larger matters when they may arrive. At present, the game laws absorb all that is not given to conviviality, in the circuit of his head and heart, without the pale of his own family, in which he is deservedly beloved, and of which he is the sun-beam. ”

“ Nay, sit, Erasmus;—sit, good my Lord of Surrey. I’ll make my lady
come to you anon, if she will, and give you entertainment.
ERASMUS.
Is this Sir Thomas More?
SURREY.
Oh good Erasmus, you must conceive his vain:
He’s ever furnished with these conceits.
RANDALL. Yes, faith, my learned poet doth not lie for that matter: I am neither more nor less than merry Sir Thomas always. Wilt sup with me? by God, I love a parlous wise fellow that smells of a politician better than a long progress.
[Enter Sir Thomas More.]
SURREY.
We are deluded; this is not his lordship. ”

“ Speaking for our company, I can safely say that their hearts are full of courage and devotion to thy person."
"'Tis well, Sir Thomas. Thrice happy is a king whose people's hearts are his throne. Again, farewell, and may Heaven look favourably upon us this coming day."
"Geoffrey, thou hast heard his Majesty's word?" asked Sir Thomas. "Certes, thy service in the matter of the conspiracy at Southampton he hath not forgotten. How sayest thou? Art willing to undertake this enterprise? Bethink thee; 'tis a perilous service, and short will be thy shrift if thou art discovered." ”

“ Indeed, such good company did Henry find him that, as quick to take fancies as he was to tire of them, he would hardly allow the poor man to spend an evening alone, so sir Thomas in despair gave up being amusing, and sat silent, though no doubt with a twinkle in his eye, resisting all the king's efforts to make him speak, till at length everyone grew weary of him, and his place was filled by some livelier man. ”

“ Sir Thomas said, you are old now, and almost past your labour. I will give you the running of my kitchen as long as you live.. He answered, Sir, you have a numerous family; I have been used to live retired; give me leave to build a home of one room for myself in such a field, and there, with your good leave, I will live and die: and if you have any work that I can do for you, I shall be ready to serve you. Sir Thomas granted his request, he built his house, and there continued to his death. ”

“ Sir Thomas was very rich. If he had not been he would not have been called Sir Thomas, for there was the tache of a ready-made clothing business upon him, which had had to be erased as far as possible by an application of a hundred thousand charity-dinner turkeys and a huge check for a hospital. ”

“ Sir Thomas said, with kind encouragement, “He who beginneth so discreetly with a dog-rose, may hope to encompass a damask-rose ere he die.”
Willy did now breathe freely. The commendation of a knight and magistrate worked powerfully within him; and Sir Thomas said furthermore,—
“These short matters do not suit me. Thou mightest have added some moral about life and beauty,—poets never handle roses without one; but thou art young, and mayest get into the train.” ”

“ Thomas, the son of a wealthy merchant of London, had been the king's chief secretary or Chancellor for the last eight years. He was a clever, versatile, not very scrupulous man, with a devouring ambition: hitherto he had been a devoted servant, and a genial companion to the king, and had lived much more like a layman than a cleric. In spite of his priesthood, he had borne arms in the war of Toulouse, and even distinguished himself in a single combat with a French champion. Henry thought that Thomas would be no less obliging and useful as archbishop than he had been as Chancellor. ”

“ SURREY.
Instantly, good Sir Thomas,
We’ll bring the writing unto our sovereign.
[They write.]
PALMER.
My Lord of Rochester,
You must with me, to answer this contempt.
ROCHESTER.
This is the worst,
Who’s freed from life is from all care exempt.
[Exit Rochester and Palmer.]
SURREY.
Now let us hasten to our sovereign.
Tis strange that my Lord Chancellor should refuse
The duty that the law of God bequeaths
Unto the king.
SHREWSBURY.
Come, let us in. No doubt
His mind will alter, and the bishop’s too:
Error in learned heads hath much to do.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III. Chelsea. ”

“ Indeed, if the things of the present life could have made a man happy, Sir Thomas had abundant grounds for happiness in this world. Yes, in this world, but not beyond it. For Sir Thomas was just simply and thoroughly a man of the world, and a most respectable man of the world too. No man could place his finger on a blot in his character or conduct. ”

“ But this same Sir Thomas having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a divorce from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her rage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him. Then the favourite and this bad woman were publicly married by the King’s pet bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had been the best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the earth. ”

“ He then related how, having entered the prison cell of Thomas More with Palmer and Sir Richard Southwell, he had heard Sir Thomas express himself strongly against the statute and declare that no Parliament in the world would be able to submit to the question of the supremacy.
“You hear, Sir Thomas!” cried all the lords. “There is nothing to reply to this.”
Sir Thomas arose immediately, and an expression of deep emotion showed itself on his weary features. “My lords,” he replied, “if I was a man who had no regard for my oath, I would not be here before you as a criminal. ”

“ Sir Thomas, like most others in the country at this period, was one of those proud men who like to do every thing with circumstance and parade, and accordingly if he only rode across the park to shoot a buck, he usually was attended by a round dozen of his keepers and servants. ”

“ Now, Sir Thomas was at that time the head of all the judges in England, having been made Lord Chancellor, and he was a very just man, so he would never let his wife take what did not belong to her. He went, therefore, into his own great hall and sent for Lady More; then he asked [Pg 171] her to stand at the top end of the hall, and placed the little dirty girl down at the lower end. Then he ordered a footman to bring in the dog and hold it in the middle between the two, and he said that the dog should decide for itself; it must know its own mistress. ”

“ Sir Thomas tells a story of a childe who was a servant in his house, and had by his father been set to attend upon George [O 18] Jaye or Gee otherwise called Clarke, that this George Jaye taught this childe his ungraciouse heresie against the blessed sacrament of the Aulter: and that into his house at Antwerpe the two nunnes were broughte which Jhon Byrt, otherwise called Adrian, stale out of their cloyster. But to these stories Joye, so he wrote his name, in his answer to Sir Thomas published by him next year [O 19] , makes the following reply, which I shall set downe in his owne words. ”

“ Who between the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk being brought through Westminster Hall to his place in the Chancery, the Duke of Norfolk, in audience of all the people there assembled, showed, that he was from the king himself straightly charged by special commission, there openly in presence of them all, to make declaration how much all England was beholden unto Sir Thomas More for his good service, and how worthy he was to have the highest room in the realm, and how dearly his grace loved and trusted him, for which, -said the duke, he had great cause to rejoice. ”

“ Thomas was with his father at Windsor at Christmas 1399, and was removed in haste to London on the report of the plot to seize the king and his sons. In the summer of 1401 he was made lieutenant of Ireland, Sir Thomas Erpingham and Sir Hugh Waterton being named his wardens. He crossed over in November, reaching Dublin on the 13th. A council met at Christmas, and took Thomas for a journey down the coast to reassert his authority. The difficulties of the English government in Ireland were great, and the boy lieutenant added naturally to the cares of his guardians. ”

“ But besides the reflections made on their persons, its but too plain that Sir Thomas is not always so careful, as one would expect a person of his learning and of so tender and scrupulous a conscience would be, in reporting matters of fact wherein they whom he called hereticks were concerned. ”

“ Some snobbish toadies immediately set to work to trace a pedigree for the new Baron, and asserted that one of his ancestors came over with the Duke William from Normandy. Whereas it was well known that the father of Sir Thomas was of very poor and humble origin, and made his money by honorable hard work as a Railway Contractor. Truth represented Sir Thomas, attired in a suit of mail as a Norman Knight, appearing to his father, who sits smoking a short pipe, in the loose and easy costume of his early calling, a “navvy,” or road excavator. ”

“ After the first burst of passion and surprise, Sir Thomas, one of the best-hearted men in the universe, cordially forgave his son’s disobedience—partly, and quite rightly, imputing it to his own foolish urgency in pressing a union with one of the Lacy family, with which the baronet was very intimate, and whose estate adjoined his.
“Well, this lady, now a widow, had been left by her husband at Chester, whilst he came on to seek an explanation with his father. Mr. Archibald Redwood was to have set out the next morning in one of Sir Thomas’s carriages to bring home his wife ”

“ Sir Thomas seems to have thought that a pope was not of the essence of the visible church, which might subsist without a pope under the government of provincial patriarchs, or archbishops.
I beg leave to add one particular more concerning Sir Thomas, as a proof of his great integrity. His friend Erasmus observes that he stood but on ill terms with the Cardinal the King's prime Minister of State. The Cardinal, says he, when he was alive, was far from being favourable to More, and rather feared than loved him. ”

“ Sir Thomas had a quality of mind and a political experience which made it possible for him to pull the last dollar for victory. In the war annals of Canada he will have a halo of billions, while Sam Hughes has one of bayonets. He mobilized our financial resources by a system that stopped only short of conscription.
I seldom see Sir Thomas standing at a street corner when I do not feel like urging him to run along and attend to his office and not to be losing time. He seems to belong to that cold group of men whose time is naturally money. ”

“ The young spark, relying on the lady's favour, was vehemently abusive to the knight, calling him a great lubberly whelp, a brewer's servant, and a person altogether unfitted to make love to a lady. Sir Thomas was not a likely man to allow such an affront to go unpunished, so going out in the courtyard with the dandy to settle the matter, he gave him a kick which sent him over the tops of the houses into a pond some distance off, where he would have been drowned, had not a poor shepherd, passing by, pulled him out with his crook. ”

“ To this Sir Thomas More mildly made answer, saying, "No man living is there, my lords, that would with better will do the thing that should be acceptable to the king's highness than I, which must needs confess his manifold benefits and bountiful goodness, most benignly bestowed upon me. ”

“ The greater part of the clergy cast off their allegiance to the pope and took the oath required by the king. Sir Thomas saw and understood, and placed his resignation as lord chancellor in the hands of his sovereign.
The loss of his office left More a poor man, and to support the whole family in Chelsea he had only an income of 1,200l. a year. To his great regret, he felt he could no longer lead the easy, happy life that had been so pleasant to him. So the various married men, husbands of the girls of the house, took away their wives and sought employment elsewhere. ”

“ Sir Thomas had a curiosity to know what book the man read; but was some time before he could discover it; he still putting the book up if any one came toward him. However, at last, Sir Thomas surprised him [1] , & snatched the book from him, & looking into it, found it to be Latin. Hereupon he examined him, & finding he pretty well understood that language, he enquired, how he came by his learning? Hereupon the man told him, as he had been a good master to him, he would venture to trust him with a secret he had never before revealed to any one. ”

“ SIR THOMAS MORE.
FORASMUCH as Sir Thomas More, Knight, sometime Lord Chancellor of England, a man of singular virtue and of a clear unspotted conscience (as witnesseth [1] Erasmus) , more pure and white than the whitest snow, and of such an angelical wit, as England, he saith, never had the like before, nor ever shall again: universally, as well in the laws of the Realm (a study in effect able to occupy the whole life of a man) as in all other sciences, right well studied, teas in his days accounted a man worthy perpetual famous memory. ”

“ He was interested in the tobacco trade; in 1715 he conveyed 130 Jacobite prisoners to the American plantations. In 1723, having lost in speculation the fortune which he had inherited from his father, he went himself to Virginia as collector of customs on the Rappahannock river. He died in Jamaica in 1729. A Liverpool street is named Sir Thomas Buildings after him. ”