tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post3604218558267159216..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Thomas More by John Guyjohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-84923671306868496672009-07-14T19:03:40.397-04:002009-07-14T19:03:40.397-04:00As royal councillor and and Lord Chancellor (the ...As royal councillor and and Lord Chancellor (the highest judicial office in the Kingdom) More raked in the dough. He spent it lavishly, maintaining a huge household, purchasing and expanding his estates so that when he finally resigned he had little enough to sustain the lifestyle his family had been grown accustomed to. After his execution most of what he possessed was confiscated. The family itself fell into lengthy legal disputes over what titles and rents remained. Subsequently his wife was even forced to apply for a modest 'mercy' pension from the King to sustain herself. <br /><br />As Chancellor More himself prosecuted and burned heretics of the 'Lollard"(reading the bible in unauthorized English translations) and Lutheran variety, on occasion imprisoning on his own estates and having them beaten, without the proper legal writs. Many of his decisions as Lord Chancellor were undertaken in an arbitrary fashion without consideration of all the particulars and in contradiction to established procedures, in keeping with the Platonic vision described in his treatise "Utopia", in which 'wise princes' obviated the need for "inflexible' legal codes or much lawyering. Sometimes he agreed to hear cases outside normal legal channels, sometimes not- depending it can be assumed on what result he or "providence' divined. <br /><br />Paradoxically, from the early days of his marriage up until the day of his execution he worn a discomforting hair shirt. In short, he was a man for his season rather than for all seasons, except with respect to the cause of the Roman Catholic Church with which he has long been closely associated.<br /><br />He and the great humanist of the age Erasmus were great friends, colleagues and correspondants. Erasmus was particulasrly impressed by the education he provided his daughter Margaret whose classical learning was more advanced than all but the most learned of the age and for this More deserves our respect.<br /><br />Erasmus, however, had a different idea of his own strengths and weaknesses. "Mine", he told Richard Pace, 'was never the spirit to risk my life for the truth. Not everyone has the strength needed for martydom. I fear that, if strife were to break out, I shall behave like Peter. When popes and emperors make the right decisions I follow, which is godly; if they decide wrongly, I tolerate them, which is safe."<br /><br />A Daughter's Love; Thomas More & His Dearest Meg by John Guy; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 2009johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-88661513147632905822009-07-14T18:59:07.315-04:002009-07-14T18:59:07.315-04:00Shortly before the new Acts of Attainder against M...Shortly before the new Acts of Attainder against More were printed and perhaps as the result of a final, desperate attempt by Cromwell to exert pressure on More, Lady Alice came in a wherry from Chelsea to see her husband. It was the one and only time she would make the effort, because she simply couldn't fathom how the man she' married, and who'd risen to such heights of power and influence as a royal councillor and Lord Chancellor, had ended up as a prisoner like this.<br /><br />"What the good-year, Master More", she began as she strode into the cell, barely pausing for breath.<br /><br />"I marvel that you that have been always hitherto taken for such a wise man will now so play the fool to lie here in this close, filthy prison and be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty and with the favour and good will of the King and his Council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned of this realm have done. And seeing you have at Chelsea a right fair house, your library, your books, your gallery, your garden, your orchard and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might in the company of me your wife, your children and household be merry, I muse what in God's name you mean here thus to tarry."<br /><br />Lady Alice was flummoxed, and even bitter, as to why Thomas just couldn't say a few simple words and sign his name on a piece of paper. The most she was willing to concede was that her husband had 'a long continued and deep-rooted scruple as passeth his power to avoid or put away, but was unable to grasp what it could be or why it could be so, for their own son-in-law, and especially William Roper and Giles Alington, had taken the oath the moment it was laid before them.<br /><br />"Is not this house as nigh hevean as my own" asked More, unfazed by his wife's rebuke.<br /><br />"Tilly Vally, tilly vally', retorted Alice, meaning nonsense, fiddlesticks! It isn't moral principles that pay the bills and feed the family.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com