SIR THOMAS MORE (1478-1535) BY ANNA MCCLURE SHOLL IR THOMAS MORE is conspicuous among English men of letters, not solely because of the quality of his English and Latin prose; but in the main for the humanistic spirit of his culture. In an age when his nation was not distinguished for liberality of thought nor for breadth of human view, Thomas More linked to his mediæval devoutness a passion for intellectual freedom which places him in the first rank of modern thinkers. He obtains perhaps broader recognition, as one whose public and private life was of such exalted purity and high-minded fidelity to a fixed ideal, that later generations have found in his character the essential elements of sainthood. He was born in 1478, in the morning twilight of the Renaissance. The strong new life of Italy, awakening to the beauty and wonder of the world and of man, under the inspiration of the Hellenic spirit, had not yet communicated its full warmth and vigor to the nations of the north. England was still mediæval and scholastic when Thomas More was a page in the household of Cardinal Morton. Even the great universities were under the domination of the schoolmen. Greek was neglected for the dusty Latin of scholasticism. The highly susceptible nature of Thomas More felt nevertheless the influence of the classical revival, with its accompanying revival of humanitarian sympathies. Humane in temperament, of a sweet and reasonable mind, he was drawn naturally to the study of the Greek classics. At the same time his inheritance of the simple Christian piety of an earlier day inclined him to asceticism. His soul was mediæval; his mind was modern. Self-repression and self-expansion struggled within him for the mastery. The hair shirt and the wooden pillow were placed over against the delights of the new learning. The career of Thomas More was determined by his father, a lawyer of distinction, who wished his son to be a devotee neither of religion nor of literature. In 1494, after a two-years' residence at Oxford, More was entered at New Inn to begin the study of law. From thenceforth his career was to be more and more involved with the troubled politics of England in the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. For a time, however, he was to advance quietly in his chosen profession, maturing under the influences of life in the world, and under the enriching forces of his friendship with Erasmus. In Erasmus, the cultured and philosophical representative of the new era, More found satisfaction for needs of his own nature which neither the study of law nor the exercises of devotion could wholly meet. The author of the Utopia' would follow the leadership of love into many paths which might otherwise have offered no thoroughfare. It is in the 'Utopia' that the friend of Erasmus, the lover of Greek humanism, the modern thinker, escapes from the trammels of his age and environment, and gives expression to the best that is within him. As far as was possible More sought to give a practical outlet to his high and prophetic ideals. In doing so he ran contrary to the tendency of his time, and paid the last penalty of such a coursemartyrdom. From the accession of Henry VIII. in 1509, to 1532, the year in which More resigned the Great Seal, his career indicated not only his moral and intellectual greatness, but the pressure of his individuality against the trammels of an age too strait for it. The justice and mercy of Sir Thomas More belong rather to the nineteenth century than to the sixteenth, despite their setting in the religious thought and feeling of the Middle Age. The landmarks of his life,- his appointment as under-sheriff of London in 1510, his embassy to Flanders in 1514 and to Calais in 1517, his admission to the Privy Council in 1518, his promotion to the Under-Treasurership in 1521 and his knighting in the same year, his election as Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, his advancement to the Lord Chancellorship in 1529-these events were steps in an uncongenial progress towards an undesired goal. Between the author of the 'Utopia' and Henry VIII. there was a great gulf fixed. The monarch might walk and talk familiarly with his Lord Chancellor in the pleasant gardens of More's home at Chelsea, but this friendship of royal imposition was the artificial linking of a modern man with a feudal tyrant. The conflict of Sir Thomas More with Henry VIII. over the divorce of Katherine of Aragon was less one of religion than of the old order with the new. The execution of More in 1535, for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy, was but the natural outcome of this conflict. In the 'Utopia' More embodied his ideals of society and government, for which he had found so few mediums of expression in the actual order about him. A critic in the Quarterly Review justly says of the book that "it is an indictment of the state of society in which More found himself, and an aspiration after a fairer and juster ordering of the commonwealth. We can trace in it something vaticinatory; some forecast of the prophetic soul of the great world dreaming on 10297 things to come." Another critic, Rudbart, finds it underlain with three great truths: that toleration should prevail in matters of religious belief; that all political power should not be vested in a single hand; that the well-being of the body politic depends upon the ethical and religious fitness of its members. 'Utopia,' the island of Nowhere, where labor is recreation, where want is not, where men are brothers, remains still an ideal to modern minds of a certain type. The charm of the book itself lies partly in its attractive subject-a golden age is always of interest - partly in its quaint and fragrant style. In the annals of English literature, Sir Thomas More the Lord Chancellor is less remembered than Sir Thomas More the friend of Erasmus and of Holbein, the head of the patriarchal household at Chelsea, the father of Margaret Roper. As one of the first-born of an age whose hospitality he was not destined to enjoy, he possesses a strong claim upon the interest and sympathy of modern generations. Alma Marine Sholl A LETTER TO LADY MORE [Returning from the negotiations at Cambray, Sir Thomas More heard that his barns and some of those of his neighbors had been burned down; he consequently wrote the following letter to his wife. Its gentleness to a sourtempered woman, and the benevolent feelings expressed about the property of his neighbors, have been much admired. The spelling is modernized.] M ISTRESS ALICE, in my most heartywise I recommend me to you. And whereas I am informed by my son Heron of the loss of our barns and our neighbors' also, with all the corn that was therein; albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is great pity of so much good corn lost, yet sith it hath liked him to send us such a chance, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of this visitation. He sent us all that we have lost; and sith he hath by such a chance taken it away again, his pleasure be fulfilled! Let us never grudge thereat, but take it in good worth, and heartily thank him, as well for adversity as for prosperity. And peradventure we have cause to thank him for our loss than for our winning, more for his wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves. Therefore I pray you be of good cheer, and take all the household with you to church, and there thank God, both for that he has given us, and for that he has taken from us, and for that he hath left us; which, if it please him, he can increase when he will. And if it please him to leave us yet less, at his pleasure be it! I pray you to make some good ensearch what my poor neighbors have lost, and bid them take no thought therefor; for if I should not leave myself a spoon, there shall no poor neighbor of mine bear no loss by any chance happened in my house. I pray you be, with my children and your household, merry in God; and devise somewhat with your friends what way were best to take for provision to be made for corn for our household, and for seed this year coming, if we think it good that we keep the ground still in our hands. And whether we think it good that we so shall do or not, yet I think it were not best suddenly thus to leave it all up, and to put away our folk off our farm, till we have somewhat advised us thereon. Howbeit if we have more now than ye shall need, and which can get them other masters, ye may discharge us of them. But I would not that any man were suddenly sent away, he wot not whither. At my coming hither, I perceived none other but that I should tarry still with the King's grace. But now I shall, I think, because of this chance, get leave this next week to come home and see you, and then shall we further devise together upon all things, what order shall be best to take. And thus as heartily fare-you-well, with all our children, as ye can wish. At Woodstock, the third day of September [1528], by the hand of your loving husband, THOMAS MORE, Knight. THE LIFE IN UTOPIA From 'Utopia' HERE are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well built, the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four miles' distance from one another, and the most remote |