St. Thomas of Chelsea

By A. L. ROWSE

TEE psychology of the martyr is surely a very curious and morbid thing. Two main elements seem to be essential to it in conjunction ; -and in these days of psychological analysis they are not difficult to identify. There is first a deep-rooted spiritual (or intellectual) pride amounting to an invincible obstinacy, and second a positive desire for pain ; the latter is in the end satisfied by the consequences brought on by the former. Both elements were present in a very marked degree in Sir Thomas More. It is not to be wondered at that so pro- minent and controversial a figure as he, taking so leading a stand on all the hazardous issues of the Reformation at its most critical phase, should have ended in martyrdom ; the wonder is that his canonization should have been so long postponed. For surely no Englishman, with the possible exception of St. Thomas a Becket, has more eminently pos- sessed the qualities necessary for a saint.

From very early the ascetic impulse was developed in him : when a young man in London studying law, he lived for many months according to the Carthusian rule, and, by dint of a hair- shirt and sleeping on planks with a log for a pillow, he managed to keep awake for nineteen or twenty hours out of the twenty- four. We hear more of the hair-shirt and his flagellation from Roper : " He used also sometimes to punish his body with whips, the cords knotted, which was known only to my wife, whom for her secrecy above all other he specially trusted, causing her, as need required, to wash the same shirt of hair." An unpleasant duty one would have thought ; however, there were no bounds to the faithful Margaret's devotion. Later, when shut up in the Tower in the worst of his troubles, he assured her that " if it had not been for my wife and you that be my children, I would not have failed long ere this to have closed myself in so straight a room, and straighter too." When discomforts were heaped upon him, his books and papers taken away and even lighting denied him, he said : " Me thinketh God maketh me a wanton, and setteth me on His lap and dandleth me." Bishop Butler would have regarded it as all very horrid and perverted—which perhaps it was. How- ever, we understand these things rather better ; we are not so surprised by them ; we know that there are these tendencies which recur in human nature.

As for intellectual pride, it was an unmistakable element in him—a sort of spiritual vanity, all the more interesting because on the surface his was a nature so agreeable, humorous, amenable. Henry can never have expected such an unyielding obstinacy from the charming companion, the whimsical, diplomatic savant. Professor Chambers owns that up to the inclusion of More's name in the Act of Attainder in February, 1584, Henry had treated him well and with unexpected -patience. More told Chapnys, the Imperial Ambassador, that the matter of the divorce concerned him no less than his life, not only for the sake of the Emperor and his aunt, Katherine, but for the sake of Henry and the kingdom of England. But who was he to judge the well-being of Henry and his Kingdom better than the king and his own Government, who were in a far better position to see all the issues involved, from the very centre ? Why could he not have submitted his judgement as everybody else had—all the nobility, the Commons, and the clergy too—in fact everybody except Bishop Fisher and a pack of friars? That was the rock on which More foundered— a deep-seated spiritual vanity. Clearly nobody wanted to take his life ; Henry genuinely regretted the political necessity ; Cranmer tried to save him by a dialectical subterfuge in taking the Oath of Supremacy as creditable to his intelligence as it was to his humanity. Only More refused to be saved. This was the issue that More had to face with his daughter

Thomas More. By R. W. Chambers. (Cape. 12s. . 6d.) Margaret when she tried to get him to yield. It is as if he were afraid of yielding his own self-will : " Too late, Margaret ? I beseech our Lord, that if ever I make such a change, it may be too late indeed. For well I wot the change cannot be good for my soul." He was a good deal too certain what was good

for his soul ; it sounds more like self-will when he says, " There is no man living of whom, while he liveth, I may

make myself sure." He fell back, of course, as they all do, upon his certainty with regard to the next world—a weak position where the facts do not warrant such certainty. At his trial, he reminded the Commissioners that St. Paul had been present and consenting unto the death of St. Stephen,

" and yet be they now both twain holy saints in Heaven, and shall continue there friends for ever, so I verily trust that

though your Lordships have now here in earth been judges to my condemnation, we may yet hereafter in Heaven merrily all meet together, to our everlasting salvation." It is beautiful, it is touching; but it is not common sense to stake so much upon a hypothesis.

And so Dame Alice thought too. In all that brilliant circle of so much wit and charm that centred upon the house at Chelsea, Dame Alice has always come off rather badly at the hands of historians; it is time that someone saw her point of view, with some sympathy for her good sense. After all, was she not right about her brilliant, witty, incompre- hensible husband ?

" ' What the good year, Master More,' quoth she, ' I marvel that you, that have been always hitherto taken for so wise a man, will now so play the fool to lie here in this close filthy prison, and be content thus to be hut up amongst mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favour and goodwill both 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 a God's name you Mean here still thus fondly to tarry.' "

It was after all much the same judgement that Edward Hall, the chronicler, made, and he was representative of ordinary sensible opinion : " I cannot tell whether I should call him a foolish wise man, or a wise foolish man." ..But it was all of no avail : More went on to his magnificent and moving end. Nor can we repine at it ; for by it a splendid story was added to the tradition of the English people, and an addition made to the slender stock of English saints in Heaven.

Professor Chambers has written what, it may be supposed, will long remain the standard work of ordinary compass on

More. It is a pleasant, sensible and very human book, scholarly and satisfying. Although it is clear that Professor Chambers has a definite point of view, and loathes Henry VIII and all his works, his sympathies are wide and his prejudices

usually under control. There are only two large lapses from this, both dealing with the general historical effects of the

Reformation : one is in Chapter II, the section on ". Henry's

England " ; the other is the whole of the final chapter on " More's Place in History," which had been better omitted.

For Professor Chambers' attitude to the Reformation is a purely sentimental, religious one, and devoid of real listorical judgement. Henry's reign, for example, is divided into two halves ; the first tolerable because. Catholic, the second one of complete frustration, ruin and national degradation. This is nonsense. And when told that the reign -was crowned with

dynastic failure, we remember that Henry and Anne gave us Elizabeth, and through her the Elizabethan Age. What more glorious, more triumphant a success could there be ?