Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/442

Rh a frivolous application was made to him by one Tubbe, an attorney, he returned a paper handed to him with the words ‘a tale of a’ prefixed to the lawyer's signature, ‘Tubbe.’ The common-law judges complained that their judgments were too often suspended by injunctions out of chancery; but Sir Thomas caused a list of his judgments to be drawn up, and, inviting the judges to dinner, discussed with them the grounds of his decision in each case. On their acknowledging his action to be reasonable, he recommended them in future to qualify the rigour of the law by equitable considerations.

After his retirement from the chancellorship one charge of taking a present of a gilt cup from a suitor was brought against him in the council. He had undoubtedly exchanged occasional gifts with suitors, in accordance with the evil custom of the day; but he had more often declined presents, and rebuked those who offered them, and no proof was adduced that his judgments were influenced by what was regarded as conventional marks of courtesy (, Lit. Works, ii. 128;, Bacon, vii. 266).

On the other hand, the treatment to which More, as chancellor, subjected persons charged with heresy caused severe attacks on his administration by protestants in his own day, and has been the subject of much subsequent controversy. In his ‘Utopia’ the most advanced principles of religious toleration held sway. Although all Utopians attended a public worship which was so simple as to be in conflict with no particular form of religious belief, every man was practically permitted to hold in private whatever religious opinions he chose. Only two restrictions were imposed: first, any one rejecting belief in God or in a future state was ineligible for civic office; and, in the second place, a citizen who attacked the religion of his neighbour was held to be guilty of sedition, and was punishable by banishment. But no theory of toleration influenced More's official conduct. He hated heretics, he wrote to Erasmus in the summer of 1533 (Epist. 466), but it was their vices, not their persons, he explained elsewhere, that excited his hatred (Apology, ch. xlix.) He boasted of his hostility to heretics in his epitaph, where he described himself as ‘hereticis molestus;’ and he allowed that when every effort had failed ‘to pull malicious folly out of a poisoned, proud, obstinate heart,’ the heretic's death was preferable to his continued sojourn on earth, with power to disseminate pernicious opinions, to the destruction of others (ib.; see English Works, pp. 351-2). The contemporary chronicler Hall describes him as ‘a great persecutor of such as detested the supremacy of the bishop of Rome’ (p. 817). Foxe represents him as ‘blinded in the zeal of popery’ to all humane considerations in the treatment of Lutherans (iv. 688), and Mr. Froude denounces him as ‘a merciless bigot.’ More undoubtedly viewed with equanimity the cruel incidents of persecution; and although Stokesley, bishop of London, shares with him much of the blame attaching to his proceedings, his personal responsibility for the barbarous usage of many protestants has not been satisfactorily disputed (cf., i. 550; , 264 sq.) When all allowances are made for the rancour of his protestant critics, it must be admitted that he caused suspected heretics to be carried to his house at Chelsea on slender pretences, to be imprisoned in the porter's lodge, and, when they failed to recant, to be racked in the Tower. In a few instances the complaints against him were, he tells us, investigated by the council after he went out of office, and although his judges were not too well disposed towards him, he claimed to have been acquitted of undue severity. He admitted, however, that he had caused the officers of the Marshalsea and other prisons to use with severity persons guilty of what he deemed to be sacrilege, and that he had kept heretics in safe custody at Chelsea. But in only two cases did he admit that he had recommended corporal punishment: he had caused a boy in his service, who taught heresy to a fellow-servant, to be whipped; and a madman, who brawled in churches and had been committed to a madhouse, was tied to a tree and beaten into orthodoxy by his orders (cf. English Works, p. 901). It is clear, however, that he under-estimated his activity. He is known to have, personally searched for heretical books the house of John Petit, a friend of his in the city, and committed him to prison, where he soon died, before any distinct charge had been formulated against him (, Narratives of the Reformation, Camd. Soc., pp. 26-7). Of John Tewkesbury, an inoffensive leatherseller of London, who was burnt on 20 Dec. 1531, More wrote, ‘There was never a wretch, I wene, better worthy’ (English Works, p. 348;, iv. 688. sq.; cf. Letters and Papers, vi. .p. 448); and the enormities practised in the case of James Bainham [q. v.] must be largely laid to More's charge.

For the year and a half following his resignation More lived in complete retirement, mainly engaged in religious controversy with Tindal and Frith. The king's relations with Anne Boleyn troubled him, and he kept away from court. To no purpose did Bishops