Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/848

Rh 818 MORE a present of 5000. This he peremptorily refused, either for himself or for his family, declaring that he &quot; had rather see it all cast into the Thames.&quot; Yet the whole of his income after resigning office did not exceed 100 a year. Hitherto he had maintained a large establishment, not on the princely scale of Wolsey, but in the patriarchal fashion of having all his sons-in-law, with their families, under his roof. When he resigned the chancellorship he called his children and grandchildren together to explain his reduced circumstances. &quot; If we wish to live together,&quot; said he, &quot; you must be content to be contributories together. But my counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first : we will not, therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will begin with Lincoln s Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of great account and good years do live full well ; which if we find our selves the first year not able to maintain, then we will in the next year come down to Oxford fare, where many great learned and ancient fathers and doctors are continu ally conversant ; which if our purses stretch not to main tain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their charity.&quot; More was now able, as he writes to Erasmus, to return to the life which had always been his ambition, when, free from business and public affairs, he might give himself up to his favourite studies and to the practices of his devotion. Of the Chelsea interior Erasmus has drawn a charming picture, which may vie with Holbein s celebrated canvas, The Household of Sir Thomas More. &quot; More has built, near London, upon the Thames, a modest yet commodious mansion. There he lives surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son, and his son s wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affectionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposition that whatsoever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done. In More s house, you would say that Plato s Academy was revived again, only, whereas in the Academy the discussions turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief care of piety. There is never any seen idle ; the head of the house governs it not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place, performing his duty with alacrity ; nor is sober mirth wanting. &quot; 1 But More was too conspicuous to be long allowed to enjoy the happiness of a retired life. A special invitation was sent him by the king to attend the coronation of Anne Boleyn, accompanied with the gracious offer of 20 to buy a new suit for the occasion ! More refused to attend, and from that moment was marked out for vengeance. A first attempt made to bring him within the meshes of the law only recoiled with shame upon the head of the accusers. They were maladroit enough to attack him on his least vulnerable side, summoning him before the privy council to answer to a charge of receiving bribes in the administration of justice. One Parnell was put forward to complain of a decree pronounced against him in favour of the contending party Vaughan, who he said had pre sented a gilt cup to the chancellor. More stated that he had received a cup as a New Year s gift. Lord Wiltshire, the (jiieen s father, exultingly cried out, &quot;So, did I not tell you, my lords, that you would find this matter true 1 ?&quot; &quot;But, my lords,&quot; continued More, &quot;having pledged Mrs. Yaughan in the wine wherewith my butler had filled the cup, I restored the cup to her.&quot; Two other charges of a like nature were refuted as triumphantly. But the very futility of the accusations must have betrayed to More the bitter determination of his enemies to compass his destruction. Foiled in their first ill -directed attempt, they were compelled to have recourse to that tremendous engine of regal tyranny, the law of treason. A bill was. brought into parliament to attaint Elizabeth Barton, a nun, who was said to have held treasonable language. Barton turned out afterwards to have been an impostor, but she had duped More, who now lived in a superstitious atmosphere of convents and churches, and he had given his countenance to her supernatural pretensions. His name, with that of Fisher, was accordingly included in the bill as an accomplice. When he came before the council, it was at once apparent that the charge of treason could not be sustained, and the efforts of the court agents were directed to draw from More some approbation of the king s marriage. But to this neither cajolery nor threats- could move him. The preposterous charge was urged that it was by his advice that the king had committed himself in his book against Luther to an assertion of the pope s authority, whereby the title of &quot; Defender of the Faith &quot; had been gained, but in reality a sword put into the pope s hand to fight against him. More was able to reply that he had warned the king that this very thing might happen, that upon some breach of amity between the crown of England and the pope Henry s too pronounced assertion of the papal authority might be turned against himself, &quot; therefore it were best that place be amended, and his authority more slenderly touched.&quot; &quot;Nay,&quot; replied the king, &quot; that it shall not ; we are so much bound to the see of Home that we cannot do too much honour unto it. Whatsoever impediment be to the contrary, we will set forth that authority to the utmost ; for we have received from that see our crown imperial,&quot; &quot;which,&quot; added More, &quot;till his grace with his own mouth so told me, I never heard before.&quot; Anything more defiant and exasperating than this could not well have been said. But it could not be laid hold of, and the charge of treason being too ridiculous to be proceeded with, More s name was struck out of the bill. When his daughter brought him the news, More calmly said, &quot; I faith, Meg, quod differtur, non aufertur : that which is postponed is not dropt.&quot; At another time, having asked his daughter how the court went, and how Queen Anne did, he received for answer, &quot; Never better; there is nothing else but dancing and sport ing.&quot; To this More answered, &quot; Alas, Meg, it pitieth me to remember unto what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come ; these dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs ; but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.&quot; 2 So the speech runs in the Life by More s great-grandson ; but in the only trustworthy record, the life by his son-in-law Roper, More s reply ends with the words, &quot; she will shortly come.&quot; In this, as in other instances, the later statement has the appear ance of having been an imaginative extension of the earlier. In 1534 the Act of Supremacy was passed, and the oath ordered to be tendered. More was sent for to Lambeth, where he offered to swear to the succession, but steadily refused the oath of supremacy as against his con science. Thereupon he was given in charge to the abbot of Westminster, and, persisting in his refusal, was four days afterwards committed to the Tower. After a close and even cruel confinement (he was denied the use of pen and ink) of more than a year, he was brought to trial before a special commission and a packed jury. Even so More would have been acquitted, when at the last moment Rich, the solicitor-general, quitted the bar and presented himself as a witness for the crown. Being sworn, he detailed a confidential conversation he had had with the. 2 Cresacre More, p. 231.