CHAPTER XXX. LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE, LORD CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND, FROM CHAP. XXX. Sept. 19. THE Great Seal having been surrendered, as we have seen, of appointing a suc cessor to Wolsey. Considerable difficulty arose about the appointment of a Difficulty new Chancellor. Some were for restoring the Great Seal to Ex-chancellor Archbishop Warham; and Erasmus states that he refused itt: but there is reason to think that a positive resolution had been before taken by Henry, and his present advisers, that it should not be again intrusted to any churchman. + There was an individual designated to the office by the public voice. To give credit to the new administration, there was a strong desire to appoint him, for he was celebrated as a scholar in every part of Europe; he had long practised with applause as a lawyer; being called to Court, he had gained the highest credit there for his abilities and his manners; and he had been employed in several embassies abroad, which he had conducted with dexterity and success. The difficulty was that he had only the rank of a simple knight; and there had been no instance hitherto of conferring the Great Seal on a layman who was not of noble birth, or had not previously gained reputation by high judicial office. In consequence, † Ep. p. 1847. Rot. Cl. 21 Hen. 8. m. 19. On the 22d October the Bishop of Bayonne writes to his court, “On ne sçait encore qui aura le sceau. Je croy bien que les prestres n'y toucheront plus, et que en ce parliament ils auront de terribles alarmes." CHAP. there was a struggle in favour of the selection of one of the chiefs of the Common Law Courts at Westminster. But the Sir THOMAS hope that the person first proposed was the best fitted to MORE аp pointed. His birth. manage the still pending negotiation for the divorce, came powerfully in aid of his claims on the score of genius, learning, and virtue; and, on the 25th of October, in a Council held at Greenwich, the King delivered the Great Seal to Sir THOMAS MORE, and constituted him Lord Chancellor of England.* " This extraordinary man, so interesting in his life and in his death, was born in the year 1480, near the end of the reign of Edward IV. He was the son of Sir John More, a Judge of the Court of King's Bench, who lived to see him Lord Chancellor. The father's descent is not known, but he was of an honourable though not distinguished family," and he was entitled to bear arms, a privilege which showed him to be of gentle blood, and of the class which in every other country except ours is considered noble. The old Judge was famous for a facetious turn, which he transmitted to his son. There is only one of his sayings handed down to us, and this, we must hope, was meant rather as a compliment to the good qualities of his own partner for life than as a satire on the fair sex. "He would compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives unto a bag full of snakes, having among them a single eel now, if a man should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel; but it is a hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake."† The future Chancellor sprung from that rank of life which is most favourable to mental cultivation, and which has produced the greatest number of eminent men in England; for, while we have instances of gifted individuals overcoming the disadvantages of high birth and affluence as well as of obscurity and poverty, our Cecils and Walpoles, our Bacons and Mores, have mostly had good education and breeding under a father's care,with habits of frugality, and the necessity for *Rot. Cl. 21 Hen. 8. m. 19. † Camden's Remains, p. 251. { industry, energy, and perseverance to gain distinction in the CHAP. world. XXX. tion. Cardinal Morton. The lawyers in those days, both judges and barristers, lived in the City, and young More first saw the light in Milk Street, Cheapside, then a fashionable quarter of the metropolis. He received the early rudiments of his education at St. His educaAnthony's school, in Threadneedle Street, a seminary which gained great and well-deserved repute, having produced Archbishop Heath, Archbishop Whitgift, and many other eminent men. In his fifteenth year, according to the custom of which we have seen various examples, he became a page in the Page to family of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Chancellor under Henry VII. Here, along with sons of the best families in England, he waited at table, and was instructed in all learning and exercises. His lively parts soon attracted the notice of his master, who, though turned of eighty, and filling such dignified offices, still encouraged amusement, and had the sagacity to discover the extraordinary merit, and to foretell the future celebrity of his page. "For the Cardinal often would make trial of his present wit, especially at Christmas merriments, when having plays for his recreation, this youth would suddenly step up among the players, and, never studying before upon the matter, make often a part of his own invention, which was so witty and so full of jests, that he alone made more sport than all the players besides; for which his towardliness the Cardinal much delighted in him, and would often say of him unto divers of the nobility who at sundry times dined with. him, 'This child here, waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous rare man.'” * The youthful page was not behind in penetration of character, and duly appreciated the qualities of the wary courtier who, the model for future Talleyrands, had continued to flourish amid all the vicissitudes of the state, and having united the Red and the White Roses, still enjoyed without abatement the confidence of the founder of the House of Tudor. The historian of Rich * More's Life, 19. Roper, 4 XXX. CHAP. ard III., drawing the character of Morton, says (no doubt from early recollections), "He was a man of great natural wit, very well learned, honourable in behaviour, lacking in no wise to win favour.” * A. D. 1496. University. But, by the kind advice of his patron, who had great care Goes to the of his bringing up, and was afraid that he might not profit in sound learning so much as might be desired amid the distractions of the Archiepiscopal palace, he was removed to the University of Oxford. He lodged at New Hall, but studied at Canterbury College, afterwards Christ Church. He must now have led a very different life from what he had enjoyed at Lambeth; for, "in his allowance, his father kept him very short, suffering him scarcely to have so much money in his own custody as would pay for the mending of his apparel; and, for his expenses, he would expect of him a particular account."† Though much pinched, and somewhat dissatisfied at the time, he often spoke of this system with much praise when he came to riper years; affirming, that he was thereby curbed from all vice, and withdrawn from gaming and naughty company.‡ Here More remained above two years, devoting himself to study with the utmost assiduity and enthusiasm. Erasmus, invited to England by Lord Mountjoy, who had been his pupil at Paris, was now residing at Oxford, and assisting in spreading a taste for Greek literature recently introduced there by Grocyn, Linacre, and Collet, who had studied it in Italy under Politian and Chalcondylas. More and Erasmus, resembling each other in their genius, in their taste, in their acute observation of character and manners, in their lively sense of the ridiculous, in their constant hilarity, and in their as In his Utopia he praises him more liberally, but still with a touch of satire, "of incomparable judgment, a memory more than credible, eloquent in speech, and, which is more to be wished in clergymen, of singular wisdom and virtue. † More's Life of Sir T. More, 18. His great grandson, who wrote in the reign of Charles I., more than two centuries ago, in describing how his ancestor when at College escaped “play and riot," adds, "wherein most young men in these our lamentable days plunge themselves too timely, to the utter overthrow as well of learning as all future virtue." XXX. devotion to classical lore, soon formed a close friendship CHAP. which lasted through life without interruption or abatement, and which was fostered during absence by an epistolary correspondence still extant, affording to us the most striking sketches of the history and customs of the times in which they lived. At the University, while More "profited exceedingly in His early rhetoric, logic, and philosophy," he likewise distinguished poems. himself very much by the composition of poems, both Latin and English. Some of these are to be found in collections of his works; and, though inferior to similar efforts in the succeeding age, they will be found interesting, not only as proofs of his extraordinary precocity, but as the exercises by which he became the earliest distinguished orator, and the earliest elegant prose-writer using the English language." * As a specimen I will give a few extracts from that which is considered the most successful of his poetical effusions in Latin. It proceeds on the idea, that become an old man, he sees again a lady whom he had loved when they were both very young, and who is still charming in his eyes. "Gratulatur quod eam reperit incolumem quam olim ferme puer amaverat. Redderis atque oculis Elizabetha meis: Quæ distinuit mihi te fortuna tot annos, Pene puer vidi, pene reviso senex. Tempora quæ teneræ nunquam non invidæ formæ Te rapuere tibi, non rapuere mihi." He afterwards refers in touching language to their first interview, and gives a description of her charms, after the fashion of the Song of Solomon: "Jam subit illa dies quæ ludentem obtulit olim Inter virgineos te mihi prima choros. Lactea cum flavi decuerunt colla capilli, Their flirtation was very marked: "Cum sociis risum exhibuit nostrisque tuisque Now comes the constancy of his attachment: "Ergo ita disjunctos diversaque fata secutos Tu prædata meos olim sine crimine sensus, Nunc quoque non ullo crimine chara manes." Let it be remembered that these verses were written in the middle of the reign of Henry VII., when the war of the Roses had almost extinguished in England the remembrance of Chaucer, and no other poetical genius had yet arisen. |