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The Last Letters of Thomas More
Written from the Tower of London, these letters of Thomas Moore still speak powerfully today. The story of Thomas Moore, recently told in Peter Ackroyd's bestselling biography, is well known. In the spring of 1534, Thomas Moore was taken to the Tower of London, and after fourteen months in prison, the brilliant author of Utopia, friend of Erasmus and the humanities, and former Lord Chancellor of England was beheaded on Tower Hill. Yet Moore wrote some of his best works as a prisoner, including a set of historically and religiously important letters. The Last Letters of Thomas Moore is a superb new edition of Moore's prison correspondence, introduced and fully annotated for contemporary readers by Alvaro de Silva. Based on the critical edition of Moore's correspondence, this volume begins with letters penned by Moore to Cromwell and Henry VIII in February 1534 and ends with Moore's last words to his daughter, Margaret Roper, on the eve of his execution. Moore writes on a host of topics-prayer and penance, the right use of riches and power, the joys of heaven, psychological depression and suicidal temptations, the moral compromises of those who imprisoned him, and much more. This volume not only records the clarity of Moore's conscience and his readiness to die for the integrity of his religious faith, but it also throws light on the literary works that Moore wrote during the same period and on the religious and political conditions of Tudor England.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
About the author
Thomas More
442 books1,189 followersSir Thomas More (1477-1535), venerated by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He was a councillor to Henry VIII and also served as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to 16 May 1532.
More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. He also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary ideal island nation. More opposed the King's separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and beheaded.
Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the "heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians." Since 1980, the Church of England has remembered More liturgically as a Reformation martyr. The Soviet Union honoured him for the Communistic attitude toward property rights expressed in Utopia.
More opposed the Protestant Reformation, in particular the theology of Martin Luther and William Tyndale. He also wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about the political system of an imaginary ideal island nation. More opposed the King's separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason and beheaded.
Pope Pius XI canonised More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the "heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians." Since 1980, the Church of England has remembered More liturgically as a Reformation martyr. The Soviet Union honoured him for the Communistic attitude toward property rights expressed in Utopia.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 18, 2014
Main take away I got from the letters was how hard he was seeking to avoid martyrdom while still being honest with himself and others. Contrasts sharply with people today and in the past (e.g. some 2nd century Christians) who are/were intentionally provocative in their zeal to attain martyrdom. Some inspirational moments as he leans on his religious beliefs to keep himself happy during his time in prison before his execution.
February 2, 2026
The Last Letters of Thomas More, ed. Alvaro de Silva
“And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”
Thomas More was born in 1478. When he was fourteen years old, Columbus discovered a “new world.” When he was thirty-nine, Martin Luther overturned the old world. When he was fifty-one, More was made Chancellor of England by Henry VIII, a position second only to the King. When he was fifty-seven, Thomas More was beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head was stuck on a pike on London Bridge.
Thomas More was executed for what he would not do and what he would not say. What he would not do was swear an oath that King Henry VIII was the lawful head of the Christian Church in England. What More would not say was his reasons for refusing to sign the oath.
More’s fall from grace was meteoric. He resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1532. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534. He was stripped of his property by a Bill of Attainder in 1534. He spent the last year of his life in a cell in the Tower. While he was in the Tower, he was visited by his daughter Margaret, who smuggled out his letters and writings.
This text compiles More’s “last letters,” written during the period of More’s disgrace, approximately 1533 to 1535. The letters were hidden by Margaret until they could be published under the Catholic restoration of Queen Mary in 1553. There are letters from More to Margaret, Cromwell, King Henry VIII, and Antonio Bonvisi, a long-time friend of More. In addition, letters from Margaret to More and Alice More to Cromwell and King Henry VIII are included.
De Silva doesn’t modernize the letters’ language or grammar. The letters keep their untranslated Early Modern English lexicon and phraseology. Hence, we have “eftsoon” in place of “again.” De Silva helps with footnotes that translate the strange, and sometimes very familiar, words into modern idiom. Initially, a hurdle; after a while, I found myself thinking, “peradventure I will eftsoon return to his merry book.” The convoluted, lengthy sentence structure is equally challenging, but careful attention to detail is both necessary and rewarding.[1]
If you are not familiar with the politics and culture of early 16th-century England, you will be facing another hurdle. For example, who was the Holy Nun of Kent? I didn’t know, but she was directly important to the More frame-up. De Silva helps out here with extensive notes and an odd footnote system: he puts a phrase in a box in the main text, which signals that the reader should go back to the notes to check out the discussion for the page of the book. De Silva’s notes are very good and can untangle mysterious passages that the correspondents understood because they lived through the experiences they were discussing.
Correspondence can be a mixed bag for non-specialists. By their nature, letters are the quotidian product of historical figures. They are not the polished fruit of thought; they are shopping lists, requests to bring home the milk, birthday greetings, and the like kind of everyday discourse. Imagine someone reading your emails expecting some gem of wisdom to emerge.
On the other hand, De Silva quotes St. John Henry Newman’s opinion on the importance of letters for historical understanding:
“A man’s life lies in his letters,” Newman wrote. “Biographers varnish; they assign motives; they conjecture feelings; they interpret Lord Burleigh’s nods; they palliate or defend.”52 Letters seldom lie. The extant correspondence of Thomas More, no matter how broken and full of gaps, is still the best way to know him. The letters are straightforward, with a pure, unadorned style. “The wording of a letter should resemble a conversation between friends,” Erasmus of Rotterdam had written in his manual On How to Write Letters, and his friend followed the advice closely.53 In these final letters we hear More converse with his daughter, a few of his friends, and, beyond them, the future audience they would one day have.
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 328-332). Kindle Edition.
I’ve read St. Anselm’s collected letters. I did not find much philosophical insight, which was disappointing. I did find a man who was concerned about other people, who counseled nuns to return to their vocation rather than offend God, and who expressed uncertainty to his monastic subordinates about abandoning them to become Archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, as Newman observes, I found the man in those letters.
The “last letters” likewise reveal the man. The most attractive thing they reveal about More is the mutual love between More and his daughter Margaret. Margaret clearly didn’t understand her father. She couldn’t understand why he was insisting on throwing away everything in his life, including being with his family, for what she considered to be a scruple about politics. “Where wonnes thou?” (“What’s wrong with you?”) she might have said.
In fact, Margaret said that More risked losing every remaining friend and supporter he had, for reasons no one understood. After all, everyone else – the nobles, clerics, lawyers, and even More’s feeble-minded jester, Master Harry Patterson. In one letter Margaret explains that she told her father (Letter 12 (Margaret Roper to Alice Alington, August 1534):
For sith the sample of so many wise men cannot in this matter move you, I see not what to say more, but if I should look to persuade you with the reason that ‘Master Harry Patenson’ made. For he met one day one of our men, and when he had asked where you were, and heard that you were in the Tower still, he waxed even angry with you and said, `Why? What aileth63 him that he will not swear? Wherefore should he stick to swear? I have sworn the oath myself.’ And so I can in good faith go now no further neither, after so many wise men whom ye take for no sample, but if I should say like Master Harry, Why should you refuse to swear, Father? `for I have sworn myself’.”
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 1067-1071). Kindle Edition.
What wonnes thou?
A number of letters are of little or marginal interest. The masterpiece of the text is Letter 12, August 1534, Margaret Roper’s letter to Alice Alington. Alice was More’s adopted daughter, the daughter of his second wife. The obvious tenderness among Margaret, Alice, and More is quite touching. The letter itself may actually be a ruse; putatively written by Margaret to Alice to recount Margaret’s visit with their father, it may actually have been written by More to provide some lasting response to some of the charges laid against him, but in such a way that it might appear innocuous. Travis Curtright, the author of The Controversial Thomas More, argues that the rhetorical style of the letter is that of Thomas More.
Letter 12 follows Alice Alington’s letter to Margaret Roper (Letter 11, August 17, 2034). Alice tells Margaret about her encounter with Thomas Audley, the man who succeeded Thomas More as Lord Chancellor.[2] After Alice importuned Audley to help her father, Audley told her two fables. One fable featured wise men who hid in a cave as a rainstorm turned everyone else into fools. When the wisemen emerged from the cave, they found that the fools refused to follow their counsel. The second fable involved a lion, a donkey, and a wolf going to confession. The lion confesses to eating everything and receives absolution. The donkey confesses to eating a single straw out of hunger, but does not receive absolution. Instead, the matter is referred to the bishop. The wolf confesses that because he was told to eat no more than what would cost a sixpence per meal, when confronted with a cow and her calf, he estimated that the cow was worth a groat[3], the calf half as much, and, so, at the two.
These fables are obscure, but in Letter 12, More explains them based on his familiarity with the idiom, rhetoric, and English politics. The story about the wise men was told by Cardinal Wolsey when he was Lord Chancellor to suggest that England might find itself the odd man out if France and the Holy Roman Empire reconciled. The barb against More is that More might be seeking to position himself as a “ruler” over the “fools” when the rainstorm of – presumably – the Reformation ended. After playing on his name being Greek for “fool,” More points out that he was a ruler, and gave it all up.
As for the second fable, More again indicates that the references are obscure as to who is supposed to be the lion or the fox. Presumably, More is the donkey who scrupulously tortures itself over taking a single straw; More allows that people can differ about whether swearing an oath concerning the supremacy of the King over the church is a trifle, but not everyone agrees, including Bishop John Fisher.
This leads More to tell a story about a plot by “Northern men” to railroad a criminal conviction at the Bartholomew fair. The Northern men had packed the jury except for one quiet man named “Company,” who they took to be a fool. After the Northern men had deliberated in favor of conviction and were ready to announce the verdict, Company spoke up and asked that the other jurors take the time to explain the basis of their verdict to him. Unable to do so, the corrupt jurymen proceeded to leverage their unity and commitment against Company in order to make him knuckle to their will.
Company plays the rural yokel card[4] by asking them to pardon his lack of sophistication and explain the reasons for their decision. Through the voice of Margaret, More explains:
Then when the poor fellow saw that they made such haste, and his mind nothing gave him that way that theirs did (if their minds gave them that way that they said), he prayed them to tarry and talk upon the matter and tell him such reason therein, that he might think as they did: and when he so should do, he would be glad to say with them, or else he said they must pardon him. For sith he had a soul of his own to keep as they had, he must say as he thought for his, as they must for theirs. When they heard this, they were half angry with him. “What good fellow,” ‘quoth one of the northern men’, `where wonnes thou?51 Be not we eleven here and you but one la alone,52 and all we agreed? Whereto shouldst you stick? What is thy name good fellow?” “Masters,” quoth he, “my name is called Company.” “Company,” pany,” quoth they, “now by thy truth good fellow, play then the good companion, come thereon further with us and pass even for good company.” “Would God, good masters,” quoth the man again, “that there lay no more weight thereby. But now when we shall hence and come before God, and that he shall send you to heaven for doing according to your conscience, and me to the devil for doing against mine, in passing at your request here for good company now, by God, Master Dickonson (that was one of the northern ern men’s name) if I shall then say to all you again: Masters, I went once for good company with you, which is the cause that I go now to hell, play you the good fellows now again with me, as I went then for good company with you, so some of you go now for good company with me. Would ye go, Master ter Dickonson? Nay nay by our Lady, nor never one of you all. And therefore must ye pardon me from passing as you pass, but if I thought in the matter as you do, I dare not in such a matter pass for good company. For the passage sage of my poor soul passeth all good company.”
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 969-981). Kindle Edition.
If this sounds familiar, then you might be acquainted with one of the more dramatic passages of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” where Bolt lifts this passage out and transforms it into this scene:
Norfolk (hardly responds to the insult; his face is gloomy and disgusted) Oh, confound all this.… (With real dignity.) I’m not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names.… You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?
More (moved) And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?
Cranmer So those of us whose names are there are damned. Sir Thomas?
More I don’t know, Your Grace. I have no window to look into another man’s conscience. I condemn no one.
Cranmer Then the matter is capable of question?
More Certainly. Cranmer But that you owe obedience to your King is not capable of question. So weigh a doubt against a certainty and sign.
More Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign.
Bolt, Robert. A Man For All Seasons (Modern Classics) (pp. 82-83). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Modern jurors are told that they must follow their conscience in something as simple as convicting a man of a crime. For example, the Ninth Circuit Model Jury Instructions tell the jury:
It is important that you attempt to reach a unanimous verdict but, of course, only if each of you can do so after having made your own conscientious decision. Do not change an honest belief about the weight and effect of the evidence simply to reach a verdict.
More takes this everyday legal principle and applies it to life outside the courtroom.
And, why not? Conscience is a matter of integrity, and a person with integrity does not have one set of standards for work and another for other areas of life.
More also relativizes the “everyone you know is doing it, so it must be right” argument. We might call this the “Pauline Kael effect”[5] since it relies on the snobbery of an insulated group that defines its parochial intuitions as universal. More points out that English opinion is a sliver of Catholic opinion, which includes not only the world outside of England, but the historic church, including those who were now in Heaven.[6]
Because there is a world outside England, the question of whether the pope can be deposed as the head of a national church remains open. As an open question, there is no universal norm – no truth settled by the working of the Holy Spirit[7] – that can be appealed to as binding the opinion of any person, thereby requiring them to change their false opinion in conformity with the truth.
More speaks of the “common faith of Christendom,” and he was one of the last people who could do so.[8] The importance of this “common faith is tied up with the idea that Christendom was “one body.” In a prior letter (Letter 5 to Thomas Cromwell, March 5, 1534), More explained:
‘And therefore sith all Christendom is one corps, I cannot perceive how any member thereof may without the common assent of the body depart part from the common head. And then, if we may not lawfully leave it by ourself, I cannot perceive (but if the thing were a treating29 in a general council) what the question could avail whether the primacy were instituted by God or ordained by the Church. As for the general councils’ assembled lawfully, I never could perceive but that in the declaration of the truths it is to be believed and to be standen to;30 the authority thereof ought to be taken for undoubtable, or else were there in nothing no certainty, but through Christendom upon every man’s affectionate reason, all things might be brought from day to day to continual ruffle and confusion, fusion, from which by the general councils, the spirit of God assisting, every such council well assembled keepeth and ever shall keep the corps of his Catholic Church.
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 659-665). Kindle Edition.
This point distinguishes More’s reliance on conscience from that of the Lutherans he prosecuted. Those Lutherans were not appealing to an “open question” within the Christian tradition. They did not appeal to a general counsel, the writings of the fathers in heaven, or to an established tradition. Their appeals were to the contrary because they were rejecting received tradition. Lutherans nominally appealed to the Bible, but in reality, they appealed to their private interpretation of it. There had never been a tradition or consensus that every man had the right to interpret the Bible according to their individual conscience. The use of conscience in this way was an oxymoron; for More, it would have been like a serial killer appealing to his conscience as justification for killing.
At the end, Thomas Cromwell, aka “Master Secretary,” pulls out all stops and throws in More’s face the fact that he had examined heretics about whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the church, and had required “precise answers.” (Letter 22 to Margaret Roper, June 3, 1535.) More responded:
https://petersbradley.substack.com/p/...
“And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?”
Thomas More was born in 1478. When he was fourteen years old, Columbus discovered a “new world.” When he was thirty-nine, Martin Luther overturned the old world. When he was fifty-one, More was made Chancellor of England by Henry VIII, a position second only to the King. When he was fifty-seven, Thomas More was beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head was stuck on a pike on London Bridge.
Thomas More was executed for what he would not do and what he would not say. What he would not do was swear an oath that King Henry VIII was the lawful head of the Christian Church in England. What More would not say was his reasons for refusing to sign the oath.
More’s fall from grace was meteoric. He resigned as Lord Chancellor in 1532. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534. He was stripped of his property by a Bill of Attainder in 1534. He spent the last year of his life in a cell in the Tower. While he was in the Tower, he was visited by his daughter Margaret, who smuggled out his letters and writings.
This text compiles More’s “last letters,” written during the period of More’s disgrace, approximately 1533 to 1535. The letters were hidden by Margaret until they could be published under the Catholic restoration of Queen Mary in 1553. There are letters from More to Margaret, Cromwell, King Henry VIII, and Antonio Bonvisi, a long-time friend of More. In addition, letters from Margaret to More and Alice More to Cromwell and King Henry VIII are included.
De Silva doesn’t modernize the letters’ language or grammar. The letters keep their untranslated Early Modern English lexicon and phraseology. Hence, we have “eftsoon” in place of “again.” De Silva helps with footnotes that translate the strange, and sometimes very familiar, words into modern idiom. Initially, a hurdle; after a while, I found myself thinking, “peradventure I will eftsoon return to his merry book.” The convoluted, lengthy sentence structure is equally challenging, but careful attention to detail is both necessary and rewarding.[1]
If you are not familiar with the politics and culture of early 16th-century England, you will be facing another hurdle. For example, who was the Holy Nun of Kent? I didn’t know, but she was directly important to the More frame-up. De Silva helps out here with extensive notes and an odd footnote system: he puts a phrase in a box in the main text, which signals that the reader should go back to the notes to check out the discussion for the page of the book. De Silva’s notes are very good and can untangle mysterious passages that the correspondents understood because they lived through the experiences they were discussing.
Correspondence can be a mixed bag for non-specialists. By their nature, letters are the quotidian product of historical figures. They are not the polished fruit of thought; they are shopping lists, requests to bring home the milk, birthday greetings, and the like kind of everyday discourse. Imagine someone reading your emails expecting some gem of wisdom to emerge.
On the other hand, De Silva quotes St. John Henry Newman’s opinion on the importance of letters for historical understanding:
“A man’s life lies in his letters,” Newman wrote. “Biographers varnish; they assign motives; they conjecture feelings; they interpret Lord Burleigh’s nods; they palliate or defend.”52 Letters seldom lie. The extant correspondence of Thomas More, no matter how broken and full of gaps, is still the best way to know him. The letters are straightforward, with a pure, unadorned style. “The wording of a letter should resemble a conversation between friends,” Erasmus of Rotterdam had written in his manual On How to Write Letters, and his friend followed the advice closely.53 In these final letters we hear More converse with his daughter, a few of his friends, and, beyond them, the future audience they would one day have.
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 328-332). Kindle Edition.
I’ve read St. Anselm’s collected letters. I did not find much philosophical insight, which was disappointing. I did find a man who was concerned about other people, who counseled nuns to return to their vocation rather than offend God, and who expressed uncertainty to his monastic subordinates about abandoning them to become Archbishop of Canterbury. In other words, as Newman observes, I found the man in those letters.
The “last letters” likewise reveal the man. The most attractive thing they reveal about More is the mutual love between More and his daughter Margaret. Margaret clearly didn’t understand her father. She couldn’t understand why he was insisting on throwing away everything in his life, including being with his family, for what she considered to be a scruple about politics. “Where wonnes thou?” (“What’s wrong with you?”) she might have said.
In fact, Margaret said that More risked losing every remaining friend and supporter he had, for reasons no one understood. After all, everyone else – the nobles, clerics, lawyers, and even More’s feeble-minded jester, Master Harry Patterson. In one letter Margaret explains that she told her father (Letter 12 (Margaret Roper to Alice Alington, August 1534):
For sith the sample of so many wise men cannot in this matter move you, I see not what to say more, but if I should look to persuade you with the reason that ‘Master Harry Patenson’ made. For he met one day one of our men, and when he had asked where you were, and heard that you were in the Tower still, he waxed even angry with you and said, `Why? What aileth63 him that he will not swear? Wherefore should he stick to swear? I have sworn the oath myself.’ And so I can in good faith go now no further neither, after so many wise men whom ye take for no sample, but if I should say like Master Harry, Why should you refuse to swear, Father? `for I have sworn myself’.”
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 1067-1071). Kindle Edition.
What wonnes thou?
A number of letters are of little or marginal interest. The masterpiece of the text is Letter 12, August 1534, Margaret Roper’s letter to Alice Alington. Alice was More’s adopted daughter, the daughter of his second wife. The obvious tenderness among Margaret, Alice, and More is quite touching. The letter itself may actually be a ruse; putatively written by Margaret to Alice to recount Margaret’s visit with their father, it may actually have been written by More to provide some lasting response to some of the charges laid against him, but in such a way that it might appear innocuous. Travis Curtright, the author of The Controversial Thomas More, argues that the rhetorical style of the letter is that of Thomas More.
Letter 12 follows Alice Alington’s letter to Margaret Roper (Letter 11, August 17, 2034). Alice tells Margaret about her encounter with Thomas Audley, the man who succeeded Thomas More as Lord Chancellor.[2] After Alice importuned Audley to help her father, Audley told her two fables. One fable featured wise men who hid in a cave as a rainstorm turned everyone else into fools. When the wisemen emerged from the cave, they found that the fools refused to follow their counsel. The second fable involved a lion, a donkey, and a wolf going to confession. The lion confesses to eating everything and receives absolution. The donkey confesses to eating a single straw out of hunger, but does not receive absolution. Instead, the matter is referred to the bishop. The wolf confesses that because he was told to eat no more than what would cost a sixpence per meal, when confronted with a cow and her calf, he estimated that the cow was worth a groat[3], the calf half as much, and, so, at the two.
These fables are obscure, but in Letter 12, More explains them based on his familiarity with the idiom, rhetoric, and English politics. The story about the wise men was told by Cardinal Wolsey when he was Lord Chancellor to suggest that England might find itself the odd man out if France and the Holy Roman Empire reconciled. The barb against More is that More might be seeking to position himself as a “ruler” over the “fools” when the rainstorm of – presumably – the Reformation ended. After playing on his name being Greek for “fool,” More points out that he was a ruler, and gave it all up.
As for the second fable, More again indicates that the references are obscure as to who is supposed to be the lion or the fox. Presumably, More is the donkey who scrupulously tortures itself over taking a single straw; More allows that people can differ about whether swearing an oath concerning the supremacy of the King over the church is a trifle, but not everyone agrees, including Bishop John Fisher.
This leads More to tell a story about a plot by “Northern men” to railroad a criminal conviction at the Bartholomew fair. The Northern men had packed the jury except for one quiet man named “Company,” who they took to be a fool. After the Northern men had deliberated in favor of conviction and were ready to announce the verdict, Company spoke up and asked that the other jurors take the time to explain the basis of their verdict to him. Unable to do so, the corrupt jurymen proceeded to leverage their unity and commitment against Company in order to make him knuckle to their will.
Company plays the rural yokel card[4] by asking them to pardon his lack of sophistication and explain the reasons for their decision. Through the voice of Margaret, More explains:
Then when the poor fellow saw that they made such haste, and his mind nothing gave him that way that theirs did (if their minds gave them that way that they said), he prayed them to tarry and talk upon the matter and tell him such reason therein, that he might think as they did: and when he so should do, he would be glad to say with them, or else he said they must pardon him. For sith he had a soul of his own to keep as they had, he must say as he thought for his, as they must for theirs. When they heard this, they were half angry with him. “What good fellow,” ‘quoth one of the northern men’, `where wonnes thou?51 Be not we eleven here and you but one la alone,52 and all we agreed? Whereto shouldst you stick? What is thy name good fellow?” “Masters,” quoth he, “my name is called Company.” “Company,” pany,” quoth they, “now by thy truth good fellow, play then the good companion, come thereon further with us and pass even for good company.” “Would God, good masters,” quoth the man again, “that there lay no more weight thereby. But now when we shall hence and come before God, and that he shall send you to heaven for doing according to your conscience, and me to the devil for doing against mine, in passing at your request here for good company now, by God, Master Dickonson (that was one of the northern ern men’s name) if I shall then say to all you again: Masters, I went once for good company with you, which is the cause that I go now to hell, play you the good fellows now again with me, as I went then for good company with you, so some of you go now for good company with me. Would ye go, Master ter Dickonson? Nay nay by our Lady, nor never one of you all. And therefore must ye pardon me from passing as you pass, but if I thought in the matter as you do, I dare not in such a matter pass for good company. For the passage sage of my poor soul passeth all good company.”
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 969-981). Kindle Edition.
If this sounds familiar, then you might be acquainted with one of the more dramatic passages of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” where Bolt lifts this passage out and transforms it into this scene:
Norfolk (hardly responds to the insult; his face is gloomy and disgusted) Oh, confound all this.… (With real dignity.) I’m not a scholar, as Master Cromwell never tires of pointing out, and frankly I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas, look at those names.… You know those men! Can’t you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?
More (moved) And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?
Cranmer So those of us whose names are there are damned. Sir Thomas?
More I don’t know, Your Grace. I have no window to look into another man’s conscience. I condemn no one.
Cranmer Then the matter is capable of question?
More Certainly. Cranmer But that you owe obedience to your King is not capable of question. So weigh a doubt against a certainty and sign.
More Some men think the Earth is round, others think it flat; it is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it? No, I will not sign.
Bolt, Robert. A Man For All Seasons (Modern Classics) (pp. 82-83). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Modern jurors are told that they must follow their conscience in something as simple as convicting a man of a crime. For example, the Ninth Circuit Model Jury Instructions tell the jury:
It is important that you attempt to reach a unanimous verdict but, of course, only if each of you can do so after having made your own conscientious decision. Do not change an honest belief about the weight and effect of the evidence simply to reach a verdict.
More takes this everyday legal principle and applies it to life outside the courtroom.
And, why not? Conscience is a matter of integrity, and a person with integrity does not have one set of standards for work and another for other areas of life.
More also relativizes the “everyone you know is doing it, so it must be right” argument. We might call this the “Pauline Kael effect”[5] since it relies on the snobbery of an insulated group that defines its parochial intuitions as universal. More points out that English opinion is a sliver of Catholic opinion, which includes not only the world outside of England, but the historic church, including those who were now in Heaven.[6]
Because there is a world outside England, the question of whether the pope can be deposed as the head of a national church remains open. As an open question, there is no universal norm – no truth settled by the working of the Holy Spirit[7] – that can be appealed to as binding the opinion of any person, thereby requiring them to change their false opinion in conformity with the truth.
More speaks of the “common faith of Christendom,” and he was one of the last people who could do so.[8] The importance of this “common faith is tied up with the idea that Christendom was “one body.” In a prior letter (Letter 5 to Thomas Cromwell, March 5, 1534), More explained:
‘And therefore sith all Christendom is one corps, I cannot perceive how any member thereof may without the common assent of the body depart part from the common head. And then, if we may not lawfully leave it by ourself, I cannot perceive (but if the thing were a treating29 in a general council) what the question could avail whether the primacy were instituted by God or ordained by the Church. As for the general councils’ assembled lawfully, I never could perceive but that in the declaration of the truths it is to be believed and to be standen to;30 the authority thereof ought to be taken for undoubtable, or else were there in nothing no certainty, but through Christendom upon every man’s affectionate reason, all things might be brought from day to day to continual ruffle and confusion, fusion, from which by the general councils, the spirit of God assisting, every such council well assembled keepeth and ever shall keep the corps of his Catholic Church.
Thomas More. The Last Letters of Thomas More (Kindle Locations 659-665). Kindle Edition.
This point distinguishes More’s reliance on conscience from that of the Lutherans he prosecuted. Those Lutherans were not appealing to an “open question” within the Christian tradition. They did not appeal to a general counsel, the writings of the fathers in heaven, or to an established tradition. Their appeals were to the contrary because they were rejecting received tradition. Lutherans nominally appealed to the Bible, but in reality, they appealed to their private interpretation of it. There had never been a tradition or consensus that every man had the right to interpret the Bible according to their individual conscience. The use of conscience in this way was an oxymoron; for More, it would have been like a serial killer appealing to his conscience as justification for killing.
At the end, Thomas Cromwell, aka “Master Secretary,” pulls out all stops and throws in More’s face the fact that he had examined heretics about whether they believed the Pope to be the head of the church, and had required “precise answers.” (Letter 22 to Margaret Roper, June 3, 1535.) More responded:
https://petersbradley.substack.com/p/...
July 10, 2011
Thomas More (1478-1535), Lord Chancellor of England to King Henry VIII, spent the last 14 months of his life as a prisoner in the Tower of London before being beheaded for not taking an oath proclaiming that Henry was the Head of the Church. The Last Letters of Thomas More collects some of his letters written during that time.
More was a man who held to his beliefs, his “conscience,” and that strength resonates in all of his writings. This is what attracted me to read this book. I greatly admire that he never wavered from his convictions, even when he knew it would mean the end of his life. He wasn’t unhappy being in prison; his faith gave him relief. During this time he also wrote A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation.
Thomas More was canonized (declared a saint) by the Catholic Church in 1935.
More was a man who held to his beliefs, his “conscience,” and that strength resonates in all of his writings. This is what attracted me to read this book. I greatly admire that he never wavered from his convictions, even when he knew it would mean the end of his life. He wasn’t unhappy being in prison; his faith gave him relief. During this time he also wrote A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation.
Thomas More was canonized (declared a saint) by the Catholic Church in 1935.
Did Not Finish
October 29, 2022I enjoyed the prologue to this book, which gave extensive background information about More’s life and thought, but as with most books of letters - I’ve left unfinished books of CS Lewis’s letters to his brother, Therese of Lisieux’s letters to her sisters, and several others - I stumbled here again. I’m keeping the book as a reference when I read Henry VIII’s biography currently on my shelf, but can’t bring myself to read this all the way to the end.
December 7, 2021
These consisted of letter between More and his daughter mostly while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. When you read his scathing, written exchanges with Erasmus of Rotterdam regarding the Reformation, it is hard to believe that those came from the kind, loving father that you learn to know in these letters to his daughter.
April 16, 2024
Spes non confundit - Hope never disappoints
September 9, 2024
heartbreaking yet inspiring book
October 5, 2009
Utopia is a much better read, but if you want to get into the mind of the Doomed man that became a Saint, you should read this book. I will say that with some of the language, Shakespeare is an easier read. This may be because I thoroughly enjoy Shakespeare, but this book had trouble holding my attention. You need to remember while reading that he was very much aware that his letters were being read by King Henry VIII and/or his cronies. I gave it 4 stars because of the interest I have in the subject matter, but if you are not interested in Thomas More this is NOT for you!
February 26, 2008
Meaty as all get-out, but fascinating nonetheless.
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