Book Review

Merriment, prayer and learning

A Daughter’s Love: Thomas and Margaret More

Everybody lays claim to Thomas More. For Catholics, he is a saint, who made his stand against Henry VIII, understanding what so many of his contemporaries failed to realise, that the king's ambitions had the potential - later realised - to destroy Catholicism within England. For scholars of the Renaissance, he is first and foremost the author of Utopia, a writer and thinker of great subtlety and imagination, an affectionate, funny and loyal friend to Erasmus, Grocyn, Linacre and a European network of humanists. For many he is the "Man for all Seasons" of Robert Bolt's play and Oscar-winning film, a man of unparallelled integrity who stood apart from the corruption and terror of the Tudor court, and by his betrayal and execution became a symbol of resistance to authoritarianism. For zealous sixteenth-century Protestants, and many later iconoclasts, he was the persecutor of heretics, whose foul-mouthed diatribes against Tyndale reveal the dark underbelly of his principles and piety, and perhaps demonstrate the inherent folly of all hero worship.

However you see him, More is a colossus of his age, and vast quantities of ink have been expended in trying to describe and understand him, which makes it all the more remarkable that John Guy has in A Daughter's Love given us a wholly new insight into the man. Here is More not as hero, symbol or saint, but as human being, as a family man, the careful and loving steward of a large and often complicated household. Most importantly, here is More as father, thrilled to the core by the brilliance of his eldest daughter, sparring with her in letters scribbled in between the huge political dramas of Henry VIII's reign, and, at the last, holding on desperately to her love and loyalty as his world collapsed around him, as he steeled himself for a brutal and unjust death.

Guy's approach is simple and brilliant. He has broken away from the overbearing focus upon More himself and written the story of a relationship, and he has carefully pieced together every fragment of the world in which that relationship flourished, from the pictures on More's study wall, to the jewels sparkling on the organ in the church where Margaret married William Roper, to the pitiful details of Margaret's journey to retrieve her father's severed head from London Bridge. It is a superb read, giving a fresh insight into many different aspects of More's world. Erasmus here is not only the humanist scholar with an international reputation; he is the tedious house guest grumbling about his kidney stones and his lost luggage, writing In Praise of Folly to relieve the boredom of his mornings when More had disappeared to the Guildhall to work. This book also takes More's intellectual pursuits and the erudition of his circle and shows in vivid, human terms the huge excitement that this could generate, and the way in which learning could transform human experience. To see his household bubbling over with excitement as they discover Latin poetry, Greek prose, astronomy or medicine is to come one step closer to understanding what the Renaissance really meant, how it illuminated people's lives.

In particular, learning was Margaret's liberation, motivation, and the basis of an exceptionally loving relationship with her father, the kind of relationship based on a privileged insight into another person's intellect and soul. At first, when the pressure of public life became too much, and at the end, imprisoned in the Tower and struggling with his fear of death and despair, it was solely to Margaret that More opened his mind and heart, writing the extraordinary letters which helped give his convictions and emotions their necessary expression, strengthening the bond which helped him face impending martyrdom.

To be an educated woman in the sixteenth century was to occupy a liminal position. More thought it wrong for a woman to publish, writing that for a woman to "lay herself out for renown" in this way was "the sign of someone who is not only arrogant, but ridiculous and miserable". Yet Margaret, exceptionally bright and deeply devout, her scholarship equal to pointing out Erasmus' mistakes, for which he honoured her, still found her way anonymously into print. Her gender restricted her, but it also offered loopholes. Since her husband conformed to Henry VIII's wishes, her own activities preserving her father's works and memory were overlooked. Most importantly, when, out of love, she took the oath of succession her father had refused, in order that she might be allowed to see him in the Tower, she included the words "as far as will stand with the law of God". This might be held to render the oath meaningless, but she was a woman, so nobody took much notice. She thus tricked the authorities into granting her access to her father, thinking she might persuade him, when in fact father and daughter took refuge together in prayer, merriment and the skilful literary construction of an explanation of his moral stand, which would soon be broadcast around Europe.

It is hard to find much to criticise. The pictures of Henry VIII and Wolsey are too stylised, too much the tyrant and the toady, but it is a minor failing. Guy is occasionally too protective of his characters: Thomas More here is a compassionate and admirable figure, with little emphasis on the vitriol sometimes directed at his opponents. His persecution of heretics is not glossed over, however, nor is it hard to understand; this was the poison that was destroying his world, and More was prepared to die himself to defend it, not just to put others to death. As with any history of More, there are points where speculation, hagiography and historical fiction are all risks, but on the whole this is a truthful and unsentimental book. Guy gives an honest account of More's failings, his indecision, his inability to avoid joking even when it endangers his own life. It is a candid picture of the man which makes the nobility of his moral stand and the poignant moments of his own Gethsemane all the more outstanding.

A Daughter's Love is history at its absolute best. Guy has already published extensively on More, and his scholarly grasp of the subject is unquestionable, but his erudition is at no point hammered home or allowed to weigh down the narrative. Other academic writers might take note. Clear, concise notes at the back of the book offer the necessary information to those who want to look more deeply into the evidence. Meanwhile, the book is written in simple, lucid prose, telling its fascinating and tragic story with great skill, giving a balanced and sobering assessment of the human cost of the events it describes in such detail. Both Thomas More and his daughter agreed that there was little value in learning unless it could be expressed with clarity, elegance, and a profound moral message. This, then, is a book worthy of its subject.

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