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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Father and Daughter, April 3, 2009
This review is from: A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg (Hardcover)
There have been attempts to besmirch the reputation of Sir (Saint) Thomas More--unsubstantiated and denied rumors of torture, inflated numbers of executions for heresy under this administration as Chancellor, and emphasis on the more colorful language in his polemics against Luther and Tyndale. All are cited as unworthy of a canonized saint, either reflecting confusion about historical accuracy or what it means to be a saint.
In this book, John Guy describes the relationship between Thomas More and his dearest daughter, Margaret Roper. It is a loving relationship, demonstrating the richness of character and integrity of both father and daughter. Guy highlights Thomas More's progressive educational program for all his children, including his daughters, uncommon at the time, with the highest standards of contemporary humanism. Erasmus of Rotterdam found in Margaret More Roper a critical and discerning reader who could appreciate his efforts and correct his Latin.
Crucially, John Guy emphasizes that Thomas More had completely integrated the sacred and the secular in his way of life and yet steadfastly kept the public and the private aspects of his life separate. When he was with his family, or when he wrote to them when he was away from them, he did not discuss the efforts, burdens or issues of his working life, as lawyer, member of Parliament, ambassador, or Chancellor. It was only when he knew that public life was going to intrude violently and with deadly force on his private life that he gave his family a sign of what was to come: a brutal knock at the door, interrupting the family gathered at meal and a preemptory summons to answer charges of treason.
Also crucially, Guy highlights the ferocious will to power of Henry VIII once he knew what he wanted and experienced the satisfaction of obtaining it. Henry was then insatiable and only those who bowed utterly to his desire could hope to survive, and even they faced the danger of his changing mood and will. Thomas More tried to warn Thomas Cromwell (as depicted in the film "Anne of the Thousand Days") never to let the king focus on what he could do, but only on what he should do. More followed his own advice and was executed; Cromwell did not follow that advice and was still executed.
Margaret was one of the few who knew her father wore a hair shirt; she would thus be the only one who knew how to sustain him during his imprisonment in the Tower, engaging him with both intellectual diversion and prayer. She would be his champion after his execution, rescuing his head from its place in the row of traitors and preserving all his works, including the letters and treatises he wrote in the Tower, so that they could be published during the reign of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon's surviving child and the first Queen Regnant of England, Ireland and Wales.
A sad and final irony I gained from the story of this relationship was an inkling of what might have been: if Henry VIII could have had the same respect and love for his daughter Mary, he could have fulfilled his early promise as a Renaissance prince. If Henry had seen Mary as the gift she was, with her intellect, her musical talent, and the same desire that Margaret had to please her father, what might have been? But then, we might not have the works Thomas More wrote in the Tower, when he put polemics aside and contemplated Jesus in His Passion, the soul facing comfort and tribulation, and that loving last letter to Margaret, praising her for her demonstration of love as he returned to the Tower of London after his trial.
John Guy has given us the great gift of this book, clarifying many aspects of Thomas More's life, including his relationships with his second wife Alice and his great friend Erasmus, who both sadly abandoned him when he faced the trials of the Tower. The supporting materials (illustrations, family trees, and bibliography) are great.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Scholarship, August 20, 2009
This review is from: A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg (Hardcover)
The scholarship and extensive research by John Guy, to write this book,is extremely impressive. To write about, and blend in facts concerning life in the 16th century is difficult enough, without having to address the uniqe personalities of historical characters, magnitude of issues, and complexity of what transpired in that era.
The genre of the book makes for a pace of patient reading, but the content, and substance makes it very worthwhile.
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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
More-praising and Roper-bashing, March 7, 2011
This review is from: A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg (Hardcover)
I don't want to repeat every weakness of the book Judith Loriente already pointed out in her brilliant review. All I want to add is that I can't take a historian seriously who lets Thomas More get away with nearly everything, while all the time spitting venom over William Roper, husband to "his beloved Meg". While the author sings his praise of More's "humour" and "brilliant wit", Roper is constantly decked with attributes as negative and demeaning as possible. I felt compelled to take Guy by his word and ask him whether a "gentle, wise" man like More would have married his beloved favourite daughter to a greedy, coarse cretin?
Beside all favouritism, if a historian claims to know what a marriage between two people was like - that the husband "didn't understand his wife" and that she "gave him little say in the matter" - he should at least offer some historic proof and evidence. That is, if he doesn't want his work to be regarded as a work of fiction. Instead I couldn't help wondering whether the author was actually labelling his speculations as the truth, to shape his reader's opinion as it pleased him.
I checked Guy's claim that Roper, in his famous "Biography of Sir Thomas More", exaggerated his own role. To be plain, the claim was rather insubstantial. Quite an exaggeration to recall a few conversations with your own father-in-law, indeed! It was not the only mistake in the book, but I guess I shouldn't harp on Margaret Giggs' mutilated family tree. After all, the book is not about her, so why bother to list all her six children in the family tree instead of just the randomly picked four?
Certainly, every historian has a favourite subject, but a scholar should be professional enough to allow shades of grey in the human character. More might have been made a saint later, but he was very human, both in his likes and dislikes. Both human gentleness and human cruelty could be found in him. Roper was human as well, though in his own way, trying to survive in a dangerous time. The author should stop accusing Roper of abandoning his father-in-law merely because he had no desire to become a martyr. Few people have it.
And don't even get me started on the one-dimensional Henry VIII in this book! I was actually positively surprised not to find him portrayed with red eyes and devil's horns. No doubt he could be cruel and vengeful, yet painting him as the epitome of evil takes away a huge part of More's greatness. How hard can it possibly be for a "gentle, wise man" like him to resist pure evil? Wasn't it, instead, the doubt and insecurity, the love More held for the king and the respect the king held for him, that made More's decision a brave one and Henry's a tragic one? This book is, to put it simple, a must for all who love stereotypes and an easy world painted in black and white.
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