Customer Reviews

A Daughter's Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg

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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.

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.

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.

This is a very well-documented book on the More family and life under King Henry VIII. The author really did his research and presents it as a very pleasing read. It is the best book written on the Thomas More. We also learn of what happened to the rest of the More clan and how life was like under the tyrant, King Henry VIII. A must for history buffs!

I don't know why this book has received so many positive reviews. It doesn't do enough to deserve them.

The problem is that it seeks to portray the good in Thomas More's character whilst refusing to acknowledge the bad. Therefore, it destroys its chances of being viewed as a work of serious scholarship. It came across as a puff-piece, in which the author tries to persuade us to view his subject with admiration and sympathy. By Chapter 22 ("Resignation") I felt affronted by its flagrant propaganda and unscholarly language.

Before you accuse me of indulging in propaganda myself, it's time to start quoting from the offending passages. On p. 197 we have:

"He [More] believed that justice had been done, but was equally keen to ensure it was seen to be done. In spite of this, Tewkesbury's friends complained that when the doomed man was cast into the fire, no writ had been issued and the burning was illegal. As no copy of the writ has ever been found, it is conceivable that More, in his eagerness to put the sentence into effect, issued verbal orders but the paperwork slipped his mind."

`Slipped his mind'? What does that say about Thomas More? Two options, from what I can see: that he was so convinced of the rightness of persecuting `heretics' that niceties like death warrants could be dispensed with, or that, in his eagerness to carry out the sentence, he really did forget there was supposed to be a warrant before he had a human being put to death.

Now, let's look at the howler that goes by the name of Chapter 22. Starting on p. 207: an acquaintance of More's, a teacher named Christopher St German, an "opponent of capital punishment for crimes of the mind", objected to the clergy's prosecution of a man named William Tracy, who made Lutheran comments in his will, and was posthumously burnt at the stake. Guy informs us that in St German's book `Doctor and Student' he questioned whether the clergy had been acting legally: "He discovered that, following an erroneous interpretation by the English authorities, canon law was being interpreted, wrongly, in such cases to mean that suspects could be given `penitential pains' regardless of whether they were proved guilty. St German took his criticisms to Cromwell, sending him a raft of ideas for remedial legislation. Only after a full investigation by members of both Houses of Parliament, he said, should the bishops be allowed to conduct any more heresy trials on their own."

This is all well and good. But check out what's next:

"St German had no seat in Parliament, and Thomas More may well have believed he could fend off such initiatives. What he couldn't have foreseen was that the knife would be turned from within his own family. For his brother-in-law, John Rastell, slowly gravitating towards Cromwell and a lifelong friend of St German, sat in the Commons and, in a dramatic, heartbreaking split with the Mores, introduced a private member's bill making the law of heresy accountable to the judges of the common law and to Parliament, a revolutionary reform as it would have stripped the bishops of their independent rights to conduct trials."

Let me see if I correctly understand this. St German wanted to make it impossible for bishops to punish people for heresy until they were found guilty. Thomas More opposed this, but John Rastell promoted it. Therefore, because Rastell was married to More's sister, Rastell turned the knife within his family. What family? Wasn't More head of the More family, and Rastell head of the Rastell family? Because Rastell was married to More's sister, did that make him duty-bound to avoid offending his brother-in-law?

It seems he did offend More:

"John Rastell's move triggered a permanent family rupture: one his wife Elizabeth would rue until the day she wrote her last will and testament. After introducing his private member's bill, John never spoke to his brother-in-law or Lady Alice again. The shattering of a relationship between in-laws who'd known and trusted each other for over thirty years must have been all the more painful, the more decisive, because for so long both families had shared similar ideals."

Though the split wasn't so shattering as to impede More from working:

"Thomas chose to stay in office to fight for what he believed in. He refused to bow to that dark influence which seemed to be growing more unbearable and unjust with every passing day. Never before had it been clearer to him that, if truth is the one great principle, then what matters in life is an honest councillor's ability to speak the truth to rulers and survive."

What was this "dark influence" that was growing? Attempts to stop the clergy from being able to punish people for crimes they had been found not guilty of in a court of law? And what is meant by this "truth" that is the one great principle? Is this "truth" nothing but More's personal opinion? If so, I won't dignify this statement with a response.

Then we have: "Thomas had stayed in office after his humiliations at Henry's hands in the hope that he could steer the king into gentler, wiser counsels. He'd fought for what he believed in, but could do no more without putting his head on the block." What "gentler, wiser counsels"? More had been burning heretics while the clergy was being attacked in Parliament over its ability to prosecute people for heresy with impunity! Was it "wise" of More to remind Parliament of what it objected to? Was it "gentle"? According to Guy, More had wanted to use the "practical philosophy" he had advocated in Utopia with Henry, but: "the king's `great matter' had ushered in a cut-throat world where evil counsels were measured only by the standard of success."

Well, all right then! Thank you, Professor Guy; now we know. The heretic-hunting Thomas More was right, and those who thought and acted differently were filling poor old Henry VIII's head with "evil counsels". I expect sixteenth century Catholic apologists and Protestant martyrologists to refer to those who opposed their subjects as having given `evil counsels', but for a twenty-first century historian to describe those who aided and abetted Henry VIII's divorce as having given him `evil counsels' beggars belief.

You see why the book lost my respect. Yet still the attempt to influence us to take More's side continues:

"Failing his political conversion, More's very continued presence in England was a threat to Henry's view of monarchy. By dint of his moral authority as an honest man, Thomas was, in fact, more likely to succeed out of office than in it, freed from his greatest liability, since he could play no further part in censoring books or burning heretics.

This is the same honest man who probably put a man to death without a death warrant?

Then there's a problem I saw with the writing style - chiefly, too many contractions. The incessant use of he'd, she'd, who'd, they'd, couldn't, etc. really grated on me - I'm not just throwing in a nuisance complaint. Still roughly on the subject of language, a good editor might have queried the logic of this statement:

"Tyndale's New Testament was slow to take off, but was unstoppable once it did. The English Reformation had begun. The tragedy, from the official Church's viewpoint, is that Tyndale lacked competition. The Church authorities were unable to see that the one person in England who knew Latin and Greek to the point where she could correct Erasmus, who could match Tyndale as a translator and stylist, and could be relied upon to conform to Catholic teaching and doctrine, was Margaret Roper. But, of course, she was a woman, so it never entered their heads."

How would another translation of the New Testament from the original Greek have conformed "to Catholic teaching and doctrine"? Is Guy suggesting that Margaret should have used her knowledge of Greek to provide another translation, but have made sure it avoided contradicting official `Catholic teaching and doctrine' where the two differed? How would that have been possible? There are, for instance, no references to popes in the New Testament. Should Margaret have added them in?

One more language-related source of confusion: Guy writes of Thomas More's knighting in 1521, "He found his new title of `Sir Thomas' mildly, if pleasantly, ridiculous, even if his wife, now to be correctly addressed as `Lady Alice', couldn't share in his usual self-deprecation." I'd got the impression that a woman can't have `lady' in front of her Christian name unless she's the daughter of an earl, marquess or duke. But if that's the case, how did plain old Alice Middleton get bumped up to `Lady Alice' just because her husband was knighted? Wouldn't she have become `Lady More'? Peter Ackroyd's biography of Thomas More states that Thomas More's second wife was known as `Dame Alice', so is there any possibility Guy made a mistake?

My final opinion on the book's language is that if you don't like melodramatic language, you might want to skip it altogether. The low point came on p. 225, where Christopher St German is referred to as "a terrier snapping at More's heels", because he dared write a rebuttal to More's `The Apology of Sir Thomas More'. This Apology is referred to as "tantamount to his self-defence against the Protestants". Yet when St German did the same thing, he did not act in self-defence, but snapped at More's heels. But of course, More is the hero of this tale, so anyone who opposes him betrays him. On p. 220, he and his family are even "doubly betrayed" when John Rastall not only "sensationally converted to Protestantism" (did others do it non-sensationally?) but also launched two lawsuits against them (not that they suffered much, since both were dismissed).

As for the claim that Rastell "sensationally converted to Protestantism" - this appears to contradict something John Guy wrote in his book `Tudor England' (1988). Of Thomas Cromwell's fall in 1540 at the start of chapter seven, he wrote:

"To label Cromwell a `Protestant' ... is too bold, especially before the Council of Trent (1545-63) when rigid definitions of `Catholicism' and `Protestantism' did not exist."

This sounds correct, since historians usually refer to those on opposing sides as reformers and conservatives. But if rigid definitions of Protestantism and Catholicism still did not exist in 1540, how can Rastell have "sensationally converted to Protestantism" back in 1532? Any thoughts?

Strangely, Moynahan's biography of the bible translator William Tyndale (God's Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible---A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal) is not mentioned in the bibliography. Was the author unaware of it? I find that hard to believe, since it paints a pretty damning portrait of More - something that would presumably have caused people to bring it to the attention of someone who had written two prior books about him (2000's Thomas More (Reputations Series) and 1980's The Public Career of Sir Thomas More - though for some reason, neither is mentioned in the list of his previous works). Wouldn't a Thomas More scholar want to read and respond to everything written about him? Particularly since Moynahan claims that even before More became Lord Chancellor, he was officiously hunting down people who were trading in English New Testaments and religious works. When he became Chancellor, he allegedly stepped up the pace, and moved on to racking at least one of them in the Tower (James Bainham) - and of course, burning them as heretics.

Now, am I unreasonable in believing that any subsequent biography of Thomas More that wants to be taken seriously should take up these accusations, and either justify them, or prove they were not true? Yes, PROVE they were not true - not just insinuate they were made up by later Protestant martyrologists. All we get is a vague disclaimer in Chapter 23, stating that the worst charges were later retracted.

Yet there remain the undisputable good qualities: the scholar of European renown, the lawyer who acted as peacemaker, and the man who treated women as human beings instead of second-class citizens. So why should any historian take sides, and portray him as saint or sinner? It's obvious - he was both. But you wouldn't guess that from reading `A Daughter's Love'. Unless you're cynical enough to notice when you read a book designed to influence your heart at the expense of your head.


Update 20 June 11: The statement that Thomas More may have put Tewkesbury to death without a death warrant because the warrant "slipped his mind" is looking even more dubious. Benson Bobrick's Wide as the Waters : The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired contains the following statement (p. 129) about Thomas Bilney, who was burned as a heretic on 19 August 1531, during More's time as Lord Chancellor:

`As a doubly lapsed heretic he was condemned without delay, and a writ for burning was procured with alacrity from More. More is said to have remarked that "in so flagrant a case they should have burnt him first and asked for a writ afterwards."'

Bobrick cites as his source, "Quoted in Lupton, Tyndale the Translator, p. 29". I don't have access to a copy of Lupton's book, so I can't check whether his source for More's alleged statement is trustworthy or potentially dodgy. Nonetheless, it appears that, even though Thomas More was a lawyer - and might therefore be expected to have been a stickler for legalities - his hatred of `heretics' may have compromised the exercise of his professional duties to the point where he thought it was acceptable to act on the principle of "kill first - sort out the paperwork later".

For history buffs, for anglo-philes, for any reader, I have to say this is a well produced book.

Excellent history of a very important
event: the development of the Constitution
of the United States and the effort to
ratify it.