How Sir Thomas More studied law, and became an orator; the wise and
good men who visited him; how he was for some time in the King’s
favor, but was afterwards imprisoned and put to death because he
would not do everything the King wished.
Well, my dear little Arthur, we have done with the cruel King Henry
the Eighth, and I am going to keep my promise, and write a little
chapter about Sir Thomas More.
We read in the chapter about Henry the Seventh, that in his reign the
young gentlemen of England began to study and read, and even to write
books, instead of spending all their time in fighting or hunting. And
I told you that Thomas Linacre, the great physician, taught a great
many gentlemen at Oxford to read and write Greek, and that Sir Thomas
More was one of his scholars.
Sir Thomas More’s father wished him to be a lawyer, and, though he
did not like it himself, he left his other learning and studied law
to please his father, and he became a great lawyer.
He was handsome and good-natured, very cheerful, and fond of
laughing. He had a pleasant voice, and it is said that he was the
first Englishman who could be called an ORATOR, that is, a man who
can speak well before a great number of others (as a clergyman
does when he preaches in a large church), and either teach them or
persuade them to think or do as he wishes.
But what you will like best to hear is, how good he was to his little
son and his daughters: he used to laugh with them and talk with them,
and as he had a pretty garden round his house at Chelsea, he used to
walk and play with them there.
Besides this, he was so kind to them, that he had the best masters in
England to teach them different languages, and music; and they used
to have very pleasant concerts, when his wife and daughters used to
play on different instruments, and sing to him. He was very fond of
painting, and had the famous painter, Hans Holbein, in his house a
long time.
Sometimes he and his children read pleasant books together, and he
was particularly careful to instruct his little girls, and they read
and wrote Latin very well, besides being very good workwomen with
their needles, and understanding how to take care of a house.
You may think what a happy family this was, and how much all the
children and the parents loved one another. All the best men that
were then alive used to come now and then and see Sir Thomas More
and family. There was the famous Erasmus, whom I mentioned before;
and Bishop Tonstall, who often contrived to save people from the
cruel Henry, when he had ordered them to be burnt; and Dean Colet,
who began that good school at St. Paul’s in London, for boys whose
parents were too poor to have them properly taught. You may think how
happy Sir Thomas More was at Chelsea, loving his wife and children,
who were all good, and most of them clever, and seeing his good and
wise friends every day.
But you know that God gives men duties to do for the country they
live in, as well as for themselves; and as Sir Thomas More was a
lawyer, he was obliged to attend to his business, and when he became
a judge, it took up so much of his time that he could not be so much
at his house at Chelsea as he wished. It was still worse when Henry
the Eighth made him Lord Chancellor of England, and required most of
his spare time to talk with him, instead of letting him go home.
For some time King Henry liked him very much, and everybody was in
hopes that he might make the king a better man.
But Henry was too bad and too cruel to take advice. The first dislike
he showed to Sir Thomas More was because that honest man did not
wish him to send away his good wife, Catherine of Arragon, and marry
another woman while she was alive. Afterwards he was angry with him
because he would not leave off thinking that the Pope was head of the
Christian Church, and say what Henry pleased, though he tried every
means to persuade him to do so.
At last the king sent him to prison on that account, and kept him
there a whole year, and sent all sorts of people to him, to try and
get him to say the king was in the right, whatever he might say or
do, and particularly that it was right for him to be called the
Supreme Head of the Church of England.
But More would not tell a lie. He knew his duty to God required him
to speak the truth; and as he thought the king wrong, he said so
boldly. This so enraged the cruel tyrant, that he determined to put
him to death; but he made believe to be sorry, and said he should
have a fair trial, and sent for him out of prison, and made a number
of noblemen and gentlemen ask him the same things over again that
he had been asked in prison before. And as he still gave the same
answers, the king ordered his head to be cut off.
In all the whole year he had been in prison he had only been allowed
to see his wife once; and his eldest daughter Margaret, who was
married to a Mr. Roper, once also. The cruel king now ordered that
he should be kept in prison, without seeing any of his family again
before his death; but Margaret Roper waited in the street, and knelt
down near where he must pass, that he might give her his blessing.
Then she determined to try to kiss her own dear father before he
died; so, without minding the soldiers who were carrying him to
prison, or the crowd which were standing round, she ran past them
all and caught her father in her arms, and kissed him over and over
again, and cried so bitterly that even the soldiers could not help
crying too.
The only thing More begged of the king on the day he was beheaded
was, that his dear daughter might be allowed to go to his funeral;
and he felt happy when they told him all his family might go.
After Sir Thomas More’s head was cut off, the cruel king ordered it
to be stuck up on a pole on London bridge; but Margaret Roper soon
contrived to get it down. She kept it carefully till she died, and
then it was buried with her.
As long as there are any good people in the world, Sir Thomas More
and his daughter will be loved whenever their names are heard.