Peter Ackroyd - The Life of Thomas More

Frank and masterful. [Ackroyd has a] gift for describing what it all looked and felt like.

The Baltimore Sun

An exceptionally fascinating, colorful and moving biography.

The Christian Science Monitor

Mr. Ackroyd skillfully captures the life of a consummate lawyer, humanist, martyr and Renaissance man.

The National Law Journal

Beautifully written, comprehensively researched.

Houston Chronicle

Exquisite. [Ackroyd has] a sense of history and a wonderful command of the English language. Highly recommendable.

Library Journal

A limpidly written and superbly wrought portrait.

Kirkus Reviews

FICTION

The Great Fire of London
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Hawksmoor
Chatterton
First Light
English Music
The House of Doctor Dee
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Milton in America
The Plato Papers

NONFICTION

Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession
London: The Biography
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination

BIOGRAPHY

Ezra Pound and His World
T. S. Eliot
Dickens
Blake
The Life of Thomas More

POETRY

Ouch!
The Diversions of Purley and Other Poems

CRITICISM

Notes for a New Culture
The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures edited by Thomas Wright

F IRST A NCHOR B OOKS E DITION , D ECEMBER 1999

Copyright 1998 by Peter Ackroyd

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, London in 1998. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in 1998.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Nan A. Talese/Doubleday edition as follows:

Ackroyd, Peter, 1949
The life of Thomas More / Peter Ackroyd. 1st ed. in the U.S.A.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. More, Thomas, Sir, Saint, 14781535. 2. Great Britain
HistoryHenry VIII, 15091547Biography. 3. Great Britain
Politics and government15091547. 4. Christian martyrsEngland
Biography. 5. StatesmenGreat BritainBiography. 6. Humanists
EnglandBiography. I. Title.
DA334.M8A64 1998
942.052092dc21

[B] 98-24333

eISBN: 978-0-307-82301-4

www.anchorbooks.com

Author photograph by Roderick Field

v3.1

FOR THOMAS WRIGHT

Sir Thomas More, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty The Queen)

The More household at Chelsea, Hans Holbein the Younger (Kunstmuseum, Basle)

Sir John More, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty The Queen)

William Roper, ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Margaret Roper, ascribed to Hans Holbein the Younger (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Elizabeth Dauncey, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty The Queen)

Cicely Heron, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty The Queen)

Anne Cresacre, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty the Queen)

John More, Hans Holbein the Younger (The Royal Collection Her Majesty The Queen)

Henry VII, ascribed to Michael Sittow (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Richard III, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Elizabeth of York, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

The young Henry VIII, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Catherine of Aragon, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Anne Boleyn, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Sir Thomas More, Hans Holbein the Younger (Frick Collection, New York; Bridgeman Art Library)

Desiderius Erasmus, Quentin Matsys (Galleria Nazionale dArte Antica, Rome)

Peter Gillis, Quentin Matsys (Private collection; Courtauld Institute of Art)

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Thomas Cromwell, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Martin Luther, Lucas Cranach the Elder (City of Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; Bridgeman Art Library)

Thomas Cranmer, Gerlach Flicke (National Portrait Gallery, London) John Colet, Pietro Torrigiano (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, unknown artist (National Portrait Gallery, London)

Coloured bust of Henry VII, Pietro Torrigiano (Victoria & Albert Museum; Bridgeman Art Library)

The Execution of William Tyndale, October 1536, unknown artist (British Library)

Henry VIII, Hans Holbein the Younger (Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Lugano; Bridgeman Art Library)

I should like to express my obligation and gratitude to the editors of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, as well as to the Yale University Press, which has published the fourteen volumes of that enterprise. Theirs is a magisterial work of scholarship, and although many of the writings are available elsewhere the Yale edition has become the indispensable companion to More studies. The other major work, in this context is The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, edited by E. F. Rogers and published by Princeton University Press. I also wish to express my thanks to the institutions and libraries that have harboured me over the last three years, in particular to the North Library of the British Library and to the London Library. I would like to thank Dr David Starkey for his suggestive advice. I must register a more private debt to my assistants, Thomas Wright and Carl Dennison.

CHAPTER I
THIS DARK WORLD