Why has Hilary Mantel maligned Thomas More?

Hilary Mantel’s latest novel, The Mirror and the Light, has been given a spectacular reception. Mantel is a powerful and engaging writer who has captured the pageantry, brutality and strange ambience of the Tudor era in a way which has earned praise from a mass of historians. The new novel completes a trilogy which has transformed the image of Thomas Cromwell, from grasping bully to near saint, in the minds of the millions of people who have read the books or seen the television series.

Whatever the truth may be about Cromwell, her portrayal of his great antagonist, Thomas More, is, I believe, a travesty. The first novel of the series, Wolf Hall, portrays More as a vengeful, even satanic figure. History matters; as Martin Luther King said: “We are made by history.” Mantel has traduced a man who did make history. Her book is, of course, a novel, but historical fiction matters just as much as fact. A few of the remarks she gives the narrator, and the more sympathetic characters, illustrate the ugly portrait she develops of him.

“More says you need not keep a promise to a heretic.”

In real history, More chose death rather than swear a false oath to the King’s commissioners who must, by that stage, have appeared to him to be Protestants, and thus heretics.

“They say [More] uses… the torment frame they call Skeffington’s Daughter… a man is folded knees to chest… the hoop is tightened until his ribs crack.”

The public record of More’s trial shows that he swore under oath that he had never been in any way involved in torture and was able to expose the principal witness as a paid professional, well known to the courts.

“I know the case. More botched it, he didn’t read the papers…”

More’s integrity and diligence in his role at the head of the judiciary was such that Protestant judges played a prominent role in rescuing his reputation in the world outside the Catholic Church from the force of Henry’s propagandists. Mantel is not just repeating the latter’s claims, but adding to them.

It is true, however, and important for his defenders to recognise, that Thomas More did conduct an extended hunt for heretics. As Lord Chancellor he signed the death warrants of at least three (and possibly as many as six) courageous Protestants, condemning them to be burnt.

Before looking in greater detail at More, it is worth noting that Mantel’s hero, Thomas Cromwell, portrayed as a tolerant moderate in Wolf Hall, did preside over torture. He also oversaw a twin track programme of religious executions: on the one hand he greatly increased the burning of hard-line Protestant sectaries, like the Anabaptists, who believed in the primacy of Scripture. On the other, he arranged traitor’s deaths for those still loyal to Rome, 15 monks in one incident alone.

But comparison with the real Cromwell is not the important point. Let’s look at the real Thomas More.

His first major political post was as the Under-Sheriff of London. In 1517, he played a courageous role in defusing riots, confronting the rioters and persuading them to disperse. Afterwards, Henry had many of them summarily hanged; More bravely petitioned the King to stop the bloody process.

Parliament still displays a remarkable picture of More in his role as Speaker, when he defied Cardinal Wolsey by refusing money for Henry without debate. This was crucial in establishing the principle that a free House of Commons had the privilege of unlimited debate and that taxes could not be raised in anticipation of Parliament’s assent. In all his posts, More defended the rule of law, including opposing papal interference in English secular matters and royal interference in religious ones.

More was a passionate believer in education for both sexes and for those with talent in all classes. Mantel depicts More’s family life negatively, with his second wife, Alice, put upon and publicly excluded by More’s extended conversation in Greek. This is leagues away from the universally shared contemporary testimony of a happy, lively household, with his strong-willed wife at the heart of it.

His writings were landmarks at home and across Europe. Shakespeare based one of his first plays, Richard III, on the biography by More, and later collaborated with five others to produce an eponymous play lauding More, which was suppressed by Elizabeth’ s censors . Samuel Johnson ’s History of the English Language devotes twice as much space to More’s poetry as to Chaucer’ s.

For many years, More showed religious tolerance, unusual for the time, especially to visiting scholars. He pressed for reform of Church corruption and for an English translation of the Bible.

Then, in 1525, some 70,000 German peasants, men, women and children, were massacred by their princes, after what started as little more than demonstrations. Many of the peasants carried biblical slogans drawn from Luther’s preaching. Yet the princes were egged on by Luther: “Stab, smite and slay all you can… you cannot meet a rebel with reason.”

A wave of horror swept across Europe. More’s greatest friend and ally was Erasmus, a man so widely respected for his learning and tolerance that today’s principal European university exchange programme bears his name. Yet, after this bloodbath, even Erasmus called for military suppression of Luther’ s adherents.

The peasant massacres provided the spark which lit More’s vigorous campaign against Lutheranism. Simultaneously, Henry, through Cromwell, was planning to dissolve the monasteries, encouraged by a Reform lobby which combined spiritual Protestantism with greedy secular interests. Whatever their failings, More knew that the monasteries were the only source of welfare, healthcare and education available to the poor and used the dwindling powers of his office to struggle against the Reformers. After his execution in 1535, the monasteries’ assets were seized and their buildings sold to wealthy men.

Beleaguered by Henry and his allies, More refused an invitation from Charles V to flee and help the Emperor take the reins of the Holy Roman Empire. Rather than abandon England, he turned his back on power, wealth and his loving family. Instead, he chose imprisonment and death.

Before his execution, More returned to religious tolerance. While continuing to refuse to save his life by taking Henry’s oath of royal supremacy, he set out in his writings how Catholics should engage with Protestants — what they could agree with the Reformers on, as well as where they must hold out for their faith.

Winston Churchill commented: “The resistance of More and Fisher to the royal supremacy in Church government was a noble and heroic stand… They saw that the break from Rome carried with it the threat of a despotism freed from every fetter… More stood forth as the defender of all that was finest in the medieval outlook.”

At the scaffold, More told his executioners: “Master Lieutenant, see me safe up [to the scaffold], and for my coming down let me shift for myself.” Thus began the image of the quintessential Englishman who goes to his death with a smile.