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Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page i

Writing Faith and Telling Tales

Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page ii

ME DI E VA L A ND EARLY MODERN
Series Editors:
David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page iii

W R I T I N G FA I T H A N D
TELLING TALES

Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work of

Thomas More

THOMAS BETTERIDGE

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana
 Copyright © 2013 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Betteridge, Thomas.
Writing faith and telling tales : literature, politics, and religion in
the work of Thomas More / Thomas Betteridge.
pages cm. — ( Writing faith and telling tales: medieval and early modern)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-02239-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 0-268-02239-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
ISBN 978-0-268-07594-1 (e-book)
1. More, Thomas, Saint, 1478–1535—Political and social views.
2. Reformation—England—Historiography. 3. Christian literature, Latin
(Medieval and modern)—England—History and criticism. 4. Great Britain—
History—Henry VIII, 1509–1547. 5. Religious thought—16th century.
6. Philosophy, Medieval. 7. Humanism—England—History—16th century.
8. England—Intellectual life —16th century. I. Title.
DA334.M8B48 2013
942.052092— dc23
[ B]

2013032614

∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence

and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines
for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page v

This book is dedicated to

Janet Betteridge and Priscilla Tolkein.
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page vi
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Note on Citations xi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Politics 39

Chapter 2 Reason 75

Chapter 3 Heresy 111

Chapter 4 Devotion 155

Conclusion 195

Notes 209

Index 247
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page viii
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many friends and colleagues have helped me during the course of writing
this book. Greg Walker and Eleanor Rycroft have been a joy to work with
on all our various and varied productions. Thomas S. Freeman read a draft
of this volume and provided me with useful comments. Peter Marshall
also gave me invaluable feedback on an earlier version of this book. I have
immensely benefited from being a member of a collegiate and collabora-
tive academic community, and I would like to thank the following for their
support over the years—Victoria Bancroft, Kim Coles, Katherine Craik,
Brian Cummings, Eamon Duffy, Elisabeth Dutton, Vincent Gillespie,
Andrew Hadfield, Elizabeth Hurren, Julia Ipgrave, Steven King, Susan-
nah Lipscombe, Eleanor Lowe, Nicole Pohl, Kent Rawlinson, and David
Scott Kastan. There are many other colleagues and students who have at-
tended lectures and seminars that I have given over the years and whose
insightful comments have helped me in numerous ways to write this book.
I would like to thank David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson for
their thoughtful and helpful responses to drafts of this volume. I would
also like to thank all the staff at the University of Notre Dame Press for the
support they have given me.

ix
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page x
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page xi

NOTE ON CITATIONS

I would like this work to be as accessible as possible. I have therefore

modernized the spelling and punctuation of the texts that I refer to
where necessary to elucidate the meaning for readers unfamiliar with
fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenth-century writing, except when quot-
ing from The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of Saint Thomas More, when
quoting poetry, or where I am making a specific philological point. I have
also silently expanded contractions. When quoting from translations of
works originally written in other languages, I have included the original
text as a footnote only where this is necessary for the point I wish to make.

xi
Betteridge-00FM_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page xii
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 1

INTRODUCTION

On September 1, 1523, Thomas More wrote to Cardinal Wolsey from

Woking, updating him on the correspondence that Henry VIII had re-
cently received.

It may like your good Grace [ Wolsey] to be advertised that I have re-
ceived your Grace’s letters directed to myself dated the last day of Au-
gust with the letters of my Lord Admiral to your Grace sent in post
and copies of letters sent between the Queen of Scots and his Lord-
ship concerning the matters and affairs of Scotland with the prudent
answers of your Grace as well to my said Lord in your own name
as in the name of the King’s Highness to the said Queen of Scots. All
which letters and copies I have distinctly read unto his Grace.1

More went on to tell Wolsey that Henry, and his queen, Catherine of
Aragon, were extremely pleased with the letter that Wolsey had written in
Henry’s name to Queen Margaret of Scotland, Henry’s sister. More told
Wolsey, “I never saw him [ Henry] like thing better, and as help me God
in my poor fantasy not causeless, for it is for the quantity one of the best
made letters for words, matter, sentence and couching that ever I read
in my life.”2

1
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 2

2 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

In 1523 More was one of Henry’s key public servants, a member of

the king’s council and under treasurer of the exchequer. He was used by
Henry and Wolsey as a diplomat, orator, and secretary.3 More was also a
celebrated letter writer and engaged in correspondence with many lead-
ing European humanists, most famously Desiderius Erasmus. His praise
of Wolsey’s letter is therefore extremely generous. Unfortunately it is im-
possible to know if it was justified, since the original letter Wolsey wrote
on Henry’s behalf has not survived. The appreciation that More showed
for Wolsey’s skills as a ghostwriter reflects perhaps a shared sense of
the creative requirements but also the compromises involved in being a
royal servant: the need to write as someone else, to author another man’s
words. More, as Henry’s secretary, was the king’s textual eyes and hands—
reading and writing for the king.
Throughout the 1520s More was an important conduit between
Henry and his realm, the kind of dependable, discreet civil servant that all
regimes require to carry out their business. The letter of September 1523
provides a snapshot of More in his role as royal councilor and secretary, as
a trusted servant of the king and Wolsey’s confidant. The courtly political
milieu of More’s letter to Wolsey seems on the surface to be many miles
from the world of the author of Utopia, Richard III, or the Dialogue concern-
ing Heresies. This disjuncture is, however, more apparent than real. More,
perhaps to a greater degree than any other figure in Tudor history, has
suffered from being viewed through inappropriate or partial perspectives.
In particular, More’s opposition to Henry’s religious policies of the early
1530s and his martyrdom profoundly colored the first Tudor accounts
of his life, and this has fed into the modern historical record.4
Thomas More was born in 1478 into a relatively wealthy, well-
connected London family. His father, John More, was a leading member
of the legal profession, rising to become judge of the King’s Bench in
1520. More’s early education was at St. Anthony’s School, a leading Lon-
don grammar school. Sometime around the year 1489 More entered the
household of Archbishop John Morton at Lambeth Palace. Also in Mor-
ton’s household at this time was the playwright Henry Medwall. William
Roper, More’s son-in-law and early biographer, records More sponta-
neously leaving his place in the audience and taking part in dramas being
performed before Morton’s household. Roper writes that “though he
[More] was young of years, yet would he at Christmas-tide suddenly some-
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 3

Introduction 3

times step in among the players, and never studying for the matter, make a
part of his own there presently among them, which made the lookers-on
more sport than all the players beside.”5 It is difficult to imagine that More’s
interventions were met with unalloyed pleasure by the players performing
the Christmas revels, but they clearly amused those watching the drama.
In 1492 More went to Oxford University, and two years later he re-
turned to London to train as a lawyer. It was while studying law that he
lodged in or near the Charterhouse, the home of the Carthusian Order
in London. Roper writes that More “gave himself to devotion and prayer
in the Charterhouse of London, religiously living there without vow
about four years, until he resorted to the house of one Master Colt, a
gentleman of Essex, that had oft invited him thither, having three daugh-
ters, whose honest conversation and virtuous education provoked him
there specially to set his affection.”6
It is unclear if More lived as a monk during his association with the
Carthusian Order.7 The passage from Roper’s life describing More’s time
“in the Charterhouse” suggests that in this period More lived as a devout
Christian as well as a gentleman, taking up offers of hospitality from the
likes of Master Colt. In 1505 More married Colt’s daughter Jane. The
marriage to Jane produced four children between 1505 and 1509, the old-
est being his favorite daughter, Margaret. During the period 1505–18
More steadily built up his career as a lawyer. This led to his becoming a
member of the important Mercers’ guild in 1509 and representing West-
minster in Henry VIII’s first parliament. At the same time More and his
family played host to Erasmus, who appears to have enjoyed staying with
More. In 1511 More’s wife, Jane, died, and within a short time he mar-
ried Alice Middleton. In 1518, when More entered the royal service, he
was a highly successful London lawyer, a humanist scholar with a Euro-
pean reputation, and a happy family man. Seymour Baker House com-
ments that “when More joined the king’s council in 1518, he did so be-
cause his training and inclinations had prepared him for exactly that.”8
The story of More’s life from his birth until he entered royal service is,
based on contemporary historical records, relatively straightforward. This
is not, however, how it appears when looked at from the perspective of
the various modern accounts of More’s early life, which present a be-
wildering array of different, often incompatible, Mores for the reader to
praise or condemn.
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 4

4 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

The first significant modern study of More was R.W. Chambers’s

biography, Thomas More, published in 1935. Chambers thought it impor-
tant to address a number of agendas. Above all he wanted to critique the
assumption that More the writer of Utopia and More the martyr were
in conflict. Chambers thought the idea that these two aspects of More
clashed was produced by a false assumption that More’s “modern” hu-
manism and his “medieval” religion were in conflict. Throughout Thomas
More Chambers argues that what distinguishes More is his ability to com-
bine the modern with the medieval. Chambers writes that

More . . . connects Medieval England with Modern England. . . .

Think of him first in connection with the continuity of the English
speech, English prose, English literature. To the student of the En-
glish language he is a vital link between Middle and Modern English.
To the student of English prose his work is the great link which con-
nects modern prose with the medieval prose of Nicholas Love, Wal-
ter Hilton, and Richard Rolle. . . . To the student of English thought
More is equally vital: he points to our own times; but he also points
back to William Langland, and More and his writings help us to see
a continuity running through English literature and history.9

Chambers insisted in his work that More’s life and work exhibit a basic
coherence. In making this argument, however, Chambers painted a sim-
plistic picture of the medieval period as a time without major conflicts or
areas of dispute; in particular he depicted More’s religion as entirely con-
ventional without pausing to consider what this meant in late medieval
England.10 Chambers’s More is a reasonable, witty man— a martyr who
put his conscience before the demands of a tyrannical king. Chambers
spends some time discussing the similarities between More and Socrates.
In particular, he argues that as Socrates transcended the particular his-
tory of ancient Athens, so More transcended that of Tudor England.11
More’s transcendent nature is for Chambers largely a product of his sta-
tus as a martyr for the rights of the individual conscience against the de-
mands of government or state.12 This claim is, however, profoundly prob-
lematic, since More was a consistent critic of those who placed their own
conscience before the teaching of the church.13 Chambers’s understand-
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 5

Introduction 5

ing of More’s attitude to conscience reflects the most pressing issue in

relation to Thomas More, which is that it elides history with hagiography,
so that the judgments that Chambers makes, which went on to inform
Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, are a strange blend of the his-
torically astute and uncritically acclamatory.
It was this combination that above all drove two highly influential
critiques of Thomas More, the biography by Richard Marius, published in
1984, and the work on More by G. R. Elton, particularly the article “Sir
Thomas More and the Opposition to Henry VIII.” Marius’s More is a
man obsessed with sex, a failed monk who could never forgive himself
for giving in to his sexual desires and marrying Jane Colt. Marius assumes
that More’s time at the Charterhouse represents an attempt by More to
become a monk and that it was his sexuality, and the demands of his fa-
ther, that prevented More from achieving this desire. Marius regards this
moment of frustration or failure as the key to More and suggests it cre-
ated a conflict that runs throughout the rest of More’s life. The evidence
that Marius advances for More’s conflicted state is an obsession with sex
that Marius suggests is an important feature of the antiheretical writings
More produced at the beginning of the 1530s. For example, Marius sug-
gests that “the Confutation rings with the clangour of More’s own re-
pressed sexuality.”14 The problem is that there is no real evidence that
More did “repress” his sexuality. He had two marriages, both of which, as
far as can be ascertained, were entirely happy. Marius suggests that More’s
second marriage, to Alice Middleton, “was probably a quiet and unob-
trusive way of living a life of sexual abstinence while he [More] remained
in the world” and that it may even have been “a continuing penance.”15
There is no historical evidence to back these claims. The fact that More’s
second marriage did not produce any children is not evidence that More
and Alice did not have sex. Marius’s biography is the mirror image of
Chambers’s Thomas More in that it builds castles in the sky on the basis of
limited historical records.
G. R. Elton shared Marius’s sense that More was a man caught be-
tween competing demands, but for Elton those demands were an obses-
sive hatred of heresy and a recognition of the need for reform.16 Elton’s
attitude to More was critical and strangely uncomprehending. It is clear
that he found it simply impossible to understand More as, or forgive him
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 6

6 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

for being, a man of reason, a humanist, the writer of Utopia, and a prin-
cipled opponent of the policies pursued by the Henrician regime in pur-
suit of Henry’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon. Both Marius and Elton
suggest that More was “happy” when he was imprisoned in the Tower of
London at the end of his life, since finally he could live as a monk. This
seems an unfortunate and belittling suggestion. More’s final letters, dis-
cussed in the conclusion of this study, indicated More feared death and
was desperate to return to his family. In his highly influential study, Re-
naissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare, Stephen Greenblatt pro-
duced an interpretation of More that is more nuanced than but essen-
tially similar to that of Elton. Again More is depicted as caught between
the playful humanist writer and the obsessive heresy hunter. Greenblatt
comments of More’s antiheretical work that “the possibility of playful,
subversive fantasy . . . is virtually destroyed.”17 Elton and Greenblatt both
see as a central element of More’s work and life a tension between the
medieval, which they implicitly relate to the campaign against heresy, and
humanism, which they see as modern or at least modernizing.
Recent studies of More have followed in the paths laid down on one
side by Chambers and on the other by Elton, Greenblatt, and Marius.
For example, the More of Peter Ackroyd’s The Life of Thomas More is,
like Chambers’s, one of the “last great exemplars of the medieval imagi-
nation.”18 There are two central problems to all of these approaches to
More. The first is a simplistic approach to the “medieval period,” invari-
ably treating it as homogeneous and conservative. For example, Marius
writes, “A thesis of this biography is that until his imprisonment More su-
ffered the severe inner struggle of a deeply divided soul. Perhaps the fun-
damental cause was that he struggled to combine medieval piety with the
invincible temptations of Renaissance secularism.”19 In this context “me-
dieval piety” implies a dated emphasis on monasticism and in particular
asceticism that any normal person would find less attractive than the
“temptations” of the Renaissance. Chambers’s apparent exception to this
rule is simply a product of his approval of what he saw as medieval homo-
geneity and piety. The second problem, exemplified in the approach that
these scholars have taken to More’s attitude to religion, is a marked ten-
dency to move beyond the available facts in order to support what are
extreme understandings of More — he is either saint or persecutor, a
humanist or medievalist, reformer or reactionary. Sophisticated writers
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 7

Introduction 7

like Greenblatt do produce more subtle versions of this dichotomy, but it

still exists in their work as an explanatory framework. John Guy’s study of
Thomas More, published in 2000, and his earlier work, The Public Career of
Sir Thomas More (1980), provide a clear-sighted correction to many of the
myths about More. Guy comments, “Writing about More presents an ex-
traordinary challenge.”20 There are, Guy argues, two reasons for this. First,
he suggests, More’s sainthood “obscures, rather than illuminates his his-
torical significance.”21 Second, many of the earliest sources and records of
More’s life have been strongly influenced by people for whom More’s
martyrdom was by far the most important aspect of his life.22
Writing Faith and Telling Tales: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work
of Thomas More is a study of More’s writing that places it within a tradition
of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century vernacular literature. In some
ways it therefore represents a return to the agenda pursued by Cham-
bers in Thomas More. The texts that I have chosen to discuss are eclectic,
designed to represent the traditions within which More wrote; I am not
claiming, however, that More had read, for example, the work of Reginald
Pecock. What I am suggesting throughout this volume is that many of
the concerns that More addressed in his writings are the same as those
that interested late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English writers.23
At the same time, unlike Chambers, I will argue that late medieval English
writing is not monolithic or homogeneous. More’s writing engages with
the issues and conflicts that interest authors as diverse as William Lang-
land, John Lydgate, and Geoffrey Chaucer. For More, reading and writing,
indeed life, were best understood as a pilgrimage, and, as with Chaucer’s
pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales, the important thing was to keep walk-
ing, talking, and listening to each other’s tales. More, like Chaucer, was
prepared to imagine and defend a promiscuous collection of tales and
tellers. The figures that More feared and fought were those like the Par-
doner in The Canterbury Tales, whose counterfeit, sterile tale and beguiling
offer to sell the pilgrims a new pardon “at every miles ende” threaten the
very existence of Chaucer’s merry company of storytellers.24 More re-
garded his opponents as latter-day Pardoners, peddlers in falsehood, en-
dangering the souls of those they attempted to seduce with their offers
of instant and immediate gratification, religious, political, and personal.
More’s commitment to the ideal of a community of storytellers is
born out of his engagement with English vernacular writing of the later
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 8

8 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and his civic humanism. The vernacu-
lar as it emerged during the fourteenth century developed a particular
sense of itself as offering a language that was an alternative to, and at
times more inclusive and authoritative than, learned Latin or other for-
eign languages. This can be illustrated by briefly examining a scene from
the C Text of Piers Plowman where the narrator, Will, and Patience sit
down to a meal, presided over by Reason, with a learned Friar. Scripture
offers them “food”—Augustine, Ambrose, and the four evangelists—
which the Friar rejects:

Ac of these mete the maystre myhte nat wel chewe;

Forthy eet he mete of more cost, mortrewes and potages.
Of that men myswonne they made hem wel at ese
Ac here sauce was ouer-sour and vnsauerly ygrounde
In a morter, post mortem, of many bittere peynes
Bote yf they synge for tho soules and wepe salte teres.25

The Friar desires food that is oversour and unsavory and will lead to
bitter pains after death. This episode reflects an important motif in
Langland’s work, which is the importance of simplicity over complexity.
The food the Friar desires is a metaphor for complex, corrupt, over-
cooked scholarly discourse that will ultimately lead to bitterness and
tears. Nicholas Watson comments, “Piers Plowman is . . . one of the first
works to argue in English against the formalism of authoritative struc-
tures developed in Latin. . . . In Piers Plowman we have both a demon-
stration of the moment at which English, notionally the language of
the ‘lewd,’ challenges this definition of its role, and an analysis of the
consequences.”26
The parable of the Friar and Scripture’s meal is about different kinds
of language and the authority they confer. It suggests a relationship be-
tween ancient Christian teaching and plain, simple wisdom while at the
same time criticizing linguistic complexity. Implicit in this moment is a
critique of clerical language and, by implication, of scholastic learning,
and a claim for the authority of a synergy between the classic Christian
teaching and simple or lewd wisdom. Vernacular writing of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries was not homogeneous, but it did consistently con-
tain a strain, perhaps particularly in relation to religious writing, that em-
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 9

Introduction 9

phasized the inclusive nature of writing in English.27 There is a sense in

the writing of authors like William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer that
English not only is a proper and appropriate language to write in but also
bears a relationship to the lived reality of the lives of ordinary people, the
lewd and everyday, a relationship that gives it a particular status and au-
thority. Late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century vernacular writing is ex-
perimental or tentative because its writers were testing in their work the
limits and possibilities of their language. This led to some writers cele-
brating the importance of the vernacular while others expressed anxiety
and concern about its spread. Piers Plowman and, in a very different way,
The Canterbury Tales push the limits of what it is possible to say and do in
English. More’s English writing needs to be seen as part of the same tra-
dition of vernacular writing as that of writers like Langland and Chau-
cer.28 In particular, it shares their sense of English as, at its best, combin-
ing classical Christian learning with popular sayings, fables, and tales to
create an authoritative ethical language.
As well as writing in the vernacular, More was also famous as a Lat-
inist and humanist scholar. His Latin writing forms an important part
of the history of humanism in England and Europe.29 Humanism is a
difficult concept to define. It claimed to represent a return to the sources
of classical learning, ad fontes, freed from medieval commentaries and
glosses. Humanism emphasized the educational importance of gram-
mar, rhetoric, and dialectic. This was because humanist scholars insisted
on the importance of the practical application of learning to society,
which required linguistic skills and eloquence. Humanists like More and
Erasmus were strongly influenced by Cicero and his insistence that the
learned should play an active part in the public sphere. This had impor-
tant implications for the kinds of intellectual labor that humanists tended
to value. James McConica comments that “the culture of humanism, with
its emphasis on the issues of the present, was entirely hostile to philo-
sophical system-building and abstract speculation.”30 This focus on the
present and practical was particularly important in relation to the politi-
cal thought of Northern European humanism, which stressed the Cicero-
nian understand of learning as, in Brendan Bradshaw’s words, a “moral
process— directed to the fulfilment of . . . human potential.”31
More and Erasmus shared an understanding of human potential
that was grounded in an Augustinian sense of the mutually supportive
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 10

10 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

natures of reason and revelation. For them the idea that human reason
was inherently and irredeemably sinful was anathema, and they both
consistently attacked fideism, the belief that faith and reason are incom-
patible. Central to More’s humanism was the ideal of friendship as an em-
bodiment of amicitia, or love, on the one hand, and reason on the other. In
textual terms the key representation of this ideal was the proverb as repre-
sented in Erasmus’s highly influential work Adages (first published 1500).
For Erasmus proverbs were pieces or shards of classical wisdom that
could, in theory, be shared by all. As Kathy Eden argues, for Erasmus,
“proverbs or adages encode over time and space a collective wisdom that
belongs equally to all members of a community.”32 Humanism for More
and Erasmus was not an abstract philosophy. It was a vital, exciting, and
reforming movement whose aim was nothing less than the renewal of
Christianity across Europe.
The vernacular and humanism are two key influences on More’s writ-
ing. In this introduction I will examine in detail two texts that More wrote
relatively early during his writing career, The Last Things (c. 1522) and the
Life of Pico (c. 1510), in order to illustrate More’s engagement with late me-
dieval English literature. These works have often been viewed as repre-
senting the two sides of More — the medieval and the humanist. I will,
however, suggest that it is important to understand them as united in em-
phasizing the devotional importance of the everyday, of the lived reality
of human life. In order to illustrate this argument in detail I will refer to a
number of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century play texts. Although
More never wrote a play, it has long been acknowledged that drama was
an important part of his life and work.33 Early Tudor drama exemplifies
late medieval English vernacular culture in its heterogeneity and critical
engagement with Christianity. In particular, the issues central to the poet-
ics and ethos of the work of Chaucer and his contemporaries were staged
in such plays as Everyman, the N Town Play, and the Digby Mary Magdalene.

Vernacular Writing and The Last Things

More’s engagement with English vernacular writing was more complex

than is sometimes acknowledged. One of his earliest works was “A Mery
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 11

Introduction 11

Gest How a Sergeaunt Wolde Lerne to Be a Frere,” possibly written in

1509.34 This relatively short poem tells the story of a Sergeant of Law’s
attempts to arrest a debtor by pretending to be a friar. It opens by sug-
gesting that people should stick to their trades, since they will make fools
of themselves if they do not:

Whan an hatter
Wyll go smater,
In phylosophy,
Or a pedlar,
Waxe a medlar,
In theolegy,
All that ensewe,
Suche craftes newe,
They dryue so fere a cast,
That euermore,
They do therfore,
Beshrewe themselfe at laste.35

This passage could be regarded as expressing a conservative medieval

attitude to society— hatters and peddlers should know their place and
keep to it. Certainly the poem ends by advising its listeners to reject in-
novation and not to repeat the Sergeant’s mistake:

I wolde auyse,
And counseyll euery man,
His owne crafte vse,
All newe refuse,
And vtterly let them gone:
Playe not the frere,
Now make good cheere,
And welcome euery chone.36

The narrator of “A Mery Gest” opens and closes his poem with con-
ventional statements of conservative social wisdom. This is despite the
fact, which the narrator fails to notice, that the poem’s story does not
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 12

12 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

endorse the morality encapsulated in the poem’s opening and closing

remarks. Instead the story depicts a world of linguistic play and physi-
cal comedy. At a basic level the sergeant does not pretend to be a friar
in order to improve his social standing. His performance is a product
of his existing social role. It is to fulfill his duty as a sergeant of law that
he dresses as a friar. The plot of “A Mery Gest” subtly but firmly under-
mines its narrator’s didactic morality by suggesting that “playing the
friar” may be necessary to maintain social norms and rules.
As soon as the Sergeant, dressed as a friar, attempts to arrest the
debtor, a fight breaks out:

They rente and tere,

Eche other here,
And claue togyder fast,
Tyll with luggynge,
Halynge and tugynge,
They fell doune both at last.
Than on the grounde,
Togyder rounde,
With many sadde stroke,
They roll and rumble,
They tourne and tumble,
Lyke pygges in a poke.37

The final image of this line is perhaps intended to remind More’s reader
of Chaucer’s description of the fight between the two clerks and the
miller in The Reeve’s Tale, in particular through its use of the phrase “pigs
in a poke.”38 For Chaucer’s Reeve and More’s narrator the violence that
erupts at the end of their texts raises questions about the amount of
control they have over their own works. In both cases tales told by advo-
cates of a conservative morality based upon order and restraint under-
mine that morality. The violence that breaks out at the end of The Reeve’s
Tale is excessive, disturbing, and amusing. It generates textual pleasure
that clearly exceeds the didactic requirements of the Reeve’s message,
which is encapsulated in the two moralizing proverbs with which he con-
cludes his tale.39 There is also no need for the narrator of “A Mery Gest”
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 13

Introduction 13

to provide a detailed account of the fight between the Sergeant and the
Debtor in order to argue for the permanence of the existing social order.
It is the requirement to entertain that drives More’s description of the
fight, with its Skeltonic rhymes and jangles.
The tension between the form of “A Mery Gest” and its narrator’s
morality comes into particular focus in the poem’s emphasis upon the
Sergeant’s success in impersonating a friar:

So was he dyght,
That no man myght,
Hym for a frere deny,
He dropped and doked,
He spake and loked,
So relygyously.
Yet in a glasse
Of he wolde passe,
He toted and he pered:
His herte for pryde,
Lepte in his syde
To se how well he frered.40

This passage suggests that being a friar is largely a matter of performance.

More invents a new word, “frered,” to encapsulate the extent to which the
Sergeant’s playacting is real. In the process the poem again puts pressure
on its narrator’s conservative social ethos. In creating a new word is not
More meddling, mixing things up that should be kept apart? What right
does More, as a lawyer, have to play the part of a word maker? Clearly the
Sergeant is, in one sense, a figure for More, and the former’s pride in his
“friaring” is a self-deprecating joke on More’s “poeting.”
“A Mery Gest” was one of the first works that More wrote. It is easy
to see it as simple, even naïve. In particular, the poem’s apparent moraliz-
ing on the importance of knowing one’s place could be seen as reflecting
a conservative medieval mind-set. In recent years, however, scholars such
as David Aers, Lee Patterson, and James Simpson have ably critiqued the
idea that in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries people uncritically
accepted the need to maintain the status quo, social, political, or religious.41
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 14

14 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

“A Mery Gest” can be seen as a typically medieval work, but only on the
basis that it offers the modern reader the temptation of medievalism: the
possibility of reading without proper care within an existing set of histori-
cal and critical assumptions. In “A Mery Gest” More is deliberately and
self-consciously mocking a conservative social morality that emphasized
the permanency of the existing social order, and he is doing so by deploy-
ing the resources of late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English ver-
nacular writing. Indeed it is arguable that it is the conservative morality
of the opening and closing passages of “A Mery Gest” that are modern
or, more accurately, typical of the sixteenth century, while the critical,
witty middle section of the poem evokes the writing of Chaucer and per-
haps specifically The Reeve’s Tale. More is a medieval writer, and it is his
critical engagement with the literature of the late fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries that provides him with the intellectual resources to critique the
emerging political, cultural, and religious norms of the sixteenth century.
More wrote The Last Things at a stage of his life similar to that during
which he wrote Richard III and Utopia. It shares with these works a con-
cern with the ethics of language and the nature of a good life. The Last
Things was first published in 1557 as part of William Rastell’s edition of
More’s English Works. In this work Rastell suggests More wrote The Last
Things in 1522. This does seem likely. In particular, the reference in The
Last Things to “a great Duke” has been interpreted as an allusion to the
duke of Buckingham, who was executed for treason in May 1521. The Last
Things is often regarded as an unfinished work and was presented as such
by Rastell in his edition of More’s works. Possibly, however, it is more
than simply coincidence that the final chapter, dealing with the sin of
sloth, is short and breaks off before it is finished. Does not an unfinished
chapter perfectly illustrate the dangers of slothfulness? The two chapters
preceding sloth concern gluttony and covetousness. They are the longest
chapters in the work, coveting textual space and consuming narrative
motivation so that little of either is left for Sloth. The Last Things is not a
simple work of conventional piety. It raises questions, for example, simi-
lar to those Chaucer poses in The Parson’s Tale in relation to specific forms
of Christian writing, and in particular penitential teaching as a key aspect
of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century religious practice. The Last Things
creates an image of a Christian textual community united in the devo-
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 15

Introduction 15

tional labor of reading. In the process it critiques the emphasis on clerical

authority articulated, for example, in the play Everyman.
The Last Things opens with an introduction that includes a discus-
sion of Christian speech. More comments that everything has its time
and it is preferable not to speak rather than to participate in a conversa-
tion that is ungodly. He goes on, however, to argue,

Yet better were it then holdynge of thy tong, properly to speake, and
with some good grace and pleasant fashion, to break into some bet-
ter matter: by whiche thy speache and talking, thou shalt not onely
profite thy selfe as thou sholdest haue done by thy well minded si-
lence, but also amende the whole audience, which is a thyng farre
better and of muche more merite.42

In this passage More is seeking to justifying the printing of The Last

Things as an act of Christian devotion. He imagines the emergence of a
Christian community through the shared reading of his work. In particu-
lar, The Last Things consistently deploys witty and comic language along-
side devotional discourse to create a diverse text that happily mixes to-
gether different forms and genres.43 More, like Augustine, while fully
accepting the doctrine of original sin, retained a sense of the salvific po-
tential of sensuous human labor and in particular language.44 This placed
him against those fideistic traditions of late medieval religious thought
that regarded human wit and imagination as irredeemably sinful and
corrupt.
Having discussed the virtue of good speaking, More goes on to re-
ject the imposition of authority upon popular or public speech:

If thou can find no proper meane to breake the tale, than excepte
thy bare authoritie sufficient to commaunde silence, it were pera-
duenture good, rather to keepe a good silence thy self, than blunt
forth rudely, and yrryte them to anger, which shal happely therfore
not let to talke on, but speake much the more, less thei should seme
to leue at thy commaundement. And better were it for the while to
let one wanton woorde passe vncontrolled, than geue occasyon of
twain.45
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 16

16 Writing Faith and Telling Tales

More would rather the tale continue than impose a violent, disruptive si-
lence on the community of Christian tale-tellers. In particular, The Last
Things, despite its focus on the seven deadly sins, is not a penitential work.
It does not ask its readers to focus obsessively on their personal sinful-
ness, and its representation of a good Christian life is far more active
and engaged than that of some other early Tudor religious works. The
Last Things focuses on the need for a Christian to be active in this world.
This emphasis upon the active over the contemplative or penitential is
ultimately based on the christocentric nature of More’s religious beliefs
and in particular on the importance he placed upon Christ’s role as a
teacher. Not for More the suffering, relatively passive, “domestic” Christ
of works like Nicholas Love’s immensely popular The Mirror of the Blessed
Life of Jesus Christ.
More’s emphasis on reason extends to his understanding of the
proper approach to Scripture. The phrase “four last things,” referring to
death, judgment, hell, and heaven, alludes to Ecclesiasticus 7:36: “Re-
member thy last thinges, and thou shalte neuer sin in this world.” More
tells the reader in the opening pages of his work that remembering the
last things is a “sure medicine.” He then develops this metaphor, compar-
ing the true healing powers of Ecclesiasticus 7:36 with those of human
doctors:

The phisicion sendeth his bill to the poticary, and therin writeth
sometime a costlye receite of many strange herbes and rootes, fet out
of far countreis, long lien drugges, al strength worn out, and some
none such to be goten. But thys phisicion sendeth his bil to thy selfe,
no strange thing therin, nothing costly to bie, nothing farre to fet,
but to be gathered al times of the yere in the gardein of thyne owne
soule.46

More in this passage seems to be drawing a relatively simple dichotomy

between the physical and spiritual. The passage tempts the reader to as-
sume that the biblical doctor works on the soul in much the same way as
the secular doctor works on the body. The two doctors, however, are in
practice quite different. The secular doctor’s cures are largely powerless,
with the patient becoming involved in a series of exchanges that ulti-
Betteridge-00intro_Layout 1 10/25/13 2:57 PM Page 17

Introduction 17

mately produce nothing and are almost entirely symbolic. Certainly there
is no actual physical cure to be found in the secular doctor’s treatments.
The biblical doctor, who is the words “Remember thy last thinges, and
thou shalte neuer sin in this world” works internally and constantly. These
words produce their own herbs, “deth, dome, pain and ioy,” which cure
the soul, and in the process the body, of sin.47
More repeats the message later in the opening, telling the reader that

this shorte medicine is of marueylous force able to kepe vs al our

life fro sin. The phisicion canne not geue no one medicine to euery
man to kepe him from sicknes, but to diuers men diuers, by reson
of the diuersity of diuers complexions. This medicine serueth every
man. The phisicion dothe but gesse and coniecture that his receipt
shal do good: but thys medicine is vndoubtedly sure.48

More’s emphasis on “diversity” here is important, since it indicates a key

element of the medicinal value of the last things, which is their ability to
operate like a proverb or adage. All people can take/read this medicine.
Christian healing is open to anyone prepared to engage in the devotional
labor of reflecting upon the last things. The metaphor of Scripture as
medicine that More deploys in the opening of The Last Things is rela-
tively simple and at the same time potentially far-reaching. It reminds
one of the meal offered by Scripture to Will and Patience in Piers Plow-
man. Clearly More is creating a tension between the medicinal properties
of the powders, herbs, and potions offered by learned secular doctors
and the medicinal properties of the last things, which are spiritual. For
the last things to be effective, however, those “taking them” must work
beyond or through the metaphor, to make the spiritual medicine real or
potent. The metaphor of the two kinds of medicine is also a metaphor
for different kinds of reading and writing. Some texts, perhaps particu-
larly penitential works, list the deadly sins, often in great detail, and com-
mand readers to renounce them.49 The Last Things deploys the metaphor
of Scripture as medicine to invite readers to exercise their reason; the last
things are healing only if internalized, thought about, and acted upon.
It is the reader who needs to provide the actual healing, through active
engagement with More’s text.
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