Page images
PDF
EPUB

how beautifully does Erasmus describe his mode of living in this very place :—

"He converseth with his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not a man living so affectionate to his children as he. He loveth his old wife as if she were a young maid; he persuadeth her to play on the lute, and so with the like gentleness he ordereth his family. Such is the excellence of his temper, that whatsoever happeneth that could not be helped, he loveth, as if nothing could have happened more happily. You would say there was in that place Plato's academy; but I do his house an injury in comparing it to Plato's academy, where there were only disputations of numbers and geometrical figures, and sometimes of moral virtues. I should rather call his house a school, or university of Christian religion; for though there is none therein but readeth and studyeth the liberal sciences, their special care is piety and virtue."

The king was used to visit his "beloved chancellor" here for days together, to admire his terrace overhanging the Thames, to row in his state barge, to ask opinions upon divers matters, and it is said that the royal answer to Luther was composed under the chancellor's revising eye. Still, the penetrating vision of Sir Thomas was in no degree obscured by this glitter. One day, the king came unexpectedly to Chelsea, and having dined, walked with Sir Thomas for the space of an hour in the garden, having his arm about his neck. We pleased ourselves with the notion that they walked where then we stood! Well might such condescension cause his son

The conduct of this great man's house was a model to all, and as near an approach to his own Utopia as might well be. Erasmus says, "I should rather call! his house a school or university of Christian religion, for though there is none therein but readeth and studyeth the liberal sciences, their special care is piety and virtue; there is no quarreling or intemperate words heard; none seem idle; which household discipline that worthy gentleman doth not govern, but with all kind and courteous benevolence," The servant-men abode on one side of the house, the women on another, and met at prayer time, or on church festivals, when More would read and expound to them. "He suffered no cards or dice, but gave each one his garden-spot for relaxation, or set them to sing, or play music." He had an affection for all who truly served him, and his daughter's nurse is as affectionately remembered in his letters when from home as are they themselves. "Thomas More sendeth greeting to his most dear daughters Margaret. Elizabeth, and Cecily; and to Margaret Giggs, as dear to him as if she were his own," are his words in one letter; and his valued and trustworthy domestics appear in the family pictures of the family by Holbein. They requited his attachment by truest fidelity and love; and his daughter, Margaret, in her last passionate interview with her father on his way to the Tower, was succeeded by Margaret Giggs and a maid servant, who embraced and kissed their condemned master, " of

Roper-for whom he entertained so warm an affection to congratulate his father upon such condescension, and to remind him that he had never seen his majesty approach such familiarity with any one, save once, when he was seen to walk arm in arm with Cardinal Wolsey. "I thank our Lord," answered Sir Thomas, "I find his grace my very good lord, indeed; and I do believe, he doth as singularly love me as any subject within the realm; however, son Roper, I may tell thee I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head should win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go off."

With the exception of his own family, (and his wife formed an exception here,) there are few indeed of his cotemporaries, notwithstanding the eulogiums they are prone to heap upon him, who understood the elevated and unworldly character of this extraordinary man.

The Duke of Norfolk coming one day to dine with him, found him in Chelsea Church, singing in the choir, with his surplice on.

66

"What! what !" exclaimed the

duke, What, what, my Lord Chancellor a parish clerk!—a parish clerk! you dishonor the king and his office." And how exquisite his reply: Nay, you may not think your master and mine will be offended with me for serving God his master, or thereby count his office dishonored." Another reply to the same abject noble is well graven on our memory. postulated with him, like many of his other friends, for braving the king's displeasure.

66

[ocr errors]

He ex

By the mass, Master More," he said, "it is perilous striving with princes; therefore I wish you somewhat to incline to the king's pleasure, for indignatio principis mors est." "And is that all, my lord?" replied this man, so much above all paltry considerations; "then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this-that I may die to-day, and you to-morrow."

He took great delight in beautifying Chelsea Church, although he had a private chapel of his own; and when last there they told us the painted window had been his gift. It must have been a rare sight to see the Chancellor of England singing with the choir; and yet there was a fair share of pomp in the manner of his servitor

whom he said after, it was homely but very lovingly bowing at his lady's pew, when the ser

done." Of these and other of his servants Erasmus remarks, "after Sir Thomas More's death, none ever was touched with the least suspicion of any evil fame.”

vice of the mass was ended, and saying,

[ocr errors][merged small]
[graphic][merged small][subsumed]

he took his seat by his son's side, and in another moment the boat was flying through the waters. For some time he spoke no word, but communed with and

after he resigned the great seal of England, (of which his wife knew nothing,) Sir Thomas presented himself at the pew door, and, after the fashion of his servitor, quaintly said, "Madam, my lord is gone.' "strengthened his great heart by holy The vain woman could not comprehend his meaning, which, when, during their short walk home, he fully explained, she was greatly pained thereby, lamenting it with exceeding bitterness of spirit.

We fancied we could trace a Gothic 'door or window in the wall; but our great desire would have been to discover the water-gate from which he took his departure the morning he was summoned to Lambeth to take the oath of supremacy. True to what he believed right, he offered up his prayers and confessions in Chelsea Church, and then returning to his own house, took an affectionate farewell of his wife and children, forbidding them to accompany him to the water-gate, as was their custom, fearing, doubtless, that his mighty heart could not sustain a prolonged interview. Who could paint the silent parting between him and all he loved so well-the boat waiting at the foot of the stairs-the rowers in their rich liveries, while their hearts, heavy with apprehension for the fate of him they served, still trusted that nothing could be found to harm so good a master-the pale and earnest countenance of "son Roper," wondering at the calmness, at such a time, which more than all other things bespeaks the master mind. For a moment his hand lingered on the gate, and in fastening the simple latch his fingers trembled, and then

thoughts; then looking straight into his son Roper's eyes, while his own brightened with a glorious triumph, he exclaimed in the fullness of his rich-toned voice, "I thank our Lord, the field is won!" It was no wonder that, overwhelmed with apprehension, his son-in-law could not apprehend his meaning then, but afterward bethought him that he signified how he had conquered the world.

The Abbot of Westminster took him that same day into custody, on his refusal to "take the king as head of his Church;" and upon his repeating this refusal four days afterward, he was committed to the Tower. Then, indeed, these heretofore bowers of bliss echoed to the weak and wavering complaints of his proud wife, who disturbed him also in his prison by her desires, so vain and so worldly, when compared with the elevated feelings of his dear daughter Margaret.

How did the fond foolish woman seek to share his purpose? "Seeing," she said, "you have a house at Chelsea, a right fair house, your library, your garden, your orchard, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in company with me, your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I marvel that you, who have been always taken for so wise a man, can be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, and, too,

MORE'S TOMB.

when you might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favor and good-will both of the king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned men of the realm have done."

And then, not even angered by her folly, seeing how little was given her to understand, he asked her if the house in Chelsea was any nearer heaven than the gloomy one he then occupied ? ending his pleasant yet wise parleying with a simple question:

"Tell me," he said, "good Mistress Alice, how long do you think might we live and enjoy that same house?"

She answered, "Some twenty years." "Truly," he replied, "if you had said some thousand years, it might have been somewhat; and yet he were a very bad merchant who would put himself in danger to lose eternity for a thousand years. How much the rather if we are not sure to enjoy it one day to an end?"

your absence? Surely the remembrance of your manner of life passed among us-your holy conversationyour wholesome counsels-your examples of virtue, of which there is hope that they do not only persevere with you, but that they are by God's grace much more increased."

After the endurance of fifteen months' imprisonment, he was arraigned, tried, and found guilty of denying the king's supremacy. Sir Thomas More was beheaded, in the bright sunshine of the month of July, on its fifth day, 1535, on Tower Hill, the king remitting the disgusting quartering of the quivering flesh because of his "high office." When told of the king's "mercy," "Now, God forbid," he said, "the king should use any more such to any of my friends; and God bless all my posterity from such pardons."

One man, of all the crowd who wept at his death, reproached him with a decision he had given in Chan

cery. More, nothing discomposed, replied, that if it were still to do he would give the same decision. This happened twelve months before.

While the last scene was enacting on Tower Hill, the king, who had walked in this very garden with his arm round the neck which by his command the ax had severed, was playing at tables in Whitehall, Queen Anne Boleyn looking on; and when told that Sir Thomas More was dead, casting his eyes upon the pretty fool that had glittered in his pageants, he said, "Thou art the cause of this man's death." The coWARD! to seek to turn upon a thing so weak as that, the heavy sin which clung to his own soul!

Some say the body lies in Chelsea Church, beneath the tomb we have sketched.

[graphic]

Others tell that his remains were interred in the Tower, and some record that the head was sought and preserved by that same daughter Margaret, who caused it to be buried in the family vault of the Ropers, It is for the glory of women that his in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury, daughter Margaret, while she loved and and they add a pretty legend how that, honored him past all telling, strengthened when his head was upon London-bridge, his noble nature; for, writing him during Margaret would be rowed beneath it, and, his fifteen months' imprisonment in the nothing horrified at the sight, say aloud, tower, she asks, in words not to be for-"That head has layde many a time in my gotten, "What do you think, most dear father, doth comfort us at Chelsey in this

lappe; would to God, would to God, it
would fall into my lappe as I
passe under

now," and the head did so fall, and she carried it in her "lappe" until she placed it in her husband's, "son Roper's" vault, at Canterbury.*

The king took possession of these fair grounds at Chelsea, where had so frequently been gathered "a choice company of men distinguished by their genius and learning," and by him was presented to Sir William Pawlett, and ultimately to Sir Hans Sloane, who obtained it in 1738, and after keeping it but two years razed it to the ground; an unhappy want of reverence on the part of the great naturalist for the home of so many great men. There is a print of it by J. Knyff, in 1699, which we copy; it shows some old features, but it had then been enlarged and altered. Erasmus has well described it as it was in More's lifetime. It had a "chapel, a library, and a gallery, called the New Buildings, a good distance from his main house, wherein his custom was to busy himself in prayer and meditation whensoever he was at leisure." Heywood, in his Il Moro, (Florence, 1556,) describes "the garden as wonderfully charming, both

The Ropers lived at Canterbury, in St. Dunstan's-street. The house is destroyed, and a brewery occupies its site; but the picturesque old gateway, of red brick, still remains, as seen in the above engraving. Margaret Roper, the noble-hearted, learned, and favorite daughter of More, resided here with her husband

until her death, in 1544, nine years after the execution of her father, when she was buried in the family vault at St. Dunstan's, where she had reverently placed the head of her father. The story of her piety is thus told by Cresacre More, in his life of his grandfather, Sir Thomas: "His head having remained about a month upon London Bridge, and being to be cast into the Thames, because room should be made for divers others, who in plentiful sort suffered martyrdom for the same supremacy shortly after, it was bought by his daughter Margaret, lest, as she stoutly affirmed before the council, being called before them after for the matter, it should be food for fishes; which she buried where she thought fittest." Anthony-a-Wood says that she preserved it in a leaden box, and placed it in her tomb "with great devotion;" and in 1715 Dr. Rawlinson fold Herne, the antiquary, that he had seen it there "enclosed in an iron grate." This was fully confirmed in 1835, when the chancel of the church being repaired, the Roper vault was opened, and several persons descended into it, and saw the skull in a leaden box, something like a bee-hive, open in the front, and which was placed in a square recess in the wall, with an iron grating before it.

[graphic]

ROPER'S HOUSE.

from the advantages of its site, for from one part almost the whole of the noble city of London was visible; and from the other the beautiful Thames, with green meadows and woody eminences all around; and also for its own beauty, for it was crowned with an almost perpetual verdure." At one side was a small green eminence to command the prospect. After confiscating the remainder of his property, the king indulged his petty tyranny still further by imprisoning Sir Thomas's daughter Margaret, "both because she kept her father's head for a relic, and that she meant to set her father's works in print."

We were calling to mind more minute particulars of the charities and good deeds of this great man, when, standing at the moment opposite a grave where some loving hand had planted two standard rose-trees, we suddenly heard a chant of children's voices, the infant scholars singing their little hymn-the tune, too, was a well-known and popular melody, and very sweet, yet sad of sound-it was just such music as, for its simplicity, would have been welcome to the mighty dead; and as we entered among the little songsters, the past faded away, and we found ourselves speculating on the hopeful present.

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »