Contrasting Wolsey and More

Press, 25 June 1983, Page 18

Contrasting Wolsey and More

The Statesman and the Fanatic: Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More. By Jasper Ridley. Constable, 1982. 293 pp. ; Illustrations. Notes, bibliography ■ and index. $43.95.

(Reviewed by

Naylor Hillary)

King Henry VIII was served by three remarkable statesmen — Tliomas Wolsey, Thomas More, and Thomas Cromwell. All eventually suffered the King’s wrath; all have enjoyed uncertain reputations with the changing fashions of history in the subsequent 400 years. Jasper Ridley has written a long, weighty book dealing with two of the Thomases — Wolsey and More. It is rich in detail, forthright in opinion, and almost always clear and entertaining to read. The object has been to reassess, yet again, the respective characters of Wolsey and More — to turn upside down the modern idea that Wolsey was an unscrupulous politician and More a saint. “Wolsey,” he writes, “is the balanced, cynical, efficient administrator and power-politician.” Ridley can imagine Wolsey as a success in any country in any century, at home as the chairman of a nationalised industry in Britain, or as a member of the Politburo in the Soviet Upion. “He would have paid himself an enormous salary and allotted himself gijeat privileges and perks, but would have managed things extremely well and have been worth every penny that was paid to him.” “By contrast,” he writes, “More is

the fanatical counter-revolutionary.” More in the twentieth century “is a far more frightening picture.” More has been claimed as an early socialist philosopher, as a champion of free speech. He was the hero of the play and the film “A Man for All Seasons.” Ridley argues, convincingly, that More in his lifetime strongly disapproved of personal freedom, individual conscience, and religious toleration. As an author he “believed in the banning, seizure and burning of unorthodox books.” On matters of religious toleration, “he believed that it was as necessary to burn heretics as to kill Turks.” Of the two, More was the scholar, the lawyer’s son who mortified the flesh (including his own) in the name of salvation, and whose flawless logic in debate covered a fanatical determination to crush opposition. Wolsey, the butcher’s son, was relatively tolerant and merciful — easy-going, self-indulgent, and wholly lacking in idealism and fanaticism. Yet Wolsey was priest and cardinal, and no theologian; More, the layman, was the learned theologian and deeply religious man. Generally the story is told through alternate chapters devoted to Wolsey and More. Thanks perhaps to the invention of printing about the time the two Thomases were born in the 14705, there is no shortage of material. Oddities of history emerge. For instance, More went to Oxford at the age of 14, probably to Canterbury

College which occupied the site of the modern college of Christ Church. Wolsey grew up in a household whose butchering business was beset by regulations and price controls, imposed by the nobles and clergy of the Privy Council, and beset by the corruption bred by excessive controls. One of the best sections of the book deals with More’s “Utopia,” a title that has passed into the language as the name for an ideal society, but a book that is more often mentioned than read. Perhaps it should be read. Some of More’s ideas about the perfect society might stand re-examination in the late twentieth century. More has no glimmer of the modern Western idea that the State exists to serve its citizens. Rather, the citizens serve the State. Utopia is the planner’s dream. Every man and woman is compelled to work. Family size is fixed. Lawyers have been expelled. No idle games are permitted. The penalty for adultery is slavery or death. Generally, slavery rather than death is the penalty for crime and the harsh treatment of slaves makes it a fine deterrent. The penalty for discussing politics outside the Senate is death. One might go on. “Utopia” emerges as a mixture of sociology textbook and foretaste of a Marxist society. Ridley’s reassessment of the horrors of an ideal, planned society, conceived by a well intentioned fanatic, gives a grim contemporary point to a history that is also rich and entertaining reading for its own sake.