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Tournai and Tyranny: Imperial Kingship and Critical Humanism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

T. F. Mayer
T. F. Mayer
Affiliation:
Augustana College, Illinois
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Extract

Almost from the first, the reign of Henry VIII witnessed high views of kingship. Some instances in the first decade of his rule have attracted much attention, but one critical episode has been overlooked. In the course of the occupation of Tournai between 1513 and 1519, Henry developed and successfully tested a complete theory of imperial kingship, partly cast in a new language of sovereignty. Drawing in part on the French models liberally strewn about the English cultural landscape, Henry asserted all the prerogatives of a rex imperator not only against the Tournaisiens but more significantly against Leo X. This new model kingship and its implications for royal relations with the church alarmed some of Henry's agents, especially Ralph Sampson. Sampson contented himself with expostulating about the threat to his conscience to his chief, Thomas Wolsey, but others showed more alarm. One of Sampson's friends, Thomas More, a similarly junior but rising functionary, offered two meditations on the potential dangers of Henry's kingship, going much beyond the abstract admonitions against tyranny of his Latin epigrams.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , June 1991 , pp. 257 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 See especially Guy, J. A., ‘Henry VIII and the praemumre manoeuvres of 1530–1531’, English Historical Review, XCVII (1982), 498Google Scholar, and ‘Thomas Cromwell and the intellectual origins of the Henrician revolution’, in Fox, Alistair and Guy, John (eds.), Reassessing the Henrician age: humanism, politics and reform 1500–1550 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 166–7Google Scholar, although Guy has modified his views in Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), p. 110Google Scholar; and the woodcut at the head of Stephen Hawes's poem on the coronation reproduced in Gluck, Florence W. and Morgan, Alice B. (eds.), Stephen Howes: the minor poems (Early English Text Society, no. 271, 1974), p. 80Google Scholar. (Dale Hoak is at work on the problem of imperial iconography.) Ullmann, Walter, ‘This realm of England is an empire’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxx (1979), 179Google Scholar, followed by Bernard, George, ‘The pardon of the clergy reconsidered’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XXXVII (1986), 262Google Scholar, made much of the claims in the revised coronation oath, but this probably cannot date from so early in Henry's reign. MissLockwood, S. G. discovered that Henry worked from the version of the oath in The Statutes. Prohemium Johamis Rastell (London, J. Rastell, 1527; STC 9518)Google Scholar, and I have confirmed that the same oath did not appear in either the 1517 or 1519 version of this work, although it might still have circulated in some other form before that.

2 Alistair Fox argues a close connexion between these two works, but the case is not original to him. Thomas More. History and providence (New Haven, 1982), esp. pp. 75–7Google Scholar. Cf. Sylvester, Richard (ed.), History of Richard III (Complete works of St. Thomas More, II, 1963), lxvGoogle Scholar.

3 Surtz, Edward and Hexter, J. H. (eds.), Utopia (Complete works of St. Thomas More, IV, 1965), 192–3Google Scholar and cf. pp. 124–5.

4 This analysis expands suggestion, Guy's in ‘Cromwell and the Henrician revolution’, esp. p. 178Google Scholar.

5 James, Mervyn, English politics and the concept of honour 1485–1642, Past and Present supplement, III (1978), I, 6, 17–8Google Scholar, 31. For Henry's francophilia as a source of models for conduct and institutions, see Starkey, David, The reign of Henry VIII. Personalities and politics (London, 1985), p. 77Google Scholar, and Guy, , ‘The French king's council’, in Griffiths, R. A. and Sherborne, J. (eds.), Kings and nobles in the later middle ages. A tribute to Charles Ross (Gloucester, 1986), p. 278Google Scholar. Knecht, R.J. emphasizes the importance of cultural borrowings from France in the sixteenth century, although he discusses only the impact of Huguenot political thought. The lily and the rose: French influences on Tudor England (Birmingham, 1987)Google Scholar. I am grateful to Professor Knecht for sending me a copy of this, his inaugural lecture in the University of Birmingham.

6 According to Slavin, A. J., ‘Craw v. Ramsey: new light on an old debate’, in Baxter, Stephen B. (ed.), England's rise to greatness 1660–1763 (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 31Google Scholar, 48, such hybrid language should be expected at least as late as the restoration.

7 David, Marcel, La souverainete et les limites juridiques du pouvoir monarchique du IXe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1954), pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

8 Phillipe Wielant is a likely candidate, as the most serious civil lawyer among the imperial delegation in Bruges. See Surtz, Edward, ‘Saint Thomas More and his Utopian embassy of 1515’, Catholic Historical Review, XXXIX (1953), 274–5Google Scholar, 280 and esp. 284–6. For the ‘Collectanea’, see Nicholson, Graham, ‘The nature and function of historical argument in the Henrician reformation’, Cambridge University, PhD. thesis, 1977Google Scholar.

9 Hocquet, Adolphe, Tournai et toccupation anglaise (Tournai, 1901), p. 104Google Scholar, treaty of capitulation, 23 Sept. 1513. It is summarized in Cruickshank, E. G., The English occupation of Tournai 1513–1519 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 5–6Google Scholar, 37–9, but without this precise claim. Cf. Public Record Office (PRO), SP 31/8/144, fos. 268–9.

10 PRO, State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII (SP) 1/230, fo. 65r-v. (Brewer, J. S., Gairdner, J. and Brodie, R. H. (eds.), Letters and papers foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII [London, 1862–1932Google Scholar; hereafter LP], I, no. 2319.) The oath is summarized in Cruickshank, , English occupation, p. 40Google Scholar.

11 David, , Souveraineté, p. 78Google Scholar. The relevant articles of the treaty are in Rymer, Thomas (ed.), Foedera (London, 1726–1735), IX, 762–3Google Scholar, 788–90 and VI, 221. Maurice Keen reflects the standard analysis in ‘Diplomacy’, in Harriss, G. L. (ed.), Henry V: the practice of kingship (Oxford, 1985), pp. 181–91Google Scholar.

12 Chaplais, Pierre, ‘Some documents regarding the fulfilment and interpretation of the treaty of Bretigny (1361–1369)’, Camden Miscellany, XIX, 1952 (3rd ser. vol. LXXX), pp. 53–4, 61, 70Google Scholar.

13 For the original visitation, see Beaucourt, Gaston du Fresne de, Histoire de Charles VII, vol. 5, Le roi victorieux (1449–1453) (Paris, 1890), pp. 335–6Google Scholar.

14 Although Henry has been faulted from that day to this for being too generous in these confirmations, he was only following the precedent set by French monarchs who granted large privileges (or confirmed those of their ancestors) at their accessions. Chevalier, Bernard, ‘The bormes villes and the king's council in fifteenth century France’, in Highfield, J. R. L. and Jeffs, Robin (eds.), The crown and local communities in England and France in the fifteenth century (Gloucester, 1981), pp. 113–16Google Scholar.

15 SP 1/113, fos. 242r–4r.

16 Nor did it take Henry very long to adopt the argument from the common weal to justify financial impositions. SP 1/15, fo. 36r, Henry VIII-Jerningham, 26 Mar., s.a.(LP, 2, no. 3055). It is of great interest, too, that when Henry's officers reported problems in Tournai which required money to remedy, they did not realize the importance of appealing to the common weal. Chevalier asserts against Henry See that Charles VII and Louis XI either had no coherent urban policy, or at least did not intend to keep the bonnes villes under their thumb. Chevalier, , Les bonnes villes de France du XlVe au XVIe siecle (Paris, 1982), pp. 110Google Scholar, 118–24, and cf. PP. 101–2 for an even stronger claim that the kings were pursuing an ‘operation de seduction’ for the sole benefit of the towns.

17 The closest English analogue again stems from Edward III, but a statute of 1354 gave an offending borough three chances before forfeiting its charter. Statutes of the realm (London, 1817), I, 346–7Google Scholar. This legislation was in part a reaction to Edward's much more high-handed dealing with Southampton fifteen years earlier, which Susan Reynolds argues ‘probably seemed less fitting as autonomous government became more established’ (Reynolds, S., An introduction to the history of English medieval towns (Oxford, 1977), pp. 112–13)Google Scholar. Elton, G. R., Reform and renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the commonweal (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 106–9Google Scholar and Tittler, Robert, ‘The emergence of urban policy, 1536–58’, in Tittler, Robert and Loach, Jennifer (eds.), The mid-Tudor policy c. 1540–1560 (London, 1980), pp. 74–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar recount the much more supportive attitude of the crown towards the towns later in Henry's reign, during Thomas Cromwell's regime. Freedom to make ordinances without royal interference and handle finances was not usually spelled out in borough charters, which suggests that neither presented problems to either crown or borough, at least not on the scale of Tournai. See the table in Beresford, Maurice, Mew towns of the middle ages: town plantation in England, Wales, and Gascony (New York, 1967), p. 205Google Scholar. Clark, Peter and Slack, Paul argue that before 1600 charters were taken as guaranteeing the autonomy of boroughs. English towns in transition 1500–1700 (Oxford, 1976), p. 126Google Scholar. John Miller rebuts the traditional interpretation that Charles II was after quasi-absolutist power over the boroughs, arguing instead that the king merely intended to insure that loyal men ran them. At no time in his reign did the crown go any further than to claim the power to remove elected officials, and Miller found only one case where the initiative behind a new charter came from the king. ‘The crown and the borough charters in the reign of Charles II’, English Historical Review, c (1985), 25–52Google Scholar. My thanks to Professor Tittler for much help with the problem of the constitutional position of the towns.

18 Hocquet, no. 27, 18 Nov. 1513; LP, I, no. 2450.

19 LP, I, no. 2590.

20 Statutes of the realm, III, 92–3. Chancery had been excluded from Edward III's Guyenne. Vale, M. G. A., English Gascony, 1399–1453: a study of war, government and politics during the later stages of the hundred years' war (Oxford, 1970), p. 5Google Scholar.

21 Hocquet, pp. 119–20; Westminster, 26 Feb. 1514. PRO C82/401; 31/8/144, fo. 237; LP, I, no. 2684.107; cf. Cruickshank, , English occupation, pp. 192–3Google Scholar.

22 Hocquet, p. 130, Henry VIII-Tournai, 20 July 1515, from the now destroyed Archives communales.

23 Vale, , English Gascon?, p. 5Google Scholar.

24 SP 1/113, fo. 238r.

25 Vale, describes the medieval patents in English Gascony, p. 7Google Scholar.

26 Hocquet, p. 133, Mountjoy's nomination as lieutenant, 20 Jan. 1515. PRO C76/196, m. 6; Rymer, Thomas (ed.), Foedera (London, 1741), XIII, 387Google Scholar; LP, I, no. 261·722. Cf. Cruickshank, , English occupation, pp. 44–5, 189Google Scholar.

27 Hocquet, p. 135.

28 David, , Souveraineté, p. 75Google Scholar. For merum et mixtum imperium see especially the indispensable work of Woolf, C. N. S., Bartolus of Sassoferrato: his position in the history of political thought (Cambridge, 1913), pp. 143–60Google Scholar, and on the extension of Bartolo's thought about merum et mixtum imperium into a broader theory of sovereignty, Ercole, Francesco, ‘Impero universale e stati particolari: la civitas sibi princeps' e lo stato moderno’, in his Da Bartolo all Althusio. Saggi sulla storia del pensiero pubblicistico del Rinascimento italiano (Florence, 1932), pp. 49–156Google Scholar. According to Ercole, p. 81, merum et mixtum imperium was itself originally a hybrid term which embraced even feudal rights and jurisdiction.

29 Oxford English dictionary, s.v. ‘regality’.

30 Ellis, S. G., Reform and revival. English government in Ireland, 1490–1530 (London, 1986), p. 13Google Scholar.

31 SP 1/16, fos. 110v–111r, Wolsey–Jerningham, 16 Jan., s.a. (LP, 2, no. 3886).

32 For the diplomatic manoeuvrings, see Cruickshank, , English occupation, pp. 145–85Google Scholar.

33 SP 1/9, fo. 12Ir, Sampson–Wolsey, Bruges, 23 Sept. 1514; fo. 149r, Wolsey Worcester, draft (LP, I, no. 3378); fo. 151r, Wolsey–Worcester, 22 Oct. [1514] (LP, I, no. 3379).

34 British Library, Cotton MSS, Caligula D VI, fo. 202r Abbeville, 3 Oct. [1514] (LP, I, no. 3331).

35 See especially SP 1/10, fos. 174r ff., instructions from Wolsey to Sir William Sidney for negotiations with Francis (LP, 2, no. 468), and, e.g. Sampson's letter of [16] Nov. 1514, BL Caligula D vi, fo. 288r–v (LP, I, no. 3445) or of 20 May 1515, ibid. fo. 294V (LP, 2, no. 480). Wolsey also insisted that he wished the see only because Henry had given it to him. LP, 2, no. 468.

36 BL Cotton MSS, Galba B III, fo. 373V, Sampson Wolsey, n.p., n.d., unsigned (LP, 2, no. 769).

37 This letter is in SP 1/13 (a draft partly in Brian Tuke's hand) and BL Cotton MSS, Vitellius B in (LP, 2, no. 2871). The quotation here is SP 1/13, fo. 247r and Cotton MSS, Vitellius B m, fo. 122r. The second rendering omits ‘the regalie’ in the last phrase. Cf. Cruickshank, , English occupation, pp. 179–81Google Scholar. The addressee was Silvestro de Gigli, who was one of three Italians working on Henry's side. The exact state of English diplomatic representation in Rome at any given moment is uncertain, but see the excellent study by Wilkie, William, The cardinal protectors of England. Rome and the Tudors before the reformation (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar.

38 SP 1/13, fo. 247V; Vit. B III, fo. 122V.

39 Bossuat, André, ‘La formule ”le roi est empereur en son royaume”. Son eraploi au XVe siècle devant le parlement de Paris’, Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser., XXXIX (1961), 371–81Google Scholar. The English civilian Alanus apparently invented the idea in the early thirteenth century, and it had thereafter migrated first to Sicily and the court of Frederick II and then to France and the partisans of Philip the Fair. Koebner, Richard, Empire (Cambridge, 1961), p. 36Google Scholar. The great Italian jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato extended it to argue that any civitas which did not recognize a superior was sibi princeps and therefore had all the jurisdiction of the emperor. Woolf, , Bartolus, p. 109Google Scholar and Ercole, , ‘Impero universale e stati particolari’, pp. 81–146Google Scholar; cf. also Kirshner, Julius, ‘Civitas sibi facial civem: Bartolus of Sassoferrato's doctrine on the making of a citizen’, Speculum, XLVIH (1973), 706Google Scholar and Keen, Maurice, ‘The political thought of the fourteenth century civilians’, in Smalley, Beryl (ed.), Trends in medieval political thought (Oxford, 1965), pp. 116–24Google Scholar. The phrase recurred frequently in pleadings before the parlement of Paris in the fifteenth century, but its later history is otherwise not well known. Italian civilians in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries kept alive both the original form of this idea and also Bartolus's cognate, applying them variously to such lesser princes as the duke of Milan or non-Tuscan civitates like Venice; some of these legists were certainly known in England. See especially Castro, Paulus de, Consiliorum sive responsorum (Venice, 1581), I, no. 34Google Scholar, fo. I7r. Other Italian jurists who made either or both cases included: Parisio, Pietro Paolo, Consiliorum (Venice, 1593), IGoogle Scholar, no. I, fo. 3V and no. 69, fo. 134r; Socini, Mariano the elder, Consiliorum (Louvain, 1551), VIGoogle Scholar, no. 3, fo. 6v; Ruini, Carlo, Responsorum sive consiliorum (Venice, 1571), IIGoogle Scholar, no. 200, fo. 272r; Cravetta, Aimone, Consiliorum sive responsorum (Venice, 1568–1592), IGoogle Scholar, no. 135, fo. 122v; Curzio, Francesco (or di Corte) the younger, Consiliorum (Venice, 1571), IGoogle Scholar, no. 61, fo. 93r; Tartagni, Alessandro, Consiliorum seu responsorum (Venice, 1597), v, IGoogle Scholar, fo. 4r; Maino, Giason del, Consiliorum (Lyon, 1544), IVGoogle Scholar, no. 101, fo. ior and I, no. 227, fo. ggr. The idea appears especially prominently in the important consilia of Mariano Socini the younger, one of the mainstays of both the Paduan and Bolognese legal faculties in the first half of the sixteenth century, and perhaps once a partisan of Henry's divorce. See Consiliorum sive malts responsorum (Venice, 1580), e.g., IGoogle Scholar, no. 69, fos. 103r and 104r (a case of 1526); I, no. 100, fo. 139V; III, no. 98, fo. 158V (a general statement of the principle, relying mainly on Paulus de Castro; a case of 1547); no. 126, fo. 198r (1548); IV, no. 82, fo. 135r; 92, fo. 15ir (appealing to the examples of the doge of Venice and the king of France; 1555), etc. Marco Mantova Benavides, who dominated the faculty of Padua almost throughout the sixteenth century, also adverted to the concept in hisConsiliorum sive responsorum, II (Venice, 1559)Google Scholar, fos. 66v–69v; Mantova certainly delivered an opinion favourable to Henry's divorce. For their consilia, see Surtz, Edward, Henry VIIFs great matter in Italy: an introduction to representative Italians in the king's divorce, mainly 1527–1535 (Ann Arbor, 1978), I, 272Google Scholar (Socini) and 298 ff. (Mantova). My thanks to Professor Antonio Padoa Schioppa for his hospitality at the Istituto per la storia di diritto italiano, Universita di Milano, which greatly facilitated my researches on this point. However all this may be, it is much more likely that Henry learned it from a French source, perhaps directly from the parlement of Paris, which had continued to defend the sovereignty of the crown even when its wearer was Henry VI.

40 SP 1/13, fo. 248r; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B III, fo. 123r.

41 SP 1/13, fo. 248V; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B III, fo. 124r.

42 SP 1/13, fo. 249T; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B III, fo. 124V.

43 SP 1/13, fo. 248V; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B III, fo. 123V.

44 SP 1/13, fo. 249r; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B III, fo. 124V.

45 One wonders whether Henry might have been in touch with the Petrucci conspirators, whose leaders were arrested on 19 May 1517. Another of his agents in Rome, Cardinal Adriano Castellesi, had patched up his often rocky relationship with Wolsey at just about the time of Henry's letter, and would be accused of misprision of the conspiracy in the consistory of 8 June. Gebhardt, Bruno, Adrian von Corneto. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Curie und der Renaissance (Breslau, 1886), pp. 38–40Google Scholar. Castellesi, the patron of Polydore Vergil, fled to Venice saying he intended to continue on to England. Henry, however, deprived Castellesi of Bath and Wells (which went to Wolsey), as well as repossessing Castellesi's palace in Rome. Besides Wolsey's adroit seizing of an opportunity for aggrandizement, it looks very much as if he and Henry were covering their tracks by protesting too much – one of the reasons for Leo's animus against Castellesi was a harshly critical letter about him which the cardinal had sent Henry. Wolsey certainly furthered Leo's resolve to deal with Castellesi; was he too dangerous? Fragnito, Gigliola, ‘Adriano Castellesi’, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, XXI, 665 ff.; and cf. Wilkie, Cardinal protectors, passimGoogle Scholar.

46 SP 1/13, fo. 249V; BL Cotton MSS, Vit. B. III, fo. 124V.

47 S P 1/13, fo. 248r–v.

48 BL Cotton MSS, Galba B ni, fo. 362r (LP, 2, no. 553), Sampson–Wolsey, Bruges, 3 June [1551]. LP gives the date as I June.

49 Haut-Jussé, Barthélemy-Amédée Pocquet du, ‘A political concept of Louis XI: subjection instead of vassalage’, in Lewis, P. S., The recovery of France in the fifteenth century (New York, 1971), pp. 196–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 SP 1/13, between fos. 253 and 254, Leo X–Henry VIII, 5 Feb. 1517 (LP, 2, no. 2873).

51 SP 1/13, fo. 256r–v (Rome, 7 Feb. 1517; LP, 2, no. 2879) and fo. 258r (Rome, 8 Feb.; LP, 2, no. 2886).

52 Martène, Edmund and Durand, Ursin (eds.), Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum…amplissima collectio, III (Paris, 1724)Google Scholar, col. 1275B–C, Wolsey–de Gigli, London, 24 Mar. 1517 (LP, 2, no. 3045).

53 Prodi, Paolo, It sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima etá moderna (Bologna, 1982)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 303 ff. on the very similar negotiations between Leo and Francis I over the concordat of Bologna, from which Henry almost certainly learned a great deal.

54 SP 1/9, fo. 107r, Sampson–Wolsey, Brussels, 6 Sept. 1514 (LP, I, no. 3246).

55 BL Cotton MSS, Galba B v, fo. 365r Sampson Wolsey, Tournai, 15 Dec. 1514 (LP, I, no. 3545).

56 See, e.g. Sampson's discussion of the role of the archbishop of Rheims as metropolitan in BL Cotton MSS, Caligula D VI, fo. 296r, Sampson–Wolsey, Bruges, 26 May (month endorsed) 1515 (LP 2, no. 512); BL Cotton MSS, Galba B III, fo. 363V, Sampson-Wolsey, Bruges, 8 June 1515 (LP, 2, no. 566). For Sampson's caution see, e.g. BL Cotton MSS, Calig. D VI, fo. 294r–v, Sampson–Wolsey, Tournai, 20 May 1515 (LP, 1, no. 480).

57 BL Cotton MSS, Galba B III, fo. 363v, Sampson–Wolsey, Bruges, 8 Jun e 1515 (LP, 2, no. 566).

58 LP, 2, no. 2274.

59 Bossuat, , ‘“Le roi est empereur”’, esp. pp. 380–1Google Scholar; Lewis, P. S., ‘France in the fifteenth century: society an d sovereignty’, Essays in later medieval French history, esp. pp. 5–6Google Scholar, 187, and Later medieval France: the polity (London, 1968), pp. 84–7Google Scholar outlines th e fifteenth-century French idea of unlimited royal sovereignty; and for Charles VII's at least theoretically ‘absolute’ monarchy, see Vale, M. G. A., Charles VII (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 230–2Google Scholar. For a sketch of a similar argument, see Guy, , Tudor England, p. 81Google Scholar.

60 Goodman, A. E., ‘Henry VII and Christian renewal’, Studies in Church History, XVII (1981), 115–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Henry VII's experience in Brittany, , Haut-Jussé, B. A. Pocquet du, François II due de Bretagne et I'Angleterre (1458–1488) (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar is fundamental. See also Griffiths, R. A. and Thomas, R. S., The making of the Tudor dynasty (Gloucester, 1985)Google Scholar, ch. 7.

61 Ullmann, Walter, Medieval foundations of renaissance humanism (London, 1977), pp. 49–50Google Scholar, 119.

62 Lewis, , ‘France in the fifteenth century’, p. 27Google Scholar.

63 Cruickshank, , English occupation, p. 267Google Scholar. Murphy, V. M., ‘The debate over Henry VIII' s first divorce: an analysis of the contemporary treatises’, unpublished Cambridge University PhD. thesis, 1984Google Scholar shows that Henry had a coherent policy on his divorce from at least 1527.

64 Tierney, Brian, ‘“Divided sovereignty” at Constance: a problem of medieval and early modern political theory’, Annuarium historiae conciliorum, VII (1975), 238–56Google Scholar.

65 I quote Robinson's, Ralph translation, rather than the flatter version in Utopia, pp. 244–5Google Scholar, but have amended Robinson's, ‘sedition’ to ‘faction’, following the Latin ‘ambitionis et factionum radicibus’. Utopia, trans. Robinson, Ralph, intro. Warrington, John (London, 1951), p. 134Google Scholar.

66 Of the numerous commentaries on Richard III, I have found Anderson's, Judith in Biographical truth: the representation of historical persons in Tudor-Stuart writing (New Haven, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar most illuminating. Her treatment parallels much of my argument. Elton has recently demanded more attention to the work, and pointed in the right direction for further interpretation. ‘Humanism in England’, in Goodman, Anthony and MacKay, Angus (eds.), The impact of humanism on western Europe (London, 1990), p. 263Google Scholar.

67 This comparison of More's text to Vergil's Anglica kistoria is necessarily provisional, since I have not yet been able to have a look at Vergil's MS first draft, the only version even approximately contemporary with More's work. Later versions were heavily revised.

68 This dimension was emphasized even more in the Latin text. See, e.g. Richard III, p. 10 (a passage where faction is the subject), p. 12 I. 7 (and commentary on 174), or p. 13 I. 17. For More's non-literal translation practice, see Sylvester's introduction, p. lvii.

69 Ibid. pp. 11–13 and 14–19.

70 Fox argues that More treated Edward and Richard in very similar ways to make the point that politics was a hopeless enterprise. More, pp. 78–81 and Politics and literature, pp. 120–2, especially p. 121 where Fox stresses that More ‘obtrudes unflattering references’ to Edward's vices ‘so as to bring the idealization [of the character sketch] under control’.

71 Ellis, Henry (ed.), Three books of Polydore Vergil's English history (London, 1844Google Scholar; Camden Society, ser. I, vol. XXIX [cited as Vergil]), p. 117 (lust and faithlessness), and p. 172 (avarice).

72 Mancini, pp. 60, 64–6.

73 Vergil, p. 171; Mancini, p. 68.

74 As More emphasized on the first page of his text in the thrice-repeated variation on the prime Christian virtue ofcharitas, the cement of the commonwealth, (Richard III, p. 3)Google Scholar. This point is here more muted in the English rendering, but comes out equally strongly in the repetition of ‘love’ in Edward's, speech on p. 13Google Scholar.

75 Fox, , More, pp. 87–91Google Scholar neatly details how the councillors individually failed in their responsibility to prevent tyranny, but this does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that More thought this an unalterable feature of la condition humaine.

76 Mancini, p. 79; Vergil, p. 178; Richard III, p. 23.

77 It should also be noted that Vergil made Buckingham the aggressor, for whom Morton acted only as one agent among many; Mancini's account ended before Buckingham's conspiracy. Vergil, p. 198.

78 The problem of the ending of Richard III has attracted much inconclusive attention; Fox, the most recent student, offers two different interpretations, one linking More's decision to quit the work to the execution of the third duke of Buckingham, in 1521 (More, pp. 104–7)Google Scholar and the other to his horrified realization that tyranny was ineluctable; not even Henry VII (Morton, much less) could cure it (Politics and literature, pp. 122Google Scholar and 126).

79 Sylvester, , Richard III, pp. c–ciGoogle Scholar; and cf. Fox, , Politics and literature, p. 114Google Scholar.

80 ‘De deditione Nerviae Henrico VIII Angliae regi’, in Bradner, Leicester and Lynch, C. A. (eds.), The Latin epigrams of Thomas More (Chicago, 1953), 98Google Scholar (no. 228); also in Miller, C. H. et al. (eds.), More, Thomas, Latin poems (New Haven, 1984Google Scholar; Complete works, 3, 2), p. 256 (no. 244). Translation mine. More visited Tournai in the summer of 1515. Ibid. p. 404.

81 There is one small problem. William Roper reported a famous exchange between More and I Henry as part of More's defence against charges of treason. Debating the power of the pope, Henry concluded by maintaining ‘we will set forth that authority to the uttermost. For we; received from that See our crown imperial’. More commented ‘which till his grace with his own mouth told it me, I never heard of before’. Roper, William, ‘The life of Sir Thomas More’, in Sylvester, R. S. and Harding, D. P. (eds.), Two early Tudor lives (New Haven, 1962), p.235Google Scholar. The syntax is maddeningly obscure, but this could mean that More claimed not to have known about the imperial crown before 1521. More corroborated this discussion (but not the crucial point about the crown) in a letter to Cromwell, where he wrote that Henry stopped More's argument; by showing him ‘a secret cause whereof I never had anything heard before’. Rogers, E. F. (ed.), p The correspondence of Sir Thomas More (Princeton, 1947Google Scholar; reprint edn., 1970) no. 199. 498. I. 213.: There and in her condensed edition (St. Thomas More: selected letters [New Haven, 1961], p. 212)Google Scholar Rogers speculated that this ‘cause’ concerned the invalidity of Henry's marriage to Katherine. More could have missed the numismatic and iconographical evidence referred to above, but his friend Cuthbert Tunstall, another of his intimates in Bruges while Utopia was being written, certainly knew all about the imperial crown no later than 1517 when he quoted it to the king. Guy, , Tudor England, p. 105Google Scholar. Thus it must be that Roper's More meant to say that he had never heard that Henry held his crown imperial from the pope. That would strengthen the extent of his I knowledge of the crown itself and perhaps therefore his reaction to it.

82 James Tracy, comparing the Adagia and Querela pacis allowed that Erasmus ‘seemed for a time sympathetic to France’ (emphasis added), but continued by showing how Erasmus shared the gloating of his English hosts over English victories. Tracy, James D., The politics ofErasmus: a pacifist intellectual and his political milieu (Toronto, 1978), p. 28Google Scholar. For this episode, see also Margolin, Jean-Claude, ‘Erasme et la France’, in Buck, August (ed.), Erasmus und Europa (Wiesbaden, 1988Google Scholar; Wolfenbüttler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, VII, p. 50. Later, once he had left p England, Erasmus was more forthright, but still did not condemn Henry to the degree that he did his bite noire, Julius, II (Pacifist intellectual, p. 33)Google Scholar. Nevertheless, the crucial point for the consummate; rhetorician Erasmus is that on severally closely-linked, particular occasions, he wrote about Henry's pretensions in a sharply critical way.

83 Erasmus, Desiderius, Querela pacts (Basel, Froben, 1517), p. 24Google Scholar. All translations are mine.

84 Phillips, Margaret Mann, The ‘adages’ of Erasmus. A study with translations (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 234 and 240Google Scholar. Erasmus did not neutralize his twin epithets until the 1533 edition. Mann argued that Erasmus's main target was Julius II, but this argument cannot apply to the passages quoted (ibid. p. 105). Then again, Erasmus excluded Henry from his catalogue of notorious aggressors in ‘Spartam nactuses, hanc orna’, also of 1515.

85 This passage is paralleled by another in ‘Aut fatuum aut regem nasci oportere’, in the Adagia I of 1515, pp. 221–2.

86 To Anton van Bergen, 14 Mar. 1514. Allen, P. S. (ed.), Opus epistolarum Desiderü Erasmi I Roterodamensis, I (Oxford, 1906)Google Scholar, no. 288. An English translation in The correspondence of Erasmus, I trans, Mynors, R. A. B. and Thomson, D. F. S., notes Ferguson, W. K. (Toronto, 1975Google Scholar; Collected works of Eramus, 11), but it needs to be used with caution whenever political terms are in question. In this case, for example, ‘altercatio cuius sit ditio’ is rendered as ‘a question about sovereignty’, when that is the last thing ditio meant.

87 Tracy, , Pacifist intellectual, p. 36Google Scholar, although he is more cautious in his conclusion about the parallels between their work. The traditional portrait of More and Erasmus as alter egos is becoming a little frayed. See especially Marius, Richard, Thomas More (New York, 1985)Google Scholar, passim; it is probably significant that Marius, and Elton, endorsing his conclusion (‘Humanism’, p. 275)Google Scholar put More and Erasmus closest in the mid-1510s. Hubertus Schulte Herbrüggen offers the latest restatement of the usual view in ‘Erasmus und England: Erasmus und More’, in Buck, , Erasmus void Europa, pp. 91–110Google Scholar.

88 Marius, , More, pp. 243–9Google Scholar.

89 Fox, in Fox and Guy, Reassessing the Henrician age, chs. 2, 3.

90 Walker, Greg, ‘The “expulsion of the minions” of 1519 reconsidered’, Historical Journal, XXXII (1989), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Starkey, , Reign, pp. 74–81Google Scholar.

91 Walker, , ‘“Expulsion”’, pp. 13–15Google Scholar labels English indignation over the minions' ‘dissoluteness’ a social rather than a political reaction, but it would be difficult so easily to separate politics and culture in the early sixteenth century.

92 Walker, , ‘“Expulsion”’, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

93 Starkey, , Reign, pp. 80–1Google Scholar, and Walker, , ‘“Expulsion”’, p. 9Google Scholar.

94 This suggestion about More's attitude an d its coalescence with that of Henry's conservative councillors must remain speculative. For the little known of More's politics so early in his career, see Guy, J. A., The public career of Sir Thomas More (New Haven, 1980)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

95 See Mayer, T. F., ‘A mission worse than death: Reginald Pole and the Parisian theologians’, English Historical Review, CIII (1988), 870–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 Foucault, Michel, The archaeology of knowledge, trans. Smith, A. M. Sheridan (New York, 1972), p. 110Google Scholar on polysemia.

97 This is probably also the meaning Vergil's anonymous mid-century translator gave the word. Mancini attributed no similar motive to Richard.

98 Richard III, pp. 13–4.

99 I owe the description of humanism as ‘critical theory’ to Paul A. Fielder's unpublished ‘Christian humanism and poverty: reflections on common weal, commonwealth, and policy’, which he kindly let me read.