The Life of Thomas More (review)

187 Reviews Ackroyd, Peter, The Life of Thomas More, London, Chatto and Windus, 1998; paper; pp. ix, 434; 8 b/w, 8 colour plates; R.R.P. £8.99. Thomas More is a popular historical figure, for both academic and general audiences, and there has been a steady stream of books and articles on the saintly Lord Chancellor from the seventies onward. Original angles are hard to find for such a well studied figure, yet Ackroyd attempts a new analysis of More's childhood, schooling, and early legal career, before relating the more readily known later public l i f e . The book contains a wealth of detail on the society and background of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century London. Overall, however, this results in a book that, for the first two-thirds at least, is a biography of some generic late medieval London man, rather than Thomas More perse. . There are many diversions and digressions in Ackroyd's writing, some of which have limited relevance. For example, Ackroyd gives a vivid two-and-a-half page description of the Coventry Corpus Christi play (pp. 119-121), but the pretext for this is that More m a y have been inCoventry for the event; or then again he m a y not. The whole book is infused with maybes and might haves, particularly in regard to More's early life. A n y biographer of the young Thomas More must cope with the lack of surviving evidence, which is w h y so m a n y books have glossed over, or skipped completely, More's childhood years. Ackroyd's solution is to f i l l in the gaps with conjecture and extrapolations from the lives of others of the period. Thus w e get James Olney's house as a proxy for More's childhood home. The 'charming reminiscence' (p. 11) of a fifteenth-century schoolboy is presented as a parallel to More's schooling. The household of the Bishop of Winchester serves as an approximation to that ofArchbishop Morton, in which More served as 188 Reviews a page. While this approach does have its merits, it reduces More's l i f e to a generic patchwork. Despite the scarcity of evidence, Ackroyd willingly ignores what little survives when it suits him. For example, he suggests that i t is 'more likely' (p. 77) that More and Erasmus first met at the house of Sir William Say than, as the evidence suggests, at the Lord Mayor of London's table. Ackroyd can provide no evidence for what is surely a pointless bit of conjecture. The book has a number of similar speculations, which reduce portions of More's life to calculations of imagined probability, rather than an examination of the historical evidence. Ackroyd sees More as fixed in his opinions and ideals from an early age, and this partly stems from his recreation of More's childhood identity from his adult character: 'as the adult, so the child' (p. 19), He therefore rejects the idea that More and his father argued over the direction of his career. As the adult More was always very obedient and respected his father's wishes, so must have been the younger More. Ackroyd reasons that More's public career was 'carefully managed and willingly undertaken' (p. 36) and that More desired his legal and stately life. Later, however, Ackroyd admits that More strove to be the opposite of his father in m a n y ways, especially with his kind and gentle behaviour toward his o w n children. H e goes on to note Erasmus' claim that More's father had threatened disinheritance if his then teenage son shunned a legal career. The reader is left to choose between the interpretation of Ackroyd and the evidence of Erasmus. Ackroyd's More is a conservative traditionalist, and essentially medieval in his outlook. More's opposition to medieval schooling is explained by Ackroyd as fears the old curriculum had the potential to create theological disorder or doubt, and not as an endorsement of the new learning associated with the Renaissance. Yet More's o w n writings suggest otherwise. In a...