Note 92 — Chapter II

It is hard to say what were More's original sentiments about the divorce. In a letter to Cromwell (Strype, i. 183, and App. No. 48; Burnet, App. p. 280) he speaks of himself as always doubtful. But, if his disposition had not been rather favourable to the king, would he have been offered, or have accepted, the great seal? We do not indeed find his name in the letter of remonstrance to the pope, signed by the nobility and chief commoners in 1530, which Wolsey, though then in disgrace, very willingly subscribed. But in March, 1531, he went down to the House of Commons, attended by several lords, to declare the king's scruples about his marriage, and to lay before them the opinions of universities. In this he perhaps thought himself acting ministerially. But there can be no doubt that he always considered the divorce as a matter wholly of the pope's competence, and which no other party could take out of his hands, though he had gone along cheerfully, as Burnet says, with the prosecution against the clergy, and wished to cut off the illegal jurisdiction of the Roman see. The king did not look upon him as hostile; for even so late as 1532, Dr. Bennet, the envoy at Rome, proposed to the pope that the cause should be tried by four commissioners, of whom the king should name one, either Sir Thomas More or Stokesly, Bishop of London. Burnet, i. 126.