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THE FIFTH PICTURE
Sir Thomas More, as Speaker of the Commons, in spite of Cardinal Wolsey’s imperious demand refuses to grant King Henry the Eighth a subsidy without due debate by the House. 1523. 

Painter—VIVIAN FORBES.                          Donor—THE VISCOUNT FITZALAN 

In the fourteenth year of King Henry the Eighth Sir Thomas More was elected Speaker of the House of Commons. At first he excused himself, foreseeing a conflict between the rights of the House and the King’s autocratic ideas. But Henry insisted, and More then accepted, only petitioning first that if he should happen, in con­veying any message from the Commons to the Sovereign, to pervert or impair his instructions, he might have leave to go back to the House and take their advice again; and secondly, that it might please the King to give the Commons his “most gracious licence and pardon, freely without doubt of your dreadful displeasure every man to dis­charge his conscience and boldly to declare his advice, and that it may like your noble Majesty of your inestimable goodness to take it all in good part.”

His fears were immediately justified. The King, by the mouth of his minister, Cardinal Wolsey, demanded money, and demanded it instantly. “It fortuned at that Parliament a very great subsidy to be demanded, which the Cardinal fearing would not pass the Commons’ House, determined for the furtherance thereof to be there present himself.” The Commons, on More’s advice, resolved to receive the Cardinal, as he wished, not with a few of his lords, but with his whole train, royally. He came accordingly, “with all his pomp, his crosses, his hat, and the Great Seal too,” into the House (then sitting in the Monastery of the Blackfriars), and in a solemn oration proved by many reasons how necessary was the demand. The members were silent, having agreed to answer, as the custom was, only by theft Speaker. More, after kneeling to show the rev­erence of the Commons for their King, explained that the demand, as made, was “neither expedient nor agreeable with the ancient liberty of the Houses Whereupon the Cardinal, displeased with Sir Thomas More . . . suddenly arose and departed.” The subsidy was afterwards duly passed, and More received a present from Wolsey, and renewed favour from the King—though, as he said, “ I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go.”

Such is the account left by More’s son-in-law, William Roper, and the painter has made of it a brilliant picture. The dramatic strain of the situation is given by the proud backward curves of Wolsey’s figure, counterpoising the grave courtesy of More’s slightly bending attitude as he points to the table and the mace, the symbol of an authority greater than himself or his opponent. The sig­nificance of the scene is enhanced by the contrast between the gay young retinue of the Cardinal and the older and more serious faces of the burgesses and knights of the shire, for whom, as f or the Commons of England, More is speaking.

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