Thomas More - Tumblr Posts
JEREMY NORTHAN and JAMES FRAIN as THOMAS MORE and THOMAS CROMWELL
THE TUDORS (2007-2010) | 2x05 "His Majesty's Pleasure"
I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.
A Man for All Seasons (1966) dir. Fred Zinnemann
“More, he insists, was quite prepared, when required, to impose Catholic beliefs on dissenters by the exercise of royal might. And now, he suggests, Mantel is compounding the erroneous approach of seeing history in the light of subsequent events by her eagerness to set More against her hero, Cromwell, to make the latter appear a “herald of the future” This is equally as preposterous as Bolt’s approach,” he says. “To reach such a conclusion about More and Cromwell from the very difficult and complicated 16th-century sources is just silly. Both men believed in the idea of enforcing ideas on others by persecution and execution. They only disagreed which ideas.” And if he had to choose between the two? “Well, More at least died nobly with magnificent insouciance. The night before Cromwell was executed, he was screaming ‘Mercy, mercy’, like a stuffed pig. That alone tells us all you need to know about the moral quality of the two.””
— Sir Thomas More: Saint or Sinner, David Starkey’s view.
#actual historical quote
eh, it’s not a contemporary quote insofar as it wasn’t recorded at the time it was said. william roper is the source , and he was writing of his father-in-law saying this allegedly in the 1520s, but the book itself was written nearly twenty years after his death (1535). he also reported in this book an exchange that heavily implied that more predicted anne boleyn’s execution so.... it would seem some anecdotes are a little too prescient to be taken at face value .
sigynofasgard replied to your post: ID THIS LOSER
ooc: Googled it - maaaan what a load of - well “propaganda” is a nice term. :-p
I know, that is putting it kindly.
Though I’ve been doing some reading up on the concept of “Tudor Propaganda,” and have come across some pretty convincing stuff that argues that the notion that the Tydder’s admin promoted an active agenda of propaganda blackening Richard III’s legacy is largely false. This really surprised me!
But even more interesting is the point that this author made that Henry’s policy was basically “we don’t talk about that shit” and was more devoted to obscuring the known facts rather than actively manipulating them. Which was its own kind of propaganda, I guess. So a good example is the fact that when Henry’s first parliament repealed the Titulus Regius act of 1484, not only did they not read the act aloud, or even refer specifically to the contents of it, but every copy of it was ordered to be destroyed, or turned in to the authorities for destruction, on pain of serious fines or forfeiture.
A lot of other interesting stuff in the article as well, especially wrt the complete non-treatment of the missing sons of Edward IV during Henry’s reign. The ref: C. S. L. Davies, “Information, Disinformation, and political knowledge under Henry VII and early Henry VIII” Historical Research 85:228 (2012), 228-53.
It’s really pretty fascinating, and makes the point that the Polydore Vergil and Thomas More versions of the events of 1483-85 didn’t gain wide circulation until the 1530s and 1540s.
My mind was pretty blown. I may even have done the dramatic forehead slap a couple of times.
“If a lion knew his own strength, hard were it for any man to rule him” ‘
Thomas More
