The New Murrey and Blue blog

If I never hear the name of Thomas More associated with Richard III again it won’t be too soon. So many seem to take his account as divinely written, holy scripture, despite the glaring error on page one of his work , the contradictions about the ‘fate’ of the Princes (he says they were buried under the stairs, then he changes that to being MOVED from under the stairs) and the section of the story that descends into farce, with a humble squire (James Tyrell, who had in reality been a knight for years by 1483) lying outside the door of Richard’s chamber, where the King was sitting on the throne…no, not the royal throne but the toilet, while mulling over ways to off the princes. I cannot believe this is anything but satire as it is so ludicrous. (I could almost imagine filming this scene with Benny Hill music blaring and evil baddies like Black Will Slaughter (now THERE’S an authentic sounding name!) running around the castle corridors with pillows, ready to smother the innocent babes.)

I have even encountered MORE than one (pardon the bad pun) person who seriously and solemnly said, “Thomas More CAN’T be lying. It’s in the name-SAINT Thomas More,” as if being a ‘saint’ somehow made him perfect, superhuman, magically all-knowing and a font of the absolute truth…(a bit like George ‘I cannot tell a lie’ Washington.)

Anyway, I decided to look up Thomas More’s canonisation and to my surprise–he was only canonised in MODERN times. In fact it was less than 100 years ago. The exact year was 1935, and the pope at the time was Pius XI. So, really, his supposed aura of saintliness is a very new thing. Without question, he was brave to defy Henry VIII, but to make of him an infallible superhuman in regards to a manuscript he never completed, may never have wanted published, and which also had changes made by his nephew William Rastell seems very odd indeed.

Thomas More statue.