London - Edward Rutherfurd [298]
“We cannot allow doubt about the succession now,” Henry declared. “My subjects must all take the oath.” In London, the aldermen were to administer the oath to each citizen and then report to Greenwich; elsewhere, Cromwell’s officials would see to it.
Susan thought the business distasteful but necessary. Better, she supposed, an agreed succession – even if it did prolong the embarrassment with the Pope – than a dispute over the Crown; and from what she heard, most people felt the same. The Londoners might grumble but none, so far as she knew, had refused to obey the king’s law. It was a shock to her therefore when, as soon as the two men got inside, Rowland blurted out: “It’s the oath. Three men have refused it. They’ve been sent to the Tower.” And seeing her still puzzled: “I’m to take it tomorrow.”
“And he thinks,” Thomas added, “that he should refuse it too.”
Susan suddenly felt weak, but she kept calm. “Which three men?” she asked. A certain Doctor Wilson, they told her: she had never heard of him. And old Bishop Fisher, too.
“That might have been expected,” she countered. Having been the one bishop who had originally refused to sanction Henry’s new marriage, the saintly old man could hardly change his mind now. It was the third name, however, which caused her heart to sink: “Sir Thomas More.”
For Rowland, she knew, the former chancellor – scholar, writer, lawyer and sternest of Catholics – was a man to be admired and followed.
“What will happen to them?” she asked.
“Fortunately, according to the Act, refusing the oath is not treason,” Thomas said. “But no doubt they’ll cool their heels in the Tower for a while. Anyone who follows their example . . .” he looked at Rowland and then grimaced. “The end of his position. The end of all this,” he indicated her beloved house. “Awkward for me too, as a brother-in-law.”
Rowland looked uncertain. “Yet More is a lawyer. He must have his reasons.”
At which Susan let out a snort of disgust. For, devout though she was, if there was one man in London whom Susan Bull had come thoroughly to dislike, it was Sir Thomas More.
History, not without cause, has often dealt kindly with Sir Thomas More. Yet, in his own day, the antipathy Susan felt was probably more common. In her own case, there were several reasons. Since his retirement two years before, he had spent almost all his time at his house by the river at Chelsea, not half a mile from their own. While she saw his bustling wife and members of his extensive family, the great man, busily writing, was rarely visible; and though people who knew him said he was kind and witty, on the few occasions when she had encountered him, she had found the pale figure with his greying hair to be remote, and also sensed that he had a rather poor opinion of women. Her real objections to him, however, dated back to the period when he was chancellor. For it was then that a more disturbing side of his character had become evident.
He had a passionate dislike of heretics. Though not in holy orders, he had more or less appointed himself as the king’s religious watchdog. A lawyer to his fingertips, he had seemed to like the role of prosecutor as well as judge. Time and again, suspected heretics had been taken by river to Chelsea for interrogations,