By Jessi Hyde and Kelly Plante
Not only is Gertrude More known today as an outspoken nun—perhaps the outspoken nun—of the early modern period in England, but she is also the great-great granddaughter of an outspoken martyr—perhaps the outspoken martyr—of the early modern period in England, St Thomas More. As Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII, Thomas More had occupied the highest secular position within the land and was beneath the king only. Yet after he refused to accept Henry’s secession from the Catholic Church so that Henry could marry Anne Boleyn, he was imprisoned in 1553 and beheaded in 1535. While Gertrude More did not die a martyr’s death for her faith, she shared character traits with her great-great grandfather and, like him, she displayed an unwavering commitment to her spiritual principles.
Her father, Cresacre More, published a biography of Thomas More, The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, Lord High Chancellour of England (1631), which he dedicated to his daughters. In the preface, he writes that he hopes this biography will serve as a “template” for himself and his children to follow:
Wherefore relying upon the assistance of this most excellent Saint, I will endeavour briefly to sett downe for mine owne instruction and my Childrens, the lif & death of St. THOMAS MORE; who was as bright a starre of our Countrie in the tempestuous stormes of persecution, in which we sayle to our heavenlie Citie; on whome God heaped a number of most singular endowments; as, aboundance of witt, profound wisedome, happie discretion, perfect Justice.… Wherefore he may worthily be sett before our eyes, as a perfect patterne and livelie example to be imitated by us: for he had no more to loose, than most men in the land, being second to none but to the Chiefest, either in worldlie dignitie, or his Prince’s favour; and yet did he willingly forgoe all, yea life itselfe, rather then to wrong his Conscience, in consenting to anie thing against the law of God, and Justice…. (More 8-10)
In this way, Cresacre encouraged his daughters—not only privately, but very publicly—to follow Thomas More’s example and to forsake even the commands of a king for those of God. As seventeenth-century readers would have known, Henry had imprisoned and then executed Thomas More for refusing to accept the Act of Supremacy, which made him the supreme head of the church of England and rejected the authority of the pope. Thomas More chose to support the authority of the pope rather than the king, out of a belief that “obedience could all too easily suppress an individual’s conscience, especially when spiritual men wield temporal authority or vice versa–as when a member of the ecclesiastical hierarchy offers an argument for the royal supremacy. In such instances, the individual must remember that he or she is not ‘bounden to obey’ at the expense of his or her duty to God” (Lay 103).
Nearly a hundred years later, Gertrude More would follow her great-great grandfather’s lead by leaving her country to start a convent abroad, in the process defying English laws that forbade Catholics to travel to the Continent without permission. At Cambrai, she continued to demonstrate an independent streak by following the teachings of Augustine Baker, who encouraged the nuns to focus on developing a direct relationship with God rather than relying on the dictates of a confessor. It was radical for a nun to believe and declare in writing that she did not require a male confessor, and she based her defense of Baker’s teachings on the concept of obedience: “More wrote an extensive defense of Baker’s work that condemned blind obedience as readily as her Protestant countrymen did” (Lay 91). She refused to follow arbitrary male authority, but she chose to follow the examples of men whom she saw as aligned with the will of God, including Baker, her father, and great-great grandfather.
In her writing, as her father had done in his biography of Thomas More, she fashions herself as Thomas More’s “intellectual successor in resisting unlawful authority” (Lay 91). Her contemporaries certainly saw her as heir to her great-great-grandfather’s legacy (Lay 101). A fourteen-line poem, “Renowned More whose bloody Fate / England ne’er yet could expiate,” appears in the prefatory material to the 1658 edition of her poetry, and explicitly situates Gertrude More in the context of her familial lineage. Furthermore, More specifically cites her great-great grandfather in her prose Apology, and editor Francis Gascoigne flags this moment with a marginal note identifying Thomas More as a martyr in order to draw parallels between their principled stands. Indeed, even today the relationship between Gertrude and Thomas More offers an important scholarly context for understanding her writing (Lay, Wynne-Davies).Gertrude and Thomas More’s shared belief that one should serve God above any human being, no matter his or her rank, materialized in Gertrude’s “attempts to redraw … boundaries by establishing God as ‘the only true teacher of Humility, true obedience and the perfect Pryer,’ thereby expanding up her ancestor’s objections to the Act of Supremacy and implicitly rejecting the arguments of Henrician religious and political theorists who would offer ‘true obedience’ to the king” (Lay 102). In this way, she participates in her famous family’s legacy. As she famously put it herself: “If Godrequire that seculars should obey the Prince, and the Laws of the Realm, so far as it may be done without offence to his own Laws, then so too must ‘Religious persons’ obey their superiors” (qtd. in Lay 104). In this way, Thomas More’s ideology carried through his great-great granddaughter, as she continued to display a staunch dedication to her religious ideals by privileging divine authority over human power.
- For a family tree showing her relationship with Thomas More, see Gertrude’s Who Were the Nuns? page.
Works Cited
Goldman, Lawrence. “Thomas More.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2009.
Holloway, Julia. “More, Helen [name in religion Gertrude] (1606-1633).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Lay, Jenna. Beyond the Cloister: Catholic Englishwomen and Early Modern Literary Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
More, Cresacre. The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Moore, Lord high Chancellour of England. B. Bellière, 1631.
Wynne-Davies, Marion. Women Writers and Familial Discourse in the English Renaissance: Relative Values. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.