Abstract
Unlike the other women whose lives are reassessed here, Jane Colt, the first wife of Sir Thomas More, escaped censorious comments by early-modern authors when they referred to her by name. Modern scholars, following the lead of Percy Allen, have more deeply criticized her behavior than did, for example, William Roper, the son-in-law whom she did not live to meet.1 After examining Roper’s life of Thomas and those by four other early-modern authors, this chapter will evaluate Percy’s claim that she was a contrary wife, who objected to her husband’s instruction. It will then turn to information about her life.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
R. W. Chambers, Thomas More (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1935), pp. 94–7.
William Roper, The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, Knight, ed. Elsie Hitchcock, Early English Text Society, no. 197 (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 6.
Nicholas Harpsfield, The Life and Death of Sr Thomas Moore, Knight, Sometimes Lord High Chancellor of England, ed. Elsie Hitchcock, Early English Text Society, no. 186 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. 3–4.
R. A. B. Mynors and D. F. S. Thomson (trans.), The Correspondence of Erasmus, 12 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), VII, 21
see P. S. Allen, et al. (eds.), Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906–1958), IV, 999, p. 17 (Hereafter EE).
Thomas Stapleton, The Life and Illustrious Martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, trans. P. Hallett, ed. Ernest Reynolds (New York: Fordham University Press, 1966), p. viii.
Andrew Breeze, “Sir Robert Basset and The Life of Syr Thomas More,” Notes and Queries, 51(2004), 263.
Ro. Ba. [Robert Basset], The Lyfe of Syr Thomas More, Sometimes Lord Chancellor of England, ed. Elsie Hitchcock and P. Hallett, Early English Text Society, no. 222 (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 28–9.
Sir Thomas More, Selected Letters (trans.) Elizabeth Rogers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), p. 105.
Ruth Norrington, The Household of Sir Thomas More: A Portrait by Hans Holbein (Waddesdon, UK: Kylin Press, 1985).
Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly, trans. Clarence Miller, second ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 72.
Anthony Edwards, Katherine Rodgers, and Clarence Miller (eds.), English Poems, Life of Pico, The Last Things, The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 12 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963–1990), 1, 130 (Hereafter CWM).
Ralph Houlbrooke (ed.), English Family Life, 1576–1716 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 133.
Craig Thompson (trans.), The Colloquies of Erasmus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 115, 120–2 (Hereafter Thompson, Colloquies)
Craig Thompson (trans.), Colloquies, Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 39 and 40 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), p. 324, n. 31 (Hereafter Thompson, Colloquies, 1997).
Preserved Smith, A Key to the Colloquies of Erasmus, Harvard Theological Studies, XIII (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927), p. 15.
Preserved Smith, Erasmus: A Study of His Life, Ideals, and Place in History (New York: Harper & Bros., 1923). p. 85. See also, Smith, Key, pp. 15–6.
Only biographies of 100 or more pages in English are included. George Potter, Sir Thomas More, 1478–1535 (New York: Small, Maynard and Co., 1925)
Claude Shebbeare, Sir Thomas More: A Leader of the English Renaissance (London: Harding & More, Ltd. Ambrosden Press, 1930)
A. Teetgen, The Footsteps of Sir Thomas More (London: Sands & Co., 1930)
Joseph Clayton, Sir Thomas More: A Short Study (London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1933)
Daniel Sargent, Thomas More (London: Sheed & Ward, 1933)
E. Routh, Sir Thomas More and His Friends, 1477–1535 (New York: Russell and Russell Reprint, 1963 of the 1934 publication)
Christopher Hollis, Sir Thomas More (London: Sheed & Ward, 1934)
Henry Rope, Fisher and More (Dublin: Browne and Nolan, 1935)
John O’Connell, Saint Thomas More (London: Duckworth, 1935)
Richard Smith, John Fisher and Thomas More: Two English Saints (London: Sheed & Ward, 1935); Chambers, More
Algernon Cecil, A Portrait of Thomas More: Scholar, Statesman, Saint (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1937).
Theodore Maynard, Humanist as Hero: The Life of Sir Thomas More (New York: Macmillan Co., 1947), pp. 37–8
John Farrow, The Story of Thomas More (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1954), pp. 25–6, 51–2
Bernard Basset, Born for Friendship: The Spirit of Sir Thomas More (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), pp. 86–7.
Anthony Kenny, Thomas More (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 12
Jasper Ridley, Statesman and Saint: Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More and the Politics of Henry VIII (New York: Viking Press, 1983, c. 1982), pp. 31–2
Gerard Wegemer, Thomas More: A Portrait of Courage (Princeton, NJ: Scepter Publishers, 1995), pp. 28–31
John Guy, Thomas More (London: Arnold, 2000), p. 69.
John Guy, A Daughter’s Love: Thomas More and His Dearest Meg (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), pp. 92–3.
Leslie Paul, Sir Thomas More (New York: Roy Publishers, 1959), p. 69 (originally published in 1953).
E. E. Reynolds, The Field is Won: The Life and Death of St. Thomas More (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce Publishing Co., 1968), p. 55.
Richard Marius, Thomas More: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), pp. 40–1.
Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (London: Chatto & Windus, 1998), pp. 115–6.
James Monti, The King’s Good Servant But God’s First: The Life and Writings of Saint Thomas More (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1997), p. 53.
Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959), p. 375.
Retha Warnicke, “The Restive Wife in Erasmus’ Colloquy: Mistress More or Lady Mountjoy?” Moreana, 20: 79–80(1983), 5–14.
Desiderius Erasmus, “The Institution of Marriage,” Erasmus on Women, ed. Erika Rummel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 80.
Allen, “Netherhall,” p. 654; N. Bailey (trans.), The Colloquies of Erasmus, 3 vols. (London: Giffings & Co., 1900), I, 264, identified the husband as “a Gentleman of a noble family.”
Erika Rummel, “Fertile Ground: Erasmus’s Travels in England,” Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period, ed. Carmine G. Di Biase (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 49–50.
George Colt, History and Genealogy of the Colts of That Ilk and Gartsherrie: English and American Branches of That Family (Edinburgh: Printed for Private Circulation, 1887), p. 234.
Barbara Harris, English Aristocratic Women, 1450–1550: Marriage and Family, Property and Careers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 47
Diana O’Hara, Courtship Constraints: Rethinking the Making of Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 210, gives estimates of £282 for daughters of knights.
Simon Payling, “The Politics of Family: Late Medieval Marriage Contracts,” The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society, ed. R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (Stroud: Allen Sutton Publishing, 1995), pp. 21–48, discusses the marriage of a son and heir to a noninheriting daughter, pointing out the marriage portion, when fathers drew up the contract, went to the groom’s father. One assumes that an adult male lawyer would negotiate the marriage contract.
R. H. Du Boulay, An Age of Ambition: English Society in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Viking, 1970), p. 100.
James McConica, “The Recusant Reputation of Thomas More,” Essential Articles for the Study of Thomas More, ed. Richard Sylvester and Germain Marc’hadour (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1977), pp. 137–43.
W. Powell (ed.), The Victoria History of the County of Essex, 10 vols. (Folkestone: Dawsons of London Reprint, 1966, for the Institute of Historical Research, 1903), V, 195–6; VIII, 224, 244; Colt, History, pp. 232–5; when he visited the church at Roydon, Allen reported that John was married twice and both wives gave him six children and that as Jane was 17 in 1505 (relying on the Marriage Colloquy), she must have been a daughter of the first wife. The Colt family genealogy disagrees with his interpretation of the monuments, but it is incorrect in some of the other early family history. Allen, “Netherhall,” p. 654.
P. S. Allen, Erasmus: Lectures and Wayfaring Sketches (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), pp. 18–9.
C. Johnston, “The Early History of Little Berkhamstead, Herts,” Home Counties Magazine, 11(1875), 279
Francis Nichols, The Hall of Lawford Hall (London: For the Author, 1891), p. 159.
Sir William Page (ed.), The Victoria History of the County of Hertfordshire, 4 vols. (London: Dawson Pall Mall Reprint for the Institute of Historical Research, 1971), III, 460–1.
Josiah Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House, 1439–1509 (London: HMSO, 1936), pp. 747–8.
Albert Hyma, “Erasmus and the Sacrament of Matrimony,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. Archive for Reformation History, 48(1957), 153–64.
Hyma, “Erasmus,” pp. 154–64. See also, J. Sowards, “Erasmus and the Education of Women,” The Sixteenth Century Journal, 13(1982), 77–89.
Copyright information
© 2012 Retha M. Warnicke
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Warnicke, R.M. (2012). Jane More. In: Wicked Women of Tudor England. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391932_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230391932_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-03237-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39193-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)