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ABSTRACT
The thesis that Thomas More (1478–1535) plotted and financed the capture of William Tyndale (c.1494–1536) in Antwerp in May 1535 despite being himself a prisoner in the Tower of London at the time was first advanced in a biography of Tyndale published by Brian Moynahan in 2002. That thesis came to immeasurably wider attention through being mentioned in each volume of the Wolf Hall trilogy by the late Dame Hilary Mantel (1952–2022). The wide circulation thus given to that claim, even though in a work of fiction rather than of scholarship, motivates this attempt to demonstrate that it is without any foundation. The consequent close scrutiny of the evidence about this episode indicates that the taking of Tyndale was planned by its protagonist, Henry Phillips, on his own initiative, and not, as has often been suggested, at the instigation of English ecclesiastical authorities.
Notes
1 Brian Moynahan, If God Spare My Life: William Tyndale, the English Bible and Sir Thomas More – A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal (London: Little, Brown, 2002). See in particular ch. 22, “The Paymaster”, 329–54.
2 Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (London: Fourth Estate, 2009), 590. This seems to be dated around November 1534. See also p. 627, set in late May 1535: “Tyndale has been, not just taken, but betrayed. Someone tempted him out of his haven, and More knows who”.
3 Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (London: Fourth Estate, 2012), 118: “More had men everywhere, all about Tyndale. It was More’s agents who betrayed him.” Hilary Mantel, The Mirror and the Light (London: Fourth Estate, 2021), 147: “I blame Thomas More for Tyndale, his nest of spies that lived on after he was dead … ”; and 381–2, “If Thomas More can reach out his hand to strike Tyndale himself, being himself dead … ”. The consistently melodramatic tone of all these comments, though offered by putatively distinct characters, is worthy of note.
4 Mantel, The Mirror and the Light, 427–30, esp. 429.
5 It is of course possible that the late Dame Hilary Mantel came up with the idea that More was responsible for Tyndale’s betrayal entirely independently of Moynahan. But this seems unlikely in view of her comment that “some people have seen the novel [Wolf Hall] as an outrageous attack on the reputation of Thomas More and as a travesty of the facts. But the truth is I have not discovered anything new about More”. Dame Hilary Mantel, interview with Jasper Rees, theartsdesk.com, January 19, 2015, reposted September 23, 2022.
6 Interview with Anne Mundow, “Living with Cromwell”, The Boston Globe, October 18, 2009.
7 Dame Hilary Mantel, interview with Tim Adams, The Guardian, April 26, 2014; and “You ask the questions: Hilary Mantel”, The Observer, October 4, 2020.
8 Mia Levitin, Irish Times, Ticket, February 29, 2020, noted that Mantel “takes great pride in respecting historical facts”; Robbie Millen, The Times, February 29, 2020, “her historical understanding is worn lightly”. See also Thomas Penn on her “phenomenal historical rigour”, Daily Telegraph, February 29, 2020, 23; or Sophie Elmhirst on her “unimpeachable accuracy”, “The unquiet mind of Hilary Mantel”, New Statesman, October 3, 2012. These instances could be multiplied.
9 Interview with Rob Attar, “Wolf Hall: Hilary Mantel talks Tudors”, Historyextra, January 20, 2015.
10 The Procurator-General at this time was one Pierre Dufief, a man notoriously zealous in the prosecution of heretics. See David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 374.
11 For Thomas Poyntz, see Brian Buxton, At the House of Thomas Poyntz: The Betrayal of William Tyndale with the Consequences for an English Merchant and his Family (Lavenham: Brian Buxton, 2013), esp. 3–15 for his family background. I am grateful to the anonymous reader of this Journal for bringing this work to my attention.
12 John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London: John Day, 1563), 513–22 (renumbered 569–78 in the online edition found at John Foxe’s The Acts and Monuments Online (https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/). It is likely that Poyntz, who died in 1562, provided his narrative to Foxe after the latter’s return to England in 1559.
13 Thomas Poyntz to John Poyntz, August 25, 1535, British Library MS Cotton Galba B. x. fols 66r–67v, summarised at Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie (21 vols. London: HMSO, 1862–1932), vol. 9, no. 182 (henceforth cited as LP, by volume and item number: e.g. LP 9.182).
14 Thomas Theobald (or Tebolde) to Cranmer, Antwerp, July 31, 1535, British Library MS Cotton Galba B. x. fols 119r–120v (summarised at LP 8.1151).
15 J. F. Mozley, William Tyndale (London: SPCK, 1937). Brian Buxton notes that two earlier historians had raised the possibility that Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester (c.1495–1555), was Phillips’s backer. See House of Thomas Poyntz, 69–70, referring to Christopher Anderson, The Annals of the English Bible (London: William Pickering, 1845) and Robert Demaus (though he voices scepticism about Gardiner’s alleged role). See Robert Demaus, William Tyndale: A Biography (London: Religious Tract Society, 1871), 424. George Townsend, the Victorian editor of John Foxe, had earlier conjectured that both Gardiner and Bishop Nix of Norwich were behind Phillips’s enterprise, on the grounds that one Gabriel Dunne, with whom Phillips had some connection at Leuven, had been a student at Trinity Hall in Cambridge, of which Gardiner had been Master, and to which Nix was a benefactor. See John Foxe, The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. G. Townsend (8 vols. London: Seeley and Burnside, 1843–49), V:812.
16 Mozley, William Tyndale, 300, footnote.
17 See OED (www.oed.com), “commission, n.¹”.
18 British Library MS Cotton Galba B. x. fol. 119r: “he had a commyssion owt also for to have taken D Barnes & george Joye with other”. Quotations from early modern manuscripts are given in modernised spelling in the text of this article, with original spelling in the notes. Quotations from early printed books are given as printed. In all cases, standard abbreviations and contractions are expanded.
19 George Collyns to “George”, Antwerp, May 1, 1535, TNA SP 1/92, fol. 115r, “ther ys commyssyon come frome the procureur generall of brysselles to tacke iij yngles men wherof one ys docktor barns” (summarised at LP 8.652). The addressee, whose surname is missing, was a mercer, apparently in London (fol. 115v).
20 Henry VIII wanted to get hold of Tyndale early in the 1530s, and pursued both Harry Phillips and Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500–58) later in the decade, though without any success. Mary’s regime shipped back John Cheke (1514–57), and Elizabeth’s was delighted when some zealous English merchants kidnapped Dr John Story (c.1503–71) and carried him back to England, where he was gaoled, tried, and executed as a traitor.
21 Mozley, William Tyndale, 300.
22 Mozley might perhaps have confused Poyntz’s letter with Theobald’s, as Poyntz’s letter could be taken as hinting at the episcopal involvement for which Mozley believed he had found direct evidence elsewhere.
23 Thomas Poyntz to John Poyntz, BL MS Cotton Galba B. x. fol. 66r, “procurement owght of yngland”. Oddly, Poyntz makes no mention of Phillips in this letter, and states that Tyndale was “taken owght of my howse be a sargant of armys other wyse a dore wardare, and the procurer Ienerall of braband”. The natural reading of this passage (that Brabant officials entered his house and arrested Tyndale) casts a modicum of doubt on the elaborate version he later supplied to Foxe, with its loving details of Phillips’s despicable trickery.
24 John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (2 vols. London: John Day, 1570), I:1224–32 (1263–71 in the online edition at https://www.dhi.ac.uk/foxe/): “Phillippes well monyed by the Englishe byshops”. This is found in the top left margin on 1228 (online 1267). On the revision of the 1563 account of Tyndale for the 1570 edition of Foxe’s work, see John N. King, “‘The Light of Printing’: William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early Modern Print Culture,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 (2001), 52–86.
25 The Victorian edition of Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs”, which conflates material from the various early editions, does not clearly signal that this marginal note was added only in 1570. See Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. Townsend, V:122. However, Mozley used original editions, and specifically those of 1563 and 1570 (William Tyndale, vii), so he should have realized that this marginal note was Foxe’s work.
26 Edward Hall, “The reign of Henry VIII”, in The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke (London: Richard Grafton, 1548) (STC 12721), fol. 227v, under 1535.
27 Moynahan, If God Spare My Life, ch. 22, “The Paymaster”, 329–54. Moynahan produces More like a rabbit out of a hat on 339.
28 John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes [1570], I:1227–28 (1266–7 online).
29 Statutes of the Realm (11 vols in 12; London, 1810–28), III:528.
30 Lady Alice More to Henry VIII, undated, but probably November or December 1534, in The Correspondence of Sir Thomas More, ed. E. F. Rogers (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 547–49.
31 Moynahan, If God Spare My Life, 351–53.
32 Matricule de l’Université de Louvain, ed. E. Reusens (10 vols. Brussels: Kiessling, 1903–67), IV.i.116, “Henricus Philippus de Anglia”, matr. December 14, 1534.
33 John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes [1570], I:1227 (1266 online).
34 Theobald to Cranmer, BL MS Cotton Galba B. x. fol. 119v: “other this Phylleps hathe gret ffrendes in yngland to mayntayne hym here or els as he shewed me he is well benyfyced in the bysshoppryke of exciter”. Had this been true, then Phillips’s benefices would have been rendered vacant by his attainder in 1539, and it would therefore have fallen to the king to present his successors. There is no sign in the patent rolls of Henry making presentations to any benefices vacated by the attainder of anyone called Phillips. Poorer benefices in the king’s gift tended to be filled at the presentation of the Chancellor (Lord Chancellor) and thus not to appear in the patent rolls as royal grants. But the kind of benefices that would justify the phrase “well benyfyced” would almost certainly have cleared the threshold for the king’s personal attention and disposal.
35 Matricule de l’Université de Louvain, IV.i.124. Robert Faryngton to Cromwell, Cambridge, January 12, 1536, TNA SP1/101, fol. 69r (summarised at LP 10.85): “Pleasith it your mastershipe (as I am credeblye informyd) Phillipe had ij benefices and a prebend when he went over the see. What order his fryndes have taken with them synce his departinge your mastershipe may have soone knolege”.
36 For Layton’s particular importance in discrediting the monasteries, see Richard Rex, “The Lost Breviarium Compertorum and Henry VIII’s First Act for the Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1536”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, FirstView, 2023.
37 Richard Layton to Cromwell, incomplete and undated, in early 1539, LP 14.i.393. The original letter is at TNA SP1/143, fol. 181r–182r. Its badly damaged and obscured opening words verify the citation from the LP summary. Phillips is not named, but is evidently the subject of this first surviving part of the letter. Layton goes on to remind Cromwell that he had told him about Phillips himself on a former occasion, when he had “brought with me a scoler then retournyde from Lovayne callyd Faryngton to declare unto you the circumstantes and the hooll trewthe of that Traytour his dealynges and behavour” (fol. 181r). Faryngton’s own letter to Cromwell (see above, note 35) was presumably written after that visit. The purpose of Layton’s 1539 letter was to defend his brother William (who had matriculated at Leuven on September 20, 1537 – see Matricule de l’Université de Louvain, IV.i.164), and incurred Cromwell’s displeasure through his part in a bungled attempt to get Phillips back to England. William Layton had helped secure the surrender of Phillips to Thomas Wriothesley at Brussels in February 1539, but then blotted his copybook by allowing Phillips to escape while in his custody. See the letter from Edward Carne to Cromwell, Brussels, February 7, 1539, TNA SP1/143, fols 39r–40v (summarised at LP 14.i.248), reporting at 39r that Layton and his companion, one Mr Joyes, “suffred hym to departe”.
38 Mozley, William Tyndale, 299; Moynahan, If God Spare My Life, 325–26. Brian Buxton, House of Thomas Poyntz, 77, asks whether Phillips might have stolen his father’s money, but seems unaware of the evidence and consensus that he had done so.
39 Harry Phillips’s undated letters to (respectively) his mother (Emelyn), his father (Richard), Dr Brerewood (Chancellor of Exeter), his brother-in-law Richard Seward, his brother Thomas, his brother-in-law John Stoker, and his brother William, are bound together at TNA SP1/100, fols. 78–85, and summarised at LP 9.1138–44.
40 John Hutton to Cromwell, Brussels, May 26, 1537, TNA SP1/120, fols 205r–208v (LP 12.i.1293), at fol. 206r-v, reports Phillips’s boast, in relation to another plot requiring clandestine correspondence, that “I have devysid to do as I did by sarten letters that I sent to my father wiche was I cawssid them to be baken with in a loffe of bred and soo ar we apoyntid to do with thois”. For Hutton’s position as ambassador, see Gary M. Bell, A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives, 1509–1688 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1990), 176.
41 Phillips to Richard Phillips, SP1/100, fol. 80r-v, at 80r, “after the transactione of a longe tyme”; and to his mother, Emelyn, SP1/100, fols. 78r–79r, at 78v, “be good unto me, and that one oder two yere cold not obtayne, lett iij yerys porrchase”. For more on Richard Phillips, see the entry for Richard Phelips of Poole and Charborough in the History of Parliament online database of MPs, 1509–1558, at https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/.
42 Theobald to Cranmer, July 31, 1535, said he had sold his books for 20 marks, “entendyng to goo hens to parres” (BL MS Cotton Galba B x, fol. 119v; LP 8.1151). Brian Buxton suggests that a letter written by Mary Basset puts Phillips in Paris by March 1536 (House of Thomas Poyntz, 42). But Mary Basset’s comment in a letter to Philippa Basset, “There is a gentleman here who is called Philip, and for love of your name he sendeth you a little basket”, gives no reason to identify that man with Tyndale’s betrayer. See Mary Basset to Philippa Basset, Abbeville, March 13, 1536, in The Lisle Letters, ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne (6 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), vol. 3, pp. 165. Edward Carne reported much later that another English expatriate student, Mr Stokes, had admitted seeing Phillips at Paris “raggyd and torne”, and lending him some clothes – which Phillips stole (Carne to Cromwell, Brussels, February 7, 1539, SP1/143, fol. 40v; LP 14.i.248). But Phillips’s dishevelled state probably places this sighting after his return from Italy. Thomas Stokes matriculated at Leuven on January 17, 1539 (Matricule de l’Université de Louvain, IV.i.186).
43 Phillips is mentioned in two despatches sent from Rome by Gregorio Casale. See Casale to Cromwell, Rome, May 3, 1536, TNA SP1/103, fols. 224r–226r (LP 10.796); and Rome, May 6, 1536, BL MS Cotton Vitellius B xiv, fols. 191r–192v (LP 10.814).
44 Hutton to Cromwell, Brussels, May 26, 1537.
45 Casale to Cromwell, Rome, 3 May 1536, SP1/103, fol. 225r-v: “Ex Pontificis secretario cognovi, Anglum quendam Philippum nomine ad Pontificis familiaritatem aspiran[tem] opera Cardinalis Caraccioli, qui eum ut virum doctum nobilemque commendat, atque Thomae Moro consanguineum et necessarium fuisse, nuncque serenissimum Regem eum persequi propter ea et quod sedis apostolicae autoritatem asseruisset. … Ideo secretario dixi irridens hunc humili loco natum esse hominem nequam et nebulonem magnum, qui sibi per dolos et fallacias victum soleat quaerere”.