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Richard
III Society
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Richard
III and the Parson of Blokesworth
By Sandra Worth
(Printed in Ricardian Register Fall 2001--Copyright © Sandra
Worth,: used with permission)
For most of his life, before Fortune showered him
with favor, John Morton, future bishop, archbishop, cardinal,
chancellor, and friend to kings, was commonly known as the Parson of
Blokesworth. In Edward IV's Act of attainder after the Battle of Towton
in 1460, when he was around forty or fifty years old, he was described
as ‘John Morton, late Parson of Blokesworth, in the shire of
Dorset, clerk.’ Little did Edward guess at the time what a
large
role ‘John Morton, clerk,’ would play in his life,
and in
the events following his death that brought about the fall of the House
of York.
John Morton was the eldest of five sons born to Richard
Morton of Millborne St. Andrew and his wife, Cecilia Beauchamp in
either 1410, or 1420. His parentage has been described as mean, though
his family owned land and boasted an ancestor who had been Sherriff of
Nottingham under Edward III. Morton received his education at the
Benedictine Abbey of Cerne, where his uncle was most likely prior, and
he went on to study at Oxford’s Balliol College. His lot
there
was probably not a happy one. Students slept four to five in a room on
lumpy straw mattresses crawling with lice, and were served rotten meat
and fish. Riots over the food were common. No doubt he was glad when,
as Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University in 1446, he could enjoy a more
luxurious lifestyle.
In 1451, Morton received his doctorate in both canon and
civil law, with great distinction. Legal degrees have been described as
the golden road to a miter in 15-century England, and in
London’s
ecclesiastical courts, such as the Court of Arches, opportunity for
fame and riches abounded. Possessed of great talent, and even greater
ambition, Morton lost no time getting himself to London where he could
win the notice, and secure the patronage, of the mighty. With his
formidable mind and eloquent tongue, he quickly achieved his purpose
and came to the attention of Cardinal Bourchier, who in turn,
introduced him to King Henry. He was appointed chancellor of the
household of the young Prince of Wales, played a role in the infamous
‘Parliament of Devils’ that attainted the Yorkist
leaders,
and soon became one of Queen Margaret’s most trusted
advisors. It
was at this point in his life that the rich living of Blokesworth was
bestowed upon him. In 1460, the Battle of Towton brought his rising
star to an abrupt halt.
His biographer, Woodhouse, says he was most
certainly in attendance upon King Henry at the fatal defeat of the
Lancastrians at Towton, and that he probably defended his life with his
sword. We are told by the historian, Grafton, that ‘The
parson of
Blokesworth fled the realm with the queen and the prince and never
returned but to the field of Barnet.’ Morton appears to have
been
one of Margaret of Anjou’s two hundred attendants in Bruges,
where they were well-treated by the kind and generous Phillip the Good.
Their circumstances deteriorated later, however, when Queen Margaret
moved to France and she was subject to deprivations at the court of
Louis XI. This must have left Morton with a bitter taste for future
exile, and may have influenced his decision to submit to Edward IV
after Tewkesbury.
Under the Yorkist Sun, Morton’s star shot into
ascendancy again. He rose to prominence as Master of the Rolls, and for
a short while during the illness of Lord Chancellor Stillington, was
entrusted with the Great Seal. Edward also dispatched him on embassies
from Hungary to France, a sure mark of royal favor. The devious mind
and lack of scruples that was to serve him so well under Henry VII,
first displayed itself during this period. The historian Hook credits
Morton with devising the underhanded, and hated, system of benevolences
which Edward used to finance his invasion of France, and which he later
developed into his infamous ‘Morton’s
Fork’ argument
of Henry’s reign, enabling Tudor to extract money from rich
and
poor alike.
In 1476, when Edward found himself in France and
abandoned by his allies, he made a treaty with Louis XI that paid him a
substantial sum to return to England. Edward may have seen the payment
as akin to Roman tribute, but in the general view it was a bribe, and
the treaty was considered shameful at the time. The Parson of
Blokesworth, now ‘Doctor Morton,’ was one of only
three
royal officers Edward sent to negotiate its terms, and certainly this
ingenious instrument of statecraft that cloaked Edward’s
failure
as triumph is sly enough to be worthy of crafty Morton, whose
brainchild it may have been. Later, when Louis, in gratitude, paid
Edward’s royal officers for their help with the treaty,
Morton
was high on the list and rode away from Picquigny not only with
Louis’ money in his purse, but with Louis’ amity,
from
which he would one day reap astounding dividends.
In sharp contrast, Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
preserved his integrity by condemning the Treaty of Picquigny and
refusing Louis’ gold. Even though Richard had no way of
knowing
at the time that the long-term consequences of his action would prove
fatal to him, he was no fool. He had to be fully aware that a
king’s enmity was not without its dangers, yet he would not
compromise his principles. Louis was never to forgive Richard for his
refusal, delivered bluntly at a private dinner that Richard departed in
such haste as to border on an insult. As a result, Richard incurred an
enmity that would one day finance an invasion against him and win the
throne for Tudor.
In his biography, Hook says that although Morton
was “munificent on great occasions, yet he was avaricious and
grasping.” Woodhouse states that Morton’s
“munificence was great and untainted by the vice of avarice,
which disgraced the sovereign.” However, Woodhouse then
refers to
Morton’s “raising of early strawberries”
as an
example of this ‘munificence,’ which proves to what
startling lengths biographers are prepared to go in order to paint
their subjects in the best light.
The truth is that Morton's
‘munificence’ was self-directed. He beautified the
Bishop’s Palace, where he lived. He spent extravagantly on
his
own installation as bishop. He drained the marshy fens and cut a canal
through to the sea at his own expense—which at first glance
may
seem an act of generosity. But Morton, a calculating character and
far-sighted, may have simply been looking ahead to the day when his
fortunes might change and he would be in need of an escape route.
In his grasping for money and power, and in his
Lancastrian sympathies and disregard for justice, Morton had much in
common with the Woodville Queen and her family. Like them, he
was
low-born and a former Lancastrian who didn’t harmonise well
with
the old Yorkist families, since they had no sympathy for Lancastrians
who had become loyal to Edward for lack of a Lancastrian pretender in
the field, and resented seeing them elevated to the peerage.
In 1479, after he was consecrated as Bishop of Ely, Morton retired to
private life and his gardens at Holborn, where he concerned himself
with the discharge of his ecclesiastical duties. Either
Morton’s
ambitions had been realized at this point in his life—at
least
temporarily—or he didn’t anticipate any greater
honors
under Edward.
In 1483, he attended King Edward in his last
illness and was appointed one of the executors of his will. Ever the
politician, however, Morton refused to implement the will that named
Richard as Protector and deprived the Woodvilles of their dream of
seizing power for themselves. Shortly afterwards, he master-minded
Buckingham’s rebellion and made his escape by means of the
canal
he himself had dug in the Fens. He has been named by many as Prime
Suspect in the murder of the Princes, which helped to bring down
Richard and secure the throne for Tudor. His involvement in the plots
speaks volumes about the relationship between the two men.
After Richard’s death at Bosworth, Henry
Tudor raised him to Archbishop of Canterbury, procured him a
cardinal’s hat and made him Lord Chancellor. Under Henry,
Morton
reached his full flowering and gave Englishmen the taste of his
quality. He had the ear of the king, and Henry’s
unabated
trust, and is generally regarded as the author of his important
legislation.
Whereas Richard had labored hard to secure justice
for the poor, both by edict and by personally presiding over courts of
appeal, Morton extended the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber and
converted it into a terrifying instrument of oppressive government
under the Tudors. Whereas Richard enacted statutes to protect the
buyers of land from unscrupulous sellers who had sold the same property
many times over, Morton enacted a law that made possession the deciding
criteria. Whereas Richard “dampned and annulled
forever”
the right of the King to taxation without authority of Parliament,
Morton devised a clever dilemma, known as Morton’s Fork, that
allowed no man an escape. By this argument, royal commissioners told
those who lived frugally that, obviously, they could afford the tax,
because their parsimony had made them rich. Those who lived comfortably
were told that, obviously, they were rich and could afford it.
Henry dated his reign from the day before the
battle of Bosworth so he could hang for treason those who had fought
for King Richard. Though it fits with Morton’s character,
this
edict has not been attributed to him. Much later, however, Morton is
connected to a similar, very important piece of legislation—a
statute that protects from treason all who fight for a sitting king. As
Woodhouse, puts it:
“ . . .a belief had become very prevalent among the people
that
the Duke of York, younger son of Edward IV, still survived, and the
apprehension that if he were restored those who fought for the present
king, whose title was so defective, might be tried for
treason…
deterred many from joining the royal standard.”
Sir Thomas More has left us a slightly more
flattering portrait of Morton, but according to Francis Bacon, he was a
stern and haughty man, much hated at court, and even more so throughout
the country. In their rebellion against Tudor, the Cornish
men
raged against him, along with Reginald Bray, another of Henry
VII’s advisors, “as parricides and vultures praying
upon
the poore and oppressed.” Morton was so hated, in
fact,
that he feared for his life and came up with a legal means of providing
for his own safety. Bacon imputes to Morton the passage of an act in
Henry’s first Parliament that made it a capital crime for
anyone
to conspire the death of any lord of the realm or member of the
king’s council, and gave the Star Chamber full jurisdiction.
Now,
merely on a word, Morton could make short shift of anyone he considered
a threat to himself.
Like Napoleon, this “man of mean
stature” also believed in absolute power. Not even the Church
was
exempt from his autocratic rule. According to the biographer, Budden,
whom Woodhouse quotes, Morton’s object was to “give
to the
Pope despotic authority in things spiritual, and in things temporal, to
concede the same despotisms to the king.”
His will is particularly enlightening. He left to
the Church of Ely his silver cross weighing over 200 ounces, set with
precious stones. In exchange for this, and also in gratitude for many
other favors conferred, both while he sat as bishop, and afterwards,
the Prior and Convent of Ely were expected to “find at their
own
expense” a monk to say daily masses for his soul, and the
souls
of his family, friends, and benefactors for twenty years.
This
contrasts with the prevailing custom of leaving a bequest to fund
services. What we have here is a man who kept book and never gave
something away for nothing. A despot, attempting to direct men even
from the grave.
In assessing Morton’s accomplishments and
legacy, Woodhouse seems to accept Buck's assertion that
More’s
History of Richard III was probably originally written in Latin by
Morton, and translated into English by Sir Thomas More, and he
concludes that “His (Morton’s) literary attainments
reflect
still greater splendour upon him, and he is to be considered the author
of the first prose composition in our language.”
Even if
More had written it, Woodhouse says, “We have the story from
the
highest authority—Morton himself, who narrated it to Sir
Thomas
More.”
Far from casting ‘splendour’ on Morton,
Morton's authorship of the History reveals some of the man's worse
traits. Richard had no withered arm, otherwise he could not have
performed so valiantly on the field of battle, unhorsing massive
Cheyney at Bosworth, and killing Tudor’s champion, William
Brandon. Clearly, Morton had no difficulty twisting the truth when it
was expedient for him to do so, and no qualms defiling the honor of the
dead. Perhaps the task of rewriting history, and destroying documents
that conflicted with the truth, which Henry VII undertook after
Morton’s death, was one of the ideas crafty Morton left his
pupil.
In their aims, philosophy, and character, Richard
and Morton could not have been more dissimilar. The way they lived
their lives illustrates the differences between them and suggests what
their personal relationship may have been like. The Treaty of Picquigny
certainly highlights a dramatic difference: Richard lived by the rules,
while Morton thrived by bending them. To Richard, principles, honor,
integrity, meant everything; to Morton, besides money and power, only
expediency mattered.
The two had little in common and were divided by a
lengthy list of differences. On one side stands a man of honor; on the
other an opportunist. It is probably safe to assume that Richard and
the low-born Parson of Blokesworth who wiled his way to dizzy heights
of power as Cardinal, and Lord Chancellor, and the confidante of kings,
rarely saw eye to eye and probably disliked one another intensely.
‘Morton’s Fork’ has become the
little bishop’s epitaph in history, but perhaps we should
pause
now to consider what the Chronicle of London and the antiquarian,
Guthrie, have to say of him:
“in our tyme was no man lyke to be compared to hym in all
thynges; Albeit that he lyved not without the great disdaynes and
greate haterede of the commons of this lande.”
Guthrie is more explicit. He says that Morton
died of the plague and delivered the nation from a pestilence; that he
neither inclined to, nor practiced, any moderation; and that there is
no vestige on record of any virtue of humanity into which he deviated.
Contrast this with the cry of the heart from the
men of York on learning of Richard’s death at Bosworth Field.
This article is based on the following works:
Walter Farquhar Hook’s Lives of the Archbishops
Woodhouse’s The Life of John Morton
Desmond Seward’s Wars of the Roses
i.
Grafton, Richard, History of England, (London, 1809) p. 122
ii.
So-called from
the church in which it was held, St. Mary le Bow. The Court of Arches
is a court of appeal in ecclesiastical cases under the direct
jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
iii.
With the
possible exception of her brother, Anthony Woodville. See Worth,
Sandra, Richard and the Queen’s Brother, Ricardian Register,
Spring, 2001.
iv.
The question
whether they were murdered or survived remains open to debate. Our own
Geoffrey Richardson is one who argues that they were done away with,
and probably by Morton and Margaret Beaufort.(See The Deceivers.) For a
fascinating discussion of the possible survival of at least one of the
princes, see Audrey Williamson’s The Mystery of the Princes,
and
Diana Kleyn’s Richard of England
v.
According to
Woodhouse, “Although he appeared merely to execute the
measures
of the king, he was in reality the chief author of the system for
controlling the power of the great feudal barons. . .
” pp.
78-79
vi.
Woodhouse, The Life of John Morton, 1885, pp. 82-83
vii. More says in Utopia that the doctor often adopted a caustic manner
when talking to stranger in order to test their reaction, but that
normally he was ‘lacking in no wise to win favor’
viii.
Francis Bacon’s Life of Henry VII
ix.
Williamson, Audrey, The Mystery of the Princes; Alan Sutton, 1981; p.157
x.
More’s description.
xi.
Budden, John, Life of John Morton, as quoted by Woodhouse, p. 95
xii.
Bentham, James, M.A. History and Antiquities of the Conventual and
Cathedral Church of Ely, 1771.
xiii.
Woodhouse, Life of John Morton, p. 102
xiv.
Cotton MS.Vitellius A. xvi. F.181 b. Chronicle of London, 1225-1509, in
English, written temp. Hen VII and beginning Hen. VIII.
xv.
William Guthrie’s History of England to 1688, 3 folio
volumes, pub. 1744-1751.
xvi.
As to be expected, Seward paints a more sympathetic portrait of Morton
than even Woodhouse.
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