Australian eJournal of Theology 16.1 (August 2010)
Book Review / A Daughter’s Love
A Daughter’s Love
John Guy
London: Harper Perennial, 2009. ISBN 9780007192328
Guy’s double biography of Thomas More and his beloved daughter Margaret is an
ambitious project seeking to retrieve the memory of Margaret and her critical role in
supporting her father as he bore Henry’s VIII’s anger. As an historian primarily, Guy has
done an outstanding job here of detailing the very complex family, financial and political
interrelationships of the Mores, but as a biographer I am not so sure this book will win
over our hearts so readily as the sales pitch promises. It’s simply too detailed to feature
her as a heroine.
Interestingly, Guy draws convincingly on More’s claim to fame, his book Utopia, his unique
elaboration of the best possible society, but a Christian one where the Utopians “always
need Christ to perfect their perfect society. Reason must be crowned by revelation” (100).
Thus this history/biography proceeds by paralleling More’s life events with the text of
Utopia. By this device Guy seeks to link the ideas and shifts in the writing of Utopia to the
on-going subtext of More’s and Margaret’s lives. After Guy’s analysis, there’s no doubt that
More wrote Utopia.
A Daughter’s Love reminds us yet again of just how complex was the interplay of
characters and relationships surrounding More as he rose to become a royal adviser and
then Lord Chancellor. It reminds us too just how feudal English society was in the
sixteenth century. Though Bolt celebrated More in his 1960 play as a stoical, grim-faced
man for all seasons, as a man of conscience built on principle, we are reminded here just
how noble and self-doubting More actually was. Guy also shows how he learned very soon
to tread warily. Wolsey’s conniving diplomacy between France and Spain changed More’s
admiration of him and alerted More to just how terrible events can be manipulated to
satisfy personal agendas. Chapter 14 entitled “Shifting Sands” plots the twists that such
naked opportunism plots.
Guy also convincingly plots the friendship between More and Erasmus. Because of this
mutual respect as friends and scholars, Margaret’s discovery of a mistake in Erasmus’s
edited version of the letters of St. Cyprian, the nisi vos / nervos issue, was valued and
upheld. Though shamefaced, Erasmus was impressed by her scholarship and
acknowledged her to be one of Europe’s leading women intellectuals in a specially written
dialogue. Yet Erasmus sought invisibility when More most needed his friendship.
Guy introduces no alternative theological understandings really, being content to recount
received understandings of the matters at issue. He relates how in helping Henry attack
Luther, More defended not the Greek New Testament over the Vulgate with all that that
entailed, but attacked his sola scriptura tenet, thus reinstating again the enduring worth of
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AEJT 16.1 (August 2010)
Book Review / A Daughter’s Love
Church tradition. The ‘true gospel of Christ,’ he said, had been “inscribed on the heart of
the Church” (141). Only the Church of the Apostles had the right to interpret scripture. All
this is quite traditional teaching and the widely received understanding of the matter
today.
While the title immediately attracted this reader, it demands closer reading through much
complex historical detail to find out what made Margaret tick. Guy does truly show not tell
us. We need to read through much petty but at times interesting background material to
find the gleanings unique to her. All too often, the fortunes and attitudes of the father
overshadowed the daughter. It was necessarily so in those days, well, in the father’s
opinion anyway. No George Eliot deceptions were allowed then. Her Devout Treatise upon
the Pater Noster remains her enduring achievement for overcoming many obstacles not
least of which was the threat of a heresy trial.
The bibliography runs for 35 pages and the subject / references index runs to 13 pages so
this is a scholarly work. The book comes with 14 pages of full-gloss colour plates of
portraits and engravings to give flesh to the text. This Harper Perennial 2009 edition is
handy and a great purchase at $28. While I enjoyed reading its 378 pages as a long-time
scholar of More myself, I do not think it will appeal to the more general reader
encountering its protagonists for the first time. Only after a long and clinical analysis does
Guy win hearts for Margaret.
Reviewer: Gregory Smith completed his doctorate at Australian Catholic University in
Brisbane on “Images of Salvation: A Study in Theology, Poetry and Rhetoric.” He lectures in
Australian poetry and theology, and is a regular contributor to AEJT.
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