How St Thomas More lost his reputation
The Iona Institute published a talk it recently hosted, by Richard Rex, Professor of Reformation History at Cambridge University. Rex noted that St Thomas More’s reputation had suffered a steep decline – mostly thanks to Hilary Mantel’s bestselling Wolf Hall, adapted into a BBC television series.
Reviewers had made much of what one commentator called the book’s “unimpeachable accuracy”. But, Rex said, the book seriously misrepresents More.
For instance, he is presented as a hypocrite: the novel’s narrator, Thomas Cromwell, says it’s “well known” that “More wears a jerkin of horsehair”. But “the evidence we have is that More’s hairshirt was a closely guarded secret, known only to his confessor, his wife, and his daughters.” (And “jerkin” would be the wrong word for a hairshirt.)
