It has been the fashion with biographers to speak bitterly of this poor woman, and to pity More for his cruel fate in being united to a termagant. No one has any compassion for her. Sir Thomas is the victim; Mistress Alice the shrill virago. In those days, when every historic reprobate finds an apologist, is there no one to say a word in behalf of the Widow Middleton, whose lot in life and death seems to this writer very pitiable? She was quick in temper, slow in brain, domineering, awkward. To rouse sympathy for such a woman is no easy task; but if wretchedness is a title to compassion, Mistress Alice has a right to charity and gentle usage. It was not her fault that she could not sympathize with her grand husband, in his studies and tastes, his lofty life and voluntary death; it was her misfortune that his steps traversed plains high above her own moral and intellectual level. By social theory they were intimate companions; in reality, no man and woman in all England were wider apart. From his elevation he looked down on her with commiseration that was heightened by curiosity and amazement; and she daily writhed under his gracious condescension and passionless urbanity; under her own consciousness of inferiority and consequent self-scorn. He could no more sympathize with her petty aims, than she with the high views and ambitions; and conjugal sympathy was far more necessary to her than to him. His studious friends and clever children afforded him an abundance of human fellowship; his public cares and intellectual pursuits gave him constant diversion. He stood in such small need of her, that if some benevolent fairy had suddenly endowed her with grace, wisdom, and understanding, the sum of his satisfaction would not have been perceptibly altered. But apart from him she had no sufficient enjoyments. His genuine companionship was requisite for her happiness; but for this society nature had endowed her with no fitness. In the case of an unhappy marriage, where the unhappiness is not caused by actual misconduct, but is solely due to incongruity of tastes and capacities, it is cruel to assume that the superior person of the ill-assorted couple has the stronger claim to sympathy.
Finding his wife less tractable than he wished, More withheld his confidence from her, taking the most important steps of his life, without either asking for her advice, or even announcing the course which he was about to take. His resignation of the seals was announced to her on the day after his retirement from office, and in a manner which, notwithstanding its drollery, would greatly pain any woman of ordinary sensibility. The day following the date of his resignation was a holiday; and in accordance with his usage the ex-Chancellor, together with his household, attended service in Chelsea Church. On her way to church, Lady More returned the greetings of her friends with a stateliness not unseemly at that ceremonious time in one who was the lady of the Lord High Chancellor. At the conclusion of service, ere she left her pew, the intelligence was broken to her in a jest that she had lost her cherished dignity. "And whereas upon the holidays during his High Chancellorship one of his gentlemen, when the service of the church was done, ordinarily used to come to my lady his wife's pew-door, and say unto her 'Madam, my lord is gone,' he came into my lady his wife's pew himself, and making a low courtesy, said unto her, 'Madam, my lord is gone,' which she, imagining to be but one of his jests, as he used many unto her, he sadly affirmed unto her that it was true. This was the way he thought fittest to break the matter unto his wife, who was full of sorrow to hear it."
Equally humorous and pathetic was that memorable interview between More and his wife in the Tower, when she, regarding his position by the lights with which nature had endowed her, counseled him to yield even at that late moment to the king. "What the goodyear, Mr. More!" she cried, bustling up to the tranquil and courageous man. "I marvel that you, who have been hitherto always taken for a wise man, will now so play the fool as to lie here in this close, filthy prison, and be content to be shut up thus with mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, with the favor and good-will both of the king and his council, if you would but do as the bishops and best learned of his realm have done; and, seeing you have at Chelsea a right fair house, your library, your books, your gallery, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might, in company with me, your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I muse what, in God's name, you mean, here thus fondly to tarry." Having heard her out—preserving his good-humor, he said to her, with a cheerful countenance, "I pray thee, good Mrs. Alice, tell me one thing!" "What is it?" saith she, "Is not this house as near heaven as my own?"
Sir Thomas More was looking towards heaven.
Mistress Alice had her eye upon the 'right fair house' at Chelsea.
CHAPTER VII.
GOOD QUEEN BESS.
Amongst the eminent men who are frequently mentioned as notorious suitors for the personal affection of Queen Elizabeth, a conspicuous place is awarded to Hatton, by the scandalous memoirs of his time and the romantic traditions of later ages. Historians of the present generation have accepted without suspicion the story that Hatton was Elizabeth's amorous courtier, that the fanciful letters of 'Lydds' were fervent solicitations for response to his passion; that he won her favor and his successive promotions by timely exhibition of personal grace and steady perseverance in flattery. Campbell speaks of the queen and her chancellor as 'lovers;' and the view of the historian has been upheld by novelists and dramatic writers.
The writer of this page ventures to reject a story which is not consistent with truth, and casts a dark suspicion on her who was not more powerful as a queen than virtuous as a woman.
For illustrations of lovers' pranks amongst the Elizabethan lawyers, the reader must pass to two great judges, the inferior of whom was a far greater man than Christopher Hatton. Rivals in law and politics, Bacon and Coke were also rivals in love. Having wooed the same proud, lovely, capricious, violent woman, the one was blessed with failure, and the other was cursed with success.
Until a revolution in the popular estimate of Bacon was effected by Mr. Hepworth Dixon's vindication of that great man, it was generally believed that love was no appreciable element in his nature. Delight in vain display occupied in his affections the place which should have been held by devotion to womanly beauty and goodness; he had sneered at love in an essay, and his cold heart never rebelled against the doctrine of his clever brain; he wooed his notorious cousin for the sake of power, and then married Alice Barnham for money. Such was the theory, the most solid foundation of which was a humorous treatise,[4] misread and misapplied.
The lady's wealth, rank, and personal attractions were in truth the only facts countenancing the suggestion that Francis Bacon proffered suit to his fair cousin from interested motives. Notwithstanding her defects of temper, no one denies that she was a woman qualified by nature to rouse the passion of man. A wit and beauty, she was mistress of the arts which heighten the powers of feminine tact and loveliness. The daughter of Sir Thomas Cecil, the grandchild of Lord Burleigh, she was Francis Bacon's near relation; and though the Cecils were not inclined to help him to fortune, he was nevertheless one of their connection, and consequently often found himself in familiar conversation with the bright and fascinating woman. Doubtless she played with him, persuading herself that she merely treated him with cousinly cordiality, when she was designedly making him her lover. The marvel was that she did not give him her hand; that he sought it is no occasion for surprise—or for insinuations that he coveted her wealth. Biography is by turns mischievously communicative and vexatiously silent. That Bacon loved Sir William Hatton's widow, and induced Essex to support his suit, and that rejecting him she gave herself to his enemy, we know; but history tells us nothing of the secret struggle which preceded the lady's resolution to become the wife of an unalluring, ungracious, peevish, middle-aged widower. She must have felt some tenderness for her cousin, whose comeliness spoke