Charles V’s ‘Encomium Mori’ as Reported By Ambassador Elyot

William Roper is the author of the first and most influential biography of Sir Thomas More, his father-in-law, finished in 1557. As stated in this source, shortly after More’s execution for high treason at the Tower of London (1535), the Emperor Charles V met Thomas Elyot then serving as ambassador at the imperial court. The content of this meeting was later on disclosed by Elyot himself to some members of More’s closest circle, among them Roper himself, whose testimony has remained the ultimate source of the episode. As soon as Charles had come to know about More’s execution, he communicated the news to Elyot and shared with him his admiration for the ex-Chancellor. Several scholars, however, have questioned the reliability of Roper’s memory in the light of historical evidence for Elyot’s whereabouts at the time of More’s death. This paper revises the main stances in the discussion of this episode, and brings into consideration other issues that might cast some light, not only on the details of this story, but also on the relationship between these two Thomases (More and Elyot) and Charles, the most powerful ruler in Europe at the time.

On the Discovery of an Elizabethan “Sonet in the commendation of Sir Thomas More Knyght”: Memory, Martyrdom, and Poetry

This article introduces the discovery of a “Sonet in the commendation of Sir Thomas More Knyght” found in a copy of the 1557 English Workes printed by Richard Tottel and edited by William Rastell. It argues the sonnet was written by a Tudor Catholic early in Elizabeth's reign and should also be read in light of its 1557 print context: its physical place in Workes alongside Rastell's Preface, and in conjunction with Tottel's Miscellany printed the same year. Read through such a lens, this newly discovered sonnet helps illuminate the idiosyncratic complexity of Catholic experience in Elizabethan England concerning memory, martyrdom, censorship and repression.

Forgetting Custom?

The final chapter explores the most extreme political usage of custom: to resist or even overturn a monarch. I argue that just as custom was invoked to justify popular rebellion during the sixteenth century, so too is it called upon to navigate their contentious staging in The Book of Sir Thomas More, a play that William Shakespeare is generally thought to have helped revise after its censorship, and Hamlet. I explore how the former play makes use of proverbs to recuperate rebellion from the charge of innovation while the latter play uses custom within a narratio, or description of offstage events by a messenger, to open up a space for the possibility of revolution, a concept and practice associated with breaking from the past. Drawing on political theology, this chapter contends that Hamlet discloses the possibility of custom’s enduring, generative power.