Papers, iii. 3274). But some divergence in their views sprang up soon afterwards. When the cardinal proposed in the council the creation of a new dignity, that of supreme constable of the kingdom, More declared himself opposed to the scheme. ‘You show yourself a foolish councillor,’ said Wolsey. More retorted with thanks to God that the king had only one fool in his council.
More was appointed a collector of the subsidy in Middlesex in August 1523. In 1525 he became high steward of Cambridge University (Cooper, and cf. MS. 318, No. 2, at Corpus Christi Coll. Oxf.); in June he played a prominent part in the elaborate pageants which attended the creation of the king's natural son Henry as Duke of Richmond (Brewer, ii. 102). He was promoted in July to the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster, to be held with his other offices. He received a license to export one thousand woollen cloths in 1526, and in the same year he joined a sub-committee of the council, consisting of three persons, two of whom were to wait on the king every day (ib. i. 54). Soon afterwards he once again took part in important negotiations in Wolsey's company at Amiens in August 1527, and in Tunstall's company at Cambray in July 1528.
Although More in early life had, like Colet and Erasmus, looked forward to a reformation of the church from within, he had no sympathy with Luther's attempt to reform the church from without. But he showed at first no anxiety to enter into the controversy. Henry VIII subsequently asserted that More persuaded him to write his ‘Defensio Septem Sacramentorum’ (1521) in reply to Luther's ‘Babylonish Captivity;’ but More claimed to have done no more than supply the index (Roper, p. 25; cf. Archæologia, xxiii. 73). When Luther, however, retaliated in a scurrilous attack on Henry VIII, conscience led More into the fray. Under the pseudonym of William Ross, an Englishman represented as on a visit to Rome, and doubtfully said to be the name of an early friend of More lately dead, More put forward a bantering rejoinder (London, 1523, 4to), which, despite frequent lapses into vulgarity, embodied his most sacred convictions (Brewer, i. 608-9). In it he seriously appealed to ‘illustrious Germany’ to reject the heresies which Luther and his allies were disseminating, and he impressively asserted his faith in the papacy. He acknowledged the vices of some of the popes, but declined to impute them to the office, believing that God would yet raise up ‘such popes as befit the dignity of the apostolic office.’ The flowing tide of Lutheranism was not affected by More's onslaught, and he soon flung himself without disguise into the struggle. In March 1527 he received permission from Bishop Tunstall to read heretical books (Burnet, i. ii. 13), and the Hanse merchants issued in the same month a printed circular announcing that Wolsey and More had forbidden the importation of Lutheran works into England (cf. copy in Brit. Mus. C. 18. e. 1, No. 94). In 1528 More completed his ‘Dialogue,’ his first controversial book in English, which was directed mainly against Tindal's writings. Thenceforth with Tindal and his allies, Frith and George Joye, he waged unceasing battle till his death.
On 19 Oct. 1529 Wolsey was deprived of his post of chancellor. Archbishop Warham was pressed to accept the honourable office, but he declined it on the score of age (Erasmus, Epist. 1151,ii. 1348; Foxe, iv. 610-11). On 25 Oct. the seals were handed to More by the king at Greenwich, and next day he took the oaths in Westminster Hall, when the Duke of Norfolk delivered to him the king's admonition to administer justice impartially. The promotion was without precedent. For the first time the chancellor was a layman. Erasmus wrote on hearing the news: ‘I do indeed congratulate England, for a better or holier judge could not have been appointed’ (Epist. 1034). But Henry made it plain that More's political power was very limited; the general direction of affairs was mainly in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, the president of the council. According to Cardinal Pole, More owed his elevation to the king's desire to win his support; in the proceedings he had begun for his divorce from Queen Catherine. But More never wavered in his devotion to her, or to the papacy which had championed her cause. ‘He is,’ wrote Chapuys at the time of his promotion, ‘an upright and learned man, and a good servant of the queen’ (Letters and Papers, iv. 6026). In a later letter to Cromwell (5 March 1534) More admitted that on his return from France in September 1527 the king first spoke to him of his scruples respecting the legitimacy of his union with the queen, and that he offered no opinion on the subject. After his appointment as chancellor, however, at Henry's invitation he seriously considered the king's views, but he announced that he was unable to agree with them. Thenceforth he declares he was left ‘free,’ but he did not conceal from himself the possible dangers to which even a silent divergence of opinion exposed him.
His first duty as chancellor was to open the new parliament meeting on 3 Nov. 1529
