Instead of three-fifteenths, which would have realised 113,000_l._[254] or more, the Parliament Rolls bear witness that the King, with royal clemency and grace, had to accept a paltry 30,000_l._, being less than a third of what he had asked for![255]
[Sidenote: Henry VII. offended with More.]
No wonder that, soon after, the King devised a quarrel with More's father (who, by the way, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the subsidy),[256] threw him into the Tower, and kept him there till he had paid a fine of 100_l._ No wonder that young More himself was compelled at once to retire from public life, and hide himself from royal displeasure in obscurity.[257]
III. THOMAS MORE IN SECLUSION FROM PUBLIC LIFE (1504-5).
[Sidenote: More and Lilly think of becoming monks or priests.]
Compelled to seek safety in seclusion, More shut himself up in his lodgings near the Charterhouse with William Lilly, another old Oxford student, a contemporary of Colet's, if not of More's, at Oxford, who having spent some years travelling in the East, had recently returned home fresh from Italy. More seems to have shared with him the intention of becoming a monk or a priest.[258]
It was possibly not the first time his thoughts had turned in this direction; but he had hitherto gone cautiously to work, taking no vow, determined to feel his way, and not to rush blindly into what he might afterwards repent of.
[Sidenote: More thinks of entering the Charterhouse.]
He had now taken to wearing an 'inner sharp shirt of hair,' and to sleeping on the bare boards of his chamber, with a log under his head for a pillow, and was otherwise schooling, by his powerful will, his quick and buoyant nature into accordance with the strict rules of the Carthusian brotherhood.[259]
[Sidenote: Escapes a royal trap laid for him.]
It was a critical moment in his life. Soon after his father had been imprisoned and fined, having some business with Fox, Bishop of Winchester, that great courtier called him aside, pretending to be his friend, and promised that if he would be ruled by him, he would not fail to restore him into the King's favour. But Fox was only setting a trap for him, from which he was saved by a friendly hint from Whitford,[260] the bishop's chaplain. This man told More that his master would not stick to agree to his own father's death to serve the King's turn, and advised him to keep quite aloof from the King. This hint was not reassuring, but it may have saved More's life.