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The Causes of Tyranny As a Guide to Political Reform: St THE CAUSES OF TYRANNY AS A GUIDE TO POLITICAL REFORM: ST. THOMAS MORE’S HISTORY OF KING RICHARD III OF ENGLAND Carle Mock, Ph.D. University of Dallas, 2017 Dr. Gerard Wegemer, Director Part One of this dissertation establishes a basis for interpreting More’s History of King Richard III. Chapter One inquires into its genre, concluding it is a “rhetorical history” like the histories composed by Thucydides, Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus, a genre similar to drama which aims to reveal fundamental moral and political truths by following classical rhetorical principles. Chapter Two investigates the relationship between the nine textually significant extant versions of this work, and concludes that they derive from a series of revised drafts. The English versions are shown to be preliminary drafts, with the Paris manuscript being the Latin version based on the latest draft. Chapter Three analyzes the changes between drafts and finds that More carefully revised his work and paid particular attention to concepts important in political philosophy. The four chapters of Part Two interpret the work's political teaching. Chapter Four introduces the major theme—the causes of tyranny in the England depicted—by contrasting tyranny with a good political order, “republic.” This chapter defines tyranny, distinguishes the tyrant Richard from the merely bad king Edward, notes the relationship between tyranny and faction, and describes the attributes of a republic and its members, “citizens.” It also discusses aligning public and private interests and avoiding conflicts of interest as principles of political reform. Chapter Five inquires into institutional causes of tyranny, discussing sanctuary and the dangers of imprudent rational critique, the strengths and weaknesses of England's criminal, civil, and constitutional law, and the weaknesses of hereditary kingship. Chapter Six inquires into moral causes, concentrating on individual failures of the virtue fides, including persons who are too trusting and those who are not trustworthy, discusses when it is appropriate to trust, and notes the importance of trustworthiness in political teaching. Chapter Seven inquires into non- human causes—Divine Providence, fate, and fortune—and concludes that despite the limits these place on human power, a significant arena for choice and action remains. Humans have free will, and should choose to work for the real, but limited possibility of political reform. The Appendix includes a new literal translation of Richard III from Latin. THE BRANIFF GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS THE CAUSES OF TYRANNY AS A GUIDE TO POLITICAL REFORM: ST. THOMAS MORE’S HISTORY OF KING RICHARD III OF ENGLAND by CARLE T. MOCK B.A., DANA COLLEGE, 2003 B.S., DANA COLLEGE, 2003 M.A., UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS, 2011 A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Dallas in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Politics in the Institute of Philosophic Studies. March 1, 2017 Approved by the Examining Committee: _________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________ © 2017 Carle Mock All rights reserved. To my mother and father CONTENTS Part One: Establishing a Basis for Interpretation 1 Chapter One: Ascertaining the Work’s Genre 8 Chapter Two: Determining an Authoritative Text 25 Section I: The Three Textual Groups 28 Section II: Editorial Interference in Group One 32 Section III: Relative Priority of Groups One and Two 48 Section IV: Relative Priority of Groups Two and Three 50 Section V: Linguistic Priority 53 Section VI: Compositional Order of the Texts 61 Section VII: Contradictory Evidence from Omissions 70 Chapter Three: Aspects of More’s Revision Process 87 Section I: Attention to Detail 87 Section II: Dramatic Progression 92 Section III: Thematic Progression 96 Part Two: Interpreting the Work’s Political Teaching 105 Chapter Four: Bad and Good Political Orders Section I: Attributes of a Tyranny 107 Section II: Faction and Characteristics of Partisans 127 Section III: Characteristics of Citizens 134 Section IV: Attributes of a Republic 136 Section V: Public and Private Interests 142 Chapter Five: Institutional Causes of Tyranny 149 Section I: Sanctuary and Prudent Political Reform 150 Section II: Strengths and Weaknesses of British Law 173 Section III: Reforming Hereditary Kingship 187 Chapter Six: Fides & Personal Causes of Tyranny 210 Section I: Fides and Political Action 211 Section II: Fides and Political Education 231 Chapter Seven: Non-Human Causes of Tyranny 249 Section I: The Four Theories of Who Controls the Future 251 Section II: The Power of Fate & Fortune 255 Section III: The Power of Man 267 Section IV: How Providence Limits Human Power 275 Section V: The Consensus on Who Chooses Rulers 280 Conclusion 291 Appendix: A Literal and Consistent Translation of Richard III into English 295 Bibliography 356 Mock 1 Part One: Establishing a Basis for Interpretation The main goal of this dissertation is to analyze Thomas More’s political philosophy as presented in The History of Richard III, and Part Two provides that analysis. However, because confusion about two fundamental questions concerning this work characterizes the present state of Morean scholarship, Part One addresses both of them in order to demonstrate that the interpretive approach adopted in Part Two is justified by the evidence. These two questions concern (1) the History’s genre and (2) which of the extant texts ought to be taken as authoritative, and they must be answered before any very specific analysis can be attempted, since, with regard to the first, different kinds of works are intended to be read in different ways and for different purposes, and, regarding the second, the various texts of More’s Richard III, while telling the same story, nevertheless differ very substantially. In order to understand how and why the current misunderstandings concerning the genre and text of Richard III came about, it is necessary to briefly recount how this work has come down to us. Certain choices made by More and his posthumous publishers have given rise to a great deal of confusion which has tended to mask the full philosophical vigor of the History throughout most of the five centuries since he first wrote it. In retrospect, the single largest contributing factor to both the prevalent misunderstandings and the general neglect of this text by subsequent scholars was More’s decision neither to publish it while he was alive, nor to leave clear instructions about how to handle his manuscripts after his death. The negative effect of this authorial choice was in this particular case uniquely compounded because, as Chapter Two will describe in Mock 2 detail, at least three significantly different manuscripts of Richard III each gave rise to different published versions of More’s History in the thirty years following his death; and one of these versions was in Latin, leading to the rare example of a major literary work coming down to us not only with substantive textual variants, but also in two different languages. The first version of More’s History to be published was printed in 1543 by Richard Grafton, and this version set two important precedents which were to have an unfortunately prejudicial effect on how readers understood More’s work over the next 400 years: its language and its mode of presentation. First, Grafton based his book on an English manuscript, and published in that language for a popular audience. More’s Latin manuscript was subsequently almost completely ignored. Although it must have been copied at least a few times, only two editions based on it were published before 1963: in More’s Complete Latin Works published at Louvain in 1565 (reprinted 1566) and in an almost identical collection published at Frankfurt in 1689. As a result, the impact of any Latin version was minimal. Furthermore, as Chapter Two will show, although these Latin editions were superior to all of the English versions in several ways, the best Latin version of Richard III is found in a manuscript that was not published until 1986. The second precedent Grafton set was to incorporate More’s work into a larger history of England (in this first instance, Grafton’s continuation of John Harding’s Chronicle), rather than publishing More’s work on its own. Graton’s second edition of that continuation (published later the same year) marked the second time Richard III appeared in print. This was followed by the inclusion of More’s History in two editions of Edward Hall’s Union of the Two Noble Houses of Lancaster and York, another chronicle, in 1548 and 1550. Then in 1557, More’s nephew William Rastell published Mock 3 his massive English Works of Sir Thomas More, which included a different and superior English version of Richard III. Importantly, Rastell claimed to have printed from an autograph manuscript, and criticized the four previously published versions as erroneous. Rastell notably treated More’s History as an independent work, but in this he was almost alone. Between 1557, when Rastell’s version was published, and 1821, when Rastell’s version was first reprinted verbatim (in an edition intended for scholars), More’s Richard III was published in English twenty-six additional times1; but only two of those2 were not parts of larger chronicle histories, and both of those two drew their text from Hall’s 1550 version, rather than from Rastell’s. Since Hall’s version included substantial portions of text that were not actually More’s,
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