King Henry VII. was now dead, and his son, the Henry VIII. who married six wives one after the other, was on the throne. He was very fond of More, and often had him at the Court at Westminster, and gave him all sorts of honours and dignities, and finally made him a knight, so that he was Sir Thomas, and his cross wife could call herself Lady Alice More, a title that pleased her very much.
More had never liked the life of a city, and now that he was richer, owing to the King's kindness, he removed to a place that was then a village three miles from London called Chelsea. It seems odd to think of Chelsea ever being a village by itself, for it is now all a part of London. The houses have crept on and on, and covered up all the space between until Chelsea is right in London.
It is still a very pretty place beside the river, with shady trees and beautiful houses, and in More's time it must have been charming. He had a large house with a garden stretching right down to the side of the water, and from this he could step into his barge and go down to Westminster to see the King.
His little girls grew up here, and spent a happy childhood. They all, especially the eldest, adored their father. More himself was a very loving father, but he never spoilt his children, and always took care that they learnt their lessons. He used to say: 'Children, virtue and learning are the meat, and play but the sauce.' When any of them grumbled at little hardships, he used to say: 'We must not look to go to heaven on feather beds.' He was very fond of all of the children, but he loved the best his eldest daughter Margaret, Meg as he called her, and every day as Meg grew older she and her father were more and more to each other. Meg was clever, too; when still only a girl she could write letters in Latin and read many very difficult books.
The home life was rather different from that which we know now. There were some pages in the household, boys of good family, who came to learn from More as he had learnt from the Archbishop. One of these, William Roper, was a very nice fellow, and he afterwards married Margaret. Then there was the Fool. It seems to us now such an odd idea to have a man paid to make jokes, but in those days it was the fashion. Some man who had a gift for saying funny things used to live in the household of a great nobleman and be as amusing as he could, and for this he received payment. More's fool was often rather impertinent, and at one time when there was a big dinner, and one of the guests happened to have a particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of merriment, even the poor gentleman himself.