A reading of Sir Thomas More through Lewkenor’s life and book

The Strangers’ Case: Lewes Lewkenor and Sir Thomas More

Imagine putting that speech in Lewes Lewkenor’s mouth. It rings of experience.

The whole strangers’ speech

More’s argument comes in two parts. The crowd interrupts after the first, and More turns to rebellion and the king’s authority before returning to the strangers. The text below preserves that break.

Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to th’ ports and costs for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.

[The crowd responds. More speaks about rebellion and obedience to the king, then returns to the strangers:]

You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound. Say now the king
(As he is clement, if th’ offender mourn)
Should so much come to short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whether would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,—
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God
Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them, what would you think
To be thus used? this is the strangers case;
And this your mountainish inhumanity.

The Book of Sir Thomas More, Act II, scene 4. See the full play text and the Oxford transcription of the Hand D passage.

Lewkenor’s account: the passage beside the speech

Lewkenor’s preface describes a sight he says he witnessed in Flanders. Here is the full passage, not only its best-known sentence:

Being some five or six years since in those parts of Flanders, which are subject to the Spanish king, and seeing a miserable troop of my unhappy countrymen, (some of which were gentlemen of good houses in England,) wandering in poor habits and afflicted gestures, heavily groaning under the burthen of an extreme and calamitous necessity: on the one side, by their heedless demeanour there, debarred from return into their country: and on the other, daily overlooked with the proud eyes of disdainful Spaniards, and for want of due regard in that comfortless service, perishing without either pity or relief. Seeing, as I say, these things and entering into a consideration of them, with an unpartial judgement, knowing some of my good friends and acquaintance in England, possessed with the like humour, as that which moved the foresaid gentlemen, to forsake their country and to settle themselves in the service and dominions of the king of Spain: I thought good to advertise them of that which my poor experience had gathered touching the small regard, distress, poverty, scorn, calamity, and affliction, befallen to such as had already entered the course, that to their unexperienced judgement, yielded such show of contentment: thereby, if it were possible, to dissuade them from attempting the like, the same being in regard of the offence to their sovereign so treacherous; of the reproach to their family, and parentage, so infamous, and lastly in so deep a degree to themselves dangerous, that being once thereinto entered, it should not be in their power, upon their afterchange of humour and appetite, thence to withdraw themselves, the error being such as admitteth not any repentance or excuse.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), prefatory address. Read the full account of the book and the biography.

Lewkenor’s sentence is built from sight and judgment: “Being … in those parts of Flanders,” “seeing a miserable troop,” then “entering into a consideration” and writing from “my poor experience.” More commands the rioters, “Imagine that you see.” Lewkenor supplies the remembered sight that gives the command its lived substance.

The two passages do different work. More speaks to a London crowd and makes it imagine the strangers’ fate. Lewkenor writes to English acquaintances tempted by Spanish service and warns them what awaits. One is public persuasion in a play; the other is a witness’s account and a letter of warning. Their shared language becomes sharper when that difference is kept in view.

“Imagine that you see”: witness and audience

More’s first move is visual. “Imagine” asks the crowd to make an absent scene present: “the wretched strangers,” their children, their bundles, the road to the ports. The speech does not begin with a legal rule or a general maxim. It makes the mob look at bodies in motion.

Lewkenor’s “Seeing” is a witness’s claim. He gives a time, “some five or six years since,” a place, “those parts of Flanders, which are subject to the Spanish king,” and a group: “my unhappy countrymen.” The verb appears again—“Seeing, as I say, these things”—before he describes the judgment that followed. In More, sight is an ethical demand made of the crowd. In Lewkenor, sight is the source of his testimony.

That difference suits Lewkenor’s account of his own life. He was not writing as a man who had chosen a comfortable foreign residence. He had been banished from England because of his Catholic faith, lost his property, and became “manifestly notorious” to his countrymen. He served in the Low Countries after his exile, received his arm injury there, and returned with his right arm and hand crippled. More’s command to “imagine” exile thus comes from the mouth of a man who had himself been forced into it.

“Wretched strangers” and “my unhappy countrymen”

More calls the people “strangers”; Lewkenor calls them “my … countrymen.” The difference is central. In the London scene, the crowd has reduced its neighbours to a category. More makes the rioters picture those strangers as people with children, possessions and a destination. Lewkenor restores the exiles’ English identity before anything else: they remain his countrymen, though they are “debarred from return into their country.”

The phrase “unhappy countrymen” carries both belonging and misfortune. “Countrymen” names the bond that survives separation. “Unhappy” names what exile and foreign service have done to them. More’s “wretched strangers” similarly joins identity to condition: they are strangers in the place that is driving them away, and wretched because of the expulsion. Each writer resists the crowd’s or host’s easy reduction of a person to an outsider.

Children, luggage, poor habits, afflicted gestures

More gives the exiles a visible load: “Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage.” Then comes the verb “Plodding.” They move slowly and heavily toward the coast. The line’s rhythm makes expulsion physical: a parent carries a child, belongings are reduced to what can be carried, and the road leads to transportation.

Lewkenor’s details are different but equally bodily: “wandering in poor habits and afflicted gestures, heavily groaning.” He gives no babies or luggage in this passage. He gives worn clothing, demeanour and sound. The strangers’ speech turns a threatened deportation into a scene that the mob must visualize; Lewkenor records the visible signs of men already living in distress.

“Poor luggage” and “poor habits” meet in poverty. “Plodding” and “wandering” meet in movement without security. “Afflicted gestures” and “heavily groaning” make suffering legible in the body. More compresses that spectacle into a few hard lines. Lewkenor unfolds it as a witness account.

Ports, return, and the trap of exile

More sends the strangers “to th’ ports and costs for transportation.” Lewkenor says the men are “debarred from return into their country.” These phrases describe opposite sides of the same forced movement. More’s Londoners would drive people out; Lewkenor’s Englishmen cannot get back in. In both texts, the stranger’s condition is made by a loss of home and control over where one may live.

More then asks the rioters to reverse places: if the king banishes them, “What country … / Should give you harbor?” The list—“France or Flanders,” “any German province,” “Spain or Portugal”—turns foreign geography into a test of hospitality. Flanders is not an invented destination for Lewkenor. It is where he says he saw these Englishmen, and where his own military service took place after banishment.

The speech asks what an expelled Englishman would want from a host country. Lewkenor’s preface records the answer from the other side: men who had left England found “small regard, distress, poverty, scorn, calamity, and affliction.” His account is directed to friends who might follow them, and its purpose is to “dissuade them.” More’s imagined exile and Lewkenor’s remembered exile meet at the question of whether another country will offer shelter.

“Overlooked with the proud eyes of disdainful Spaniards”

Lewkenor’s phrase is exact and severe: “daily overlooked with the proud eyes of disdainful Spaniards.” “Daily” makes contempt habitual. “Proud eyes” gives it a look and a social direction: Spaniards look down on the Englishmen. “Disdainful” names the judgment in that look. These men are not merely far from home; they are made to feel their lower standing every day.

More gives the Londoners the reverse image. They are told to imagine the strangers’ treatment and then ask whether they would accept a nation that “Spurn[s] you like dogs.” Lewkenor describes contempt passing from the Spaniards’ eyes to the Englishmen’s condition; More makes the English crowd imagine being on the receiving end of the spurn. The speech transfers the humiliation Lewkenor saw in Flanders to the people who would impose it in London.

The dog image turns differently in the two texts. In More, the strangers are treated “like dogs.” A few lines earlier, the law itself is led “in line” and slipped “like a hound” against them. Lewkenor’s “proud eyes” make the contempt visible, while More’s image makes its violence explicit: first the law is unleashed, then the stranger is kicked aside.

At Mere Bridge: “vermin,” sacks, and the river

Lewkenor gives a scene in Antwerp that makes the word “stranger” painfully concrete. English gentlemen pass a group of Spanish soldiers on the Mere Bridge. The soldiers call them vermin, spies and traitors, then discuss what should be done to them:

Likewise a great company of them standing round together in a ring (as their manner is) upon the Mere Brigge in Antwerp, and seeing certain English gentlemen pass by, one of them, and he a captain, by name Lucas, well known by his red beard, bald head, and maimed arms, said, that he wondered what the King made with any such vermin in his country. Another of them swear a great oath, that look how many English men there were in the Kings service, there were so many spies and traitors; the third said, it were an alms deed to put them all in sacks, and to throw them into the river; but the fourth very gently replied, that it would be a better course to send them down to the Kings galleys, where in regard of their big joints and broad shoulders, they could not but prove good luggers at an oar.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), account of Englishmen on the Mere Bridge in Antwerp. See the full account.

Here the threat is not abstract. The men are already in exile, already serving abroad, and are described as vermin and traitors simply for being English. One speaker proposes drowning them in sacks; another would send them to the galleys. More imagines the London mob’s victims driven to the ports. Lewkenor records Spanish soldiers proposing to throw English exiles into a river. In More, expulsion exposes the strangers to violence; in Lewkenor, that violence is spoken aloud.

The Antwerp passage names only “the river.” The Estate names the Meuse in a separate account of prisoners after the battle of Jeblours:

Likewise after the overthrow of that their late fleets, (which before hand they termed Invincible) when such numbers of them were taken, that the prisons of London were not capable of them, if her majesty would have followed the example of their own nation, she might have used them as Don Juan did the Walloons after the battle of Jeblours, where taking very near 2000 of them prisoners, the next day after the battle he caused them to be bound two and two together, and to be tumbled headlong over the bridge of Namures into the river of Meuse: but her majesty, like a Christian princess, full of royal magnanimity (though the mischievous intention of their coming, and the horrible cruelties that they pretended were not unknown unto her,) yet caused them to be dispersed into several convenient places, and there upon her charge to be provided for, and lastly, to be sent over into Flanders, accompanied with ships, artillery, and sufficient convoy of men, to warrant their safety by the way.

Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), comparison of Don Juan’s treatment of Walloon prisoners with Elizabeth’s treatment of Spanish prisoners; ellipsis marks omitted wording.

These are two different episodes. The Englishmen on the Mere Bridge are threatened with the unnamed river and the galleys. The Meuse passage concerns nearly two thousand Walloon prisoners whom Don Juan has thrown from the bridge at Namur; Lewkenor contrasts this with Elizabeth’s care for Spanish captives. It is a comparison of how a power treats people in its hands.

He uses the word “barbarous” in his own account of soldiers’ treatment of civilians:

I have seen the rude and barbarous soldier cut off the fingers of women to come to their rings, which otherwise would not come off with such speed as they desired.

Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), account of soldiers billeted in civilian households; see the source and context.

More asks the crowd to imagine “a nation of such barbarous temper.” Lewkenor’s “rude and barbarous soldier” is not an imagined national character: he says, “I have seen” the mutilation. He describes a soldier cutting women’s fingers off to take their rings. That eyewitness sentence gives the speech’s word “barbarous” a precise, brutal human act.

Lewkenor also reports Englishmen hanged after the sack of Antwerp:

I will not speak of the cruelty of the commendador upon certain English gentlemen that had done notable services both to him and the duke of Alva, of whom nevertheless, for a mere trifling occasion, he caused eight to be hanged up after the sack of Antwerp on the Mere bridge.

Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), account of the sack of Antwerp. He says these events happened before his time in Flanders and were reported to him by hearsay.

That is the same bridge where Lewkenor places the soldiers’ threat against passing English exiles. In both accounts, English service does not protect Englishmen from contempt or violence. The speech’s “Kill them, cut their throats” and “Whet their detested knives” echo a world in which Lewkenor records men threatened, mutilated, drowned or hanged.

Neglect, law, and the violence that follows

Lewkenor says the exiles perish “for want of due regard in that comfortless service,” “without either pity or relief.” More describes the crowd silencing “Authority” with its “brawl,” teaching that “insolence and strong hand should prevail,” and leading “the majesty of law” as a hound. The connection lies in failed protection. Lewkenor’s men receive no due regard where they serve; More’s mob would silence public authority and turn law into an instrument of persecution.

More traces the consequence beyond the first attack. If one crowd can act by “self same hand, self reasons, and self right,” “other ruffians” can repeat the pattern until people “feed on one another.” Lewkenor’s account of Oudenaarde gives that danger a brutal military example. He first praises six hundred English soldiers as “the tallest and best appointed soldiers” he had seen. Then he records what followed:

But now to my newcome English that had done these notable services to the Spaniard, let us see how they were recompensed: within one year they were suffered all in a manner to famish, which misery some of them seeking to relieve by foraging out upon the country, four and twenty of them were taken by the Spanish provost, and carried to Oudenaarde (of the rendering whereof they had been the chiefest means) and openly hanged in the market place.

Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives, account of the English soldiers after Oudenaarde. See the full text and context.

This is not the same event as the London riot. It is Lewkenor’s account of foreign soldiers, hunger, foraging and punishment. It shows the world behind his phrases “comfortless service” and “without … relief”: military service did not secure the Englishmen’s safety, and their service in taking Oudenaarde did not save them from being hanged there.

“What would you think to be thus used?”

More’s question is the hinge: “what would you think / To be thus used?” He asks the crowd to judge the treatment from the position of its victims. The question does not excuse the exiles’ past actions; it makes punishment answer to a standard of humanity. Even a banished man remains entitled to an abode, to safety from knives, and to recognition as a creature made by God.

Lewkenor returns to the knife and throat image in his appeal to Englishmen abroad:

Let them not tire out their years and youth in so comfortless and unrewarded a service, the end whereof is never other than untimely death, desolation, or beggary; let them not trust themselves to sleep in the bosom of a flattering stepmother, that holdeth a knife in her hand to cut their throats, when they may securely throw themselves into the arms of a loving natural mother, that will receive them, coming like penitent and obedient children, with true tears and perfect joy.

Lewes Lewkenor, The Estate of English Fugitives (1595), closing appeal to Englishmen in Spanish service. See the source and context.

More has “Whet their detested knives against your throats”; Lewkenor warns of a “knife in her hand to cut their throats.” The shared image is exact in its violence: a knife aimed at the throat. More makes the English crowd imagine that violence done to them; Lewkenor warns exiles that the promised shelter of foreign service may hide the knife, and urges them back to England, the “loving natural mother.”

Lewkenor’s preface reaches its own judgment through experience. He says he considered what he saw “with an unpartial judgement”; he had “known” the Englishmen and had “good friends and acquaintance” in England tempted by the same service. He writes to turn what he has seen into warning. More makes the audience inhabit the stranger’s position; Lewkenor turns a stranger’s position into counsel for people at home.

From Lewkenor’s exile to “the strangers’ case”

Lewkenor’s preface is about English fugitives under the Spanish king. It warns English readers against foreign service, describes the contempt and deprivation awaiting exiles, and urges friends not to follow the same path. More’s speech takes that experience into a different argument. It asks an English crowd to extend to foreign residents the shelter and justice that English exiles needed abroad.

That movement gives the ending its force: “This is the strangers case; / And this your mountainish inhumanity.” The speech names the case before it condemns the crowd. Its moral accusation rests on the details it has made the audience see: children, luggage, a road to the ports, knives, dogs, and the denial of an abode.

As Lewkenor’s speech, this is writing from the inside of the argument. He knew banishment, public notoriety at home, military service abroad, and injury sustained there. In The Estate, he records his countrymen “overlooked with the proud eyes of disdainful Spaniards” and “perishing without either pity or relief.” In Sir Thomas More, the same experience becomes a demand that the English crowd recognize the stranger’s case before it is too late.

Text and attribution

The strangers’ speech appears in Act II, scene 4 of The Book of Sir Thomas More. The play’s manuscript includes a passage in Hand D, traditionally identified as Shakespeare’s handwriting. This reading takes Lewkenor as the writer and compares the speech with his documented exile and the exact testimony of The Estate of English Fugitives. The manuscript and the conventional attribution can be examined in the Oxford transcription; Lewkenor’s quotations and their context are available in the Estate page.