Henry Pattinson

Thomas More's fool

The story so far…

Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)

A servant or a fool, no one is entirely sure. Thomas More seems to like it like that. Here, he behaves like a natural fool, suffering from some mental illness that troubles him. More talks of bleeding him, and his wife says he should be whipped for dropping bread crumbs on old John More: “I am pelting you with God.” Cromwell feels “something which he identifies as pity, a heavy stirring beneath the breastbone.”

Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall

Thomas More notes from his cell in the Tower, that Pattinson the fool has sworn the oath. The fool but not the master.