Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation 52XI

Let us now consider likewise what great worldly wealth ariseth unto men by great offices and authority--to those worldly-disposed people, I say, who desire them for no better purpose. For of those who desire them for better, we shall speak after anon.

The great thing that they all chiefly like therein is that they may bear a rule, command and control other men, and live uncommanded and uncontrolled themselves. And yet this commodity took I so little heed of, that I never was aware it was so great, until a good friend of ours merrily told me once that his wife once in a great anger taught it to him. For when her husband had no desire to grow greatly upward in the world, nor would labour for office of authority, and beside that forsook a right worshipful office when it was offered him, she fell in hand with him, he told me. And she all berated him, and asked him, "What will you do, that you will not put yourself forth as other folk do? Will you sit by the fire and make goslings in the ashes with a stick, as children do? Would God I were a man--look what I would do!" "Why, wife," quoth her husband, "what would you do?" "What? By God, go forward with the best! For, as my mother was wont to say--God have mercy on her soul--it is evermore better to rule than to be ruled. And therefore, by God, I would not, I warrant you, be so foolish as to be ruled where I might rule." "By my troth, wife," quoth her husband, "in this I daresay you say truth, for I never found you willing to be ruled yet."

VINCENT: Well, uncle, I follow you now, well enough! She is indeed a stout master-woman. And in good faith, for aught that I can see, even that same womanish mind of hers is the greatest commodity that men reckon upon in offices of authority.

ANTHONY: By my troth, and methinketh there are very few who attain any great commodity therein. For first there is, in every kingdom, but one who can have an office of such authority that no man may command him or control him. No officer can stand in that position but the king himself; he only, uncontrolled or uncommanded, may control and command all. Now, of all the rest, each is under him. And yet almost every one is under more commanders and controllers, too, than one. And many a man who is in a great office commandeth fewer things and less labour to many men who are under him than someone that is over him commandeth him alone.

VINCENT: Yet it doth them good, uncle, that men must make courtesy to them and salute them with reverence and stand bareheaded before them, or unto some of them peradventure kneel, too.

ANTHONY: Well, cousin, in some part they do but play at gleek--they receive reverence, and to their cost they pay honour again therefor. For except, as I said, a king alone, the greatest in authority under him receiveth not so much reverence from any man as according to reason he himself doth honour to the king. Nor twenty men's courtesies do him not so much pleasure as his own once kneeling doth him pain if his knee hap to be sore. And I once knew a great officer of the king's to say--and in good faith I believe he said but as he thought--that twenty men standing bareheaded before him kept not his head half so warm as to keep on his own cap. And he never took so much ease with their being bareheaded before him, as he once caught grief with a cough that came upon him by standing long bareheaded before the king.

But let it be that these commodities be somewhat, such as they be. Yet then consider whether any incommodities be so joined with them that a man might almost as well lack both as have both. Goeth everything evermore as every one of them would have it? That would be as hard as to please all the people at once with one weather, since in one house the husband would have fair weather for his corn and his wife would have rain for her leeks! So those who are in authority are not all evermore of one mind, but sometimes there is variance among them, either for the respect of profit or the contention of rule, or for maintenance of causes, sundry parts for their sundry friends, and it cannot be that both the parties can have their own way. Nor often are they content who see their conclusions fail, but they take the missing of their intent ten times more displeasantly than poor men do. And this goeth not only for men of mean authority, but unto the very greatest. The princes themselves cannot have, you know, all their will. For how would it be possible, since almost every one of them would, if he could, be lord over all the rest? Then many men, under their princes in authority, are in such a position that many bear them privy malice and envy in heart. And many falsely speak them full fair and praise them with their mouth, who when there happeth any great fall unto them, bark and bite upon them like dogs.

Finally, there is the cost and charge, the danger and peril of war, in which their part is more than a poor man's is, since that matter dependeth more upon them. And many a poor ploughman may sit still by the fire while they must arise and walk.

And sometimes their authority falleth by change of their master's mind. And of that we see daily, in one place or another, such examples and so many that the parable of that philosopher can lack no testimony, who likened the servants of great princes unto the counters with which men do reckon accounts. For like as that counter that standeth sometimes for a farthing is suddenly set up and standeth for a thousand pound, and afterward as soon is set down beneath to stand for a farthing again; so fareth it sometimes with those who seek the way to rise and grow up in authority by the favour of great princes--as they rise up high, so fall they down again as low.

Howbeit, though a man escape all such adventures, and abide in great authority till he die, yet then at least every man must leave at last. And that which we call "at last" hath no very long time to it. Let a man reckon his years that are past of his age ere ever he can get up aloft; and let him, when he hath it first in his fist, reckon how long he shall be likely to live thereafter; and I daresay that then the most part shall have little cause to rejoice. They shall see the time likely to be so short that their honour and authority by nature shall endure, beside the manifold chances by which they may lose it sooner. And then, when they see that they must needs leave it--the thing which they did much more set their hearts upon than ever they had reasonable cause--what sorrow they take for it, that shall I not need to tell you.

And thus it seemeth unto me, cousin, in good faith, that since in the having of authority the profit is not great, and the displeasures neither small nor few; and since of the losing there are so many sundry chances and by no means a man can keep it long; and since to part from it is such a painful grief: I can see no very great cause for which, as a high worldly commodity, men should greatly desire it.