More's Tudor Livery Chain

Few who have seen Robert Bolt's Man for All Seasons in theater or film could forget the scene where, trying to remove his Tudor livery chain, More says to Norfolk, "Help me with this."  Norfolk declines.  Roper asks, "Shall I, sir?" More responds, "No thank you, Will.  Alice?"  But Alice too declines, giving her husband a piece of her mind in the process.  More listens gravely, then asks, "Margaret, will you?"  Margaret replies, "If you want".  And, as she takes the chain from his neck, More says, "There's my clever girl."

It's a touching portrayal, but Bolt has taken artistic license. According to Gerard Wegemer in Thomas More:  A Portrait of Courage,  More was still wearing the Tudor chain when he was taken to the Tower in 1534. Wegemer posits that Henry had likely given More the chain when he knighted him in 1521.

It is clear that the chain was not specifically tied to the office of Lord Chancellor of England.  Holbein's famous individual portrait of Thomas More (now in the Frick collection in New York) was likely painted in 1527.  It shows More wearing the heavy gold chain, the design of which is known as the Collar of Esses.   But at that time More was only the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.  It was not until October 1529 that he became Lord Chancellor of England.

In A Daughter's Love, John Guy informs that it was not the livery chain but the Great Seal which More returned to Henry upon resigning as Chancellor.  Guy also points out that in the Holbein family study (done somewhat later), More is also shown wearing the livery chain but the esses are reversed.  Guy speculates that More instigated this as a way of making fun of his worldly success.

Peter Ackroyd does not comment on the reversed esses in his The Life of Thomas More but reflects in relation to the Holbein individual portrait:

"Holbein did not know that under the gold chain and velvet doublet More wore a hair shirt which chafed and broke his skin.  But once it has been imagined there, the true value of the painting emerges.  This is the portrait of a private self dressed as a public image, with the contrast between a secret inner life and rhetorical public role creating this enigmatic and inscrutable figure."

Sources:
John Guy, A Daughter's Love (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) and Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (Anchor Books, 1999),  Kindle editions without pagination