During the year when he was imprisoned in the tower of London, Thomas More wrote an eloquent letter of apology to his friend Antonio Bonvisi, regretting that he had not adequately fulfilled his obligation to be a good friend, and hoping that his debt might still be paid:

Peering over More's shoulder, the modern reader may be amused by the promiscuous flattery and self-abnegation required in Renaissance friendships. Among the upper classes, friends used pledges of affection and intimacy to make claims and fulfill debts, and they insisted that their relationships enacted ideals of parity, reciprocity, and persuasive communication. As recent studies of friendship in early modern Europe have emphasized, this glorifying rhetoric manifested a deep uneasiness about new forms of social and political power; Renaissance friends wanted to create an alternative to relationships based on utilitarian calculations of patronage and political power, and they wanted to create a model for a civil society. Friendship, then (the studies have concluded), essentially was a way to navigate a society roiled by power struggles.