More, Thomas (1478–1535)

MORE, THOMAS (1478–1535)

MORE, THOMAS (1478–1535), English humanist scholar, author, and statesman. Thomas More was born in London on 7 February 1478 and executed there for high treason on 6 July 1535. His father, John More (died 1530), secured an appointment for his twelve-year-old son as page to John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor under Henry VII (ruled 1485–1509). Grateful for the training in diplomacy, More paid tribute to Morton, a canonist who had helped to overthrow Richard III in favor of Henry VII, in both his Utopia (1515) and his History of Richard III (c. 1513, published 1543). Under Morton's influence More attended Canterbury College, Oxford, where he met such humanists as John Colet, William Grocyn, and Thomas Linacre. Under parental pressure, he left Oxford in 1494 for the study of law at New Inn, and later at Lincoln's Inn. While studying law he became deeply attached to the Carthusians of the Charterhouse and carefully discerned a religious vocation. But once he determined that he should seek God in the world rather than in ascetical retirement from it, he married Jane Colt, who bore him four children before her death in 1511. Six weeks later the widower married the widow Alice Middleton to provide his young children with a good stepmother.

The center of a group of humanists at London, More in 1499 first met Desiderius Erasmus, who honored his friend in the Latin title of his famous Praise of Folly (Encomium Moriae). More's earliest literary works date from this period, but legal work and a series of public offices increasingly consumed his time. He began to compose Utopia during a trade mission to the Low Countries in 1515, and in 1518 he formally entered the service of Henry VIII (ruled 1509–1547) as a royal counselor. Mindful of the vagaries of political life, More dramatized the arguments for and against royal service in the first book of Utopia. While the philosophical seafarer Raphael Hathloday (whose account of Utopia fills the second book) refuses even to consider advising a European prince, lest he be sullied by contact with unprincipled courtiers intent on money, territory, or power, the character More takes a guardedly optimistic tone by arguing that politics is the art of the possible and that one need not necessarily be seduced or compromised if one is clear on certain nonnegotiable moral principles. While the second book has been interpreted in ways as widely different as heralding an ideal Platonic polis and prophetically anticipating a Marxist paradise, it may well be an ironical humanistic exploration of what a society would look like if it systematically abandoned the principles of political philosophy associated with Augustine's City of God, on which More had lectured as early as 1504 and to which he frequently returned in later political writings and in his own practice.

From 1518 to 1529 More proved himself an able member of the king's council, especially as a liaison between Henry VIII and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1475?–1530), then Lord Chancellor, who was laboring to secure a general European peace. More was knighted in 1521 and chosen as the speaker of the House of Commons in 1523. By that year he had joined the campaign against the Lutheran literature then beginning to flood England and wrote controversial works, some on the king's behalf and others in his own name, against Luther and against William Tyndale, Simon Fish, and others. At this time also Henry began to consult More on his proposed divorce from Catherine of Aragón. When More informed the king that after long study he could not support his case, Henry chose other officials to pursue his "great matter" and sent More off to France for the negotiations that eventually resulted in the Treaty of Cambrai (1529).

When Wolsey had to resign from office after proving unable to dissolve Henry's marriage during the 1529 trial, Henry named More as the first nonclerical Lord Chancellor on 25 October 1529. While Henry's policies veered toward a breech with Rome over the question of the divorce, they showed little inclination to any doctrinal changes of the sort that More considered heretical and that he had long opposed both by the controlled use of civil law and by his writings. In the business of the chancery he garnered a reputation for impartiality and promptness in handling a vast docket of cases, but his direct influence with Henry VIII waned as it became increasingly obvious that the king was willing to break with Rome in order to marry Anne Boleyn. More resigned his office on 16 May 1532, the day after the bishops capitulated to the king on certain questions that More considered non-negotiable.

For over a year he lived modestly in retirement at Chelsea. His ongoing efforts to inform the king's conscience took the form of pseudonymous works such as The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, a story about the Turkish invasion of Christian Hungary in which one need not look terribly deep to find applications for the controversies between Protestant and Catholic religion in England. More managed to evade the various efforts of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's principal secretary and chief minister, to implicate him in treasonable activities, but he began to prepare himself for the inevitable by beginning to compose his Treatise on the Passion. He finished the work during his imprisonment for refusing to swear to the Oath of Supremacy when summoned to Lambeth Palace on 12 April 1534. Alert to various traps and ruses, he refused to reveal his conscience on the matter to anyone, even the much-loved members of his family. After confinement to the Tower of London for over a year, he was convicted of treason on 1 July 1535 on the basis of perjured evidence by Sir Richard Rich, one of Cromwell's lackeys. Only after the delivery of the verdict did he break his self-imposed silence about the reasons for his refusal to swear the oath when he delivered a great speech, claiming to have all the councils of Christendom in support of his conscience. After merrily joking with the executioner and insisting that he was "the king's good servant, but God's first," he died on the scaffold on 6 July 1535.

See also Cromwell, Thomas ; Erasmus, Desiderius ; Henry VII (England) ; Henry VIII (England) ; Humanists and Humanism ; Utopia .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More. New Haven, 1963–.

——. Saint Thomas More: Selected Writings. Edited by John F. Thornton. New York, 2003.

——. Selected Letters. Edited by Elizabeth Frances Rogers. New Haven, 1961.

Secondary Sources

Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. New York and London, 1998.

Marius, Richard. Thomas More: A Biography. New York, 1984.

Martz, Louis L. Thomas More: The Search for the Inner Man. New Haven, 1990.

Joseph W. Koterski