More, Sir Thomas (St)

More, Sir Thomas (St) (?1477–1535), educated at Canterbury College, Oxford. He was for a time in youth in the household of Cardinal Morton, and it was probably from Morton's information that he derived his account of Richard III's murder of the princes, etc. He was called to the bar, where he was brilliantly successful. He devoted his leisure to literature, becoming intimate with Colet, Lily, and, in 1499, Erasmus. He entered Parliament in 1504. During an absence as envoy to Flanders he sketched his description (in Latin) of the imaginary island of Utopia (1516). He completed his Dialogue, his first controversial book in English (directed mainly against Tyndale's writings), in 1528. He succeeded Wolsey as lord chancellor in 1529, but resigned in 1532.

Although willing to swear fidelity to the new Act of Succession, More refused to take any oath that should impugn the pope's authority, and was therefore committed to the Tower of London with John Fisher, bishop of Rochester. During the first days of his imprisonment he prepared a Dialoge of Comfort against Tribulacion and treatises on Christ's passion. He was indicted of high treason, found guilty, and beheaded in 1535.

More was a critic and a patron of art, and Holbein is said to have stayed in his house at Chelsea, and painted portraits of More and his family. More's other chief English works are his Lyfe of Johan Picus erle of Mirandula (printed by John Rastell, c.1510), his History of Richard the Thirde (printed imperfectly in Grafton's Chronicle, 1543, used by Hall, and printed fully by William Rastell in 1557), Supplycacyon of Soulys (1529), Confutacyon of Tyndales Answere (1532), and The Apologye of Syr Thomas More (1533). His English works were collected in 1557. His Latin publications (collected 1563, etc.) included, besides the Utopia, four dialogues of Lucian, epigrams, and controversial tracts in divinity. He was beatified by the Church of Rome in 1886, and canonized in 1935. Bolt's play about More, A Man for All Seasons (1960), was also made into a successful film.