Utopia

Utopia - INTRODUCTION - SIR THOMAS MORE 1478-1535 was son of Sir John More, a judge of the Kings Bench under Henry VIII. He was educated at St. Anthonys School, Threadneedle Street, London, and entered at Canterbury Hall, Oxford, in 1492. He was a member afterwards of Lincolns Inn, of which he became Bencher, 1509, and Reader. He had a brilliant career at the Bar, and also mixed in politics. About 1497 he became intinlate with Colet and his circle, notably the great Erasmus. He travelled on the Continent several times, being entrusted with political missions to Flanders and Calais. Henry VIII. marked him as a rising man, and made him Master of Requests and Privy Councillor 1518 while he was at Court he was treated with great cordiality by the King. In 1521 he was knighted, and after this honours fell thick on him. He was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and in I529 succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor of England. But in 1532 he opposed the King on the Heresy Laws, and resigned his Chancellorship. For some time he lived in retirement, but, being afterwards called upon to acknowledge the justice of the divorce from Queen Catharine, he declined to do so, or to subscribe to anything impugning the Popes authority. He was accordingly arraigned of high treason, and, with Bishop Fisher, executed in 1535. More was a scholar, and the friend of all the great scholars of his age his compositions in Latin verse and prose ark forcible and elegant, and his English remarkable for its purity and simplicity...