Thomas More

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Thomas More (1478-1535) was a great humanist scholar, respected by nearly all his contemporaries, even those who took different positions in the religious controversies around the Reformation. He was canonized by the Roman Catholic church in 1935, 400 years after his execution for treason - he had refused to accept that Henry VIII was Head of the Church in England. He opposed the divorce of Henry from Katherine of Aragon, but acknowledged that Anne Boleyn was Queen.

More was the son of John More (c. 1451-1530), a lawyer and judge. He was educated partly in the household of Archbishop Morton (c. 1420-1500), Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England; Canterbury College, Oxford (later absorbed by Christ Church); New Inn; and Lincoln's Inn. From youth, he was regarded as a precocious scholar, and a man of enormous personal charm - his entertainment of his circle, including Erasmus, Holbein, John Colet, Dean of St Paul's and a noted humanist educationist (he founded St Paul's School), William Lily, High Master of St Paul's School 1509-1522, and the astronomer Nicholas Kratzer (1487-1550), became famous throughout Europe for hospitality, erudition and wit. His family are represented in the well-known drawing by Holbein, of which the painting is lost - but versions of it exist, such as that painted in 1592 by Rowland Lockey. Following in his father's footsteps, Thomas More entered the Law, being called to the Bar in 1501 or 1502. In 1504 he entered Parliament, and was a Member of the Parliaments of 1504, 1509, and 1512 (Speaker in 1523). His ability drew the attention of all, and by 1515 he was in the royal service, becoming a member of the Privy Council in 1518. He was sole royal secretary 1522-1526, and on the fall of Wolsey in 1529, he was appointed Lord Chancellor. He had always been pious and a learned theologian (he may have helped Henry VIII with his Assertio Septem Sacramentorum ('Defence of the Seven Sacraments') against Martin Luther in 1521); now he made his own efforts to combat the spread of Lutheranism, publishing his Dialogue Concerning Heresies in 1529. His more literary rather than religious writings include an History of King Richard III (unfinished) and Utopia (1516). More was knighted in 1521. Non-Catholics often know him as Sir (rather than Saint) Thomas More. That he was prolific as an author is shown by the fact that the Yale edition of the Complete Works of St Thomas More runs to 15 vols. (1963-97).

Writing about More, besides biographies by his son-in-law W. Roper (The lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, knighte, first printed in 1626 (reprinted in the EETS, ed. E. V. Hitchcock, (no. 197) in 1935); R.W. Chambers (Thomas More, London, Jonathan Cape, 1938); Jasper Ridley (The Statesman and the Fanatic: Thomas Wolsey and Thomas More, London, Constable, 1982); Peter Ackroyd, (The Life of Thomas More, London, Chatto & Windus, 1998), includes two plays: one modern, Robert Bolt's (1960) A Man for All Seasons, later filmed (1966); and the other from his own century. This, the Play of Sir Thomas More, exists in one manuscript, and various modern editions. It was written collaboratively, with a first draft probably by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle. Six hands have been identified in the manuscript; the other four are a professional copyist; Thomas Heywood; Thomas Dekker; and probably William Shakespeare. If this widely held ascription is correct, the three pages in this play are the only autograph extant of Shakespeare's writing, and therefore an indication of his methods.