Thomas Starkey (c. 1498–1538) was anEnglish political theorist,humanist, and royal servant.[1][2][3]
Starkey was born inCheshire, probably atWrenbury, to Thomas Starkey and Maud Mainwaring. His father likely held office inWales and was wealthy enough to pay for his son's education. His mother, Maud, was a daughter of Sir John Mainwaring, one of the wealthiest men in the palatinate.
He attended theUniversity of Oxford and gained anMA atMagdalen College in 1521. He went toPadua withThomas Lupset in 1523. Here he studied the works ofAristotle and admired the government ofVenice. By 1529 he had entered the service ofReginald Pole as secretary.[4] Together with Pole, Starkey went toAvignon in 1532 where he studied civil law, before returning to Padua.
Starkey returned to England in late 1534 and caught the eye ofThomas Cromwell, chief minister to Henry VIII, in early 1535. Cromwell used Starkey to handle intelligence from Italy and as a royal propagandist.
His deep ties toReginald Pole proved somewhat detrimental to his career, especially after a manuscript of Pole'sDe unitate, a savage attack onHenry VIII, arrived in England in 1536. These same ties to Pole and his family made him a subject of investigation in the 1538Exeter Conspiracy. He died on 25 August 1538, perhaps of plague.
Between 1529 and 1532 Starkey wrote hisA Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, later known asStarkey's England. Cast as a dialogue betweenReginald Pole andThomas Lupset, theDialogue is one of the most significant works of political thought written in English in the first half of the sixteenth century.[5] In 1536 he publishedAn Exhortation to the People instructing them to Unity and Obedience, a defence ofRoyal Supremacy and commissioned byThomas Cromwell.
