Thomas More (born February 7, 1478,London, England—died July 6, 1535, London; canonized May 19, 1935; feast day June 22) was an Englishhumanist and statesman, chancellor ofEngland (1529–32), who was beheaded for refusing to accept KingHenry VIII as head of theChurch of England. He is recognized as asaint by theRoman Catholic Church.

Early life and career

Thomas—the eldest son of John More, a lawyer who was later knighted and made a judge of the King’s Bench—was educated at one of London’s best schools, St. Anthony’s in Threadneedle Street, and in the household ofJohn Morton,archbishop of Canterbury andchancellor of England. The futurecardinal, ashrewd judge of character, predicted that the bright and winsome page would prove to be a “marvellous man.” His interest sent the boy to theUniversity of Oxford, where More seems to have spent two years, masteringLatin and undergoing a thorough drilling in formallogic.

About 1494 his father brought More back to London to study thecommon law. In February 1496 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four legal societies preparing for admission to the bar. In 1501 More became an “utter barrister,” a full member of the profession. Thanks to his boundless curiosity and a prodigious capacity for work, he managed, along with the law, to keep up his literary pursuits. He read avidly fromHoly Scripture, theChurch Fathers, and the classics and tried his hand at all literarygenres.

Although bowing to his father’s decision that he should become a lawyer, More was prepared to be disowned rather than disobey God’s will. To test his vocation to the priesthood, he resided for about four years in theCarthusian monastery adjoining Lincoln’s Inn and shared as much of the monks’ way of life as was practicable. Although attracted especially to theFranciscan order, More decided that he would best serve God and his fellow men as a lay Christian. More, however, never discarded the habits of early rising, prolongedprayer,fasting, and wearing the hair shirt. God remained the center of his life.

In late 1504 or early 1505, More married Jane Colt, the eldest daughter of an Essex gentleman farmer. She was acompetent hostess for non-English visitors, such as the Dutch humanistDesiderius Erasmus, who was given permanent rooms in the Old Barge on theThames side in Bucklersbury in theCity of London, More’s home for the first two decades of his married life. Erasmus wrote hisIn Praise of Folly while staying there.

The important negotiations More conducted in 1509 on behalf of a number of London companies with the representative of theAntwerp merchants confirmed his competence in trade matters and his gifts as an interpreter and spokesman. From September 1510 to July 1518, when he resigned to be fully in the king’s service, More was one of the two undersheriffs of London, “the pack-horses of the City government.” He endeared himself to the Londoners—as animpartial judge, a disinterested consultant, and “the general patron of the poor.”

More’s domestic idyll came to a brutal end in the summer of 1511 with the death, perhaps in childbirth, of his wife. He was left a widower with four children, and within weeks of his first wife’s death he married Alice Middleton, the widow of a London mercer. She was several years his senior and had a daughter of her own; she did not bear More any children.

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More’sHistory of King Richard III, written in Latin and in English between about 1513 and 1518, is the first masterpiece of English historiography. Though never finished, it influenced succeeding historians.William Shakespeare is indebted to More for his portrait of thetyrant.

TheUtopia

In May 1515 More was appointed to a delegation to revise an Anglo-Flemish commercial treaty. The conference was held atBrugge, with long intervals that More used to visit other Belgian cities. He began in theLow Countries and completed after his return to London hisUtopia, which was published atLeuven in December 1516. The book was an immediate success with the audience for which More wrote it: the humanists and an elite group of public officials.

“Utopia” is a Greek name of More’s coining, fromou-topos (“no place”); a pun oneu-topos (“good place”) is suggested in a prefatory poem. More’sUtopia describes a pagan and communist city-state in which the institutions and policies are entirely governed by reason. The order and dignity of such a state provided a notable contrast with the unreasonable polity of Christian Europe, divided by self-interest and greed for power and riches, which More described in Book I, written in England in 1516. The description ofUtopia is put in the mouth of a mysterious traveler,Raphael Hythloday, in support of his argument thatcommunism is the only cure againstegoism in private and public life. Throughdialogue More speaks in favor of the mitigation of evil rather than its cure,human nature being fallible. Among the topics discussed by More inUtopia werepenology, state-controlled education, religiouspluralism,divorce,euthanasia, and women’s rights. The resulting demonstration of his learning, invention, and wit established his reputation as one of the foremost humanists. Soon translated into most European languages,Utopia became the ancestor of a new literarygenre, theutopian romance.