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Utopia

Thomas More

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Utopia

INTRODUCTION

Sir Thomas More, son of Sir John More, a justice of

the King’s Bench, was born in 1478, in Milk Street, in the

city of London. After his earlier education at St. Anthony’s

School, in Threadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in

the household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of

Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for

persons of wealth or influence and sons of good families to

be so established together in a relation of patron and

client. The youth wore his patron’s livery, and added to

his state. The patron used, afterwards, his wealth or

influence in helping his young client forward in the world.

Cardinal Morton had been in earlier days that Bishop of

Ely whom Richard III. sent to the Tower; was busy

afterwards in hostility to Richard; and was a chief adviser

of Henry VII., who in 1486 made him Archbishop of

Canterbury, and nine months afterwards Lord Chancellor.

Cardinal Morton—of talk at whose table there are

recollections in ‘Utopia’delighted in the quick wit of

young Thomas More. He once said, ‘Whoever shall live

to try it, shall see this child here waiting at table prove a

notable and rare man.’

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At the age of about nineteen, Thomas More was sent

to Canterbury College, Oxford, by his patron, where he

learnt Greek of the first men who brought Greek studies

from Italy to England—William Grocyn and Thomas

Linacre. Linacre, a physician, who afterwards took orders,

was also the founder of the College of Physicians. In 1499,

More left Oxford to study law in London, at Lincoln’s

Inn, and in the next year Archbishop Morton died.

More’s earnest character caused him while studying law

to aim at the subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt,

taking a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays.

At the age of twenty-one he entered Parliament, and soon

after he had been called to the bar he was made Under-

Sheriff of London. In 1503 he opposed in the House of

Commons Henry VII.’s proposal for a subsidy on account

of the marriage portion of his daughter Margaret; and he

opposed with so much energy that the House refused to

grant it. One went and told the king that a beardless boy

had disappointed all his expectations. During the last years,

therefore, of Henry VII. More was under the displeasure

of the king, and had thoughts of leaving the country.

Henry VII. died in April, 1509, when More’s age was a

little over thirty. In the first years of the reign of Henry

VIII. he rose to large practice in the law courts, where it is

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said he refused to plead in cases which he thought unjust,

and took no fees from widows, orphans, or the poor. He

would have preferred marrying the second daughter of

John Colt, of New Hall, in Essex, but chose her elder

sister, that he might not subject her to the discredit of

being passed over.

In 1513 Thomas More, still Under-Sheriff of London,

is said to have written his ‘History of the Life and Death of

King Edward V., and of the Usurpation of Richard III.’

The book, which seems to contain the knowledge and

opinions of More’s patron, Morton, was not printed until

1557, when its writer had been twenty-two years dead. It

was then printed from a MS. in More’s handwriting.

In the year 1515 Wolsey, Archbishop of York, was

made Cardinal by Leo X.; Henry VIII. made him Lord

Chancellor, and from that year until 1523 the King and

the Cardinal ruled England with absolute authority, and

called no parliament. In May of the year 1515 Thomas

More—not knighted yet—was joined in a commission to

the Low Countries with Cuthbert Tunstal and others to

confer with the ambassadors of Charles V., then only

Archduke of Austria, upon a renewal of alliance. On that

embassy More, aged about thirty- seven, was absent from

England for six months, and while at Antwerp he

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established friendship with Peter Giles (Latinised

AEgidius), a scholarly and courteous young man, who was

secretary to the municipality of Antwerp.

Cuthbert Tunstal was a rising churchman, chancellor to

the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in that year (1515)

was made Archdeacon of Chester, and in May of the next

year (1516) Master of the Rolls. In 1516 he was sent again

to the Low Countries, and More then went with him to

Brussels, where they were in close companionship with

Erasmus.

More’s ‘Utopia’ was written in Latin, and is in two

parts, of which the second, describing the place ([Greek

text]—or Nusquama, as he called it sometimes in his

letters—‘Nowhere’), was probably written towards the

close of 1515; the first part, introductory, early in 1516.

The book was first printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under

the editorship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, and other of More’s

friends in Flanders. It was then revised by More, and

printed by Frobenius at Basle in November, 1518. It was

reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not printed in

England during More’s lifetime. Its first publication in this

country was in the English translation, made in Edward’s

VI.’s reign (1551) by Ralph Robinson. It was translated

with more literary skill by Gilbert Burnet, in 1684, soon

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