as the breath of life to the Englishman of the next
age. And with all this his life was passed in the
period of the profoundest religious, political, and social
change that our nation has witnessed. He first saw the
light in an age of civil conflict: he died when religious
strife was at its fiercest. The
of his birth saw
year
the murder of Clarence; the year of his death found
the English King deposed and excommunicated by
the Pope. As a boy he heard tell of the last
intrigues and the last battles of the War of the Roses

-as a man he took part in the measures by which England under Wolsey and Henry VIII. was assuming a position in Europe which the proudest of her ancient kings might have envied. It was a period of profound disturbance. Without were fightings, within were fears. But it was above all a time of vigorous and exultant vitality. And in all the varied manifestations of national life, the literary and artistic interests, and the political and religious struggles, no man played a more prominent part than the man who among all changes kept untarnished honour till the end.

Thomas More was born in Milk Street, Cheapside, in the ward of Cripplegate Within, on February 7, 1478.1 His father was John More, afterwards to become Knight and a Justice of the King's Bench. His mother's name is less easily ascertained. "Matris nomen nescitur, quippe quae adhuc infante Thomas Moro mortua est," says one of his earliest bio

1 See on this point, the appendix to Mr. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers (2nd edition), where the question is finally settled; and Notes and Queries, 4th Series, ii, 365.

graphers. His great-grandson, Cresacre More, states that her name was "Handcombe, of Holiewell in the countie of Bedford," but the discovery of Mr. Aldis Wright—a contemporary family register-has generally been accepted as proof that she was really Agnes, daughter of Thomas Granger.1

He was of gentle, not noble, blood: "familiâ non celebri sed honestâ natus," says the epitaph he wrote for himself. Little else is known, for the family papers were seized by Henry VIII. and have not been discovered. Cresacre More is anxious to show that "Judge More bare arms from his birth, having his coat quartered, which doth argue that he came to his inheritance by descent"; yet he can say no more of his family than, " as I heard, they either came out of the Mores of Ireland, or they of Ireland came out of us." Mr. Foss, however, has entered into a lengthy examination, the result of which has satisfied him that Sir Thomas More's grandfather was a certain John More, first butler, afterwards steward, and finally reader, of Lincoln's Inn.2 It seems clear too that the Mores held property in Hertfordshire for several generations. Thomas More had one brother, John, who was his clerk in later days. Of his two sisters, Joan married a certain Richard Stafferton, and Elizabeth became the wife of John Rastell, the poet, and second printer of note in England.

The vision of his mother on her wedding night, recorded by the biographer, differs little from those

told of many mothers of famous men in early times. While he was still an infant he had a narrow escape of being drowned, which is noted with much earnestness by Dr. Stapleton, whose Tres Thomae was the earliest printed life, and who delighted to find resemblances in the minutest details between More and S. Thomas of Canterbury. "This escape,' says his grandson, "was no doubt a happy presage of his future holiness, and put his parents in mind that he was that shining child, of whom his mother had that former vision; wherefore his father had the greater care to bring him up in learning." He himself tells an anecdote of his childhood which may serve to remind us of the exciting events among which it was passed. When all London was talking of King Edward's death, he heard his father told how, on the very night of the decease, a neighbour had said, "By my troth, man, then will my master, the Duke of Gloucester, be king." Thomas More was then little over five years old; but he never forgot the terror that that grim name evoked.

Before long he was placed under a school-master of fame, one Nicholas Holt, at S. Anthony's in Threadneedle Street. This school, one of the grammar schools founded by Henry VI., had at the time a great reputation, and its master had already taught William Latimer and John Colet, the future Dean.

1 Latin Works, p. 46. That he heard the story told to his father is in the Latin, but not in the English version of the History of Richard III.; cf. English Works, p. 38. Cf. Letters etc. of Richard III. and Henry VII., vol. ii., Preface (by Mr. James Gairdner), p. xxi.

The school maintained its fame down to the days of Stowe, who tells us that in the disputation of the London schools in the churchyard of S. Bartholomew, Smithfield, the boys of S. Anthony's usually carried away the prize. After Thomas More had there "been brought up in the Latin tongue, he was by his father's procurement received into the house of the right reverend, wise, and learned prelate, Cardinal Morton,"1 probably about 1489.

Morton, then Archbishop and Lord Chancellor, but not to receive the red hat till 1493, was at that time probably the most important man in England; and it may be reasonably inferred from young More's reception into so distinguished a household that his father had then reached a position of some dignity, though he had not yet become a serjeant-at-law. No choice could have been wiser. Morton was a man of learning as well as a sagacious statesman; and the discretion which was his most characteristic quality may well have impressed itself on More. His rise had been due to Cardinal Bourchier, by whom he was originally introduced at Court, and whom he ultimately succeeded in the archiepiscopate, and he was as fortunate in the enmity of Richard III. as he had been in the favour of Edward IV. In his History of Richard III., More was a man of great natural wit, very well learned, honourable in behaviour, lacking in no wise to win favour; "2 a character which is improved

says that he

1 Roper, Life of More (edit. Lumby: Cambridge, 1880),

and amplified in the Utopia, in a passage so significant of More's position and advantages in his house that it may well be quoted here. "He was of mean stature, and though stricken in age yet bare he his body upright. In his face, did shine such an amiable reverence as was pleasant to behold; gentle in communication, yet earnest and sage. He had great delight many times with rough speech to his suitors to prove, but without harm, what prompt wit and what bold spirit were in every man. In the which, as in a virtue much agreeing with his nature, so that therewith were not joined impudency, he took great delectation. And the same person as apt and meet to have an administration in the weal public he did lovingly embrace. In his speech he was fine, eloquent, and pithy. In the law he had profound knowledge, in wit he was incomparable, and in memory excellent. These qualities which in him were by nature singular, he by learning and use had made perfect." 1

This is the description which his young protégé gives of the great counsellor of Henry VII.-" The King," he makes Master Hythlodaye add, "put much trust in his counsel, and the commonwealth also in a manner leaned unto him when I was there." The whole passage-an imaginary conversation at the Chancellor's house, in which Hythlodaye takes the chief part-may not improbably be a recollection, rather than an invention, of More's, for the social questions of the day undoubtedly received much attention from Morton. He is now remem

1 Ralph Robinson's Translation, Arber's edit. p. 36.