II SIR THOMAS MORE "Thomae Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius, [BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The foundation for all lives of Sir Thomas I More's SIR THOMAS MORE was a Londoner. He was born in the heart of the capital, in Milk Street, Cheapside, not far from Bread Street, where Milton was born more than a century later. The year of More's birth carries birth, 7th us back to 1478, to the end of the Middle Ages, to the year when the Renaissance was looming on England's intellectual horizon, but was as yet shedding a vague and Feb. 1478. flickering light. The centre of European culture was in distant Florence, and England's interests at home were still mainly absorbed by civil strife. Though by 1478 the acutest phases of that warfare were passed, it was not effectually stemmed till Henry vII. triumphed at Bosworth Field and More was seven years old. Much else was to change before opportunity for great achievement should be offered More in his maturity. It was in association with men and movements for the most part slightly younger than himself that More first figured on life's stage. He set forth on life in the vanguard of the advancing army of contemporary progress, but destiny decreed that death should find him at the head of the opposing forces of reaction. Senior of Luther and Of the leading actors in the drama in which More was to play his great part, two were at the time of his birth unborn, and two were in infancy. Luther, the practical leader of the religious revolution by which More's career was moulded, did not come into the world until More was five; nor until he was thirteen was there born Henry VIII., the monarch to whom he owed his martyrdom. To only two of the men with whom he conspicuously worked was he junior. Erasmus, one of the chief emanciThe junior of Erasmus pators of the reason, from whom More derived and Wolsey. abundant inspiration, was his senior by eleven years; Wolsey, the political priest, who was to give England ascendancy in Europe and to offer More the salient opportunities of his career, was seven years his senior. One spacious avenue to intellectual progress was indeed in readiness for More and his friends from the outset. One commanding invention, which exerted unbounded influence-the introduction into England by Caxton of the newly invented art of printing The invention of printing. was almost coincident with More's birth. A year earlier Caxton had set up a printing-office in Westminster, and produced for the first time an English printed book there. That event had far-reaching consequences on the England of More's childhood. The invention of printing was to the sixteenth century what the invention of steam locomotion was to the nineteenth. The birth in England of the first of the two great influences which chiefly stimulated men's intellectual development, during More's adolescence, was almost simultaneous with the introduction of printing. Greek learning and literature were first taught in the country at Oxford in the seventh decade of the fifteenth century. It was not till the last decade of that century that European explorers set foot in the New World of America, and by compelling men to reconsider their notion of the universe and pre-existing theories of the planet to which they were born, completed the inauguration of the new era of which More was the earliest English hero. II father. More's family belonged to the professional classes, whose welfare depends for the most part on no extraneous advantages of inherited rank or wealth, but on personal More's ability and application. His father was bara rister who afterwards became a judge. Of humble origin he acquired a modest fortune. His temperament was singularly modest and gentle, but he was blessed with a quiet sense of humour which was one of his son's most notable inheritances. The father had a wide experience of matrimony, having been thrice married, and he is credited with the ungallant remark that a man taking a wife is like one putting his hand into a bag of snakes with one eel among them; he may light on the eel, but it is a hundred chances to one that he shall be stung by a snake. At school Of the great English public schools only two-Winchester and Eton-were in existence when More was a boy, and they had not yet acquired a national repute. Up to in London. the age of thirteen More attended a small day school-the best of its kind in London. It was St. Anthony's school in Threadneedle Street, and was attached to St. Anthony's Hospital, a religious and charitable foundation for the residence of twelve poor men. Latin was the sole means and topic of instruction. In the service of the Archbishop. Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was wont to admit to his household boys of good family, to wait on him, and to receive instruction from his chaplains. More's father knew the Archbishop and requested him to take young Thomas More into his service. The boy's wit and towardness delighted the Archbishop. 'At Christmastide he would sometimes suddenly step in among the players and masquers who made merriment for the Archbishop, and, never studying for the matter, would extemporise a part of his own presently among them, which made the lookers-on more sport than all the players besides.' The Archbishop, impressed by the lad's alertness of intellect, would often say of him to the nobles that divers times dined with him "This child here writing at the table, whoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man." The Archbishop arranged with More's father to send him to the University of Oxford, and, when little more than fourteen, he entered Canterbury Hall, a collegiate establishment which was afterwards absorbed in Cardinal Wolsey's noble foundation of Christ Church. At Oxford. |