scholarly journals Sir Thomas More, Utopia, and the Representation of Henry VIII, 1529-1533

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
J. Christopher Warner
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Open Debate ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lord Chancellor

This essay examines Sir Thomas More's Utopia in the context of Henry VIII's divorce crisis. During this period tracts from the royal press publicized an image of Henry VIII as a disinterested philosopher-king who welcomed open debate and advice at his court. Reading Morus and Hythlodaeus's dialogue on the subject of court counsel in light of this campaign helps us to perceive the manner in which More's appointment as lord chancellor served the purposes of the king's propaganda.

Notes on Elizabethan Prose

PMLA ◽  
1889 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
James M. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Inductive Method ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Subject Making

The progress of English prose is a subject of great interest, and one that has not as yet been thoroughly treated from the historical point of view. Here, as elsewhere in literary, as well as scientific subjects, the inductive method must be employed, and by selection and comparison the advance made from century to century may be indicated. Any treatment of the subject making the smallest pretension to fullness should begin at least as early as the second half of the fourteenth century, with the prose of Wyclif and his contemporaries, after the native and foreign elements of the language had become so blended into one that what was once foreign was no longer felt to be so. The progress should be traced through the fifteenth century, marked by the names of Mandeville—whose so-called ‘Travels’ has at last found its true historical position,—Pecock, Malory and Caxton, to the first half of the sixteenth century, when prose-writers become more numerous, and the language becomes more flexible and better suited to the purposes of prose, as seen in the writings of Sir Thomas More and his controversial opponent, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas Elyot, whose “Boke called the Governour” is a real land-mark of English prose, Bishop Hugh Latimer, the most forcible and witty preacher of his time, and Roger Ascham, who connects the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, and who deliberately uses English for his works, although it would have been “more easier” for him to write in Latin.

Thomas More in the Subtext of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s Henry VIII

Moreana ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 42 (Number 163) (3) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Dominant Theme ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Since the dominant theme of the play is that of “The King’s Great Matter” (his divorce of Katherine and marriage to Anne) it would be difficult for a viewer or reader not to think of Thomas More as the play unfolds, so much was he involved in this event. But Sir Thomas More—which also had Shakespeare among its authors—was not approved by the Master of the Revels, and the playwrights no doubt wished to avoid a similar rejection. A solution for them was to suggest More in the subtext, particularly since his cult was by then well established. This article studies the relationship of the absent More to several of the characters present on stage.

“Still more things to forget, in the wiping of Henry Patenson’s bottom in the Exchequer”

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 195- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Roger Schofield
Keyword(s):  
High Rank ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The One ◽  
Very High

The final piece of parchment of the roll kept by the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer for 16 Henry VIII, or 1524–5, contains a very strange case. Written partly in Latin and partly in English, as was the normal practice of the Court of the Exchequer, it contains a pretended report on the dispute between John Hone, a citizen and maker of candles, on the one hand, and Henry Patenson, more familiarly known as Harry Patenson, because of his physical likeness to king Henry VIII. The defendant in the Exchequer case was described as the ‘Simperyng fole of london’. This case in the Exchequer court had some exceptionally well known participants, including the Second and Third Barons of the Exchequer, who were of very high rank. This article sheds new light on Sir Thomas More.

Tunstal—Trimmer or Martyr?

1973 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 337-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morley Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Close Friend ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
The World ◽  
Sir Thomas More

Was Cuthbert Tunstal a ‘trimmer’—that is, one primarily concerned with his own advantage—rather than a partisan in the religious revolution initiated by Henry VIII? We might have expected the latter contingency after reading the glowing tribute paid to him by Sir Thomas More: ‘… the incomparable Cuthbert Tunstal, who, to everyone's satisfaction, has recently been appointed Master of the Rolls. I will not try to praise him, not simply because the world would discount such praise from a close friend, but because his fine qualities and learning defy description. His fame is so widespread, that praising him would be, as they say, like lighting up the sun with a candle’. Yet the historiographical neglect of Tunstal seems to indicate that historians have preferred the pejorative judgement of Foxe, who says that he ‘dissembled’ in taking the Oath of Supremacy to Henry VIII. All the conservative bishops who took the oath ‘turned cat-in-the-pan’ in Mary's reign, but when they took it in 1535 they were, according to Foxe, ‘right Lutherans’. He, unquestionably, thought Tunstal was a ‘trimmer’.

Sir Thomas More's Connection with the Roper Family

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 523-533
Author(s):  
Pearl Hogrefe
Keyword(s):  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Lord Chancellor ◽  
Business Relations

William Roper, son-in-law of Sir Thomas More, is one of those people who seem overshadowed by associates. He is usually mentioned as the son-in-law of the Lord Chancellor, or as the husband of More's brilliant daughter, Margaret. The origin of his connection with the More family is dismissed in the DNB by the statement: “His legal duties apparently brought him to the notice of Sir Thomas More, and about 1525 he married More's accomplished daughter, Margaret.” But in fact the Ropers were people of some financial and professional importance in their own right; and according to documents of the period, the Ropers and the Mores had legal and other business relations for many years before the intermarriage between the two families.

Catholicism, Kinship and the Public Memory of Sir Thomas More

2002 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 476-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL QUESTIER
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Family Networks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Group A ◽  
Lord Chancellor

Historians are now particularly aware that kinship had political and social resonances in the early modern period. Historians of English Catholicism in this same period have always stressed that a web of family networks helped to sustain the English Catholic community within its harsh post-Reformation environment. But how exactly did this happen, particularly when Catholicism in England was so diverse, and when Catholics were often deeply divided over key political and religious issues? In this essay I examine how these relationships worked for one significant kinship group, a set of people descended from or related to the Henrician Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More, and thus how they affected Catholicism's political and ecclesial expressions of itself. I argue that in doing this, we can begin not only to reveal how far religious continuity depended on or was influenced by kinship, but also to describe some of the ways in which post-Reformation Catholicism was defined and perceived.

Non-Utopian Euthanasia: An Italian Report, c. 1554

1969 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
René Graziani
Keyword(s):  
Actual Practice ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Evidence

The Utopian custom of euthanasia used, quite rightly, to be discussed in terms of classical sources and generally turned on whether Sir Thomas More advocated it personally or not. The fruitfulness of such discussion has its limits, and I find that More scholars have largely dropped the subject. Some new evidence has come to light, however, which raises the question whether More's apparently speculative projection had not in fact some basis in actual practice. An Italian diplomat who visited England during the reign of Mary in 1554, that is twenty-eight years after Utopia was published, stated unequivocally that euthanasia (he does not use the term, of course) was customary among some people in England. He thought it a primitive survival.I have found two main sources for the text of the report: (1) the various copies of an anonymous manuscript usually called ‘Ritratti del Regno d'lnghilterra’ (2) a book by the Ferrarese diplomat Giulio Raviglio Rosso, I Successi d'lnghilterra dopo la morte di Odoardo sestofno al giunta in quel Regno del Sereniss.

More, Thomas (1477–1535)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare M. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Formal Education ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Lord Chancellor ◽  
The Church

Thomas More was a classical, biblical and patristic scholar, an author in many genres, a lawyer who became Lord Chancellor, a humanist ‘born for friendship’ according to Erasmus, a widowed husband who remarried and could not decide which wife he loved more, a father who established a ‘school’ with the best of tutors in his home so that his daughters could have the same formal education (denied to women) as his son, and a martyr who refused to recognize Henry VIII as head of the church in England and was therefore beheaded by the king he had vindicated against Martin Luther. With his Utopia he coined a word and inspired subsequent writers to imagine both ideal and non-ideal societies.

Sir Thomas More and the Opposition to Henry VIII

Moreana ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 4 (Number 15-16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 285-303
Author(s):  
G.R. Elton
Keyword(s):  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Sir Thomas More

Thomas More as author of Margaret Roper's letter to Alice Alington

Moreana ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (Number 211) (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Travis Curtright
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Sir Thomas More ◽  
Indirect Argument

Why would Sir Thomas More write a letter to Alice Alington under the name of Margaret More Roper? To answer that question, this essay examines the political and familial circumstances of the letter's composition, its artfully concealed design of forensic oratory, and use of indirect argument. A careful analysis of the letter's rhetorical strategy will reveal further that More crafted his defense of conscience with allusion to the question of counsel from Utopia, whether or not a philosopher should enter into a king's service. In the Alington letter, from More's position as an imprisoned, former Chancellor of England, he revised civic humanism's call for political engagement into a powerful statement of defiance against King Henry VIII.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document