More, SIR THOMAS, was born in Milk Street, London, in 1478. His father, who subsequently became Sir John More, Justice of the King's Bench, was a man of character and talent, with a high sense of parental responsibility. More received his first instruction in Latin, then the basis of all education, in one of the most famous English schools of the time—that of St Anthony, Threadneedle Street, London. In after-life More wrote Latin with all the facility, though not with the classical purity, of the best Italian scholars of the Revival of Learning. When he attained his fifteenth year his father, after the fashion of the time, placed him as page in the household of Archbishop Morton, to whose virtues More afterwards paid the highest tribute in his Utopia. Morton, on his side, formed the highest expectations of More, and was in the habit of saying to the nobles who dined with him: 'This child here waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.'
By Morton More was sent to Oxford, where the Renaissance was now represented by such men as Colet and Linacre, both of whom had travelled and studied in Italy. From Linacre he appears to have learned Greek, and from Colet he received a spiritual impulse which gave a direction to his entire life and opinions. From Colet More also learned those novel methods of biblical interpreta- tion which Colet himself may have learned from Savonarola in Florence. By his acquaintance with the classics therefore, and by his enlightened views regarding the theology and the traditions of the church, More was emphatically a man of the new order. When, some time after leaving Oxford (probably about 1498), he first met Erasmus, both at once felt that they were in entire sympathy on all the deepest questions of the time.
It was his father's wish that he should follow the same profession as himself. Having completed his legal studies, first at New Inn and afterwards at Lincoln's Inn, he acted for three years as reader in Furnival's Inn. It marks the religious basis of More's character that he spent the next four years in the Charterhouse of London in 'devotion and prayer.' By his marriage with the eldest daughter of Mr Colte, a gentleman of Essex, he definitively made choice of a secular career. During the last years of Henry VII. he became under-sheriff of London and member of parliament, in which latter capacity he gave serious offence to the king by protesting against the excessive dowry demanded by Henry from parliament on the occasion of his daughter's marriage with James IV. of Scotland.
On the accession of Henry VIII. (1509) a brilliant prospect was opened up to More. It was Henry's ambition to surround himself with men of genius and accomplishments; and More had by this time attained a European reputation in the world of learning. As ambassador on two occasions to the Low Countries he had also given proofs of his tact and capacity for business. More, however, had little inclination for public life, and it was only after much hesitation that he took service under Henry. Introduced to the king through Wolsey, he rose rapidly in dignity and in the royal favour. He became Master of Requests (1514), Treasurer of the Exchequer (1521), and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1525). For a time the king showed him every mark of personal attention—paying him unexpected visits at his house in Chelsea 'to be merry with him.' Congratulated on these marks of favour by his son-in-law Roper, More, who had divined Henry's real character from the first, replied: 'If my head would win him a castle in France it should not fail to go.' As speaker of the House of Commons (1523), More, on the occasion of Wolsey's demand for a subsidy of which the House disapproved, received the great cardinal in a manner that made him exclaim: 'Would to God you had been at Rome, Mr More, when I made you speaker.' More, however, still continued to enjoy Henry's favour; and on two occasions was sent on missions of importance to Francis I. and the Emperor Charles V.
On the fall of Wolsey in 1529, More, against his own strongest wish, was appointed to the office of Lord Chancellor. Seeing from the first where the king's divorce from Catharine of Aragon must eventually lead, he knew that only one fate could be in store for himself. In the discharge of his office he displayed a primitive virtue and simplicity, being 'ready to hear every man's cause, poor and rich, and keep no doors shut from them.' The one stain on his character as judge is the harshness of his sentences for religious opinions. In passing such sentences More acted only in the spirit of the time; but in his Utopia he had shown the clearest conception of the sacredness of the individual conscience. 'The Utopians,' he says, 'put the unbelievers to no punishment, because that they be persuaded that it is in no man's power to believe what he list.' More sympathised with Colet and Erasmus in their desire for a more rational theology and for radical reform in the manners of the clergy, but like them also he had no promptings to break with the historic church. He could look only with displeasure, therefore, on the successive steps which led Henry to the final schism from Rome. In 1532 he resigned the chancellorship, and retired into private life. The disapproval of his policy by such a man as More could not be disregarded by Henry, and various attempts were made to win him over. Nothing, however, could shake the constancy of More, and his death became a mere matter of time and policy. The opportunity came in 1534. In that year Henry was declared head of the English Church; and More's steadfast refusal to recognise any other head of the church than the pope led to his sentence for high-treason after a harsh imprisonment of more than a year. The manner in which he met his death, while it is one of the commonplaces of English history, strangely illustrates an inveterate habit of his nature—the disposition to jest with the most serious questions and on the most momentous occasions. As, on 7th July 1535, he mounted the scaffold he exclaimed to a stander-by: 'Friend, help me up; when I come down again I can shift for myself;' and raising his head after it had been laid on the block, he bade the executioner stay till he had put aside his beard, 'for,' said he, 'it never committed treason.'
More was twice married; but only by his first wife had he any family. In no life of More should his daughter Margaret, the wife of his biographer Roper, pass unmentioned. By her high character and accomplishments, but above all by her pious devotion to her father, she holds a place among the illustrious women of English history.
One of the distinguished characters in the political history of England, More also ranks high in the history of its literature. By his Latin Utopia (1516; Eng. trans. 1556) he takes his place with the most eminent humanists of the Renaissance, and he was the one literary Englishman of the 16th century well-known and admired on the Continent. In his History of King Richard III. (1513) he produced what may be regarded as the first book in classical English prose. In his personal character More was the most attractive and lovable of men; and his tragic end gave the crown to the moral beauty of his life. From Erasmus's sketch of him we realise all his virtues and all his attractions; but realise also that he was a winning rather than an imposing figure. He had ingenuity rather than insight; not infrequently his wit passed into levity and even into flippancy; and there was in his character a strain of morbidness and superstition which precluded him from the largest and humanest views of men and things. In 1886 he was beatified.
See Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More (first printed 1626); Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors; Mackintosh, Lardner's Cabinet Encyclopædia; Seeböhm, Oxford Reformers; D. Nisard, Renaissance et Réforme; editions of the Utopia by Lupton (1895) and Michelis (1896); Lives of More by Father Bridgett (1891) and W. H. Hutton (1895); also works cited at HENRY VIII., WOLSEY, ERASMUS, and FISHER.