utopia thomas more, Literatura Angielska [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Utopia
By Thomas More
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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. Ater his earlier education at St. Anthony’s School,
in hreadneedle Street, he was placed, as a boy, in the
household of Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Can-
terbury and Lord Chancellor. It was not unusual for persons
of wealth or inluence and sons of good families to be so
established together in a relation of patron and client. he
youth wore his patron’s livery, and added to his state. he
patron used, aterwards, his wealth or inluence in help-
ing 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 aterwards in hostility to
Richard; and was a chief adviser of Henry VII., who in 1486
made him Archbishop of Canterbury, and nine months
aterwards Lord Chancellor. Cardinal Morton—of talk at
whose table there are recollections in ‘Utopia’delighted in
the quick wit of young homas More. He once said, ‘Who-
ever shall live to try it, shall see this child here waiting at
table prove a notable and rare man.’
At the age of about nineteen, homas More was sent to
Canterbury College, Oxford, by his patron, where he learnt
Greek of the irst men who brought Greek studies from Italy
to England—William Grocyn and homas Linacre. Lina-
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cre, a physician, who aterwards took orders, was also the
founder of the College of Physicians. In 1499, More let Ox-
ford 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 lesh, by wearing a hair
shirt, taking a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fri-
days. At the age of twenty-one he entered Parliament, and
soon ater he had been called to the bar he was made Un-
der-Sherif 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 irst years of the reign of Henry VIII.
he rose to large practice in the law courts, where it is 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 homas More, still Under-Sherif 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.’
he book, which seems to contain the knowledge and opin-
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Utopia
ions 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 Chancel-
lor, and from that year until 1523 the King and the Cardinal
ruled England with absolute authority, and called no parlia-
ment. In May of the year 1515 homas More—not knighted
yet—was joined in a commission to the Low Countries with
Cuthbert Tunstal and others to confer with the ambassa-
dors of Charles V., then only Archduke of Austria, upon a
renewal of alliance. On that embassy More, aged about thir-
tyseven, was absent from England for six months, and while
at Antwerp he established friendship with Peter Giles (La-
tinised 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 let-
ters—‘Nowhere’), was probably written towards the close of
1515; the irst part, introductory, early in 1516. he book
was irst printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under the editor-
ship of Erasmus, Peter Giles, and other of More’s friends
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