More began his formal education at Saint Anthony's School in London, where he would have studied Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Around 1490 his father placed him as a page in the household of John Morton, who was then the lord chancellor of England and archbishop of Canterbury and subsequently became a cardinal. The two years More spent in Morton's household gave him an opportunity to observe firsthand the political life of England. As William Roper, More's son-in-law and biographer, tells it, Morton said of More that "This child here waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvelous man." Roper also tells how More would step in and improvise a part of his own when actors put on plays and pageants during the Christmas season.
More attended Oxford University for about two years, probably from 1492 to 1494. Brought back to London by his father to study law, he attended the New Inn for about two years, transferring to Lincoln's Inn on 12 February 1496. He began to practice law around 1501. At the same time, he tested his vocation for a spiritual life: from about 1500 to 1504 he lived within the precincts of the London Charterhouse, participating in the Carthusian monks' life of austere devotion.
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