More, Thomas(1478–1535)
Sir Thomas More, later canonized St. Thomas More, was a lawyer and statesman rather than a philosopher. More was born the son of a London lawyer who later became a judge. He was educated at St. Anthony's School and was appointed a page in the household of Archbishop (later Cardinal) Morton, who sent him to Canterbury Hall, Oxford, in the early 1490s. More left without a degree to study at New Inn and Lincoln's Inn in London. His lectures dealt not only with law but also with St. Augustine's City of God. He early composed various English poems and Latin epigrams that were not printed for years. However, a Latin translation of four Greek dialogues of Lucian appeared in 1506, and an English translation of the Latin life of his model, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in 1510. Increasingly involved in public affairs, More became a member of Parliament in 1504, beginning the career that led to the well-known events of his chancellorship and his martyrdom. By the time of the Utopia (1516), he had long since mastered Greek and enjoyed the friendship of such humanists as Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas Linacre, William Grocyn, John Colet, Cuthbert Tunstall, and St.
