Sir Thomas), lord high chancellor of England, the son of Sir John More, knight, one of the judges of the king's-bench, was born in the year 1480, in Milk-street, London. He was first sent to a school at St Anthony's in Threadneedle-street; and afterwards introduced into the family of cardinal Moreton, who, in 1497, sent him to Canterbury college in Oxford. During his residence at the university he constantly attended the lectures of Linacre and Grocinus, on the Greek and Latin languages. Having in the space of about two years made considerable proficiency in academical learning, he came to New-inn in London, in order to study the law; whence, after some time, he removed to Lincoln's-inn, of which his father was a member. Notwithstanding his application to the law, however, being now about 20 years old, he was so bigoted to monkish discipline, that he wore a hair-shirt next his skin, frequently fasted, and often slept on a bare plank. In the year 1503, being then a burgess in parliament, he distinguished himself in the house, in opposition to the motion for granting a subsidy and three fifteenths for the marriage of Hen. VII.'s eldest daughter, Margaret, to the king of Scotland. The motion was rejected; and the king was so highly offended at this opposition from a beardless boy, that he revenged himself on Mr More's father, by sending him on a frivolous pretence to the Tower, and obliging him to pay 100l. for his liberty. Being now called to the bar, he was appointed law-reader at Furnival's val's inn, which place he held about three years; but about this time, he also read a public lecture in the church of St Lawrence, Old Jewry, upon St Austin's treatise De civitate Dei, with great applause. He had indeed formed a design of becoming a Franciscan friar, but was dissuaded from it; and, by the advice of Dr Colet, married Jane, the eldest daughter of John Colt, Esq., of Newhall in Essex. In 1508 he was appointed judge of the sherriff's court in the city of London, was made a justice of the peace, and became very eminent at the bar. In 1516 he went to Flanders in the retinue of bishop Tonstal and Dr Knight, who were sent by king Henry VIII. to renew the alliance with the archduke of Austria, afterwards Charles V. On his return, cardinal Wolsey would have engaged Mr More in the service of the crown, and offered him a pension, which he refused. Nevertheless, it was not long before he accepted the place of master of the requests, was created a knight, admitted of the privy council, and in 1520 made treasurer of the exchequer. About this time he built a house on the bank of the Thames, at Chelsea, and married a second wife. This wife, whose name was Middleton, and a widow, was old, ill-tempered, and covetous; nevertheless Erasmus says he was as fond of her as if she were a young maid.

In the 14th year of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More was made speaker of the house of commons; in which capacity he had the resolution to oppose the then powerful minister, Wolsey, in his demand of an oppressive subsidy; notwithstanding which, it was not long before he was made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, and was treated by the king with singular familiarity. The king having once dined with Sir Thomas at Chelsea, walked with him near an hour in the garden, with his arm round his neck. After he was gone, Mr Roper, Sir Thomas's son-in-law, observed how happy he was to be so familiarly treated by the king: to which Sir Thomas replied, "I thank our lord, sir Roper, I find his grace my very good lord indeed, and believe he doth as singularly favour me as any subject within this realm: howbeit, I must tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof; for, if my head would win him a cattle in France, it would not fail to go off." From this anecdote it appears, that Sir Thomas knew his grace to be a villain.

In 1526 he was sent, with cardinal Wolsey and others, on a joint embassy to France, and in 1529 with bishop Tonstal to Cambrai. The king, it seems, was so well satisfied with his services on these occasions, that in the following year, Wolsey being disgraced, he made him chancellor; which seems the more extraordinary, when we are told that Sir Thomas had repeatedly declared his disapprobation of the king's divorce, on which the great defensor fidei was so positively bent. Having executed the office of chancellor about three years, with equal wisdom and integrity, he resigned the seals in 1533, probably to avoid the danger of his refusing to confirm the king's divorce. He now retired to his house at Chelsea; dismissed many of his servants; sent his children with their respective families to their own houses, (for hitherto he had, it seems, maintained all his children, with their families, in his own house, in the true style of an ancient patriarch); and spent his time in study and devotion: but the capricious tyrant would not suffer him to enjoy this tranquillity. Though now reduced to a private station, and even to indigence, his opinion of the legality of the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, was deemed of so much importance, that various means were tried to procure his approbation; but all persuasion proving ineffectual, he was, with some others, attainted in the house of lords of misprision of treason, for encouraging Eliz. Barton, the nun of Kent, in her treasonable practices. His innocence in this affair appeared so clearly, that they were obliged to strike his name out of the bill. He was then accused of other crimes, but with the same effect; still, refusing to take the oath enjoined by the act of supremacy, he was committed to the Tower, and, after 15 months imprisonment, was tried at the bar of the king's-bench, for high treason, in denying the king's supremacy. The proof relied on the sole evidence of Rich the solicitor-general, whom Sir Thomas, in his defence, sufficiently discredited: nevertheless the jury brought him in guilty, and he was condemned to suffer as a traitor. The merciful Harry however indulged him with simple decollation; and he was accordingly beheaded on Tower-hill, on the 5th of July 1535. His body, which was first interred in the Tower, was begged by his daughter Margaret, and deposited in the chancel of the church at Chelsea, where a monument, with an inscription written by himself, had been some time before erected. This monument with the inscription is still to be seen in that church. The same daughter, Margaret, also procured his head after it had remained 14 days upon London-bridge, and placed it in a vault belonging to the Roper's family, under a chapel adjoining to St Dunstan's church in Canterbury. Sir Thomas More was a man of some learning, and an upright judge; a very priest in religion, yet cheerful, and even affectedly witty (a). He wanted not sagacity, where religion was out of the question; but in that his faculties were so enveloped, as to render him a weak and credulous enthusiast. He left one son and three daughters; Margaret, the eldest of which, was very remarkable for her knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages. She married a Mr Roper of Well-hall in Kent, whose Life of Sir Thomas More was published by Mr Hearne at Oxford, in 1716. Mrs Roper died in 1544; and was buried in the vault of St Dunstan's in Canterbury, with her father's head in her arms.

Sir Thomas was the author of various works, tho' his Utopia is the only performance that has survived in the esteem of the world; owing to the rest being chiefly of a polemic nature: his answer to Luther has only gained him the credit of having the best knack of any man in Europe, at calling bad names in good Latin.

(a) This last disposition, we are told, he could not restrain even at his execution. The day being come, he attended the scaffold, which seemed so weak, that it was ready to fall; whereupon, "I pray (said he) see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." His prayers being ended, he turned to the executioner, and with a cheerful countenance said, "Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thy office; my neck is very short, take heed therefore thou strike not away for saving thy honesty." Then laying his head upon the block, he bid him stay until he had put aside his beard, saying, "That had never committed any treason." His English works were collected and published by order of queen Mary, in 1557; his Latin, at Basil in 1563, and at Louvain in 1566.

More (Henry), an eminent English divine and philosopher, in the 17th century, was educated at Eton school, and in Christ-college in Cambridge, of which he became a fellow, and spent his life in a retired way, publishing a great number of excellent works. He refused bishoprics both in Ireland and England. He was an open-hearted, sincere Christian philosopher, who studied to establish men in the belief of providence against atheism. Mr Hobbes was used to say, that if his own philosophy was not true, there was none that he should sooner like than our philosopher's. His writings have been published together in Latin and English, folio.