MORE 



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factory, and was led by her religious views to with- 

 draw from it. After the publication of her Sacred 

 Dramas, she retired to Cowslip Green, a cottage 

 near Bristol, where she did much to improve tlie 

 condition of the poor in her neighbourhood bv 

 est;ililishing schools for their instruction. She still 

 continued her literary work, and helped by her 

 writings to raise the tone of English society. Her 

 essays on Tke Manners of the Great and The Re- 

 liijiitn, of the. Fashionable World (a pamphlet on 

 Village Politics), her novel Calebs in Starch of a 

 Wife, and a tract called The Shepherd of Salisbury 

 Plain are some of the most popular of her works. 

 In 1828 she moved from Barley Wood, a house 

 she had built for herself near Cowslip Green, and 

 took up her alxxle at Clifton, where she died, Sep- 

 teml>er 7, 1833. See the Life by Roberts (2 vols. 

 1838), and the short Life by Miss Yonge (1888). 



More, HENRY, one of the Cambridge Platon- 

 ists, was born at Grantham in Lincolnshire in 1614. 

 He was educated at Eton and Christ's College, 

 Cambridge, revolted early against the Calvinism 

 of his parents, and gave himself entirely to philo- 

 sophy, especially to Plato and more particularly 

 the Neoplatonist writers. He- took his Bachelor's 

 degree in 1635, his Master's in 1639, when he was 

 lected fellow of his college. Here he remained all 

 his life, nor could he be prevailed upon to accept 

 church preferment. He lived in an atmosphere of 

 unusual spiritual elevation, and exercised a great 

 influence on the young men that gathered round 

 him. Among his pupils was a young lady of family 

 who Iiecame Viscountess Conway, and at whose 

 *eat of Kagley in Warwickshire More often stayed. 

 This lady's sympathies with the mystic and "the 

 occult extended also to Van Helmont and Valen- 

 tine Greatrakes, and she ultimately found rest 

 among the Quakers. More's earlier rationality 

 gradually gave place to hopeless mysticism and 

 theosophy, and his successive works decline corre- 

 spondingly in value. He died Septemlier 1, 1687, 

 And was buried in the cha|>el of his college. His 

 Divine Dialogues (1668) is a work of altogether 

 unusual interest. His Optra Theologica were col- 

 lected in 1675, his Opera Phi/osophira in 1B78. 

 See the Life by Richard Ward (1710), and 

 Tulloeh's Rational Theology in England in the 

 Seventeenth Century (vol. ii. 1874). 



More, SIR THOMAS, wan born in Milk Street, 

 London, in 1478. His father, who subsequently 

 became Sir John More, Justice of the Queens 

 Bench, was a man of character and talent, with 

 a high sense of parental responsibility. More 

 received his first instruction in Latin, then the l>asis 

 of all education, in one of the most famous English 

 schools of the time that of St Anthony, Thread- 

 needle 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 lie attained 

 liis fifteenth year his father, after the fashion of 

 the time, placed him as page in the household of 

 Archbishop Morton, to whose virtues More after- 

 wards paid the highest tribute in his Utopia. 

 Morton, on his side, formed the highest expecta- 

 tions 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 liis 

 entire life and opinions. From Colet More also 

 .learned those novel methods if biblical interpreta- 

 332 



tion which Colet himself may have learned from 

 Savonarola in Florence. By his acquaintance with 

 the classics therefore, and bv his enlightened views 

 regarding the theology ancl the traditions of the 

 church, More was emphatically a man of the new 

 order. When, some time after leaving Oxford 

 (probably alxiut 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 

 Funiival's Inn. It marks the religious basis of 

 M ore'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-sherifT 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 ha 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 ana 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 lie 

 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 

 kind'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, 

 lieing ' reaay 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 con- 

 science. 'The Utopians,' he says, 'put the un- 

 believer* to no punishment, Itecause that they l>e 

 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 



