LIFE OF SIR THOMAS MORE. B CHAPTER I. CHILDHOOD. LESSED Thomas More, hitherto known as Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, was the eldest son of John More, Gentleman, afterwards Sir John More, Knight, puisne judge of the King's Bench in the time of Henry VIII. The early lives of Sir Thomas More place his birth in the year 1480, thus making him about fifty-five years old at the time of his martyrdom.* A recent discovery has proved that * His son-in-law, Roper, says nothing of his age, nor does Harpsfield. Cresacre More says he was born in 1480. He seems to have taken this date from the family picture, commonly called the Burford Picture, painted in 1593. On this picture is an inscription stating that in 1505 Sir Thomas was in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and that he was in his fifty-fifth year at his death-6th July, 1535. The error arose from supposing that the more famous Holbein family picture, on which the ages are noted, was painted in 1530; for on this Sir Thomas is declared to be in his fiftieth year. The picture, however, was painted not later than January, 1528. This will be shown later on. Stapleton errs still more widely. In Chapter IV. he says that More wrote the Utopia in 1516, being then in his thirty-fourth year, and died in 1535, in his fifty-second year. This would place his birth in the latter part of 1482. Again, in Chapter VI., he says that at his death he was not yet fully fifty-two years old. The same mistake occurs in Chapter I. Though Stapleton was intimate with members of More's household, they apparently only guessed at his age, and it would seem from their mistake that he looked younger than he really was. Blessed John Fisher's looks, on the contrary, caused his age to be greatly exaggerated. |