MORDANTS. See DYEING.
MORE, Site THOMAS, Lord High Chancellor of EngMore, Site THOMAS, Lord High Chancellor of Eng- land, was the son of Sir John More, Knight, one of the Judges of the King's Bench. He was born in Lon don, in the year 1480, and educated first at a school at St. Anthony's in Threadneedle Street, and afterwards at Oxford, where he soon acquired a considerable pro ficiency in classical learning ; and being destined for the profession of the law, he came to New Inn in Lon don, from whence, after some time, he removed to Lincoln's Inn, of which his father was a member. Having obtained a seat in parliament, he distinguished himself, in the year 1503, by his opposition to the mo tion for granting a subsidy and three fifteenths for the marriage of Henry VIPs eldest daughter Margaret to the King of Scotland. The motion was rejected ; and the king was so violently offended at this opposition, that, in revenge, he sent Mr. Morc's father, on a fri volous pretence, to the Tower, and obliged him to pay 100/. for his liberty After being called to the bar, he was appointed law reader at Furnival's Inn, which place he held about three years ; and about the same time, he also read a public lecture in the church of St. Lawrence, Old Jewry, upon St. Austin's treatise De Cfritate Dci. At one time he seems to have formed the design of becoming a Franciscan friar ; but he was afterwards dissuaded from it, and married Jane, the eldest daughter of John Colt, Esq. of Newhall, in Essex. In the year 1508, he was appointed judge of the Sheriff's Court in the city of London, was made a jus tice of the peace, and attained great eminence 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 to England, Cardinal \Volsey wished to engage Mr. More in the service of the crown, and offered him a pension, which he declined. It %%as not long, however, before lie accepted the place of master of the requests. lie was also created a knight, admitted a member of the privy council, and, in 1520, made treasurer of the ex chequer. About this time he built a house on the banks of the Thames, at Chelsea, and married a second wile.
In the 14th year of Henry VIII. Sir Thomas More was appointed Speaker of the House of Commons, in which capacity he had the courage to oppose \Volsey, in his demand of an oppressive subsidy. Soon after wards, however, he was made chancellor of the dutchy of Lancaster, and treated with great lamiliarity by the king. In the year 1526, he was sent, with Cardinal \Volsey and others, on a joint embassy to France ; and, in 1529, with Bishop Tonstal to Cambray. Notwith standing his opposition to the measures of the court, he was appointed chancellor in the following year, after the disgrace of \Volsey. In 1533, however, he re signed the seals, probably to avoid the danger of re fusing his sanction to the king's divorce. lie now
retired to his house at Chelsea; dismissed many of his servants ; sent his children, with their families, whom he seems to have maintained in his own house, to their respective homes ; and spent his time in study and de votion. But he was not long permitted to enjoy tran quillity. 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 attempts were made to procure his approbation ; but these having proved ineffectual, he was, along with some others, included in a bill of attainder in the I louse of Lords, for mis prision of treason, by encouraging Elizabeth Barton, the nun of Kent, in her treasonable practices. His innocence in this affair, however, appeared so clearly, that they were obliged to strike his name out of the bill. Ile was then accused of other crimes, but with the same effect ; until, upon refusing to take the oath enjoined by the act of supremacy, he was committed to the Tow er ; and, after fifteen months imprisonment, was tried at the bar of the King's Bench for high treason. The proof rested on the single evidence of Rich, the solicitor general, whom Sir Thomas, in his defence, sufficiently discredited. The jury, however, brought him in guilty ; he was condemned to suffer as a traitor, and was ac cordingly beheaded on Tower Hill, on the 5th of July, 1535. His body was first interred in the Tower, but was afterwards begged and obtained by his daughter 11Iargaret, and deposited in the chancel of the church at Chelsea, where a monument, with an inscription writ ten by himself, had been some time before erected, and .1s still to be seen. The same daughter also procured his head, after it had remained fourteen days upon Lon don bridge, and placed it in a vault belonging to the Roper Family, under a chapel adjoining to St. Dunstan's church in Canterbury.
Sir Thomas More was a man of considerable learn ing, eminent talents, and inflexible integrity. Al though possessed of great sagacity in other matters, his religious bigotry exposed him to superstition and credulity. When only twenty years old, he was so de voted to monkish discipline, that he wore a huir shirt next his skin, Frequently fasted, and slept upon a bare plank. Yet his disposition was cheerlul, and he had an affectation of wit, which he could not restrain even upon the most serious occasions. He was the author of various books, chiefly of a polemical nature. His Utopia is the only performance that has survived in the esteem of the world. flume says of him, that of all the writers of that age in England, Sir Thomas Nlore seems to come the nearest to the character of a classical author. 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. A life of Sir Thomas More, by his son-in-law, Mr. Roper, of \Vellhall, in Kent, was published by Mr. Hearne, at Oxford, in 1716. (z)