MORE, NICHOLAS ?-11189). A Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, born in Wa, man of the first Provincial Assembly in 1682, Speaker of the Assembly in 1681. and in the `In111e year was appointed Chief Justiee. In 1683 he was by the Assembly for his pemers. but In' %%:1s never tried by the Council. His case is peculiarly as prob.
ably the first instance of impeachment that oc curred in America. Consult: Shepherd. History of Proprietary Government in Pennsylrania (New York, 1896) ; trot. vi. of Columbia rnirer sity Studies in history, Economics, and Public Lair.
MORE, Sir THOMAS (147S-1533). An More, Sir THOMAS (147S-1533). An lish author and statesman. Ile was horn in London and educated first at Saint Anthony's School near his home, but at thirteen was placed in the household of Cardinal _Morton, _Morton his and predicted that lie would 'prove a marvelous man.' His interest a year or two later sent the boy to Oxford, where lie entered at Canterbury afterwards in Christ Church. Here he laid the foundations of the scholarship which made hint such an ad mirable type of the liellaissance under Linacre and Grocyn. lie left Oxford after two years and studied law at New Inn and Lin coln's inn, he kept up his literary studies and his friendship with these men and with Erasmus, Colet, and Lilly: with Erasmus, in particular, he met in 1497 on his first visit to he had a close friendship which was only termi nated by death. More at one time of a priest, and in these days lived a very austere and ascetic life. He lectured on Saint be riritate Dei; and it is possible that his meditations on the City of God may have his own famous conception of an ideal community in the Utopia. he abandoned Iris idea of orders about 1303, he remained a tine specimen of the devout layman all his life, a sharp critic of any in the In 1504 he entered Parliament and soon fame by a of money to the lIenry VII., whose hostility compelled him to retire to private life. His law practice. however, him a income. When Henry VIII. came to the throne, lie was made umler-sheriff of London. and in a num ber of important commercial missions. his absenve in Flanders on one of which he published 1516. lie was made justice of the peace in 1515, and two years later master of an office which him into contact' with the to whose council he w•as admitted in the ,amt' year. He was in 1521, and continued a prominent ure at Court. the notice of \Volsey, he was recommended by the Cardinal as Speaker of the House of Commons, and elected in 1523.
like Erasmus and Colet, lie had much at heart a reform of the Church in practical matters. lie had no sympathy with the violent. 111(.3,11W,l of ',Miler and his followers, and in 1323 appeared as a champion of his the German reformer. Thenceforward until his death he was constantly in the lists the supporters of the IIVW doctrines. nn \Volsey's fall in 1529. Nlore was appointed to :succeed him as Chancellor. the of the Olive by any lint a ecclesiastic an unheard-of innovation. Ile held the (Mice only two year.: and a half, :HUI then it. fore that his conscience would him to an open with the whom he had al ready opposed at several of the breach with The inevitable conflict came in the of 1534, when subscription was required to the act of succession, including a renunciation of the jurisdiction of 'any foreign potentate.' Store flatly refused to take the oath, and was com mitted to the Tower, where he remained a pris oner until his death. Ile was brought to trial on a charge of treason, and convicted by the most flagrant perjury and injustice, and sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. The King commuted the sentence to beheading. On July Gth he was exe cuted in the Tower. retaining the calmness and wit which had marked his life to the last. Ilk execution shocked the whole of Europe, and Charles V. declared that he would rather have lost his best friend than such a counselor.
was beatified by Leo X111. in 1880, together with other English martyrs.
Store is to-day best known as the author of the Utopia (q.v.). It was written in Latin, so as to reach the learned world, and is full of dra matic skill and fertile invention. The earliest English version, of which five scholarly reprints were published between 1809 and 1893, appeared in 1551, but earlier than this it had been trans lated into German, Dutch, and Italian. Store's English works, principally of a controversial or devotional character, are marked by forcible, ner vous, simple style, and by an abundance of witty iiimbtration. His History of Richard III. (first correctly printed in 1557), though incomplete, is notable among the beginnings of modern history in English. and his early biography of Pico della Slirandola (1510) is characteristic of his devo tion to the Renaissance ideal. Consult: Bridgett. Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (London, 1391) : Hutton, Sir Thomas More (ib., Cooke. Three areal Lives (ib., IS84) Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (3d ed., ib., 1887) Nisard, Renaissance et rtforme (Paris, 1877) Louis, More and seine Utopia (Berlin, 1893). See Co.r ]tifNISJI.