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I N T R O D U C T I O N On September 1, 1523, Thomas More wrote to Cardinal Wolsey from Woking, updating him on the correspondence that Henry VIII had recently received. It may like your good Grace [Wolsey] to be advertised that I have received your Grace’s letters directed to myself dated the last day of August with the letters of my Lord Admiral to your Grace sent in post and copies of letters sent between the Queen of Scots and his Lordship concerning the matters and affairs of Scotland with the prudent answers of your Grace as well to my said Lord in your own name as in the name of the King’s Highness to the said Queen of Scots. All which letters and copies I have distinctly read unto his Grace.1 More went on to tell Wolsey that Henry, and his queen, Catherine of Aragon, were extremely pleased with the letter that Wolsey had written in Henry’s name to Queen Margaret of Scotland, Henry’s sister. More told Wolsey, “I never saw him [Henry] like thing better, and as help me God in my poor fantasy not causeless, for it is for the quantity one of the best made letters for words, matter, sentence and couching that ever I read in my life.”2 1 In 1523 More was one of Henry’s key public servants, a member of the king’s council and under treasurer of the exchequer. He was used by Henry and Wolsey as a diplomat, orator, and secretary.3 More was also a celebrated letter writer and engaged in correspondence with many leading European humanists, most famously Desiderius Erasmus. His praise of Wolsey’s letter is therefore extremely generous. Unfortunately it is impossible to know if it was justified, since the original letter Wolsey wrote on Henry’s behalf has not survived. The appreciation that More showed for Wolsey’s skills as a ghostwriter reflects perhaps a shared sense of the creative requirements but also the compromises involved in being a royal servant: the need to write as someone else, to author another man’s words. More, as Henry’s secretary, was the king’s textual eyes and hands— reading and writing for the king. Throughout the 1520s More was an important conduit between Henry and his realm, the kind of dependable, discreet civil servant that all regimes require to carry out their business. The letter of September 1523 provides a snapshot of More in his role as royal councilor and secretary, as a trusted servant of the king and Wolsey’s confidant. The courtly political milieu of More’s letter to Wolsey seems on the surface to be many miles from the world of the author of Utopia, Richard III, or the Dialogue concerning Heresies. This disjuncture is, however, more apparent than real. More, perhaps to a greater degree than any other figure in Tudor history, has suffered from being viewed through inappropriate or partial perspectives. In particular, More’s opposition to Henry’s religious policies of the early 1530s and his martyrdom profoundly colored the first Tudor accounts of his life, and this has fed into the modern historical record.4 Thomas More was born in 1478 into a relatively wealthy, wellconnected London family. His father, John More, was a leading member of the legal profession, rising to become judge of the King’s Bench in 1520. More’s early education was at St. Anthony’s School, a leading London grammar school. Sometime around the year 1489 More entered the household of Archbishop John Morton at Lambeth Palace. Also in Morton ’s household at this time was the playwright Henry Medwall. William Roper, More’s son-in-law and early biographer, records More spontaneously leaving his place in the audience and taking part in dramas being performed before Morton’s household. Roper writes that “though he [More] was young of years, yet would he at Christmas-tide suddenly some2 Writing Faith and Telling Tales times step in among the players, and never studying for the matter, make a part of his own there presently among them, which made the lookers-on more sport than all the players beside.”5 It is difficult to imagine that More’s interventions were met with unalloyed pleasure by the players performing the Christmas revels, but they clearly amused those watching the drama. In 1492 More went to Oxford University, and two years later he returned...

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