The Life of Thomas More Read Free Page A

for. They are a part, too, of their sense of the necessity for active involvement in the world. If Augustine learned from Paul, More in turn learned from Augustine.
    These were the interests, then, that brought together Linacre the physician and Lily the grammarian, More the lawyer and Colet the preacher and educator. But there is one other person who would play a permanent and significant role in Thomas More’s life. The name of John Rastell is now forgotten, yet he could lay claim to the title of ‘Renaissance man’ with greater plausibility than most of his more famouscontemporaries. He was an ‘utter barrister’ of the Middle Temple, some two or three years older than More, and it is likely that they met when the younger man first entered New Inn. Rastell married More’s sister, Elizabeth, while he was still a student of the law; some three years later, in 1499, he provided security for a loan together with John More and Thomas More. He and his wife returned to his birthplace of Coventry for a few years, but on his return to London he manifested all the energy which the city seemed to invest in those of a passionate nature. The details of his career can be summarised here as an indication of the range of interests associated with the ‘More circle’ itself. John Rastell was a playwright, theologian and compiler of English history; he was a maker of pageants, a mathematician and a student of cosmography; he was an engineer, a legal theorist and a putative religious reformer; he constructed the first public London stage and proposed to set up a colony in the New World; he was an MP, a printer and a publisher. It was Rastell (and, later, his son) who published More’s polemical works, for example, and from his press issued a number of plays, legal abridgements, ‘merry tales’ and musical texts which owe some of their inspiration—if not their origin—to Thomas More and his household.
    So we may include John Rastell with Linacre, Lily, Colet and More himself as constituting a group which has been variously described as that of ‘London humanists’ or ‘London reformers’. It is pertinent that they came to prominence at a time when intellectual self-consciousness itself was beginning to emerge from the communal spirit of medieval piety. They found their proper role, too, in a city whose mercantile power under Henry VII was at last commensurate with its status as the central focus of national life; it was this moment of confidence and prosperity that encouraged the spirit of reform. Most importantly, perhaps, the London reformers were in positions of power and authority—Linacre tutor to the Prince of Wales, John Colet soon to be Dean of St Paul’s—which allowed them to exert a direct and sometimes decisive influence upon the more public aspects of London life. It would not be too much to claim that the progress of law reform and the changes in the educational curriculum, let alone the improvement in public hygiene and the conduct of general administration through various humanist courtiers, were directly attributable to the work of this group of people.There are other significant associations. John Morton had been a patron of the ‘new learning’ and his successor, William Warham, also played a part in promoting it. Other leaders of the English faith, such as Christopher Urswick and Richard Fox, supported it as an important means of improving the piety of the Church and renovating its teachings.
    It would be wrong to apply the title of ‘London humanism’, however, in too narrow or exclusive a sense. As far as Thomas Linacre was concerned, for example, his interest in a revived classical scholarship was inspired and shared by the scholars of Louvain, Antwerp, Florence and elsewhere. In particular he kept up a close and steady contact with the great Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, who had published his translation of
De Sphaera.
More importantly, Aldus had single-handedly promulgated the works of