(he humorously regretted) to fast in his absence (Brewer, i. 150). His time was chiefly spent at Bruges, Brussels, and Antwerp. In the latter city he delighted in the society of Peter Giles or Ægidius, a friend of Erasmus, and found time to sketch his imaginary island of ‘Utopia.’ The work was completed and published the next year.
In 1515 More was included in the commission of the peace for Hampshire, an honour that was again conferred on him in 1528 (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, ii. 170, 670, 3917). In 1516 he wrote to Erasmus: ‘When I returned from my embassage of Flanders the king's majesty would have granted me a yearly pension, which surely, if I should respect honour and profit, was not to be contemned by me; yet have I as yet refused it.’ But neither Wolsey nor the king was willing to accept a refusal. On 17 Feb. 1516 More was reported to be frequently in Wolsey's antechamber, and on 10 March Erasmus expressed a fear that he would be carried away by a whirlwind of court favour (Epist. 21). In the same year he accepted a pension of 100l. for life (Letters and Papers, vol. ii. pt. i. No. 2736). A riot in the city on May-day 1517, caused by a sudden outbreak of popular fury against foreign merchants, brought More again to the notice of the authorities. He undertook to address the rioters near St. Martin's Gate, and treated them to disperse (Hall). He was afterwards appointed by the city to examine into the causes of the disturbance (Apology, ch. xlvii.) In the following August, while the sweating sickness, he tells us, raged in London, he was nominated, much against his will, a member of a new embassy to Calais which was to arrange disputes with envoys of France (Brewer, i. 188). ‘Thus it is,’ wrote Erasmus regretfully (Epist. 318), ‘that kings beatify their friends; this it is to be beloved of cardinals.’ The squabblings of the conference disappointed More, who played a very subordinate part, but he was not home again till November (Brewer, i. 197). After his return he argued successfully in the Starchamber against the claim of the crown to seize a ship belonging to the pope which had put in at Southampton. The adroitness of his argument impressed Henry VIII with the necessity of making him at once an officer of the crown. In 1518 he was nominated master of requests, or examiner of petitions presented to the king on his progresses through the country—an office which required its holder to reside with the court, and to be in constant personal relations with Henry. Although More is called ‘councillor’ in the pension grant of 1516, his actual introduction to the privy council seems to have been delayed till the summer of 1518 (Venetian State Papers, ii. 1072). His absorption by the court was completed on 23 July 1519, when he resigned the office of under-sheriff.
Although More had already in his ‘Utopia’ offered as a philosopher many counsels of perfection to politicians, he held no exaggerated views of the practical power of statesmen to root out evil opinions and practices ‘in the commonwealth and in the councils of princes.’ He was an intelligent, peace-loving conservative, sprung from the people, who desired the welfare of all classes; but he never contemplated achieving reform in any department of the state or church by revolution. By his tact and discretion a politician might so order what was bad, he thought, ‘that it be not very bad’ (Utopia, p. 65). ‘For it is not possible,’ he wrote, ‘for all things to be well unless all men were good, which I think will not be yet these many years.’ The first words that Henry VIII addressed to him on entering the royal household—‘willing him first to look unto God and after God unto him’—largely indicated the spirit in which he devoted himself to political life.
Throughout his attendance at court More was enthusiastic in his praises of Henry's affability and courtesy, while Henry on his side was charmed by More's witty conversation, and treated him with exceptional familiarity. Henry would often send for him into his private chamber to talk ‘in matters of astronomy, geometry, divinity, and such other faculties,’ or would invite him to sup in private with him and the queen, ‘to be merry with them.’ At times, too, the king would present himself as an unbidden guest at dinner-time at More's own house, and would walk with More about his garden at Chelsea, ‘holding his arm about his [councillor's] neck.’ But More was under no delusion respecting his tenure of the king's affection. ‘If my head should win him a castle in France,’ he told Roper in 1525, ‘it should not fail to go.’ His devotion to the new learning met with Henry's full approval. When he was with the king at Abingdon in the spring of 1518, an old-fashioned clergyman preached at court against the study of Greek and against ‘the new interpreters,’ and after the sermon More was deputed to confute his arguments in the royal presence. More brought his opponent to his knees, to the amusement of his audience (Erasmus, Epist. 346). Similarly when More called the king's attention to the outcry of the ‘barbarians’ at Oxford against the incursion of Greek learning into the university, he drew from Henry a strong expression of opinion adverse to the brawlers
