. Let us
again recur to dates.(3) Sir Thomas More was born in 1480: he was
appointed under-sheriff in 1508, and three years before had offended
Henry the Seventh in the tender point of opposing a subsidy. Buck,
the apologist of Richard the Third, ascribes the authorities of Sir
Thomas to the information of archbishop Morton; and it is true that
he had been brought up under that prelate; but Morton died in 1500,
when Sir Thomas was but twenty years old, and when he had scarce
thought of writing history. What materials he had gathered from his
master were probably nothing more than a general narrative of the
preceding times in discourse at dinner or in a winter's evening, if
so raw a youth can be supposed to have been admitted to familiarity
with a prelate of that rank and prime minister. But granting that
such pregnant parts as More's had leaped the barrier of dignity, and
insinuated himself into the archbishop's favour; could he have drawn
from a more corrupted source? Morton had not only violated his
allegiance to Richard; but had been the chief engine to dethrone
him, and to plant a bastard scyon in the throne. Of all men living
there could not be more suspicious testimony than the prelate's,
except the king's: and had the archbishop selected More for the
historian of those dark scenes, who had so much, interest to blacken
Richard, as the man who had risen to be prime minister to his rival?
Take it therefore either way; that the archbishop did or did not
pitch on a young man of twenty to write that history, his authority
was as suspicious as could be.

(3) Vide Biog. Britannica, p. 3159.

It may be said, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas, who had smarted
for his boldness (for his father, a judge of the king's bench, had
been imprisoned and fined for his son's offence) had had little
inducement to flatter the Lancastrian cause. It is very true; nor am
I inclined to impute adulation to one of the honestest statesmen and
brightest names in our annals. He who scorned to save his life by
bending to the will of the son, was not likely to canvas the favour
of the father, by prostituting his pen to the humour of the court. I
take the truth to be, that Sir Thomas wrote his reign of Edward the
Fifth as he wrote his Utopia; to amuse his leisure and exercise his
fancy. He took up a paltry canvas and embroidered it with a flowing
design as his imagination suggested the colours. I should deal more
severely with his respected me