re of the Reformation were the homely sermons preached at
Westminster and at Paul's Cross by Bishop Hugh Latimer, who was burned
at Oxford in the reign of Bloody Mary. The English Book of Common Prayer
was compiled in 1549-1552. More was, perhaps, the best representative of
a group of scholars who wished to enlighten and reform the Church from
the inside, but who refused to follow Henry VIII. in his breach with
Rome. Dean Colet and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, belonged to the
same company, and Fisher was beheaded in the same year (1535) with More,
and for the same offense, namely, refusing to take the oath to maintain
the act confirming the king's divorce from Catharine of Arragon and his
marriage with Anne Boleyn. More's philosophy is best reflected in his
_Utopia_, the description of an ideal commonwealth, modeled on Plato's
_Republic_, and printed in 1516. The name signifies "no place" [Greek:
oy thopst], and has furnished an adjective to the language. The _Utopia_
was in Latin, but More's _History of Edward V. and Richard III._ written
1513, though not printed till 1557, was in English. It is the first
example in the tongue of a history as distinguished from a chronicle;
that is, it is a reasoned and artistic presentation of an historic
period, and not a mere chronological narrative of events.

The first three quarters of the 16th century produced no great original
work of literature in England. It was a season of preparation, of
education. The storms of the Reformation interrupted and delayed the
literary renascence through the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and
Queen Mary. When Elizabeth came to the throne, in 1558, a more settled
order of things began, and a period of great national prosperity and
glory. Meanwhile the English mind had been slowly assimilating the new
classical culture, which was extended to all classes of readers by the
numerous translations of Greek and Latin authors. A fresh poetic impulse
came from Italy. In 1557 appeared _Tottel's Miscellany_, containing
songs and sonnets by a "new company of courtly makers." Most of the
pieces in the volume had been written years before by gentlemen of Henry
VIII.'s court, and circulated in manuscript. The two chief contributors
were Sir Thomas Wiat, at one time English embassador to Spain, and that
brilliant noble, Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey, who was beheaded in
1547 for quartering the king's arms with his own. Both of them were dead
long befo