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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
9 famous people mentioned
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Sir Thomas More
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tags: [personage]
► definition
Definition:Chancellor of England, born in London; was the lifelong friend of Erasmus, and the author of "Utopia," an imaginary commonwealth; succeeded Wolsey as Chancellor, but resigned the seals of office because he could not sanction [King Henry VIII's] action in the matter of the divorce, and was committed to the Tower for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, whence after 12 months he was brought to trial and sentenced to be beheaded; he ascended the scaffold, and laid his head on the block in the spirit of a philosopher; was one of the wisest and best of men (1478-1535).Rev. James Wood. The Nuttall Encyclopedia (1907)
painting: by Hans Holbein (1527) https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13466190
► uses
Uses:
Nursie: You almost were a boy, my little cherrypit.
Queen: What?
Nursie: Yeah. Out you popped, out of your mummies pumpkin and everybody shouting : "It's a boy, it's a boy!". And somebody said "but it hasn't got a winkle!" And then I said "A boy without a winkle? God be praised, it is a miracle. A boy without a winkle!" And then Sir Thomas More pointed out that a boy without a winkle is a girl. Anyway, I was really disappointed.
BBC. Blackadder, season 2: Bells
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More's decision to educate his daughters set an example for other noble families. Even Erasmus became much more favourable once he witnessed their accomplishments.
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I had the honour to have much conversation with Brutus; and was told, “that his ancestor Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas, Cato the younger, Sir Thomas More, and himself were perpetually together:” a sextumvirate, to which all the ages of the world cannot add a seventh.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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