A Humanist and Diplomat
Cuthbert Tunstall was born in 1474 at Hackforth in Yorkshire, the son of Thomas Tunstall; his parents married after his birth. He studied at Oxford and Cambridge and then at Padua, the finest school of law in Europe, where he took a doctorate in both civil and canon law. He learned Greek and mathematics as well, and his arithmetic textbook of 1522, dedicated to his friend Thomas More, was one of the first books on the subject printed in England.
He belonged to the circle of Christian humanists who hoped to renew the church through learning, and Erasmus counted him a close friend. Tunstall rose in royal service as Master of the Rolls and as an ambassador. In 1521 he was in Germany for the Diet of Worms, where Luther was condemned, and he wrote home urging that Luther's books be kept out of England.
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