A Lawyer's Son in London
Thomas More was born in London on 7 February 1478, the son of John More, a lawyer who later became a royal judge. As a boy he served as a page in the household of John Morton, archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. He studied at Oxford for about two years before his father brought him home to train in the law, and he was called to the bar around 1502.
As a young lawyer he lived for a time near the London Charterhouse and shared the prayers of its Carthusian monks, testing whether he was called to the religious life. He chose marriage, but he kept a monk's disciplines all his life. Beneath his clothes he wore a hair shirt, which his daughter Margaret secretly washed for him.
He married Jane Colt in 1505, and they had four children. After her death in 1511 he married a widow, Alice Middleton, within weeks. More gave his daughters the same education in Latin, Greek, and philosophy as his son, which was rare in his day, and his eldest, Margaret Roper, became one of the most learned women in England.
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