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ii. Thomas More: Life and Work In 1515 he was sent to the Low Countries (Holland and Belgium) to negotiate a commercial treaty, and it was during this mission that he first conceived and wrote the second part of his famous book Utopia, and then completed the first part in the following year (1516) when the whole book, in Latin was published in Louvain. In 1529 More replaced Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor, a post equivalent to that of prime minister. But later, when he refused to oblige by Henry VIII’s commands of rejecting the Pope’s authority and admitting the justice of the king’s divorce from Queen Catherine, he was sent to the Tower of London for imprisonment. He was indicted of high treason and was found guilty and beheaded in 1535. His unfinished work The History of Richard III was found after his death and was subsequently published by his son-in-law, Rastell, in 1557 ii. Utopia Utopia is More’s masterpiece, written in the form of a conversation between More and Hythloday, a returned voyager from Utopia. The name Utopia comes from two Greek words meaning “no place” and was adopted by More as the name of his ideal commonwealth. It was written in Latin (1515-16) and received instant populace and then was translated into English in 1551 by Ralph Robinson. Utopia is divided into two books. The first book contains a long discussion on the social conditions of England. In the second book is described in detail an ideal communist society, Utopia. Book One of Utopia Book One of Utopia is a picture of contemporary England with forcible exposure of the poverty among the laboring classes, the greed and luxury among the rich, and an eagerness for war on the part of the rulers. The enclosure of land and expulsion of peasants were severely condemned as the source of social evils. And the savage laws which justified hanging for theft were exposed with a burning indignation. A passage from Book One of Utopia, taken from A Short History of English Literature, P36