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MonkeyNotes-Utopia by Sir Thomas More
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On the king's death, his son Henry VIII succeeded the crown. This
king proved to be very different from his father. He squandered the
money that his father had so carefully saved and very soon emptied
the treasury. Henry's needs were great and he began taxing the
people with increasing savagery. His chief minister, Cardinal
Wolsey, soon lost all influence with him. Wolsey, a man of humble
birth, had managed to become the most important man in England.
Consequently, by the time Utopia was written (and more so later),
all authority had become concentrated in the hands of a single
minister. This meant that the checks that had been imposed on the
king by the presence of other prelates and nobles in his council
were removed. The king had become a despot and used
extraordinary means to make money with little opposition. His
actions were not those of a well-meaning king who looked after his
constituents but one who had only his own military conquests in
mind. Therefore, as a result, a revolt occurred against his attempts
to levy taxes in 1525, which lead to a sharp decrease in military
actions.
The rise of humanism, which was the revival of classical cultures
and the rise of skeptical inquiry, lead to the development of new
ideas about society and culture and a critique of social and
religious institutions. More saw himself as one of these humanists
who found much intellectual fodder in classical writers such as
Plato, yet he also was devoted to the Catholic Church throughout
his life. Therefore, while Utopia owes much of its ideas to Plato's
The Republic, it also espouses a very strong Christian ethic.
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