ABSTRACT
Despite Utopia’s canonical status, it was not alone in questioning theories of the body social. In abolishing property, More’s book represented a thoroughgoing destruction of the body social, especially where the clerical and noble estates were concerned. But other contemporary critics, while not as radical, also undermined the theory’s validity. In the play Of Gentleness and Nobility (c. 1523-25), John Heywood cast doubts on definitions of gentility based upon landowning and inheritance. For his part, Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Book Named the Governor, first published in 1531 and a leading piece of English humanist writing, pushed the envelope further and opened alternatives to birth and blue blood as qualifications for government service. In 1536, Richard Morison, a humanist propagandist hired by Cromwell, published a pamphlet arguing that merit or wealth, rather than birth, should be the basis of aristocratic position. All three authors backed social mobility based on education as an alternative to inherited position and title.
