ABSTRACT
A convenient point from which to begin an attempt to gain some understanding of Donne’s world is the train of events which culminated in the execution of Sir Thomas More in July 1536. More was the uncle of Donne’s maternal grandmother and the author of Utopia, as well as of a host of theological and devotional works. 1 Donne was to call him ‘a man of the most tender and delicate conscience that the world saw since [St] Augustine’ (Donne 1984, p. 62). Henry VIII’s confidant and – from 1529 until his resignation in 1532 – his Chancellor, More was beheaded for his opposition to the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon and usurpation, as it appeared to him, of papal authority.
