Margaret Roper: A Martyr's Favoured Child

Margaret Roper, eldest and favourite child of Sir Thomas More, is often overshadowed in historical accounts by her famous father and the tragedy of his death. Today we’re attempting to bring Margaret to the foreground to see what we can learn about her life and legacy…

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Intro / Outro song: Silent Partner, "Greenery" [   • Greenery – Silent Partner (No Copyrig...  ]

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Linked videos and playlists:
Literacy video:    • What Was Literacy?: Perceptions of In...  

Links to read examples of Sir Thomas More’s letters to his daughter Margaret during his imprisonment in the Tower of London:
2nd/3rd May 1535: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/more...
His last letter, 5th July 1535: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/more...


Images (from Wikimedia Commons, unless otherwise stated):

Portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger (1527). Held by The Frick Collection.

Portrait miniature of William Roper by Hans Holbein the Younger (16th century). Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Portrait miniature of Margaret Roper (More) by Hans Holbein the Younger (between 1535 and 1536). Held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Portrait of Juan Luis Vives by an unknown artist (17th century). Held by the Museo del Prado.

Portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger (1523). Held by the National Gallery.

First page of Margaret Roper's translation of Erasmus' Precatio Dominica.

Study for the Family Portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein the Younger (circa 1527). Held by the Kunstmuseum Basel.

Thomas More and his family by Rowland Lockey after Hans Holbein the Younger (1592). Held by the National Trust.

Portrait of Margaret Roper, from a 1593 reproduction of a now-lost Hans Holbein portrait of all of the women of Thomas More's family, artist unknown.

Quoted texts:

Margaret Bowker, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Margaret Roper (née More).

Excerpt from Thomas More’s letter to Margaret Roper (1523).

Thomas Stapleton, The Life of Sir Thomas More, trans. Philip E. Hallett, ed. E. E. Reynolds (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1966).

Jaime Goodrich. “Thomas More and Margaret More Roper: A Case for Rethinking Women’s Participation in the Early Modern Public Sphere.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 39, no. 4, The Sixteenth Century Journal, 2008, pp. 1021–40, https://doi.org/10.2307/20479136.

Juan Luis Vives, The Education of a Christian Woman (1523)

Also consulted were:
Other relevant entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography