Morison, Richard

(ca. 1510-1556)

   English humanist, politi-cian, and religious reformer. Educated at Eton and the new Cardinal College founded by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey at Oxford, he also studied at Padua and perhaps in Paris before returning to England in 1536 as a protégé of Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister of state and the major force pushing the religious policies of King Henry VIII toward Protestantism. Morison wrote both religious and politi-cal pamphlets upholding royal authority over the church. His tract A Remedy for Sedition (1536) emphasized the central role of royal power in creating a stable and powerful nation. After the fall of Cromwell from power in 1540, his public career languished, but with the accession of Edward VI in 1547, he regained favor at court, was knighted in 1550, and sent as ambassador to the court of the Emperor Charles V. He lost this position when the Catholic Mary Tudor came to the English throne in 1553, and because of the suppression of Protestantism by her government, he settled in Strasbourg, where he died in 1556.