Two Early Tudor Lives: The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey by George Cavendish; The Life of Sir Thomas More by William Roper

Around the year 1557, George Cavendish and William Roper fashioned masterful biographies of two figures who played major roles in the dramatic sequence of events that transformed the face of England. Each author knew his subject intimately; Cavendish served Wolsey as the Cardinal’s gentleman usher, and Roper was More’s son-in-law. Each biography has recently been edited from the manuscripts for the Early English Text Society, and the modernized versions presented here are based upon these authoritative editions.