Richard Morrison (ambassador) - Life

Life

Richard Morrison was the son of Thomas Morison of Hertfordshire by a daughter of Thomas Merry of Hatfield. He had a sister, Amy, who married Stephen Hales (d. 27 March 1574), esquire, of Newland, Warwickshire, brother of John Hales.

Morrison attended Cardinal College, Oxford (now Christ Church) ca. 1526 and met Nicholas Udall, who became the master of Eton College and was known as the father of English comedy. He graduated B.A. at Oxford on 19 January 1527–8, and directly entered the service of Thomas Wolsey; but he soon left the cardinal, visited Hugh Latimer at Cambridge, and went to Italy to study Greek. He attended the University of Padua in 1532, making the acquantaince there of Michael Throckmorton. In Italy both these young humanists had links with a group of reformers later called ‘spirituali’, whom Morison met through contacts with Edmund Harvel and Bishop Cosimo Gheri. He became a proficient if impoverished scholar at Venice and Padua, and retained an interest in literature, along with his adopted Calvinistic religious views.

Writing in February 1536 to Thomas Cromwell, he said that he wished to do something else than be wretched in Italy. Cromwell summoned him home, and gave him an official appointment. Morison and Throckmorton subsequently took up diametrically opposed religious positions: while Throckmorton would embark on a career as agent for Reginald Pole, Morison returned to England to become Henry VIII's propagandist, producing A Remedy for Sedition in response to the Pilgrimage of Grace. Cromwell used a whole coterie of "divers fresh and quick wits" that also included Nicholas Udall, John Bale, John Heywood (C. 1497-1580), Thomas Gibson, William Marshall, John Rastell, Thomas Starkey, Richard Taverner and John Uvedale.

On 17 July 1537 he became prebendary of Yatminster in Salisbury Cathedral, and derived benefit from the Dissolution of the Monasteries. He received the mastership of the hospitals of St. James's, Northallerton, Yorkshire, and St. Wulstan, Worcester, with other monastic grants. The King in 1541 is said to have given him the library of the Carmelites in London.

In 1546 Morison went as ambassador to the Hanseatic League. On Henry VIII's death he was furnished with credentials to the king of Denmark, and ordered by the council to announce Edward VI's accession. On 8 May 1549 he was made a commissioner to visit the university of Oxford, and before June 1550 was knighted. In 1550 Morison replaced Sir Philip Hoby as Ambassador to the Emperor. Setting off in July, he went with Roger Ascham as his secretary, the two reading Greek every day together. His despatches to the council were long, but Morison found time to travel in Germany with Ascham, who published in 1553 an account of their experiences in A Report of the Affaires of Germany. The emperor frequently remonstrated through Morison about the treatment of the Princess Mary; and he did not altogether like Morison, who was in the habit reading Bernard Ochino's Sermons or Machiavelli to his household ‘for the sake of the language.’

After Edward's death, Morison was revoked as ambassador. On 5 August 1553 he and Sir Philip Hoby received a recall for a political gaffe: they had alluded to Guilford Dudley as king in a letter to the council. The next year Morison withdrew to Strasburg with Sir John Cheke and Anthony Cooke, and spent his time in study under Peter Martyr, whose patron he had been at Oxford. He was at Brussels early in 1555, and is said also to have passed into Italy, but he died at Strasburg on 17 March 1556.

Morison died a rich man, and had begun to build the mansion of Cashiobury in Hertfordshire.