no parliament. In May of the year 1515 Thomas More--not knighted yet--was
joined in a commission to the Low Countries with Cuthbert Tunstal and
others to confer with the ambassadors of Charles V., then only Archduke
of Austria, upon a renewal of alliance. On that embassy More, aged about
thirty-seven, was absent from England for six months, and while at
Antwerp he established friendship with Peter Giles (Latinised AEgidius),
a scholarly and courteous young man, who was secretary to the
municipality of Antwerp.

Cuthbert Tunstal was a rising churchman, chancellor to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who in that year (1515) was made Archdeacon of Chester, and
in May of the next year (1516) Master of the Rolls. In 1516 he was sent
again to the Low Countries, and More then went with him to Brussels,
where they were in close companionship with Erasmus.

More's "Utopia" was written in Latin, and is in two parts, of which the
second, describing the place ([Greek text]--or Nusquama, as he called it
sometimes in his letters--"Nowhere"), was probably written towards the
close of 1515; the first part, introductory, early in 1516. The book was
first printed at Louvain, late in 1516, under the editorship of Erasmus,
Peter Giles, and other of More's friends in Flanders. It was then
revised by More, and printed by Frobenius at Basle in November, 1518. It
was reprinted at Paris and Vienna, but was not printed in England during
More's lifetime. Its first publication in this country was in the
English translation, made in Edward's VI.'s reign (1551) by Ralph
Robinson. It was translated with more literary skill by Gilbert Burnet,
in 1684, soon after he had conducted the defence of his friend Lord
William Russell, attended his execution, vindicated his memory, and been
spitefully deprived by James II. of his lectureship at St. Clement's.
Burnet was drawn to the translation of "Utopia" by the same sense of