John Morton

John Morton was Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Chancellor and a cardinal, and gave his name to a piece of reasoning about taxation that has outlived everything else about him. He was a lawyer who served the Lancastrian side through the Wars of the Roses, was attainted after Towton, went into exile with Margaret of Anjou, and made his peace with Edward IV after the cause was lost - the sort of career that was normal and is easy to mistake for treachery. Richard III arrested him at the council meeting in the Tower in 1483, the one at which Hastings was taken out and beheaded without trial, and put him in the custody of the Duke of Buckingham, whose rebellion a few months later Morton is generally thought to have encouraged before escaping to Flanders. He returned with Henry VII, who made him chancellor in 1487 and archbishop, and he governed the finances of the new regime for a decade. Morton's Fork is the argument attributed to him for extracting benevolences: a man who lives well is plainly rich and can pay, and a man who lives modestly must have savings and can pay too. Whether he ever used it is uncertain and the phrase is later, but the fiscal severity was real and was resented. Thomas More served in his household as a boy and praised him in Utopia, and More's history of Richard III - the main source for Shakespeare - reflects what Morton thought of him. He built the great gate at Lambeth Palace, which still carries his name. He commissioned a canal in the Fens known as Morton s Leam that drained land for centuries. He died at Knole in 1500 and is buried in Canterbury cathedral crypt.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history