This research project aims at analysing in an exhaustive way the relations between the English humanist, lawyer and politician Thomas More (1478-1535) and the Universal monarchy of the first Spanish Habsburgs (Charles I, Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV), along the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We believe that, within the frame of Anglo-Spanish relations during the period, Thomas More played a role that came to be decisive in the cultural and geo-political evolution of both communities.

For the present purpose we will analyse a wide corpus of historical and literary texts in order to fulfil the following targets:

1. To clarify the image of the Spanish Empire and the Spaniards that More contributed to build in Tudor England. It is through More’s writings (as well as in those written at his time or shortly after) and his personal relations with Catherine of Aragon, Charles V or Juan Luis Vives that we intend to show a writer and a public character that appears to be contradictory: on the one hand, he admires Spanish culture, its supremacy and its staunch defence of Catholicism, but also as an Englishman, he sees Spaniards as the Other, both ethnically and culturally. In this manner, he was taking part in the construction of identities by opposition (or tactical). Consequently, we will also explore how this prejudices, affinities and rejections helped to build More’s own identity as well as England’s.

2. To analyse the impact that More’s thought and life had in Spain, particularly after his death in 1535, not only as author and scholar (admired by Quevedo, for example), but also as an icon of religious and political resistance to Protestant England. When Thomas More was elected chancellor of England (1529), the Imperial diplomacy of Charles V saw him as a supporter of Queen Catherine (the Emperor’s aunt) against Henry VIII, who questioned the validity of his marriage with her. Eventually, the English monarch broke up with Rome, married again and had More executed. Far beyond simply evincing the ideological use of Thomas More in the interest of Habsburg Spain, we endeavour to demonstrate that the appropriation of his thought and memory in our country was by no means an uncontroverted issue: More’s Erasmian overtones, some conflicts in Utopia or certain ‘ambiguous’ episodes in his life deserve to be examined from his perspective.

3. To deepen into the genesis of Thomes More’s idealization, a process that did not take place only in England or in Peninsular Spain, but particularly in the Netherlands, a territory which belonged to the Crown of Spain until the Peace of Westfalia (1648). It was there that the English Catholics (many of which were More’s relatives and friends) took shelter during the 1540s and 1560s. Also there, two official biographies of More were composed by authors intimately associated to these circles. Around this figure (and under the support of the crown and papacy), a Catholic identity (in the exile and against the Tudors) was formed. On the other hand, many of these exiles joined the Society of Jesus and returned secretly to England (some of them after being trained in Spain) in order to restore Catholicism. Their testimony can be the seed of a corpus made up by later works (fictional and non-fictional, like the play Sir Thomas More attributed to Shakespeare in collaboration) that we intend to investigate.