Richard Morrison (ambassador)

Sir Richard Morrison (or Morison or Morysine) (ca. 1513 – 1556) was an English humanist scholar and diplomat. He was a protégé of Thomas Cromwell, propagandist for Henry VIII, and then ambassador to the German court of Charles V for Edward VI.

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.

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