Margaret Roper was an English writer and translator. Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, is considered to have been one of the most learned women in sixteenth-century England. She is celebrated for her filial piety and scholarly accomplishments. Roper's most known publication is a Latin-to-English translation of Erasmus' Precatio Dominica as A Devout Treatise upon the Paternoster. In addition, she wrote many Latin epistles and English letters, as well as an original treatise entitled The Four Last Things. She also translated the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius from the Greek into the Latin language.
Portrait of Margaret Roper, from a 1593 reproduction of a now-lost Hans Holbein portrait of all of the women of Thomas More's family.
Sir William Roper
Miniatures of William and Margaret Roper by Hans Holbein the Younger
Image: William roper
Sir Thomas More, venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, amateur theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.
Sir Thomas More (1527)
Portrait of Saint Thomas More, executed on Tower Hill (London) in 1535, apparently based on the Holbein portrait.
Rowland Lockey after Hans Holbein the Younger, The Family of Sir Thomas More, c. 1594, Nostell Priory
Study for a portrait of Thomas More's family, c. 1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger