Life
Born in Dorset, he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He was made canon of Sarum in 1458, rector of St. Dunstan's (in the West), archdeacon of Winchester in 1474, canon of Wells from 1475 to 1478 and archdeacon of Berkshire in 1476. He was appointed Master of the Rolls from 1472 to 1479.
In February 1477, he was sent by the Yorkist King Edward IV, together with Sir John Donne, as ambassador to the French court. After serving a short spell in 1478 as Archdeacon of Leicester he was appointed Bishop of Ely by King Edward on 8 August 1479 and he was consecrated on 31 January 1479. Morton was an important foe of the Yorkist regime of King Richard III and spent some time in captivity in Brecknock castle. After the dynastic change to the Tudors in 1485, Henry VII made him Archbishop of Canterbury on October 6 of 1486, and appointed him Lord Chancellor of England in 1487. In 1493 he was appointed Cardinal priest of the church of St. Anastasia in Rome by Pope Alexander VI. He built the "Old Palace" of Hatfield House where Elizabeth I spent much of her girlhood.
As Lord Chancellor, Morton was tasked with restoring the royal estate, depleted by Edward IV. By the end of Henry VII's reign, the king's frugality, and Morton's tax policy, carried out by Edmund Dudley and Richard Empson, had replenished the treasury. Morton gave a statement, later known as 'Morton's Fork', that no one was to be exempted from taxes: "If the subject is seen to live frugally, tell him because he is clearly a money saver of great ability, he can afford to give generously to the King. If, however, the subject lives a life of great extravagance, tell him he, too, can afford to give largely, the proof of his opulence being evident in his expenditure."
Morton died at Knole House, Kent, on 15 September 1500. His monument was placed in the south-east part of Canterbury Cathedral's crypt, with an effigy and an arch decorated with angels, cardinal's caps, and tun barrels inscribed with MOR (a pun on his name, Mor-ton). However, this monument is a cenotaph since his actual body was buried in the crypt's central chapel of the Virgin Mary, according to his wishes.
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