[2] As a result of his work as a civil lawyer Morton came to the notice of Thomas Bourchier, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1454,[5] and on 26 September 1456 he entered royal service, being appointed as chancellor of the infant Edward, Prince of Wales.

[9] Morton was one of a number of lawyers involved in drawing up the act of attainder against the Yorkist lords passed by the parliament which met in Coventry in November 1459.

However, he escaped and joined Queen Margaret of Anjou in France, being appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal to Henry VI and assisting in the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Tours on 28 June 1462.

[12] After these attempts to restore Henry VI failed, Morton returned to France with the queen and shared the exile of the small Lancastrian court at the Chateau of Koeur near Saint-Mihiel in Lorraine.

[13] Following the final defeat of the Lancastrian cause at the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, Morton was granted a pardon by Edward IV and resumed his career in royal service.

[15] Civil lawyers were also in demand for diplomatic missions[16] and Morton left England in early January 1474 together with Lord Duras on an embassy to Burgundy.

They were also commissioned to seek alliances against France with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick III, and Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary.

[19] On 16 February 1477 Edward IV sent Morton and Sir John Donne as ambassadors to Louis XI to seek the extension of the truce under the Treaty of Picquigny.

[21] In the meanwhile, Morton had been consecrated by Archbishop Bourchier as Bishop of Ely in the chapel at Lambeth on 31 January 1479 and he vacated the other ecclesiastical offices which he had accumulated.

[22] It was during this period that Morton was mentioned by the visiting Italian observer, Dominic Mancini, as being, along with Archbishop Thomas Rotherham and William, Lord Hastings, "of no small influence" with the king.

Mancini wrote that "these men being in age mature, and instructed by long experience of public affairs, helped more than other councillors to form the king's policy, and besides carried it out".

[28] Rotherham was soon restored to favour[29] but Morton was committed to the custody of Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who sent him to his castle at Brecon in Wales.

Morton was involved in the failed uprising known as Buckingham's rebellion but he subsequently escaped to Flanders from where he continued to coordinate opposition to Richard III.

[30] Morton was included in the Acts of Attainder passed by Richard III's first (and only) parliament which met at Westminster in January 1484 and he once again lost all his temporal possessions.

His real mission, however, may have been to secure papal dispensation for Richmond's intended marriage to Edward IV's eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, which was necessary because both were descended from John of Gaunt.

[35] The overall direction of policy in domestic and international affairs remained in the king's hands, advised by his councillors,[36] but Morton and other royal clerks carried out the administrative work of putting his decisions into effect.

[39] The historian Polydore Vergil wrote that Morton and Bray were the two councillors who could reprove Henry VII when necessary[40] and that it became obvious after their deaths that they had been responsible, not for aggravating royal harshness, but for restraining it.

Cardinal Bourchier had left the manor of Knole to the see of Canterbury in 1480 and Morton carried out repairs and improvements of what was to be one of his favourite residences as archbishop.

[47] John Haryngton, the proctor of the English Cistercians, and therefore an opponent of Morton's attempt to extend his jurisdiction to include exempt religious houses, including the Cistercians,[2] said that he saw in him "nothing but the qualities of a good judge"[48] and that in his opinion he was:a man of great learning and profound wisdom, devoted to the service of God, concerned for the public welfare rather than for his own advantage, immersing himself profitably in both religious and secular affairs, and not shrinking from the heat and burden of the day.

[2] A chaplain in his household, Henry Medwall, wrote the first play to be printed in English, Fulgens and Lucrece, which may have been performed before the members of the court at Lambeth in 1497.

[54] Almost a century after Morton's death a theory arose that he had actually written More's History of King Richard III[55] but More's authorship of this work is not now questioned.