Margaret Roper

Roper, the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas More, is considered to have been one of the most learned women in sixteenth-century England.

[3] In addition, she wrote many Latin epistles and English letters, as well as an original treatise entitled The Four Last Things.

[6] It was a large and commodious mansion opposite the Thames, built by Sir Thomas More on the site subsequently occupied by Beaufort House.

[7] There, Erasmus, a close friend of More, passed many happy days, and Hans Holbein the Younger painted some of his finest pictures.

[4] Margaret gave early indications of extraordinary intellectual abilities, deep devotion to God, and is cited as having "the most amiable and affectionate disposition".

She was proficient in Greek and Latin, prose and verse, philosophy and history, and had a thorough knowledge of music, arithmetic, and some other sciences.

[10] She, like the rest of her family, was a sincere adherent to the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church; having married William, a Lutheran, she is said to have converted him back to the religion of his fathers.

Thomas Cromwell allowed the visitations in hopes that Roper would persuade More to accept the Acts of Supremacy to avoid execution.

Roper took steps to clear her father's name posthumously by hiring More's old secretary John Harris to collect and recreate his writings to prove that there was no evidence of treason found within them.

[3] In Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Dream of Fair Women, he invokes Margaret Roper ("who clasped in her last trance / Her murdered father's head") as a paragon of loyalty and familial love.

In Robert Bolt's famous play A Man for All Seasons, Margaret and William Roper were major characters.

In the 2007 TV show The Tudors which focuses on the reign of Henry VIII, Margaret Roper is portrayed by actress Gemma Reeves.

In the 2015 miniseries Wolf Hall, she is portrayed by Emma Hiddleston as working with her father on translations and assisting him with his correspondence, and participating along with More in dangerous, but expertly guarded verbal exchanges with Thomas Cromwell.

Sir William Roper