Richard Morrison (ambassador)

He was a protégé of Thomas Cromwell, propagandist for Henry VIII, and then ambassador to the German court of Charles V for Edward VI.

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.

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.

[4] He became a proficient if impoverished scholar at Venice and Padua, and retained an interest in literature, along with his adopted Calvinistic religious views.

On Henry VIII's death he was furnished with credentials to the king of Denmark, and ordered by the council to announce Edward VI's accession.

On 5 August 1553 he and Sir Philip Hoby received a recall for a political gaffe: they had alluded to Guilford Dudley as king in a letter to the council.

The next year Morison withdrew to Strasbourg with Sir John Cheke and Anthony Cooke, and spent his time in study under Peter Martyr, whose patron he had been at Oxford.

[2] Morison suggested to king Henry VIII that the popular Robin Hood plays should be suppressed in favour of anti-papist propaganda.

His attitude is clear in a Cottonian manuscript entitled A Discourse Touching the Reformation of the Lawes of England (1535): Howmoche better is it that those [Romish] plaies shulde be forbodden and deleted and others dyvysed to set forthe and declare lyvely before the peoples eies the abhomynation and wickedness of the bishop of Rome, monks, friers, nuns, and suche like ...