Thomas Starkey

For the Episcopal bishop, see Thomas A. Starkey. For the 19th-century lawyer and jurist, see Thomas Starkie.

Thomas Starkey (c. 1495–1538) was an English political theorist and humanist.

Starkey attended the University of Oxford and gained an MA at Magdalen College in 1521. After this, Starkey stayed in Padua until around 1526. Here he studied the works of Aristotle and admired the government of Venice.

Between 1529 and 1532 Starkey wrote his A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, later known as Starkey's England, and cast in dialogue form, between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset (1495–1530). In 1536 he published An Exhortation to the People instructing them to Unity and Obedience, a defence of Royal Supremacy and commissioned by Thomas Cromwell.

References

• Kathleen M. Burton (editor) (1948), A Dialogue Between Reginald Pole and Thomas Lupset
• Arthur Kinney, Tudor England: An Encyclopedia (Garland Science, 2000)
• Thomas F. Mayer, Faction and Ideology: Thomas Starkey's Dialogue Historical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), pp. 1–25