Cardinal John Morton is an honorable, prudent, and virtuous old man when he appears in Utopia, as well as the Archbishop and Cardinal of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor of England—just as he was in real life. Both in fact and fiction, Thomas More served as a household page for Morton while still a boy, and he deeply respects his former master. We meet the Cardinal in Book I of Utopia, when Raphael Hythloday describes a conversation he had at the Cardinal’s table about certain laws and policies in England. Although the Cardinal proves to be eloquent, open-minded, and tolerant of a joke here and there, it becomes apparent that the other men at his table are impudent flatterers. That such a virtuous man tolerates such bad company suggests how quietly private interests can infiltrate human governments.