Thomas Starkey's Dialogue between Pole and Lupset has long given him a place in the histories of both early-Tudor vernacular literature and political thought, usually as the first modern liberal and an epigone of Marsilius of Padua. Further, his pivotal role in the protracted efforts to secure his former patron Reginald Pole's opinion on Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon produced a central, if temporary, notoriety for him in the political history of the second Tudor's reign. More recently these judgments have been revised and Starkey's "English" importance reduced; instead, he has become one of the first and most interesting of the inglesi italianati (Italianate Englishmen).

Born into a family of comparatively minor Cheshire gentry, Starkey may have gone to the leading grammar school in England, Magdalen College School, Oxford. In any event he took both B.A. (1516) and M.A. (1521) in that college (first as demy...