William Roper the second was the eldest son of John Roper (d. 1524),
Attorney-General to
Henry VIII, and his wife Jane (died c.1544), daughter and coheir of
Sir John Fyneux, Chief Justice of
King's Bench. The Ropers were an ancient
Kentish family, owners of the manor of St Dunstan outside the West Gate of
Canterbury, since known as the Roper Gate. He was educated at one of the English universities and then studied law at
Lincoln's Inn, being
called to the bar in 1525. He was appointed Clerk of the Pleas in the
Court of King's Bench, a post previously held by his father, holding the post until shortly before his death. Aged about twenty-three it is thought he joined the household of Sir Thomas More, marrying Margaret, More's eldest daughter, in 1521.
Erasmus, who knew More and his family well, described Roper as a young man "who is wealthy, of excellent and modest character and not unacquainted with literature". He was a member of various Parliaments (as MP for several constituencies including Rochester and Canterbury) between 1529 and 1558 and appointed
High Sheriff of Kent for 1554–55. Although he remained a Roman Catholic, he was permitted to retain his office of
prothonotary of the
Court of King's Bench after the accession of
Elizabeth I. However, his diatribe against Elizabeth's late mother,
Anne Boleyn, in his biography of More earned him the enmity of many Elizabethan loyalists and Protestants. His biography of Sir Thomas More was written during the reign of
Mary I nearly twenty years after More's death, but was not printed until 1626, when it became a primary source for More's earliest biographers because of Roper's intimate knowledge of his father-in-law. ==In popular culture==