As Book 1 opens, More explains how his friend Peter Gilles introduces him to Raphael Nonsenso during a visit to Antwerp. Raphael is a Portuguese sailor and autodidact who once traveled with the famed merchant Amerigo Vespucci. Raphael regales the two friends with tales of his travels and faraway lands. Impressed by Raphael’s learning and worldliness, Gilles suggest that Raphael should enter the service of a royal court, where he could be very useful in matters of state. Raphael rejects this idea, saying that kings are too interested in waging war and enriching themselves to be concerned with good governance (20). Courtiers support kings in these matters and rarely revise their views as a matter of protecting their reputation. In England, Raphael says he saw these tendencies first hand at a dinner with Cardinal John Morton. An English lawyer attending the dinner complains that capital punishment has failed to deter theft in England. Raphael responds by suggesting that thievery is driven by poverty (22), and that this is driven by the greed of the rich who displace farm workers and leave them nowhere to go.

Throughout Raphael’s tales, Gilles and More both suggest that the knowledge Raphael has developed from his travels would make him a useful member of a royal court.