he being not more careful to instruct and educate the young men, than their father was to tutor him: his -bounty makes him rich, and his recommendations potent: his interest went far, and his money farther. Bishop Fox was Secretary to King Henry VIII., and he to Bishop Fox: the one was not a greater favourite of the King's, than the other was his; as one that brought him a head capable of all observations, and a spirit above all difficulties. Others managed the affairs of England, Wolsey undertook it's interest : nis correspondence was good abroad; his observations close, deep, and continued at home: he improved what he knew, and bought what he knew not. Being a master of so happy a reservedness as to what he understood not, that in all these varieties of things that tried his parts, he never came under the reproof of Megabyses, to whom Apelles said; " Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemed'st to be somebody, but now there is not the meanest boy that grindeth ochre, but he laugheth at thee." And as he was reserved in his speech, so he was moderate in his carriage, till the success of lesser actions flushed him for greater.

"Too sudden prosperity in the beginning undoeth us in the end while we expect all things flowing upon us at first, we remit our care, and perish by neglecting. Every head cannot bear wine, nor every spirit a fortune. Success eats up circumspection. How many a man had ended better, if he had not begun so well!-Ego et rex meus was good grammar for Wolsey, a schoolmaster; but not for the Cardinal, a statesman. To be humble to superiors, is duty; to equals, is courtesy; to inferiors, is nobleness; and to all, safety: it being a virtue, that for all her lowliness commandeth those souls it stoops to."

75

SIR THOMAS MORE.*

[1480-1535.]

By authors, who delight in recording wonders, we are informed that several strange dreams of Sir Thomas More's mother, during her pregnancy, portended his future fortune: but without regarding the legends of superstition, we may truly affirm, that his childhood afforded the liveliest hopes of what his maturer years accomplished. Of this we have a testimony in the behaviour of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England; for young More being, according to the custom of those times,† placed in his family for education, his Grace would often say to the nobility who dined with him; "This boy who waits at the table, whosoever lives to see it, will prove a marvellous man.”

Thomas More, the son of Sir John More a gentleman of established reputation in the law, was born (according to the best accounts) in 1480, in Milk

* AUTHORITIES. Hoddesdon's, Warner's, and Cayley's Life of More, Biographia Britannica, British Biography, and Jortin's Life of Erasmus.

† Beside the mode of educating youths in religious houses, it was usual to place them in the palaces of the bishops or the castles of the nobility, where they received instruction, and were occasionally employed to swell the retinue of their patrons,

*

street, London. In 1497 he was sent to Canterbury College, Oxford, where he remained two years, and then removed to New-Inn, for the purpose of following his father's profession. On his first entrance upon business, he acquired great reputation at the bar: but taking an early distaste to that mode of life, he suddenly retired to the Charter-House, where resigning himself wholly to devotion, he remained secluded from the world no less than four years. Bigoted to the superstitions and the discipline of monkery, it is said that, like Lady Margaret, he wore a hair-shirt next his skin (which he never afterward, indeed, wholly laid aside) fasted often, and not unfrequently slept upon a plank.

At this time, he had a strong desire to enter into the society of St. Francis; but, his father persisting in his design of making him a lawyer, his filial submission overcame his inclination to the ecclesiastical state. Another motive was his gay and lively temper, and an amorous inclination hardly to be subdued by any austerities; upon which account Dean Colet, his intimate friend and 'ghostly father,' advised him to marry: and accordingly he accepted an invitation from Mr. Colte of Newhall in Essex, to reside some time at his house. This gentleman had three daughters, and in the course of his visit More conceived an affection for the second; though, on being urged by the father to make his choice, he espoused the eldest, merely to spare her the vexation or the disgrace of being passed by. Upon his marriage in 1507 with this lady, who lived with him nearly seven years, he took a house in Bucklersbury, and

* On the site of which, part of Christ Church now stands.

resumed his practice of the law. What greatly contributed to raise his reputation was this: He was not full two and twenty years of age, when he was elected member of the parliament summoned by Henry VII. in 1503, to grant a subsidy and ninefifteenths for the marriage of his eldest daughter. This gave him an early opportunity of publicly displaying his talents. For many of the members, through dread of his Majesty's displeasure, making no opposition to this arbitrary claim, More argued with such strength and clearness against it, that it was finally rejected. Mr. Tyler one of the privy. council, who was present when the speech was made, went immediately to the King, and informed him that "a beardless boy had disappointed his purpose." The avaricious prince frustrated in his favourite project, and unable to wreak his resentment upon one who had only performed his duty, meanly revenged himself on his father Sir John, whom he ordered to be imprisoned in the Tower till he had paid a fine of a hundred pounds. And More himself, being apprised by his friend Whitford, Chaplain to Fox Bishop of Winchester, that the court were laying snares to entrap him in his practice as a lawyer, deemed it prudent to decline the profession, and lived in retirement till the King's death.

His retirement,* however, was of no real disadvantage to him; as he employed his time in studying the French language, history, mathematics, and the

Enco

* In 1508, Erasmus dedicated to him his celebrated mium of Folly.' From the dedication it appears that Bayle, and after him Jortin and others, erred in stating this piece to have been written two years later, and under More's roof.

(Cayley.) 4

belles-lettres; so that when he again emerged from his retreat, scarcely any cause of importance was tried, in which both parties did not attempt to retain him : but he never could be tempted, by any fee whatever, to undertake a bad cause. His first preferment was in the city, where he was made Judge of the Sheriff's Court, in 1510; and before he was actually engaged in any concerns of the government, he was twice appointed, with the consent of Henry VIII., agent for the English merchants, in some causes between them and the foreign merchants of the Steel-Yard, in which he acquitted himself with distinguished honour. In 1516, he visited Flanders in the retinue of Bishop Tonstal and Dr. Knight, who were sent by Henry to renew the alliance between himself and the Archduke of Austria, subsequently Charles V. Upon his return Cardinal Wolsey, extremely solicitous to secure him for his Majesty's service, offered him a pension; which however, from his reluctance to exchange the condition of an independent man for that of a courtier, he thought proper to decline. Some time afterward, a large ship belonging to the Pope arriving at Southampton, and Henry claiming it as a forfeiture, More in the royal presence pleaded the cause of his Holiness with so much learning and eloquence, that the vessel was immediately restored. The King would now no longer be induced by any entreaty to dispense with his service, and having no better place at that time vacant, he made him Master of the Requests; conferred on him the honour of knighthood; appointed him one of his privy council; and admitted him to the greatest personal familiarity.

It was a custom with his Majesty, says the author