keep me the mind to look to be out of this world and to be with Him. For I can never but trust, that who so long to be with Him shall be welcome to Him; and, on the other side, my mind giveth me verily that any that ever shall come to Him shall full heartily wish to be with Him ere ever he shall come at Him." With some affectionate words and commendation to his prayers, he concludes, asking him to send the letter back, "for though its contents are harmless, the bearer might get into trouble by it".*

It seems, however, that Dr. Wilson kept it, and wrote him a second letter, to which Sir Thomas answered shortly: "I perceive that you have promised to swear the oath. I beseech Our Lord give you thereof good luck. And whereas I perceive that you would gladly know what I intend to do, you wot well that I told you when we were both abroad, that I would therein neither know your mind nor no man's else; nor you nor no man else should therein know mine. With God's grace I will follow my own conscience. What my own shall be to-morrow, myself cannot be sure; and whether I shall have finally the grace to do according to mine own conscience or not hangeth in God's goodness, not in mine, to whom I beseech you heartily to remember me in your devout prayers, and I shall and do daily remember you in mine, such as they be."+

Whether Dr. Wilson was moved to recall his promise to take the oath I do not find recorded. From the bill of the governor's expenses it appears that he remained prisoner for two years and two months; yet at a subsequent period he got promotions that he could not have enjoyed without acquiescing in the schism.

By comparing the various expressions of Sir Thomas together, it seems that he was himself deterred from taking the oath of succession, in the form in which it was proposed to him, by several reasons, some of which were doctrinal, and held by the

Cotton MS.; Titus, Bk. i.; also Archæologia, xviii. 294.

doctors of the Church; but others were of a secret nature known to himself, and which he had never communicated to another, and would not reveal even to his daughter. Whether these had reference to Anne Boleyn's affinity with Henry, or her precontract of marriage with Percy, or some other impediment still more secret, we cannot now discover, any more than we can know the grounds on which Cranmer pronounced that Anne's marriage with Henry had been null from the beginning; it may be as well to anticipate somewhat, in order to conclude here what is told of the wreck of his property and home.*

Towards the end of the year 1534, the wife and children of Sir Thomas petitioned for his pardon and release. They alleged that he had remained more than eight months in the Tower "in great continual sickness of body and heaviness of heart". "The king during that time has allowed his wife to retain his moveable goods and the revenues of his lands, although forfeited for his refusal of the oath; but lately an Act has been made in the last parliament, not only confirming the former forfeiture, but causing the inheritance of all the lands which the said Sir Thomas had from the king, amounting to the annual value of £60, to be forfeited. All that his wife brought him is expended in the king's service, and she is likely to come to want, as also her son, who stands charged with the payment of certain great sums due by Sir Thomas to the king. But above all this, Sir Thomas is likely to die, after his long and true service to the king. They beseech the king to grant this their petition, considering that his offence is not of malice or obstinacy, but of such a long continued and deep-rooted scruple as passeth his power to avoid and put away."+

Dr. Bailey, in his Life of Fisher, mentions several incidents of More's life in the Tower to which I have here made no reference-e.g., a plot laid to gain him over by the report that Fisher had taken the oath. In my Life of Blessed Fisher I have given my reasons for taking all this as apochryphal.

† Arundel MS., 152, f. 300 b. Archæologia, xxvii. 369.

In May, 1535, Lady More made another appeal to Cromwell. She had been compelled of very necessity to sell her apparel to provide 15s. weekly for the board wages of her poor husband and his servant.* Neither of these petitions found the slightest response in the heart of the monarch wholly given to feasting and pageantry, and surrounded by greedy sycophants. In January, 1535, the king granted to Henry Norris, "Esquire of the Royal Body," the fee simple of the manors of Doglington and Fringeford, in Oxfordshire, the advowson of Doglington Church, and Barly Park, which had come into the king's hand by the attainder of Sir Thomas More.†

In April, the manor of South, in Kent, with advowsons thereto belonging, likewise forfeited, were given to the queen's brother, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. And the king's brother-in-law, the Duke of Suffolk, wrote to the king a few days after the death of the martyr, begging him not to grant any part of Sir Thomas More's land lying about Chelsea, because he himself wished to have the house and lands adjoining, which (he says) are not above the yearly value of £16.§

* Letters and Papers, viii. 800.

+ Ib., viii. 149, n. 16. He had received these by royal grant in

1525.

Ib., 632, n. 13. The manor of South had been granted to Sir Thomas in 1522.

§ Ib., 1101. Whether the duke obtained his request I do not perceive. The following are mentioned as the successive owners of More's house : Sir William Paulet-Gregory, Lord Dacre-Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley-Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury-The Earl of Lincoln— Sir Arthur Gorges-Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex-King Charles I. The Duke of Buckingham-William Plummer-The Earl of Bristol-Lady Ann Russell-The Duke of Beaufort-Sir Hans Sloane (who pulled it down in 1740).

CHAPTER XXI.

ASCETIC WRITINGS.

T would seem that during the far greater part of his im

to read, as well as of pen and ink and plenty of paper. He composed works in Latin and English that would fill two good octavo volumes. All these writings were devotional or ascetic, that is, meditations on the mysteries of faith or treatises on the exercise of Christian virtues.

If I mistake not, Blessed Thomas More stands quite alone among the ascetic writers of the Church; for while he is not inferior to the best ecclesiastics in his use of Holy Scripture, his knowledge of the human heart, his analysis of the workings of passion and the counterworkings of grace, he considered it his layman's privilege to use a livelier style and to illustrate his matter with abundance of merry stories.

As far back as 1522, when he had lately been made a knight and treasurer of the kingdom, and was in the midst of all the splendours of Henry's court, he had sought to keep his heart pure and humble by composing a treatise in English on the words of Ecclesiasticus: "In all thy works remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin". * Novissima, the last things, were understood to be these four-Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Sir Thomas began a treatise that was to comprise all four, but he laid it aside before he had concluded

* Ecclus. vii. 40.

the first part, on Death, and the fragment was not published

until 1557.

"This short medicine," he says, i.e., the remembrance of the Last Things, "is of a marvellous force, able to keep us all our life from sin. This medicine, though thou makest a sour face at it, is not so bitter as thou makest for. He biddeth thee not take neither death, nor doom, nor pain, but only to remember them, and yet the joy of heaven therewith to temper them withal. Now, if a man be so dainty-stomached, that going where contagion is, he would grudge to take a little treacle, yet were he very nicely wanton if he might not, at the leastwise, take a little vinegar and rose water on his handkercher." And, indeed, in More's treatment of the matter, though he has barely touched on heaven, and written merely of death, there is far more rose water than vinegar. Not that his descriptions or exhortations lack strength, but that they have a literary interest which entices the reader to linger over the most appalling subjects. A few samples will show my meaning. Here is an allusion to the famous pictures of Death in PardonChurch-Haugh at St. Paul's, London: "We were never so moved by the beholding of the Dance of Death pictured in Paul's as we shall feel ourselves stirred by the imagination in our hearts, of our own deaths. And no marvel; for those pictures express only the loathly figure of our dead, bony bodies; which, though it be ugly to behold, yet neither the sight thereof, nor the sight of all the dead heads in that charnel house, nor the apparition of a very ghost, is half so grisly as the deep conceived phantasy of death in its nature by the lively imagination graven in thine own heart. For there seest thou not one plain grievous sight of the bare bones hanging by the sinews, but thou seest thyself—if thou die no worse death—yet at leastwise lying in thy bed, thy head shooting, thy back aching, thy veins beating, thine heart panting, thy throat rattling, thy flesh trembling, thy mouth gaping, thy nose sharping, thy legs cool* English Works, p. 71.