CHAP. V. these promises he found to be, as injuries ought to be, A.D. 1509. Written on sand;-these and other particulars of his Italian experience may be left to the biographer of Erasmus. In 1509, on the accession of Henry VIII. to the English throne, the friends of Erasmus sent him a pressing invitation to return to England, which he gladly accepted. For our present purpose it were better, therefore, to see him safely on his horse again, toiling back on the same packhorse roads, lodging at the same roadside inns, and meeting the same kind of people as before, but his face now, after three or four Erasmus years' absence, set towards England, where there are England. hearts he can trust, whether he can or cannot those in Rome, and where once again, safely housed with More, he can write and talk to Colet as he pleases, and forget in the pleasures of the present the toils and disappointments of the past." returns to For what most concerns the history of the Oxford Reformers is this-that it was to beguile these journeys that Erasmus conceived the idea of his Praise of 1 Mountjoy to Erasmus, Epist. x., 2 It is difficult to fix the date of who seems to have been then at Rome, pressing him to come back to England (Eras. Epist. x., the date of which is fixed by its contents). The letter prefixed to the Praise of Folly is dated ex rure, 'quinto Idas Junias,' and states that the book is the result of his meditations during his long journeys on horseback on his way from Italy to England. This letter must have been dated June 9, 1510, at earliest, or 1511, at latest. 1510 is the probable date (see infra, note at p. 204). The later editions of the Praise of Folly put the year 1508 to this 'Folly,' a satire upon the follies of the times, which had grown up within him at these wayside inns, as he met in them men of all classes and modes of life, and the keen edge of which was whetted by his recent visit to Italy and Rome.1 What most concerns the subject of these pages is the mental result of the Italian journey, and it was not long before it was known in almost every wayside inn in Europe. IV. MORE RETURNS TO PUBLIC LIFE ON THE ACCESSION But little can be known of what happened to Colet and More during the absence of Erasmus in Italy. That Colet was devoted to the work of his Deanery may well be imagined. thinks of from Eng As to More; during the remaining years of Henry More VII.'s reign, he was living in continual fear-thinking fleeing of flying the realm2-going so far as to pay a visit to land. the universities of Louvain and Paris, as though to make up his mind where to flee to, if flight became needful.* Nor were these fears imaginary. More was not alone in his dread of the King. Daily the royal avarice was growing more unbounded. Cardinal Morton's letter; but the edition of August, The In the absence of direct proof, it is 2 Roper, p. 9. 3 See More's Letter to Dorpius, in CHAP. V. celebrated fork-the two-pronged dilemma with which A.D. 1509. benevolences were extracted from the rich by the clever Empson and Dudley. Henry actions. 6 prelate had been bad enough. The legal plunder of Empson and Dudley was worse. It filled every one with terror. These two ravening wolves,' writes Hall, who lived near enough to the time to feel some of the VII.'s ex- exasperation he described, had such a guard of false perjured persons appertaining to them, which were by their commandment empannelled on every quest, that 'the King was sure to win whoever lost. Learned 'men in the law, when they were required of their 'advice, would say, "to agree is the best counsel I can ""give you." By this undue means, these covetous 'persons filled the King's coffers and enriched them'selves. At this unreasonable and extortionate doing 'noblemen grudged, mean men kicked, poor men 'lamented, preachers openly at Paul's Cross and other places exclaimed, rebuked, and detested, but yet they 'would never amend.' Then came the general pardon, Henry VII, the result, it was said, of the remorse of the dying King, and soon after the news of his death. dies. Accession VIII. 666 Henry VIII. was proclaimed King, 23rd April, 1509. of Henry The same day Empson and Dudley were sent to the Tower, and on the 17th of August, in the following year, they were both beheaded. More was personally known to the new King, and presented to him on his accession a richly illuminated vellum book, containing verses of congratulation.2 These verses have been disparaged as too adulatory in their tone. And no doubt they were so; but More had written them evidently with a far more honest loyalty than Erasmus was able to command when he 1 1 Hall, ed. 1548, fol. lix. 2 Epigrammata Mori: Basil, 1520, p. 17. wrote a welcome to Philip of Spain on his return to CHAP. V. the Netherlands. More honestly did rejoice, and with A.D. 1509. good reason, on the accession of Henry VIII. to the throne. It not only assured him of his own personal safety; it was in measure like the rise of his own little party into power. Oxford Re favour Not that More and Colet and Linacre were suddenly The transformed into courtiers, but that Henry himself, formers in having been educated to some extent in the new learn- with the ing, would be likely at least to keep its enemies in King; check and give it fair play. There had been some sort of connection and sympathy between Prince Henry in his youth and More and his friends: witness More's freedom in visiting the Royal nursery. Linacre had been the tutor of Henry's elder brother, and was made royal physician on Henry's accession.1 From the tone of More's congratulatory verses it may be inferred that he and his friends had not concealed from the prince their love of freedom and their hatred of his father's tyranny. For these verses, however flattering in their tone, were plain and outspoken upon this point as words well could be. With the suaviter in modo was united, in no small proportion, the fortiter in re. It would be the King's own fault if, knowing as he must have done, More's recent history, he should fancy that these words were idle words, or that he could make the man, whose first public act was one of resistance to the unjust exactions of his father, into a pliant tool of his own! If he should ever try to make More into a courtier, he would do so at least with his royal eyes open. How fully Henry VIII. on his part sided with the 1 Johnson's Life of Linacre, pp. 179 et seq. but no mere cour tiers. A.D. 1509. under sheriff of London. CHAP. V. people against the counsellors of his father was not only shown by the execution of Dudley, but also by the More made appointment, almost immediately after, of Thomas More to the office of under-sheriff in the City, the very office which Dudley himself had held at the time when, as speaker of the House of Commons, he had been a witness of More's bold conduct--an office which he and his successor had very possibly used more to the King's profit than to the ends of impartial justice. The young lawyer who had dared to incur royal displeasure by speaking out in Parliament in defence of the pockets of his fellow-citizens, had naturally become a popular man in the City. And his appointment to this judicial office was, therefore, a popular appointment. The spirit in which More entered upon its responsible duties still more endeared him to the people. Some years after, by refusing a pension offered him by Henry tested high VIII., he proved himself more anxious to retain principle. the just confidence of his fellow-citizens, in the impar More's tiality of his decisions in matters between them and the King, than to secure his own emolument or his Sovereign's patronage.1 The spirit too in which he reentered upon his own private practice as a lawyer was illustrated both by his constant habit of doing all he could to get his clients to come to a friendly agreement before going to law, and also by his absolute refusal to undertake any cause which he did not conscientiously consider to be a rightful one.2 It is not surprising that a man of this tested high principle should rapidly rise upon the tide of merited prosperity. Under the circumstances in which More was now placed, his 1 Vide infra, p. 380. 2 Stapleton, 1588 ed. pp. 26, 27. |