princely sum to reward him, which More refused. Having been Chancellor for three years, he returned the Great Seal to the King's hands in 1532 hoping thus to escape from embroilment, against his conscience, in the royal supremacy and divorce, and devote the remainder of his life to piety and quiet work. It turned out otherwise. The King was set upon forcing this most admired of his subjects to take the oath supporting his headship of the Church of England. He no longer bore him any love— if indeed that King's love ever went beyond a quickened satisfaction at a subject's ministration to his will. When others were swearing to this oath, and men's eyes were naturally turned on More, how could that King tolerate such an example of recalcitrancy? The exigencies of Henry's policy impelled him to an execution which was not repugnant to his mood or nature. There is no need to re-tell that marvellous story of the imprisonment and execution of this noble and saintly man." We turn to earlier and lighter phases of his personality.

More was a man of wit and imagination, with the tastes and aptitudes of a scholar. He learned his Greek from Grocyn and Linacre, and doubtless later through collaboration with Erasmus. From the latter's first visit to England a strong friendship and mutual admiration arose between the two, which continued unshaken till the day when Erasmus with a good part of the learned world was horrified at the news of More's execution. More was always interested in theology, and liked to argue its points with this good friend. Together, they translated into Latin a number of the Dialogues of Lucian. In selecting this brilliant and scandalous Ancient, More appears simply as a lover of the classics, with his Christian theology tucked well away. About the same period he translated into English an Italian Life, and letters, of Pico della Mirandula, in which congenial task the nobility

* It is best told in the Life of More by his son-in-law Roper, (Margaret's husband), and in the letters of More written in his captivity.

7 Seebohm's Oxford Reformers (Third ed., 1887) is the standard, but not always accurate, account of the relations between Colet, More, and Erasmus.

8 First published in 1506.

of his nature and the beauty of his English were manifested at their brightest.

Erasmus wrote the Praise of Folly in More's house in 1509, and dedicated it to him. We may think of the Utopia as the answering note of More's Erasmian humanism, just as the ocean setting of the piece answered. to the stir in men's minds made by the recent voyage and narrative of Americus Vespucius. Erasmus despised all vernaculars, and the Utopia was written in Latin, and not in that mother tongue of which More was a master. It was pacifist and socialistic, keenly denunciatory of the fellies of avarice and the accumulation of wealth. It gently ridiculed the Friars and deprecated the needless number of priests. It argued against cruel and ineffective punishments, like hanging men for theft, and reflected upon the economic and social ills of England. There were no idlers in Utopia; all men and women labored. Hence six hours daily work sufficed to supply the common needs, and the remainder of the day was spent according to the tastes of a people who deemed human felicity to lie in the free cultivation and garnishing of the mind,"animi libertatem cultumque." None cared for gold; they used it for chamber-pots, but drank from glass and carthen vessels. They prefer a dim light in their churches (here speaks the author's esthetic taste). They still obeyed the decree of their founder King that every man should be free to follow what religion he would, and to argue peaceably in its support.

The last principle, the much spoken of religious tolerance of the Utopia, was of a piece with the rest of this Platonic composition. It was a congruous part of its humanistic idealism, having no connection with actual life, enforcement of law, and maintenance of the Catholic faith, in sixteenth century England. There was no time in the life of this most reverent and legal minded Catholic when he would actually have tolerated any denial of the religion of the Roman Catholic Church. And as for innocent dallyings with the idea of toleration in some unreal Atlantis, it must be remembered that the Utopia was published in 1516, a good year before Luther

posted those fateful theses on the Wittenberg church door. The Lutheran revolt from the doctrine and authority of the Church awakened the self-consciousness of Catholics, and dispelled their tolerant security. No strict Catholic thereafter might indulge in wayward gambols. Had More foreseen the Lutheran revolt and the Anabaptist social upheavals apparently springing from it, he would not have written the Utopia. That indeed would have been playing with hell-fire, quite consciously. His later anxious mind is shown by his words. to his son-in-law: "Son Roper, I pray God that some of us, as high as we seem to sit upon the mountains treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day that we gladly would wish to be at a league and composition with them to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves." So More spoke, before the King's divorce was broached, as Roper was congratulating him on "the happy state of the realm that had so Catholic a prince, that no heretic durst show his face." More already had forebodings.

There is no need to give the details of More's polemic against Tyndale and other, mainly Lutheran, heretics. Earnestly, and perhaps eagerly, he used the powers of his Chancellorship to suppress heresy, persecute it, if one will use the term. It is superfluous to say that he thought himself fulfilling his highest duty. Likewise during his Chancellorship and the years following his retirement, he wrote indefatigably and voluminously; for there was then a huge crop of persons and books to write against. As he says in 1532: "Our Lord send us now some years as plenteous of good corn as we have had some years of late, plenteous of evil books. For they have grown so fast and sprongen up so thick, full of pestilent errors and pernicious heresies, that they have infected and killed, I fear me, more silly simple souls than the famine of the dear years destroyed bodies."

This passage which opens The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, is followed by a descriptive list of these chief pestilent books. If Tyndale seemed his chief an

tagonist, there were many other heresy mongers. More took upon himself the defense of all the teachings of the Church. He supports purgatory, auricular confession, celibacy, image-worship, pilgrimages. He shows himself far more close-minded and conservative than Erasmus. But his was a hard position, writing controversial compositions in a crisis, when indeed men were suspecting that Henry secretly favored the heretics. Even a man as honest and sincere as More might find himself forced to support what it might have amused him to ridicule after the manner of Erasmus.

The circumstance that early in his life More lectured as well as studied in the Inns of Court, suggests the rôle of that veritable Law-school in enabling the Common Law of England to surmount the impact of the Civil Law in the sixteenth century, and in the end make most beneficial use of the principles of Roman jurisprudence. A vigorous and vital renewing of the study of Justinian's Digest was taking place in France and Italy, a renewal which, under such great leaders as Alciatus, Budé, and finally Cujas, was sloughing off the mummifying wrappings of the Commentators, and restoring to their virility the living and eternal texts.

If the Roman law was then about to be "received" in a Teutonic Germany, why should it not subdue the Common Law of a less purely Teutonic England? Persuasion lay within its excellence everywhere, and in both England and Germany mighty influences were impelling its acceptance. But the Common Law of England proved tougher; and nothing had done more to toughen it than the yearly publication of law reports and the constant discussion and inculcation of its tenets in the Inns of Court. It was destined to triumph in the masterful career and influence of Sir Edward Coke, and thereafter still triumphantly intact, it proved capable of mollifying its harshness and amplifying its meagre experience from the equity and commercial law of Rome."

From the law and from Sir Thomas More who suffered

F. W. Maitland, English Law and the Renaissance. (Cambridge,

death in 1535, we turn to two younger men, scholars as well as educators, who will serve to illustrate the lack of epoch-making qualities in English scholarship. One was Sir Thomas Elyot, an official in the time of Wolsey and Crumwell. He died in 1546. Various published works show him a well read Latinist, not uninfluenced by Italian humanism. In 1531 he published his Boke named the Gouvernour, which treated of the education proper to those who were likely to be called upon to exercise authority in the Commonwealth as prince or magistrate.10 As he says in the Proheme addressed to the King, he would "describe in our vulgar tongue the form of a just public weal: which matter I have gathered as well of the sayings of our most noble authors (Greek and Latin) as by my own experience." The book "treateth of the education of them that hereafter may be deemed worthy to be governors of the public weale under your highness." "A public weale" to Elyot's well read and experienced mind "is a body living compact or made of sundry estates and degrees of men, which is disposed by the order of equity and governed by the rule and moderation of reason." He regarded the welfare of the whole Commonwealth as the right end to be held in view, yet inasmuch as "the base and vulgar inhabitants not advanced to any honor or dignity" are not likely to hold authority, his book has to do with the education of men of gentle birth. As was natural, and prudent in addressing Henry VIII, he says that "the best and most sure governance is that of one king or prince."

It

The book proceeds, with no tangibly original ideas, to set forth a suitable scheme of studies and education. is filled with classic examples drawn from Plutarch and many other writers. The author evinces the broadening effect of the classics upon himself by the range of instructive incident and story, which he culls from them for the benefit of his readers. He inculcates the need of a good and beneficent character in rulers, and describes the moral

10 The Boke named the Gouvernour, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, Knight, edited with a Life and full notes by H. H. S. Croft, 2 Vols. (London, 1880).