abandon the secret rules by which his personal life was restrained. He was outwardly of the world, but in spirit he was always a recluse.

Gradually he came prominently before his contemporaries. His books made him known to scholars. Wolsey may have known him at Oxford, and now found him useful on embassies and at Court. The King sought him out and made a friend of him, would talk with him of theological matters, obtained his help for that book against Luther which won him the title of "Defender of the Faith," and often at night "would have him up to the leads, there to consider with him the courses, motions, and operations of the stars and planets." So, when Wolsey fell, More, who had already been Speaker of the House of Commons, and won great praise alike from King and Cardinal, became Lord Chancellor—the first great layman and lawyer who held that high office. As judge men spoke of him with admiration for centuries. He was a statesman, too, as well as a lawyer, and his aid was sought in all Henry's foreign negotiations. He might have been the greatest man in England after the King if he would have strained his conscience. But this he would not do. He never approved the Divorce; he was known to be a champion of the injured Queen Katherine, and a friend to her nephew, the Emperor Charles. As Church questions, too, came in dispute, he took more and more the conservative side. He would not repudiate the Pope's supremacy, or separate himself from the imposing unity of Christendom, which it seemed to him was threatened by the nationalism of Henry VIII., as well as by the heresy of Luther. And so at last it came that the lion felt his strength: it was More's own prophecy, and he was one of the first victims.

On Monday, April 13, 1534, he was required to take oath to the succession of the issue of Anne Boleyn, and in repudiation of the validity of the first marriage of the King. He at once refused. He would not deny to swear to the succession, but the oath put before him he could not reconcile with his conscience. In this he persisted. Imprisonment, trial, death, came naturally and inevitably; and of these Miss Manning, with the letters and memoirs before her, has made the faithful Margaret write as from a full heart.

On Tuesday, July 6, 1535, he was executed on Tower Hill. "He bore in his hands a red cross, and was often seen to cast his eyes towards heaven." He died as he had lived, with saintly calm, and still playing with a gentle humour. "That at least," he said, as he drew aside his beard from the block, "has committed no treason."

The King's wrath did not cease with the execution of his faithful counsellor. Dame Alice More lost all, and had hard stress for the few years that remained to her of life. Happily his son and his daughters had all been married before the troubles came. Margaret's marriage was a happy one. Will Roper was soon weaned from his "Lutheran" fancies, and lived, thirty-four years after his wife, to write an exquisite and pathetic memoir of the great Chancellor. When the tyrant was dead More's family seemed almost sacred in the eyes of the nation. His memory was cherished, and memorials of all kinds poured forth during the years of Mary's reign; and when Elizabeth had been twenty years on the throne Roper died in peace, desiring to be buried with his "dear wife," where his father-in-law "did mind to be buried."

Margaret Roper herself died in 1544, and was buried in Chelsea Church. Her monument is, with the Ropers', in S. Dunstan's, Canterbury. In that ancient city the family of her husband had long dwelt, and the house itself lasted till this century. Of it Miss Manning very prettily wrote:—

"My friend, Mrs. George Frederick Young, who was born in the Ropers' house at Canterbury, tells me that it was of singular antiquity, full of queer nooks, corners, and passages, with a sort of dungeon below, that went by the name of 'Dick's Hole,' the access to which was so dangerous that it at length was forbidden to descend the staircase. The coach-house and harness-room were curiously antique; the chapel had been converted into a laundry, but retained its Gothic windows. At length it became needful to rebuild the house, only the old gateway of which remains. While the workmen were busy, an old gentleman in Canterbury sent to beg Mrs. Young's father to dig in a particular part of the garden, for that he had dreamed there was a money-chest there. This request was not attended to, and he sent a more urgent message, saying his dream had been repeated. A third time he dreamed, and renewed his request, which at length was granted; and, curiously enough, a chest was found, with a few coins in it, chiefly of antiquarian value, which, accordingly, were given to an archæologist of the place. Here my information ceases."

More and his favourite daughter are those of whom we first think when we try to recall some memories of the "Christian academy;" but their famous guests must not be forgotten. I cannot speak now of the soldiers and diplomatists, the priests and scholars, who pass across the scene so rapidly as we read the letters of the Chancellor himself or the memoirs of his son-in-law and his great-grandson. But two names stand out as famous above the rest, and as both among the closest of those friends whom More delighted to honour,—Erasmus the scholar and Holbein the painter.

Of Erasmus who shall speak in a few words? Are not the libraries of Europe full of his books, and are not his witticisms still repeated to-day as if they were but the new thoughts of the newest of moderns? The intellectual life of his age seems summed up in his person. It had no interest in which he did not mingle, nor any opinion which he did not weigh and test. If he held himself above its passions, it was simply because his was a keen critical nature, loving in its own fashion, but too cold to sympathise deeply with any combatant or to thrill with any passion. "He had no mind," said Miss Manning rather sharply, "to be a martyr, but only to suggest doubts which led braver men to be such."

"This worthy man," says his eighteenth century biographer, Jortin, "spent a laborious life in an uniform pursuit of two points: in opposing barbarous ignorance and blind superstition, and in promoting useful literature and true piety. These objects he attempted in a mild, gentle manner, never attacking the persons of men, but only the faults of the age. He knew his own temper and talents, and was conscious he was not fitted for the rough work of a reformer."

Jortin's, indeed, is the juster estimate. It was Erasmus's keen sight, not his want of moral courage, which prevented his being a martyr. He could not sympathise with the foreign reformers; he had no taste for antinomianism, still less for ignorance, and he saw that the Church abroad, with all its accretions,—which none ridiculed so wittily as he,—still preserved a treasure that the human mind could not afford to lose.

Erasmus was a lifelong friend of More. They had met originally in England while Henry VII. was still on the throne. Erasmus stayed at More's house, and together they discussed the wrongs and follies of the time. Encomium Moriæ—"The Praise of Folly"—was written by Erasmus under More's roof, and the title had a punning reference to the author's host. Later books, especially the great edition of the New Testament which made the sacred text, said More, "shine with a new light," had all of them the sanction of the faithful English