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CHAPTER III.

IN FAVOUR AT COURT.

HANDSOME in person, generous in disposition, skilled in every martial and fashionable exercise, affable to those around him, and eminently religious, such was Henry VIII. on his accession to the throne, and it is perhaps not surprising that the usually far-seeing Thomas More regarded the young king with the same eyes as the bulk of the nation, who at that time looked forward to a long and prosperous reign.

He at once returned to the duties of his profession, discharging them with even more zest than formerly, steadily rose to eminence, and began to gain yearly, without "any grudge of his conscience," as he afterwards told Roper, £400 a-year. This sum, says Lord Campbell, considering the value of money at that time, and the relative profits of the bar, indicate as high a station as £10,000 at the present day.*

With Wolsey, the prime favourite, now rising rapidly to greatness, the reader will remember that More had become acquainted in his early days at Oxford, when he was the boy student, and Wolsey bursar.

Amidst his natural love of pleasure, in the early portion

* Roper says that he was twice chosen agent to the Still Yard Merchants, or Steel Yard. They were chiefly of Germany, and enjoyed privileges in London by charters from our kings. They were great importers of corn.—Hunter's Edition of More's Life of More.

of his reign, Henry not unfrequently occupied himself with matters of state, instead of being wholly absorbed in the amusements of the court *

Wolsey only occupied the first place in the royal favour, and at once fell in with the young king's wish to summon More to court. It was with difficulty, however, that he could be prevailed upon to accept the dangerous honour. His present career was yet more honourable, nay, it was more lucrative, and it was not without an inward misgiving and apprehension of future trouble, that he finally consented, and exchanged the peaceful quietude of his beloved home and the daily round of his law duties, for the life of a courtier and a statesman.

Some little time previous, More's services had been engaged in a suit of which a circumstantial account has been handed

down to us. A ship belonging to the Pope had been seized at Southampton, and was forfeited to the Crown for a breach of the Law of Nations. The Pope's Nuncio at the Court of London claimed restitution, and retained More's services as counsel. The hearing was held in the Star Chamber before the Chief Justices, the Lord Treasurer, and other officers of State. To plead against the Crown must have been an onerous undertaking, but More exerted himself to the utmost, argued with precision and clearness, brought all his own learning to bear as well as availing himself of

* Henry saw Wolsey's talent for business, and constantly flattered him with thanks, but in everything governed for himself. Wolsey neitber framed a bill for parliament, nor a despatch for a foreign court, which was not submitted to Henry, and never acted, even in domestic politics, till he had taken his pleasure.—Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, p. 193, vol 1.

the authorities furnished by his client, and made such an impression by his speech in behalf of his Holiness, that restitution was decreed.

The King himself was present during the hearing of this cause celebre, and to his credit, instead of showing mortification at the loss of his prize, he united with others in praising More for his commendable demeanour, and for no entreaty, says Roper, would he give up his services at Court.

How well did Henry's reign promise in the outset. He undoubtedly was at that time ever ready to patronise merit, his purse was open to the needy, or to reward and encourage literature, and small wonder is it that his subjects, were dazzled by the brilliant promise, and gave to him credit for more virtue than he really possessed,

In the year 1514, More left the bar, was knighted by the King, made Master of the Requests, and sworn of the Privy Council.

Amidst the public and private duties that now thronged thickly upon him, More yet found leisure for the composition of works which in his own day acquired the highest celebrity.

The shafts of envy, however, did not pass him by, his epigranis, full of pleasant and sparkling wit for which he was famous throughout, aroused the malignity of Brixius or La Brie, as his contemporary Rabelais calls him.*

In 1513, Brixius composed a poem which he called Chordigera, where, in three hundred hexameter verses, he described a battle fought that year on S. Laurence's day by a French ship La Cordeliere, and an English ship called The Regent.

*Sam Knight's Erasmus.

More, who at that time had not risen to as high a position as he filled later, composed several epigrams in derision of this poem, and Brixius, piqued at this affront, revenged himself by the Anti Morus, an elegy of four hundred verses, in which he severely censured all the faults he thought he had found in the poems of More.

Brixius was certainly the aggressor on this occasion as More showed in a long and spirited letter which he sent him. He also published an answer to the Anti Morus, but on receiving a letter from Erasmus exhorting him to treat the attack of Brixius with silent contempt, he at once suppressed the edition, and even called in such copies as were in circulation.

This quarrel produced, at a later date, a letter from Erasmus, in which he says:

"Respecting your quarrel with More, I cannot express the great esteem I have for his learning and character. I think of More as all men do who know him, as a man of incomparable genius, possessing a happy memory, a most ready eloquence. When a boy he learned Latin, when a young man Greek, under the ablest teachers, especially Grocyn and Linacre. In divinity he has made so much progress that he is not to be despised even by eminent theologians. The liberal arts he has touched not infelicitously, in philosophy he is beyond mediocrity, to say nothing of the profession of the law, in which he yields to no one. His prudence is rare and unheard of, and for these reasons his sovereign never rested until he had brought More to be one of his council. As to the ostentatious contempt in which you profess to hold More, the world will laugh at it. 66 Antwerp, 1520."

Extremely against his will had More been brought to court, and in a letter to his friend Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, he writes thus concerning it :

"I have come to the court extremely against my will, as every one knoweth, and as the king himself knows, for in sport he often twits me with it, and here I hang as unseemly as a man not used to ride doth sit unhandsomely in his saddle; but our prince, whose special and extraordinary favour towards me I know not how ever to deserve, is so affable and courteous to all who approach him, that every one, however little he may imagine it, may hope to win his love, even as citizens' wives of London do, who imagine that Our Lady's picture near the Tower smileth on them when they pray before it. But I am not so happy as to perceive such fortunate signs of deserving his love within myself, and am of too humble a spirit to persuade myself that I deserve it, yet such is the king's virtue and learning, and so great his industry, that the more I see him increase in these high qualities, the less irksome does this courtier's life appear to me."

After he had been made Treasurer of the Exchequer, Erasmus, writing to Cochleus, says :—

"When next you write to More, you shall wish him joy of his dignity and good fortune, for being before only of the king's Privy Council, now of late by the benevolence and free gift of his most gracious prince, he, neither desiring it, nor seeking for it, is not only made knight, but Treasurer of the King's Exchequer, an office in England both honourable and also commodious for the purse."

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"No man," as Erasmus truly said, ever strove harder to gain admittance at court than More to keep out of it."