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a curious philosophical work under the title of Utopia, which, describing an imaginary pattern country and people, has added a word to the English language, every scheme of national improve

*The following is a specimen of Sir Thomas More's juvenile poetry :

He that hath lafte the hosier's crafte,
And fallth to makyng shone;
The smyth that shall to painting fall,
His thrift is well nigh done.

A black draper with whyte paper,
To goe to writing scole,

An old butler become a cutler

I wene shall prove a fole.

And an old trot, that can God wot,
Nothing but kyss the cup,

With her physicke will kepe one sicke,
Till she hath soused hym up.
A man of law that never sawe
The wayes to buy and sell
Wenyng to ryse by merchandyse,
I pray God spede him well!

A merchaunt eke, that will go seke
By all the meanes he may,
To fall in sute till he dispute
His money cleane away;
Pletyng the lawe for every stray
Shall prove a thrifty man,
With bate and strife, but by my life
I cannot tell you whan.

Whan an hatter will smatter

In philosophy,

Or a pedlar waxe a medlar

In theology, &c.

ment founded on theoretical views being since then termed Utopian. The most of the English writings of More are pamphlets on the religious controversies of his day, and the only one which is now of value is A History of Edward V., and of his Brother, and of Richard III., which Mr Hallam considers as the first English prose work free of vulgarisms and pedantry.

The intention of Sir Thomas More in his Utopia is to set forth his idea of those social arrangements whereby the happiness and improvement of the people may be secured to the utmost extent of which human nature is susceptible; though, probably, he has pictured more than he really conceived it possible to effect. Experience proves that many of his suggestions are indeed Utopian. In his imaginary island, for instance, all are contented with the necessaries of life; all are employed in useful labour; no man desires, in clothing, any other quality besides durability; and since wants are few, and every individual engages in labour, there is no need for working more than six hours a-day. Neither laziness nor avarice finds a place in this happy region; for why should the people be indolent when they have so little toil, or greedy when they know that there is abundance for each? All this, it is evident, is incompatible with qualities inherent in human nature: man requires the stimulus of self-interest to render him industrious and persevering; he loves not utility merely, but ornament; he possesses a spirit of emulation which makes him endeavour to outstrip his fellows, and a desire to accumulate property even for its own sake. With much that is Utopian, however, the work contains many sound suggestions. Thus, instead of severe punishment of theft, the author would improve the morals and condition of the people, so as to take away the temptation to crime; for, says he, if you suffer your people to be illeducated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves, and then punish them?' In Utopia, we are told, war is never entered on but for some gross injury done to themselves, or, more especially, to their allies; and the glory of a general is in proportion, not to the number, but to the fewness of the enemies, whom he slays in gaining a victory. Criminals are generally punished with slavery, even for the greatest misdeeds, since servitude is no less terrible than death itself; and, by making slaves of malefactors, not only does the public get the benefit of their labour, but the continual sight of their misery is more effectual than their death to deter other men from crime. It is one of the oldest laws of the Utopians, that no man ought to be punished for his religion; it being a fundamental opinion among them, that a man cannot make himself believe anything he pleases; nor do they drive any to dissemble their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions among them; which, being a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians.' Every man may endeavour to convert others to his views by the force of amicable and modest argument, without bitterness against those of other opinions; but whoever adds reproach and violence to persuasion, is to be condemned to banishment or slavery. Such tolerant views were extremely rare in the days of Sir Thomas More, and in later life were lamentably departed from by himself in practice; for in persecuting the Protestants, he displayed a degree of intolerance and severity which were strangely at variance both with the opinions of his youth and the general mildness of his disposition.

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[Letter to Lady More.]

[Returning from the negotiations at Cambray, Sir Thomas More heard that his barns and some of those of his neighbours had been burnt down; he consequently wrote the following letter to his wife. Its gentleness to a sour-tempered woman, and the benevolent feelings expressed about the property of his neighbours, have been much admired.]

Mistress Alice, in my most heartywise I recommend me to you. And whereas I am informed by my son Heron of the loss of our barns and our neighbours' also, with all the corn that was therein; albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is great pity of so much good corn lost; yet since it has liked him to send us such a chance, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of his visitation. He sent us all that we have lost; and since he hath by such a chance taken it away again, his pleasure be fulfilled! Let us never grudge thereat, but take it in good worth, and heartily thank him, as well for adversity as for prosperity. And peradventure we have more cause to thank him for our loss than for our winning, for his wisdom better seeth what is good for us than we do ourselves. Therefore, I pray you be of good cheer, and take all the household with you to church, and there thank God, both for that he has given us, and for that he has taken from us, and for that he hath left us; which, if it please him, he can increase when he will, and if it please him to leave us yet less, at his pleasure be it!

hatred report above the truth, or else that nature changed her course in his beginning, which, in the course of his life, many things unnaturally committed.)

None evil captain was he in the war, as to which his disposition was more meetly than for peace. Sundry victories had he, and sometime overthrows, but never in default for his own person, either of hardiness or politic order. Free was he called of dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal. With large gifts he get him unsteadfast friendship, for which he was fain to pil and spoil in other places, and get him stedfast hatred. He was close and secret; a deep dissimuler, lowly of countenance, arrogant of heart; outwardly coumpinable where he inwardly hated, not letting to kiss whom he thought to kill; dispitious and cruel, not for evil will alway, but oftener for ambition, and either for the surety and increase of his estate. Friend and foe was indifferent, where his advantage grew; he spared no man's death whose life withstood his purpose. He slew with his own hands king Henry VI., being prisoner in the Tower.

[The Utopian Idea of Pleasure.]

(From Bishop Burnet's translation of the Utopia.) They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantages as far as the laws I pray you to make some good onsearch what my allow it. They account it piety to prefer the public poor neighbours have lost, and bid them take no good to one's private concerns. But they think it thought therefore; for, if I should not leave myself a unjust for a man to seek for his own pleasure, by spoon, there shall no poor neighbour of mine bear no snatching another man's pleasures from him. And, loss by my chance, happened in my house. I pray on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and you be, with my children and your household, merry good soul, for a man to dispense with his own advanin God; and devise somewhat with your friends what tage for the good of others; and that, by so doing, a way were best to take, for provision to be made for good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts corn for our household, and for seed this year coming, with another; for, as he may expect the like from if we think it good that we keep the ground still in others when he may come to need it, so, if that should our hands. And whether we think it good that we fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reso shall do or not, yet I think it were not best sud-flections that one makes on the love and gratitude of denly thus to leave it all up, and to put away our folk from our farm, till we have somewhat advised us thereon. Howbeit, if we have more now than ye shall need, and which can get them other masters, ye may then discharge us of them. But I would not that any man were suddenly sent away, he wot not whither. At my coming hither, I perceived none other but that I should tarry still with the king's grace. But now shall, I think, because of this chance, get leave this next week to come home and see you, and then shall we farther devise together upon all things, what

order shall be best to take.

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those whom he has so obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself. They are also persuaded that God will make up the loss of those small pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which religion does easily convince a good soul. Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. And thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which nature leads us; for they reckon that nature leads us only to those delights to which reason as well as sense carries us, and by which we neither injure any other person, nor let go greater pleasures for it, and which do not draw troubles on us after them; but they look upon those delights which

[Sir Thomas's account of Richard III. has been followed by men, by a foolish though common mistake, call plea

Shakspeare.]

Richard, the third son, of whom we now entreat, was in wit and courage egal1 with either of them; in body and prowess, far under them both; little of stature, ill-featured of limbs, crook-backed, his left shoulder much higher than his right, hard-favoured of visage. He was malicious, wrathful, envious, and from afore his birth ever froward. It is for truth reported, that the duchess his mother had so much ado in her travail, that she could not be delivered of him uncut; and that he came into the world with the feet forward, as men be borne outward; and (as the fame runneth) also not untoothed (whether men of

1 Equal.

sure, as if they could change the nature of things, as not advance our happiness, but do rather obstruct it well as the use of words, as things that not only do very much, because they do so entirely possess the minds of those that once go into them with a false notion of pleasure, that there is no room left for truer and purer pleasures.

nothing that is truly delighting: on the contrary, There are many things that in themselves have they have a good deal of bitterness in them; and yet by our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest designs of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures, they reckon those whom I mentioned before, who think themselves

really the better for having fine clothes, in which they think they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion that they have of their clothes, and in the opinion that they have of themselves; for if you consider the use of clothes, why should a fine thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet that sort of men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not owe it wholly to their mistakes, look big, and seem to fancy themselves to be the more valuable on that account, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they had been more meanly clothed; and they resent it as an affront, if that respect is not paid them. It is also a great folly to be taken with these outward marks of respect, which signify nothing; for what true or real pleasure can one find in this, that another man stands bare, or makes legs to him? Will the bending another man's thighs give you any ease? And will his head's being bare cure the madness of yours? And yet it is wonderful to see how this false notion of pleasure bewitches many, who delight themselves with the fancy of their nobility, and are pleased with this conceit, that they are descended from ancestors who have been held for some successions rich, and that they have had great possessions; for this is all that makes nobility at present; yet they do not think themselves a whit the less noble, though their immediate parents have left none of this wealth to them; or though they themselves have squandered it all away. The Utopians have no better opinion of those who are much taken with gems and precious stones, and who account it a degree of happiness next to a divine one, if they can purchase one that is very extraordinary, especially if it be of that sort of stones that is then in greatest request; for the same sort is not at all times of the same value with all sorts of people; nor will men buy it, unless it be dismounted and taken out of the gold. And then the jeweller is made to give good security, and required solemnly to swear that the stone is true, that by such an exact caution, a false one may not be bought instead of a true; whereas if you were to examine it, your eye could find no difference between that which is counterfeit and that which is true; so that they are all one to you, as much as if you were blind. And can it be thought that they who heap up an useless mass of wealth, not for any use that it is to bring them, but merely to please themselves with the contemplation of it, enjoy any true pleasure in it? The delight they find is only a false shadow of joy. Those are no better whose error is somewhat different from the former, and who hide it, out of the fear of losing it; for what other name can fit the hiding it in the earth, or rather the restoring it to it again, it being thus cut off from being useful, either to its owner or to the rest of mankind? And yet the owner having hid it carefully, is glad, because he thinks he is now sure of it. And in case one should come to steal it, the owner, though he might live perhaps ten years after that, would all that while after the theft, of which he knew nothing, find no difference between his having it or losing it, for both ways it was equally useless to him.

Among those foolish pursuers of pleasure, they reckon all those that delight in hunting, or birding or gaming of whose madness they have only heard, for they have no such things among them.

* 營

Thus though the rabble of mankind looks upon these, and all other things of this kind which are indeed innumerable, as pleasures; the Utopians, on the contrary, observing that there is nothing in the nature of them that is truly pleasant, conclude that they are not to be reckoned among pleasures. For though these things may create some tickling in the senses (which seems to be a true notion of pleasure), yet they reckon that this does not arise from the thing itself, but

from a depraved custom, which may so vitiate a man's taste, that bitter things may pass for sweet; as pregnant women think pitch or tallow tastes sweeter than honey; but as a man's sense when corrupted, either by a disease or some ill habit, does not change the nature of other things, so neither can it change the nature of pleasure.

They reckon up several sorts of these pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in that delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. They divide the pleasures of the body into two sorts; the one is that which gives our senses some real delight, and is performed, either by the recruiting of nature, and supplying those parts on which the internal heat of life feeds; and that is done by eating or drinking: Or when nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it. There is another kind of this sort of pleasure, that neither gives us anything that our bodies require, nor frees us from anything with which we are overcharged; and yet it excites our senses by a secret unseen virtue, and by a generous impression, it so tickles and affects them, that it turns them inwardly upon themselves; and this is the pleasure begot by music.

Another sort of bodily pleasure is, that which consists in a quiet and good constitution of body, by which there is an entire healthiness spread over all the parts of the body not allayed with any disease. This, when it is free from all mixture of pain, gives an inward pleasure of itself, even though it should not be excited by any external and delighting object; and although this pleasure does not so vigorously affect the sense, nor act so strongly upon it, yet, as it is the greatest of all pleasures, so almost all the Utopians reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life; since this alone makes one's state of life to be easy and desirable; and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They look upon indolence and freedom from pain, if it does not rise from a perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of pleasure. There has been a controversy in this matter very narrowly canvassed among them; whether a firm and entire health could be called a pleasure or not? Some have thought that there was no pleasure but that which was excited by some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion has been long ago run down among them, so that now they do almost all agree in this, That health is the greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that, as there is a pain in sickness, which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure, as sickness itself is to health, so they hold that health carries a pleasure along with it. And if any should say that sickness is not really a pain, but that it only carries a pain along with, they look upon that as a fetch of subtility that does not much alter the matter. So they think it is all one, whether it be said, that health is in itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat; so it be granted, that all those whose health is entire have a true pleasure in it: and they reason thus. What is the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health which had been weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed, it finds a pleasure in that conflict. And if the conflict is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we will fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pursued, and so does neither know nor rejoice in its own welfare. If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny that; for what man is in health that does not perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man that is so dull and

stupid, as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health? And what is delight but another name for pleasure?

infinitely beneath him in intellect, was ALEXANDER BARCLAY, a clergyman of England, but supposed to have been a native of Scotland. Besides a curious work in prose and verse, entitled, The Ship of Fooles, (1509), in which is described a great variety of human absurdities, he translated many Latin and other books, including Sallust's History of the Jugurthine war, which was among the earliest English versions of classical authors produced in England.

JOHN FISCHER.

FISCHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, (1459-1535), was chiefly distinguished in his lifetime by pamphlets in Latin against the Lutheran doctrines: these have long been in oblivion, but his name still calls for a place in our literary history, as one of the fathers of English prose. He was a steadfast adinherent of the church of Rome, and his name is tarnished with some severities to the reforming party; but we have the testimony of Erasmus, confirmed by the acts of his life, that he possessed many of the best points of human character. He steadily refused translation to a more valuable bishopric, and he finally laid down his life, along with Sir Thomas More, in a conscientious adherence to the principle of the validity of the nuptials of Queen Catherine.

But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be the most valuable that lie in the mind; and the chief of these are those that arise out of true virtue, and the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the pleasure of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of the body, are only so far desirable as they give or maintain health. But they are not pleasant in themselves, otherwise than as they resist those impressions that our natural infirmity is still making upon us; and, as a wise man desires rather to avoid diseases than to take physic, and to be freed from pain rather than to find ease by remedies, so it were a more desirable state not to need this sort of pleasure, than to be obliged to indulge it. And if any man imagines that there is a real happiness this pleasure, he must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men, if he were to lead his life in a perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and by consequence in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself, which, any one may easily see, would be not only a base but a miserable state of life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and the least pure; for we can never relish them but when they are mixed with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure of eating; and here the pain outbalances the pleasure; and, as the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer; for, as it is upon us before the pleasure comes, so it does not cease, but with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and that goes off with it; so that they think none of those pleasures are to be valued, but as they are necessary. Yet they rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge the tenderness of the great author of nature, who has planted in us appetites, by which those things that are necessary for our preservation are likewise made pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life be, if those daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs, as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us! And thus these pleasant, as well as proper gifts of nature, do maintain the strength and the sprightliness of our bodies.

They do also entertain themselves with the other delights that they let in at their eyes, their ears, and their nostrils, as the pleasant relishes and seasonings of life, which nature seems to have marked out peculiarly for man; since no other sort of animals contemplates the figure and beauty of the universe, nor is delighted with smells, but as they distinguish meats by them; nor do they apprehend the concords or discords of sounds; yet in all pleasures whatsoever, they observe this temper, that a lesser joy may not hinder a greater, and that pleasure may never breed pain, which they think does always follow dishonest pleasures. But they think it a madness for a man to wear out the beauty of his face, or the force of his natural strength, and to corrupt the sprightliness of his body by sloth and laziness, or to waste his body by fasting, and so to weaken the strength of his constitution, and reject the other delights of life; unless, by renouncing his own satisfaction, he can either serve the public, or promote the happiness of others, for which he expects a greater recompense from God; so that they look on such a course of life, as a mark of a mind that is both cruel to itself, and ingrateful to the author of nature, as if we would not be beholden to him for his favours, and therefore would reject all his blessings, and should afflict himself for the empty shadow of virtue; or for no better end than to render himself capable to bear those misfortunes which possibly will never happen.

Contemporary with Sir Thomas More, though

While in the Tower on account of that assumed

offence, the pope acknowledged his worth and consistency by the gift of a cardinal's hat; which drew send him a hat when he will; mother of God! he from Henry the brutal remark, Well, let the pope shall wear it on his shoulders then, for I will leave The English writhim never a head to set it on!' ings of Bishop Fischer consist of sermons and a few small tracts on pious subjects, printed in one volume at Wurzburg in 1595. One of the sermons was a funeral one, preached in 1509, in honour of the Countess of Richmond (mother of Henry VII.), whose chaplain he had been. In it he presents a remarkable portraiture of a pious lady of rank of that age, with a curious detail of the habits then thought essential to a religious gentlewoman.

[Character and Habits of the Countess of Richmond.]

[In allusion to Martha, the subject of the text,] First, I say, the comparison of them two may be made in four things; in nobleness of person; in discipline of their bodies; in ordering of their souls to God; in hospitalities keeping and charitable dealing to their neighbours. In which four, the noble woman Martha (as say the doctors, entreating this gospel and her life) was singularly to be commended and praised; wherefore let us consider likewise, whether in this noble countess may any thing like be found.

First, the blessed Martha was a woman of noble blood, to whom by inheritance belonged the castle of Bethany; and this nobleness of blood they have which descended of noble lineage. Beside this, there is a nobleness of manners, withouten which the nobleness of blood is much defaced; for as Boethius saith, If ought be good in the nobleness of blood, it is for that thereby the noble men and women should be ashamed to go out of kind, from the virtuous manners of their ancestry before. Yet also there is another nobleness which ariseth in every person, by the goodness of nature, whereby full often such as come of right poor and unnoble father and mother, have great abilities of nature to noble deeds. Above all the same there is a four manner of nobleness, which may be called an encreased nobleness; as, by marriage and affinity of more noble persons, such as were of less condition may increase in higher degree of nobleness.

In every of these I suppose this countess was noble

same.

ance.

First, she came of noble blood, lineally descending of King Edward III. within the four degree of the Her father was John, Duke of Somerset ; her mother was called Margaret, right noble as well in manners as in blood, to whom she was a very daughter in all noble manners: for she was bounteous and liberal to every person of her knowledge or acquaintAvarice and covetyse she most hated, and sorrowed it full much in all persons, but specially in any that belonged unto her. She was also of singular easiness to be spoken unto, and full courteous answer she would make to all that came unto her. Of marvellous gentleness she was unto all folks, but specially unto her own, whom she trusted and loved right tenderly. Unkind she would not be unto no creature, ne forgetful of any kindness or service done to her before; which is no little part of very nobleness. She was not vengeable ne cruel, but ready anon to forget and to forgive injuries done unto her, at the least desire or motion made unto her for the same. Merciful also and piteous she was unto such as was grieved and wrongfully troubled, and to them that were in poverty or sickness, or any other misery.

To God and to the church full obedient and tractable, searching his honour and pleasure full busily. A wareness of herself she had alway to eschew every thing that might dishonest any noblewoman, or distain her honour in any condition. Frivolous things that were little to be regarded, she would let pass by, but the other that were of weight and substance, wherein she might profit, she would not let, for any pain or labour, to take upon hand. These and many other such noble conditions, left unto her by her ancestors, she kept and increased therein with a great diligence.

The third nobleness also she wanted not, which I said was the nobleness of nature. She had in a manner all that was praisable in a woman, either in soul or body. First, she was of singular wisdom, far passing the common rate of women. She was good in remembrance and of holding memory; a ready wit she had also to conceive all things, albeit they were right dark. Right studious she was in books, which she had in great number, both in English and in French; and for her exercise and for the profit of others, she did translate divers matters of devotion, out of the French into English. Full often she complained that in her youth she had not given her to the understanding of Latin, wherein she had a little perceiving, specially of the Rubryshe of the Ordinal, for the saying of her service, which she did well understand. Hereunto in favour, in words, in gesture, in every demeanour of herself, so great nobleness did appear, that what she spake or did, it marvellously became

her.

the morrow after make answer of her mind determinately. A marvellous thing!-the same night, as I have heard her tell many a time, as she lay in prayer, calling upon St Nicholas, whether sleeping or waking she could not assure, but about four of the clock in the morning, one appeared unto her, arrayed like a bishop, and naming unto her Edmund, bade take him unto her husband. And so by this means she did incline her mind unto Edmund, the king's brother, and Earl of Richmond, by whom she was made mother of the king that dead is (whose soul God pardon), and grand-dame to our sovereign lord King Henry VIII., which now, by the grace of God, governeth the realm. So what by lineage, what by affinity, she had thirty kings and queens within the four degree of marriage unto her, besides earls, marquisses, dukes, and princes. And thus much we have spoken of her nobleness.

Her sober temperance in meats and drinks was known to all them that were conversant with her, wherein she lay in as great weight of herself as any person might, keeping alway her strait measure, and offending as little as any creature might: eschewing banquets, rere-suppers, juiceries betwixt meals. As for fasting, for age, and feebleness, albeit she were not bound, yet those days that by the church were appointed, she kept them diligently and seriously, and in especial the holy Lent throughout, that she restrained her appetite, till one meal of fish on the day; besides her other peculiar fasts of devotion, as St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Catharine, with other; and theroweout all the year, the Friday and Saturday she full truly observed. Ás to hard clothes wearing, she had her shirts and girdles of hair, which, when she was in health, every week she failed not certain days to wear, sometime the one, sometime the other, that full often her skin, as I heard her say, was pierced therewith.

*

*

In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions, and so after them, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our lady, which kept her to-then she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain, she said also matins of the day; and after that daily heard four or five masses upon her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day, was ten of the clock, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her stations to three altars daily; daily her dirges and commendations she would say, and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our lady, beside many other prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily when she was in health, she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which after the manner of Rome, containeth sixty and three aves, and at every ave, to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of, which here before have heard her confession, which be divers and

The four nobleness, which we named a nobleness gotten or increased, she had also. For albeit she of her lineage were right noble, yet nevertheless by marriage adjoining of other blood, it took some encreasement. For in her tender age, she being endued with so great towardness of nature and likelihood of inheritance, many sued to have had her to marriage. The Duke of Suffolk, which then was a man of great experience, most diligently procured to have had her for his son and heir. Of the contrary part, King Henry VI. did make means for Edmund his brother, then the Earl of Richmond. She, which as then was not fully nine years old, doubtful in her mind what she were best to do, asked counsel of an old gentle-many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every woman, whom she much loved and trusted, which did advise her to commend herself to St Nicholas, the patron and helper of all true maidens, and to beseech him to put in her mind what she were best to do! This counsel she followed, and made her prayer so full often, but specially that night, when she should

1 Refrain.

third day. Can also record the same tho that were present at any time when she was houshilde,3 which o'clock, it was not uncommon, on festive occasions, to have a 1 Second suppers. When supper took place at four or five

second served up at a later hour.

2 There is an omission here.

8 Received the sacrament of the Lord's supper.

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