[257] This story is told in substantially the same form in the manuscript life of More by Harpsfield, written in the time of Queen Mary, and dedicated to William Roper.—Harleian MSS. No. 6253, fol. 4.
[258] ‘Meditabatur adolescens sacerdotium cum suo Lilio.’—Stapleton, Tres Thomæ, ed. 1588, p. 18, ed. 1612, p. 161. See also Roper, pp. 5, 6.
[259] Stapleton and Roper, ubi supra.
[260] Richard Whitford himself, retiring soon after from public life, entered the monastery called ‘Sion,’ near Brentford in Middlesex, and wrote books, in which he styled himself ‘the wretch of Sion.’ See Roper, p. 8, and Knight’s Life of Erasmus, p. 64.
[261] Stapleton, ed. 1588, p. 20, ed. 1612, p. 163.
[262] That this letter was written in 1504 is evident. First, it cannot well have been written before Colet had commenced his labours at St. Paul’s; secondly, it cannot have been written in Oct. 1505, because it speaks of Colet as still holding the living of Stepney, which he resigned Sept. 21, 1505. Also the whole drift of it leads to the conclusion that More was unmarried when he wrote it. And he married in 1505, according to the register on the Burford picture, which, the correct date of More’s birth having been found and from it the true date of Holbein’s sketch, seems to be amply confirmed by the age there given of More’s eldest daughter, Margaret Roper. She is stated to be twenty-two on the sketch made in 1528, and so was probably born in 1506.
[263] Mori Epigrammata: Basle, 1518, p. 6. See the prefatory letter by Beatus Rhenanus.
[264] Ibid.
[265] See Epigram entitled ‘Gratulatur quod eam repererit Incolumem quam olim ferme Puer amaverat.’—Epigrammata: Basle, 1520, p. 108, and Philomorus, pp. 37-39.
[266] ‘From whence [the Tower], the day before he suffered, he sent his shirt of hair, not willing to have it seen, to my wife, his dearly beloved daughter.’—Roper, p. 91.