For a while, indeed, Colet’s voice had been silenced; but now Erasmus was able to congratulate his friend on his return to his post of duty at St. Paul’s.
Erasmus to Colet.
‘I was delighted to hear from you’ [he wrote from Cambridge], ‘and have to congratulate you that you have returned to your most sacred and useful work of preaching. I fancy even this little interruption will be overruled for good, for your people will listen to your voice all the more eagerly for having been deprived of it for a while. May Jesus, Optimus Maximus, keep you in safety!’[421]
III. MORE IN TROUBLE AGAIN (1512).
In closing this chapter, it may perhaps be remarked that little has been heard of More during these the first years of his return to public life.
More engrossed in business.
More writes his history of Richard III.
Death of his wife.
The fact is, that he had been too busy to write many letters even to Erasmus. He had been rapidly drawn into the vortex of public business. His judicial office of undersheriff of London had required his close attention every Thursday. His private practice at the bar had also in the meantime rapidly increased, and drawn largely on his time. When Erasmus wrote to know what he was doing, and why he did not write, the answer was that More was constantly closeted with the Lord Chancellor, engaged in ‘grave business,’[422] and would write if he could. What leisure he could snatch from these public duties he would seem to have been devoting to his ‘History of Richard III.’[423] the materials for which he probably obtained through his former connection with Cardinal Morton.
And were we to lift the veil from his domestic life, we should find the dark shadow of sorrow cast upon his bright home in Bucklersbury. But a few short months ago, such was the air of happiness about that household, that Ammonius, writing as he often did to Erasmus, to tell him all the news, whilst betraying, by the endearing epithets he used, his fascination for the loveliness of More’s own gentle nature, had spoken also of his ‘most good-natured wife,’ and of the ‘children and whole family’ as ‘charmingly well.’[424]
His four children.
Now four motherless children nestle round their widowed father’s knee.[425] Margaret, the eldest daughter—the child of six years old—henceforth it will be her lot to fill her lost mother’s place in her father’s heart, and to be a mother to the little ones. And she too is not unknown to fame. It was she