Introduction by P. E. Hallett

The History of the Passion closes the long list of works, both Latin and English, written by St. Thomas More. His imprisonment in the Tower lasted from April 17, 1534, to July 6, 1535, the day of his martyrdom. From the beginning he knew that he was never likely to regain his freedom and determined to make the best possible use of his time as a preparation for death. In all sincerity he expressed his satisfaction at obtaining so valuable a period of quiet and recollection for prayer and study. To Margaret Roper, his beloved daughter, he wrote of his appreciation of the grace of God that ‘hath also put in the king towards me that good and gracious mind, that as yet he hath taken from me nothing but my liberty, wherewith (as help me God) his grace hath done me great good by the spiritual profit that I trust I take thereby, that among all his great benefits heaped upon me so thick I reckon, upon my faith, my imprisonment even the very chief.’¹ Similarly on another occasion he said to her: ‘They that have put me here ween they have done me a high displeasure.’... ‘I find no cause, I thank God, Meg, to reckon myself in worse case here than in my own house. For methinketh God maketh me a wanton and setteth me on his lap and dandleth me.'² He had spent long years in writing against the new heresies the controversial books which form the bulk of his English works, but now, although

occasional references to current controversies are still to be found, his chief preoccupation is to prepare himself, and his family, too, for the inevitable separation of death. Thus did he write the Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation and the History of the Passion.

Devotion to our Lord's passion was familiar to him. ‘Every year on Good Friday,’ writes Stapleton, ‘he called together the whole of his family into what was called the New Building, and there he would have the whole of our Lord's passion read to them, generally by John Harris. From time to time More would interrupt the reading with a few words of pious exhortation.’³ It may well be that in the present work we have echoes of those exhortations. Another clue to their contents may perhaps be provided by More’s words to Tyndale: ‘Who can speak of Christ's passion and speak nothing of his mercy?’⁴ Pico of Mirandula, whom More in his early years had chosen as a model, upon his deathbed gazed upon the crucifix, ‘that in the image of Christ's ineffable passion, suffered for our sake, he might, ere he gave up the ghost, receive his full draught of love and compassion in the beholding of that pitiful figure, as a strong defence against all adversity, and a sure portcullis against wicked spirits.’⁵ More, too, wished his last thoughts to be with his crucified saviour. To Cromwell, who examined him concerning the new statute by which the king was declared supreme head of the Church, he replied: ‘I have fully determined with myself neither to study nor meddle with any matter of this world, but that my whole study should be upon the passion of Christ and mine own passage out of this world.’⁶ From the number of references to our Lord's passion

in the letters which he wrote during his imprisonment it is clear that he kept this resolution faithfully. Thus speaking of his death he says : ‘The fear thereof, I thank our Lord, the fear of hell, the hope of heaven, and the passion of Christ daily more and more assuage.’ And in the same letter: ‘I beseech him to...give me grace and you both in all our agonies and troubles devoutly to resort prostrate unto the remembrance of that bitter agony which our saviour suffered before his passion at the mount. And if we diligently do so, I verily trust we shall find therein great comfort and consolation.’⁷ In another he writes of the fall of St. Peter who ‘fell in such fear soon after, that at the word of a simple girl he forsook and forswore our saviour,’ and takes warning to himself by the example.⁸ The Dialogue of Comfort, written at the same time, bears similar witness to the constant preoccupation of his mind with our Lord's passion. It is not too much to say that the moving passage on the subject in the last chapter is the grand climax towards which everything else in the book leads. ‘If we could and would,’ he writes, ‘with due compassion conceive in our minds a right imagination and remembrance of Christ's bitter painful passion, of the many sore bloody strokes that the cruel tormentors with rods and whips gave him upon every part of his holy tender body, the scornful crown of sharp thorns beaten down upon his holy head, so straight and so deep that on every part his blessed blood issued out and streamed down, his lovely limbs drawn and stretched out upon the cross to the intolerable pain of his forebeaten and sore beaten veins and sinews, new feeling, with the cruel stretching and straining, pain far passing any cramp in every part of his blessed body at once, then the great long nails cruelly driven with hammers through his holy hands and feet, and in

this horrible pain lift up and let hang, with the peise (weight) of all his body bearing down upon the painful wounded places, so grievously pierced with nails, and in such torment (without pity, but not without many despites), suffered to be pined and pained the space of more than three long hours, till himself willingly gave up unto his Father his holy soul, after which yet to shew the mightiness of their malice after his holy soul departed they pierced his holy heart with a sharp spear, at which issued out the holy blood and water whereof his holy sacraments have inestimable secret strength: if we would, I say, remember these things in such wise, as would God we would, I verily suppose that the consideration of his incomparable kindness could not in such wise fail to inflame our keycold hearts, and set them on fire in his love, that we should find ourselves not only content, but also glad and desirous, to suffer death for his sake that so marvellous lovingly letted not to sustain so far passing painful death for ours.’⁹ Passio Christi, conforta me, prays St. Ignatius, ‘Passion of Christ, strengthen me.’ It was from his meditations upon our Lord's passion that St. Thomas drew the strength to suffer martyrdom. To the very end it was his comfort and his support. Thus he set out upon his last journey up Tower Hill with a cross in his hand, and in his reply to the good lady who offered him wine showed how his thoughts were with him who died for us upon the cross. ‘Christ in his passion,’ he said, ‘was given not wine, but vinegar to drink.’¹⁰ St. Thomas began his history in English and then continued it in Latin. He seems to have written the two languages with equal ease, and why in the middle of his work he should have changed from one to the other we can only conjecture. It was largely, though not entirely, the needs of controversy that had led him

to write in English. Latin, on the other hand, was usually the medium of his prayers. A long Latin prayer--a mosaic of verses from the Psalms-concludes the volume of his Latin Works.11 The other prayers that Stapleton¹¹ enumerates as used by him are the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Litanies, the Gradual Psalms, and the Beati Immaculati. These would certainly have been recited in Latin. Stapleton mentions some English prayers of his composition which are to be found in his collected English works. They are, in fact, very few. Apart from a short collect at the end of the sections of the English History of the Passion, they fill barely two pages of the English Works.13 Even the unlearned laity used commonly to say their Paternoster and Ave Maria in Latin.

There is something noteworthy in the fact that St. Thomas, as his life drew to an end and his preparation for death became more absorbing, should desert the English of his social life and of his controversies, and betake himself to the language of the Mass, of the Divine Office, of the Vulgate and of the whole western Church.

The first part, then, of the History of the Passion is in English only, and was printed for the first time in the magnificent volume of More’s English Works which William Rastell published in 1517 and dedicated to Queen Mary. It has never been reprinted, but it is hoped that the new edition of the saint's English Works, of which Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode have already published two volumes, will include it in its proper place.

The second part was printed for the first time in the volume of More's Latin Works which appeared at Louvain in 1566. Although William Rastell's name does not appear in this edition, it seems most likely that he helped in its preparation. He possessed More's

papers, and it would seem natural that after publishing his English Works he should turn his attention to his Latin writings. Moreover, it was in Louvain that he was in exile. He did not, however, live to see the volume published. He died on August 27, 1565, and was buried beside his wife in the church of St. Peter in that city. The Latin portion of the History of the Passion was reprinted in the Frankfurt edition of More’s Opera Omnia in 1689.

Although More himself did not translate this second part of his work into English, yet an English version was printed in Rastell's volume of 1557, following the earlier English portion and occupying fiftyfour pages.¹² It is the work of Mary Basset, More’s granddaughter, as we are informed in Rastell's prefatory notice. Because of its excellence, many persons, as he tells us, wished it to be published separately, so that it might reach a wider circle of readers. ‘Which more would buy, set out alone, than with so many other of his works, and haply so shall it be hereafter at more leisure.’15 The fulfilment of Rastell's pious wish has been delayed for nearly four centuries, for Mrs. Basset's version has never been reprinted until now. We may be allowed to express the hope that his anticipation of large sales may be fulfilled!

More’s manuscript of the History of the Passion, or at least its latter pages, must have been among the papers seized by the King's agents when the martyr's correspondence with St. John Fisher was discovered. The fact is mentioned in an editorial note at the end of the Latin work, which Rastell or Mrs. Basset has translated in the English version. That this should have occurred just as More had written the words: ‘They laid hands upon Jesus,’ has often been pointed to as a remarkable coincidence. But somehow or other the MS.

came into the possession of the martyr's family. Perhaps it was amongst the books and papers for retaining possession of which Margaret Roper was brought before the King's Council.¹³ She pleaded that she had hardly any books and papers but what had already been published (there is much virtue in a ‘hardly,’ vix) and was allowed to keep them. We must remember that she had many influential and wealthy connections and friends. It was certainly among the papers to which William Rastell refers in his dedication to the Queen. ‘I did diligently collect and gather together, as many of those, his works, books, letters, and other writings, printed and unprinted in the English tongue,¹⁴ as I could come by, and the same (certain years in the evil world past keeping in my hands very surely and safely) now lately have caused to be imprinted in this one volume.’

Rastell was at the very centre of the More circle, both at home in Mary's reign and abroad in exile in the reign of her successor, being doubly connected with the chancellor, first as his sister's son, and then as the husband of Winifred Clements, the daughter of John Clements, tutor to More’s children, and of Margaret Gigs, More’s adopted daughter.

It is time to speak of Mary Basset, the translator of the portion of More’s History now published. She is introduced to us in the preface of ‘The Printer to the Gentle Reader,’ as the daughter of William Roper and Margaret, St. Thomas More’s favourite child. The Ropers were married in 1521, and according to William's epitaph,¹⁵ had five children, two boys and three girls. The names are given in the Life of More in the Lambeth

Library by Ro. Ba.¹⁶: ‘two sons, Thomas and Anthony, and three daughters, Elizabeth, Marie, and Margaret.' Nicholas Harpsfield, writing just before the publication of More’s English Works in 1557, implies that Elizabeth and Margaret were already dead.¹⁷ Writing of More’s Latin exposition of the passion of Christ, he adds that it ‘is so plainly and exquisitely translated into English by...Mistress Basset, that it may seem originally to have been penned in English by Sir Thomas More himself.’¹⁸ Elsewhere he gives a fuller account which we must quote in full. She is ‘late wife to Master Clarke, and now wife to Master Basset, one of our gracious sovereign Queen Mary's privy chamber, who in the late King Edward's days, because he would the better preserve himself not to be entangled with the schism, withdrew himself into Flanders. This Mistress Basset is very well experted in the Latin and Greek tongues: she hath very handsomely and learnedly translated out of the Greek into the English all the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, with Socrates, Theodoret, Sozomen, and Evagrius, albeit of modesty she suppresseth it and keepeth it from the print. She hath also very aptly and fitly translated into the said tongue a certain book that Sir Thomas, her grandfather, made upon the passion, and so

works only. elegantly and eloquently penned that a man would think it were originally written in the said English tongue.’¹⁹ The British Museum²⁰ has a Latin version of the First Book of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History and an English version of the first five books translated by ‘Mary Clarcke’ and dedicated, during the reign of Edward VI, to the Lady Mary. It seems to be the actual manuscript

presented to the future queen, but it has lost its original binding of purple velvet.²¹ According to the Dictionary of National Biography, the Basset family was originally Cornish, but in the sixteenth century one branch settled in Devonshire. James Basset, who married Mary Clarke (née Roper), was the third son of Sir John Basset of Umberleigh, Devon (who died in 1529), by his second wife, Honora, daughter of Sir Thomas Granville. He became a gentlemanservant to Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and at the latter's trial in 1551 deposed that he had been in his service twelve years and was now about twentyfour years old,²² that as wages he had four pounds and livery; also fourteen pounds annuities, viz., four pounds out of the manor of Taunton, and ten pounds out of the lordship of Eastmere.²³ As one of the most active proctors for the accused bishop, he took a prominent part in the trial. His selfimposed exile, of which Harpsfield speaks, presumably followed after these proceedings.

Returning to England he obtained, as did his wife, a position of trust in personal service upon Queen Mary. The Record Office contains a series of letters, from May 3, 1555, to November 29 of the same year, which passed between Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, exiled in Brussels, and Basset in London. They are mostly concerned with business affairs and the money of which Devonshire seems constantly to have been in need. It is interesting to come across in this correspondence the name of ‘Mr. Bonvise’, who promised to advance the Earl money on Basset's credit. This can be none other

valuable references. Lambeth. than the wealthy Antonio Bonvisi, More’s greatest friend, who gathered around him in Louvain so many exiles from the More circle. As just before his death More wrote that Bonvisi had been his friend for nearly forty years, the Italian must now have been very old. He died at Louvain on December 7, 1558.²⁴ On January 10, 1558, Basset left London and after a six days' journey-owing to bad weather--arrived at Brussels, where he was commissioned to bear to King Philip the tidings that his wife the Queen of England was pregnant.²⁵ On January 20, 1566, Mary Basset, now a widow for the second time, with two sons by her second husband, Philip and Charles, made her will, from which we take the following details.²⁶ She left £100 for ‘prayers,’ i.e. Masses. To Charles, her younger son, she left lands near Sandwich in the parish of Wodnesborough ‘which I purchased with that portion that his father gave him in his last will, and a great deal more of my own.’ To Philip, ‘my lands in Devonshire.’ Bequests to her two brothers, Thomas and Anthony Roper, to ‘Reynold Bray, my sister Bray's son and my godson,’²⁷ and to Bridget Clements, Dr. John Clements' daughter and her goddaughter. Legacies to servants. ‘To my son (Philip) a ring that was my grandfather More’s, and a great hoop of gold that Mr. Basset gave me for a wedding ring, and a gold ring that King Philip gave me set with a great ruby and a cross of gold with pointed

History of Surrey). Here, for some time before its removal to the vault of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, was kept the skull of St. Thomas More which Margaret Roper had rescued. The present owners of Baynards still have the ancient chest in which, according to tradition, it reposed. diamonds in the corner and pearls hanging to the cross, also a gilt cup with a cover to the same which cup King Philip gave him at his christening.’ The residue of her estate she left to Charles, the younger son. Her legacies to her sons are to become void ‘if they become heretics or vicious livers or cause trouble to executors.’ As executors she named her ‘dear father, Mr. W. Roper, Esq.,’ and Mr. Thomas Welles, a priest. They were to manage the property ‘till they think my children fit to manage,’ and if the children should die, they were to give everything to charity.

The scanty notices we have been able to collect concerning Philip and Charles show them to have been sons worthy of such staunch Catholic parents.

A paper drawn up by the vile apostate and traitor, George Elliot, for the information of the Earl of Leicester, and endorsed August 10, 1581, mentions the two brothers amongst those ‘Papists’ living in London who ‘carry the countenance of gentlemen.’²⁸ Later on, in the same report, Judas Elliot (for so he was called) writes that Mr. Charles Basset should be able to tell the whereabouts of the Jesuits, for he was often in their company.

The Jesuits are, of course, Fathers Campion and Persons, who came to England in 1580 and worked so zealously for the Catholic faith. Elliot's information was correct; indeed both Philip and Charles were members of Campion's Catholic Association-a band of young men, the chief of whom was George Gilbert, who helped the future martyr in his printing and other activities. For Gilbert's arrest a trap was laid by Sir George Carey, afterwards Lord Chamberlain. Gilbert escaped and was sent abroad out of harm's way by Fr. Persons, but Charles Basset and another were arrested. Two or three months later, however, Basset was again

at large, for he travelled to Rome bearing a letter, dated August 30, 1581, from Fr. Persons to the Rector of the English College. Fr. Persons writes: ‘In my former letter I commended to you, with all the affection I could, my son, friend, patron, and most generous benefactor, George Gilbert...Now to that commendation I associate...Charles Basset... Such are his virtues that I doubt not you will be grateful to me for having directed him to your college. He is a youth of an illustrious and wealthy family. Had he no other recommendations, he should be dear to you on this sole account, that he is the greatgrandson of the illustrious martyr, Thomas More. But he has better gifts in himself: he has talents, manners, virtues worthy of himself and his ancestors...’²⁹ Basset caught up with Gilbert in France, and they both made generous benefactions to the English College at Rheims (whither it had migrated from Douai) and to the nuns of Rouen. Together they travelled on to Rome, where Basset, described as belonging to the diocese of London, was on November 19, 1581, admitted to the English College.³⁰ His health, however, broke down very seriously, and in April, 1583, it was thought wise to send him back to France. According to Fr. Persons he earnestly desired to enter the Society of Jesus.³¹ By the beginning of June he was in Paris, whither Dr. (afterwards Cardinal) Allen, who was anxiously expecting him at Rheims, went to visit him and Fr. Persons. Basset is, writes Allen, mihi amantissimus.35 We next hear of him, again in the company of Fr. Persons, at Rouen on September 30, 1584, but two months later he died a most holy death at Rheims,

leaving all his possessions to the English College or other charities.³² Philip Basset is harder to trace. In a return of recusants for 1577, amongst those in Lincoln's Inn who ‘upon suspicion had of their religion were appointed to receive the Communion...but have not yet done the same’ is ‘Philip Basset, son and heir of Mrs. Basset, late of the Privy Chamber.’ He is in the good company of his grandfather and uncles, for first in order amongst the sturdy recusants of the Inn stand: ‘William Roper, of Kent; of yearly revenue £1000, as we think: Thomas Roper, his eldest son; one of the two protonotaries of the Queen's Bench: Anthony Roper, his brother, clerk of the papers in the same court.’³³ In a search conducted on August 27, 1584, by Sheriff Spencer, ‘in the house of Roger Smith, gent., in Holborn,’ was found Philip Basset who had been ‘expelled out of Lincoln's Inn for Papistry.’ That he was still a wicked Papist was evident from ‘a Papistical book’ upon his table. It would seem certain that this notice refers to Mary Basset's son, although he is described as ‘of Collond John (sic)...in the county of Derby.’³⁴

A further penalty for Catholic loyalty seems to be indicated in the following notice, the last we have been able to discover concerning him. The Sheriff of Devon reports on October 24, 1585, that Philip Basset has disappeared and is probably in the Fleet Prison. Mary Basset long outlived her second husband and died on March 20, 1572. Her will was proved in London on April 19 of the same year. Her father, William

Cal. S. P. Dom., 1581-1590. I owe most of these references concerning Charles and Philip Basset to the Rev. Bernard 39

Basset, S. J., of Heythrop College. Roper, survived until January 4, 1578, when he was in his eightysecond year. His wife, Margaret, had died as early as Christmas 1544.

A Latin Vita Henrici VIII, attributed (wrongly) to Nicholas Harpsfield, gives the interesting information that Mary Basset contributed largely towards the expenses of Rastell's 1557 edition of More’s English Works.40 His preface to her translation, which here we are printing, bears witness to her devotion, her modesty, and other virtues.

There can be no doubt that her translation is an excellent piece of work. It is scrupulously accurate, and even when she corrects a mistake (for St. Thomas was never able to revise the whole of his MS.) she apologises for doing so. Perhaps in order not to miss any shade of meaning, perhaps in deference to More’s own custom, as shown in his translation of Richard III,³⁵ she is fond of writing two English words in place of one Latin word. Thus we find for confitendum, ‘praise and thank,’ for pinguissima, ‘very fat and plentiful,’ for homuncio, ‘a silly wretched man,’ for anima, ‘soul and life,’ for abluere, ‘clean, purge, and wash away,’ for spiritus promptus, ‘the spirit prompt and ready,’ for caro infirma, ‘the flesh frail and weak,’ etc. A Latin sentence will usually require a larger number of English words to render it, but sometimes Mrs. Basset seems unnecessarily prolix. Take the very first sentence as an example. There the words ‘yet forgot he not at his departing to make an end of all together, with thanksgiving to God’ represent but five Latin words. Yet the translation is always smooth and easy, and though sentences are often much longer than modern idiom requires, it is always readily intelligible and at the same time attractive.

Whether the claim made for it that it is indistinguish

able from More’s own writing can be justified or not, must be decided by each reader for himself. Perhaps she has not quite so wide a range of vocabulary-More was never afraid to coin new words if necessary-and though alliteration is common, it is not quite so thorough as it is in More’s writing. Thus she has: ‘like a slothful sluggard straightways wert fallen asleep,’ ‘sundry matters as in such a sudden stir very sore perplexed them,’ ‘driven down deep into the dark flaming fire of hell,’ etc., but she never reaches such tremendous vehemence as, for example, this sentence of her father's: ‘this drowsy drudge hath drunken so deep in the devil's dregs, etc.’³⁶ Mrs. Basset's object in translating her grandfather's Latin was a practical one, and with the same practical object in view we have modernised her spelling and punctuation. In both respects there have been difficulties. Sometimes words which in the sixteenth century were not distinguished in spelling are now utterly distinct. We refer in our notes to one such example, the words ‘council’ and ‘counsel.’ At other times words have changed their meaning so considerably that it would be misleading to give, without annotation, the modern English equivalent. Thus ‘sely’ means pitiable and not silly. Such obsolete words as we have thought it necessary to retain have been glossed in footnotes.

Regarding the earlier method of punctuation, Professor Reed has some valuable remarks in the Introduction to More’s Dialogue.43 Quoting Ben Jonson, he shews that it was based upon the natural pauses that would be made by one who was reading aloud. Nowadays, on the contrary, it is the grammatical form of the sentence which more commonly determines the punctuation. We

have tried to conform to modern usage, but sometimes the length or the structure of the sentence--very different from what is now customary-have made it difficult.

One other point calls for mention. In quoting the texts of the Gospel narrative upon which the exposition is based, Mrs. Basset, or perhaps Rastell, has reproduced the Latin as well as translating them into English. As the book is professedly a translation, we have not thought it necessary to do more than print the English version.

As St. Thomas More wrote them, the earlier English portion of the history is, in number of words, more than three times as long as the Latin part. Even when account is taken of Mrs. Basset's expansion of the original in her translation-which has more than doubled the number of words-the second part is still only about twothirds the length of the first. Yet, paradoxically, it contains far more of the history of the passion. For the saint begins very far away from his immediate subject, and treats of the creation, the fall of the angels and of man, the decree for man's redemption and many incidental questions. He then treats of the conspiracy of the highpriests (whom he calls ‘bishops’) and ancients against Jesus, the treason of Judas and the washing of the disciples' feet, and when he comes to the institution of the Holy Eucharist he writes what is almost a separate work upon the real presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, with a long series of quotations from the Greek and Latin Fathers.

Thus it is only in the portion translated by Mrs. Basset that the history of the passion proper begins, i.e., the leaving of the Upper Room and the journey to Gethsemani. For the order of the text and the concordance of the four accounts given by the evangelists, More, as he explains in the first part, follows the Monatessaron of John Gerson, for whose writings he had

17 the greatest respect. He speaks of him³⁷ as ‘an excellent learned man, and a gentle handler of a troubled conscience.’

It is not, however, in order to discover Gerson's views on the harmony of the gospels that modern readers will read More’s History of the Passion, but to know the bases of More’s own faith and courage. No writer of so strong a personality as he can fail to reveal the secrets of his own heart when dealing with such a theme. What gives supreme interest to the discussions upon our Lord's hiding himself from his enemies or offering himself openly to them is the knowledge that here we have a reflection of what was going on in More’s own conscience. In this work we have a commentary on what More said to Cromwell, as he afterwards related it to Margaret: ‘Whereto I answered, as the truth is, that I have not been a man of such holy living, as I might be bold to offer myself to death, lest God for my presumption might suffer me to fall, and therefore I put not myself forward, but draw back. Howbeit, if God draw me to it himself, then trust I in his great mercy that he shall not fail to give me grace and strength.’³⁸ In the long meditation upon our Lord's fear in the Garden of Olives, More refers continually to the martyrs of early times, and clearly he is thinking also of himself. For St. Thomas was indeed of a fearful nature and dreaded pain, but he had the supreme heroism which in spite of fear and dread goes forward steadily to the martyr's death. As he wrote to his daughter: ‘Surely, Meg, a fainter heart than thy frail father hath canst thou not have. And yet I verily trust in the great mercy of God, that he shall of his goodness so stay me with his holy hand that he shall not finally suffer me to fall wretchedly from his favour.... The more weak that man is, the more is the strength of God in his safeguard

declared.’ ‘Virtue is made perfect in infirmity,’ said St. Paul. When, in the early morning of July 6, 1535, St. Thomas More stood smiling upon the scaffold on Tower Hill, he might have repeated, with still greater reason, what he had said, over a year ago, to his faithful sonin-law, as they were rowed down the Thames from Chelsea, where all his hopes of earthly happiness were enshrined, to Lambeth where he was to make his fateful decision: ‘Son Roper, I thank our Lord the field is won.’ Now, in virtue of the passion of Christ, he had gained his greatest triumph and received the martyr's palm.

P. E. Hallett.

WONERSH, Passion Sunday, 1940.

Footnotes

1. English Works, 1557, p. 1442 E. ↩

2. Roper’s Life of More, E.E.T.S., p. 76. ↩

3. Life of Sir T. More, Eng. trans., p. 96. ↩

4. E.W., p. 408, B. ↩

5. ibid., p. 8, F. ↩

6. ibid., p. 1452, A. ↩

7. ibid., p. 1431, E. and H. ↩

8. ibid., p. 1442, G. ↩

9. E.W., p. 1260, E. ↩

10. Stapleton, l.c. 209. ↩

11. l.c., 67. ↩

12. pp. 1350-1404. ↩

13. Stapleton, l.c., p. 215. ↩

14. He collected the Latin works and papers as well, but in this preface he is accounting for his publication of the English ↩

15. given by Lewis in his edition of Roper’s Life of More, p. 6. ↩

16. printed in Wordsworth’s Ecclesiastical Biography, II, p. 111. ↩

17. Life of More, E.E.T.S., pp. 83 and 100. ↩

18. ibid., p. 107. ↩

19. ibid., p. 83. ↩

20. Harleian MSS. 1860. ↩

21. I owe this information to Professor R. W. Chambers’ historical notes (Harpsfield, l.c., p. 334) as well as some other ↩

22. Similarly Sir Thomas More, as a boy, was received into the household of Archbishop (afterwards Cardinal) Morton at ↩

23. Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. 1838, VI, pp. 231 and 236. ↩

24. D.N.B. ↩

25. State Paper, Venetian, Vol.. VI, part 3, no. 1146. (v. infra, p. xxii). ↩

26. Notes and Queries, 11th Series, Vol. VI, Aug. 3, 1912, p. 87. ↩

27. Mrs. Basset’s sister Elizabeth married Sir Edward Bray who possessed Baynards, Surrey, from 1535 to 1558 (Brayley’s ↩

28. Landsown MSS., Burghley Papers, 33 Plut., n. 16, printed by Foley, Records of the English Province, S.J.,Vol. II, p. 586. ↩

29. Cath. Record Soc., Vol. 4, pp. 13-15. ↩

30. Foley, op. cit., Vol. VI, pp. 77, 153. ↩

31. C.R.S., IV, pp. 69-71. ↩

32. C.R.S., l.c., Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, Ser. II, p. 39. ↩

33. ibid., XXII, p. 102. ↩

34. Foley, op. cit., Vol. V1, p. 716. ↩

35. Cf. More’s English Works, Vol. I, 1931, p. 191. ↩

36. E.W., 679, H. ↩

37. E.W., 1376, C. ↩

38. ibid., 1454, F. ↩