The Printer to the Gentle Reader

Lo here, good reader, I put into your hands another work of Sir Thomas More’s, compiled in Latin by him in the tower, in the year of our Lord 1534 and lately englished by Mistress Mary Basset (a near kinswoman of his own), daughter to William Roper, Esq., and Margaret his wife, daughter to the said Sir Thomas More. A work, of truth, full of good and godly lessons, which he began being then prisoner and could not achieve and finish the same, as he that ere he could go through therewith (even when he came to the exposition of these words, Et injecerunt manus in Jesum), was bereaved and put from his books, pen, ink, and paper, and kept more straitly than before, and soon after also was put to death himself.

This work in Latin hath been by sundry great clerks read and weighed, and very well liked, and is again so set out in our tongue, and goeth so near Sir Thomas More’s own English phrase that the gentlewoman (who for her pastime translated it) is no nearer to him in kindred, virtue, and literature, than in his English tongue. So that it might seem to have been by his own pen indited first, and not at all translated. Such a gift hath she to follow her grandfather's vein in writing.

Somewhat I had to do ere that I could come by this book. For the gentlewoman which translated it seemed