CHAPTER V. FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: PROSE-WRITERS. 1. Characters of the English Monarchs.-2. The New Learning and its Chief Promoters.-3. Sir Thomas More.-4. Henry VIII. as an Author.-5. Hugh Latimer.-6. William Tyndal.-7. Other English Translators of the Bible. -8. Chroniclers in Latin.-9. Chroniclers in English; John Bellenden; Robert Fabyan; Edward Hall; Lord Berners's Froissart.-10. John Leland. -11. Sir Thomas Elyot. 1. Ar the opening of the sixteenth century, Henry VII. was King of England. In 1509, he was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII., who reigned until 1547; in which year Edward VI. came to the throne, and reigned until 1553. The intellectual character of the time was affected by the personal characters of these monarchs. Henry VII., whose nature was cold, greedy, jealous, despotic, but essentially commonplace, "looked with dread and suspicion on the one movement which broke the apathy of his reign, the great intellectual revolution which bears the name of the Revival of Letters." Henry VIII., on the other hand, though equally despotic and far more violent and dangerous, was "from the first openly on the side of the new learning," and was not only a fair scholar and a wit, but a lover of scholars and of wits. Edward VI., who was but a boy of sixteen when he died, was of saintly disposition, in favor of the Protestant Reformation, and fond of learning, but was controlled by the two powerful noblemen, Somerset and Northumberland, who in succession were the real kings. 2. The most remarkable feature of this portion of the sixteenth century is the energy with which "the new learning" was both cultivated and resisted in England. In the year 1500, there lived six Englishmen who were then the chief promoters of the new English scholarship: Grocyn, fifty-eight years old; Linacre, about forty; John Fisher, forty-one; John Colet, thirty four; William Lily, about thirty-two; and Thomas More, twenty. Often at a distance from these men, but in full sympathy with them, and ready to help them at any moment by his learning, his eloquence, and his wit, was the renowned scholar Erasmus, who had taught Greek at Oxford. The eldest of these men, William Grocyn, was born in 1442; and after obtaining all the learning that England could give him, he went to Italy and learned Greek. In 1491, he settled at Exeter College, Oxford, as the first teacher of that language in England, having at one time Erasmus among his pupils. He died in 1522, being then master of All Hallow's College at Maidstone. Next comes Thomas Linacre, a physician, about eighteen years younger than Grocyn, and fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. Early in the reign of Henry VII., he was sent on a mission to the court of Rome, and staid by the way at Florence to learn Greek. On his return to Oxford, he gave lectures on medicine, and taught Greek and Latin. He was chief founder of the Royal College of Physicians; he did much for Latin scholarship in England; and died in 1524. Next in this group of scholars is John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, of about the same age as Linacre. He invited Erasmus to Cambridge, and supported him in the endeavor to teach Greek there. John Colet, born in 1466, was the son of Sir Henry Colet, a wealthy knight of London, and twice its Lord Mayor. After seven years at Oxford, he studied in Paris, and then went to Italy and learned Greek. In 1505, he became Dean of St. Paul's. In 1510, the death of his father gave him a large inheritance, with a part of which he founded St. Paul's School, -at once a flourishing seat of the new scholarship. He died, after a noble and most useful life, in 1519. When John Colet founded St. Paul's School, he appointed as its head master his friend William Lily, an excellent Greek scholar, a man about two years younger than himself. His most famous book was the "Latin Grammar," which Henry VIII. sanctioned so vigorously, that he declared it penal publicly to teach any other, and which continued to be in use in England for many generations. 3. The youngest and the most brilliant man in this group of scholars who early in the sixteenth century, against formidable opposition, gave to English thought and English literature the awakening that came with the new scholarship, was Thomas More. He was born in 1480, the son of Sir John More, a justice of the King's Bench. While still a lad, Thomas More became an inmate of the household of the powerful Cardinal John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Morton had been one of the foremost of Oxford scholars when Wil. liam Grocyn was a child. He was Doctor of Laws and Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1446. He practised law, and obtained many church benefices; was Master of the Rolls in 1472, Bishop of Ely in 1478, — the same Bishop of Ely of whom the Protector Richard, about to seize the crown, said: "My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, an hour before he sent him to the Tower. When afterwards released, and transferred to the custody of the Duke of Buckingham, Morton helped to organize the insurrection which cost Buckingham his head; and, being himself safe in Flanders, was thenceforth busy as a negotiator on the side that triumphed at Bosworth Field. Thus Morton became the trusted friend of Henry VII., who at the beginning of his reign made him, in 1486, Lord Chancellor of England, and nine months afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. While upholding the sovereignty of the archbishop in spiritual things, Morton, as Henry VII.'s chief adviser, maintained in temporal affairs the absolute sovereignty of the king. He greatly enriched himself, but was liberal with his wealth. He helped the king, more narrowly avaricious, to draw money, by benevolences or otherwise, from his subjects; and he shared the king's unpopularity. Morton was a vigorous old man of between seventy and eighty, whose life was blended with the history of half a century, when young Thomas More was placed in his household, and found him a generous patron and appreciative friend. A son of one of lower rank was often received of old into a great man's house. He wore there his lord's livery, but had it of more costly materials than were used for the footmen, and was the immediate attendant of his patron, who was expected to give him a start in life when he came of age. When at Christmas time a Latin play was acted, young Thomas More could step in at will among the players, and extemporize a comic part. "Whoever liveth to try it," Morton would say, "shall see this child here waiting at table prove a notable and rare man." Dean Colet used to say, "There is but one wit in England, and that is young Thomas More." About the year 1497 the archbishop sent the youth to Oxford, where he was entered to Canterbury College, now included in Christ Church. There he learned Greek of Linacre and Grocyn. In 1499 he removed thence to London, and proceeded to study law at Lincoln's Inn. In 1500 Archbishop Morton died. While studying law, More, who was earnestly religious, tried on himself for a time the experiment of monastic discipline; wore a hair shirt, took a log for a pillow, whipped himself on Fridays. At the age of twenty-one he entered Parliament, and soon after he had been called to the bar he was made an UnderSheriff of London. In 1503 he opposed in the House of Commons Henry VII.'s proposal for a subsidy on account of the marriage-portion of his daughter Margaret; and he opposed with so much energy, that the House refused to grant it. One went and told the king that a beardless boy had disappointed all his expectations. During the last years, therefore, of Henry VII., More was under the displeasure of the king, and had thoughts of leaving the country. But in the first years of the reign of Henry VIII. he was rising to large practice in the law courts, where it is said he refused to plead in cases which he thought unjust, and took no fees from widows, orphans, or the poor. He would have preferred marrying the second daughter of John Colt, of New Hall, in Essex, but chose her elder sister, that he might not subject her to the discredit of being passed over. In 1513, Thomas More, then under-sheriff of London, is said to have written his "History of the Life and Death of King Edward V., and of the Usurpation of Richard III.," first printed in 1557, from a MS. in his writing. The work comes down to us both in Latin and in English; and although More's son-in-law, who first printed it, believed it to have been written by More, there is some reason to think that the Latin original was the work of Cardinal Morton, and the English version only the work of More. If the book was wholly More's, it must have been written from information chiefly derived from his old patron, Morton. In 1515, two years after Thomas More is supposed to have written the book just mentioned, he was sent by the king on an embassy into Flanders, "for the debatement and determination" of matters in dispute between Henry VIII. and Charles V. In 1516, he was again sent thither on the same business. During these visits in Flanders, More was much with his friend Erasmus, and found also a new friend, Peter Giles, a scholarly and courteous young man who was secretary to the municipality of Antwerp. It was in these two years that Thomas More wrote his celebrated book "Utopia," the most significant literary production of this period, and one of the most notable productions in English literature. It was written in Latin, and first printed at Louvain in 1516. It was afterward reprinted at Basle, at Paris, and at Vienna, but never in England during More's lifetime. Its first publication in England was in 1551, in the delightful English translation made by Ralph Robinson; which translation was revised and republished in 1556. More's "Utopia" has given an adjective to our language, we call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own way the chief political and social evils of his time. Having commended the book in a witty letter to his friend Giles, More tells in the first part how he was sent into Flanders with Cuthbert Tunstal, "whom the king's majesty of late, to the great rejoicing of all men, did prefer to the office of Master of the Rolls;" how the commissioners of Charles met them at Bruges, and presently returned to Brussels for instructions; and how More then went to Antwerp, where he found a pleasure in the society of Peter Giles, which soothed his desire to see again his wife and children, from whom he had been four months away. One day, when he came from the service in Antwerp Cathedral, More fables that he saw his friend Giles talking to "a certain stranger, a man well stricken in age, with a black sunburnt face, a long beard, and a cloak cast homely about his shoulders," whom More judged to be a mariner. Peter Giles introduced him to his friend as Raphael Hythloday (the name, from the Greek 00s and dúos, means "knowing in trifles "), a man learned in Latin and profound in Greek, a Portuguese wholly given to philosophy, who left his patrimony to his brethren, and, desiring to know far countries, went with Amerigo Vespucci in the three last of the voyages of |