to request that a new quarry might be opened at Caen to supply him with good stone for the buildings, which he intended to be magnificent as well as enduring. Ipswich College was never finished; the portions which had been erected were destroyed soon after his sudden fall from greatness, and the appropriated revenues were seized. Nothing now remains of the edifice except the gateway, which is mostly built of compact red brick, and much in the style of the Cardinal's buildings at Hampton Court. Even this interesting and very picturesque relic is going to decay, and will soon disappear unless the good feeling and taste of the people of Ipswich should do something to preserve it as a memorial of the most illustrious man that was ever native of their town. This college lay very near the Cardinal's heart. In 1528, when the divorce case of his master was commencing, and when he was oppressed with business and cares of all kinds, he drew up in Latin the rules of his school in Ipswich, which are yet extant. They have been printed in an Essay on a System of Classical Instruction," and contain the course of Latin studies which Wolsey prescribed for the eight classes into which he divided the school. It appears to have been his intention that this noble establishment at Ipswich should be preparatory for youths whose studies were to be finished in his own college at Oxford. Christchurch College survived the storm of violence and rapine, and still survives, but the several professorships he had established were soon suppressed.

Wolsey had a natural son, who went by the name of Thomas Winter, and who received from his father no fewer than eleven benefices. He is said to have had two other children, but there is no good evidence of the fact. In judging of him we must always bear in mind the general loose morality of the times in which he lived, a period of nepotism and debauchery among the highest of the Roman churchmen. There can be no doubt that he used his influence, abroad as well as at home, for his

* London: John Taylor, 1825.

own aggrandizement; but if he loved to get, he loved to spend; he was never sordid, and a great part of his wealth always went to objects which tended to raise the civilization of his country. The splendid Gothic church architecture had been elaborated into wonderful richness, at the expense of its original grand simplicity, in the time of Henry VII.; but Wolsey was one of the first, if not the very first, to attempt to give beauty and magnificence as well as comfort to our domestic architecture. "His part in the death of the Duke of Buckingham,' says Sir James Mackintosh, "was his most conspicuous crime the circumstance most favourable to him is the attachment of dependants." We still hold it as being at the least doubtful whether he took any active part against Buckingham, or even whether he could have prevented the legal murder of that nobleman. The man who had often pleaded on his knees for three hours together without success, may have pleaded for Buckingham in vain, or may have been deterred by fear from making any attempt to persuade Henry from his appetite for blood. Wolsey was never a man of high courage. For many a year he must have felt that he was living encaged with a lion that could be kept quiet only by submission and coaxing. At the very first and very faint show of a different conduct, the royal monster struck his claws to his heart. The great redeeming circumstance of the attachment of his dependants is indisputable. His servants adhered to him even when there was danger in so doing, and they wept for him when he died. Thus there is at least one inaccuracy in the wellknown lines which Samuel Johnson wrote upon his fall:

"At length his sovereign frowns-the train of state
Mark the keen glance, and watch the sign to hate.
Where'er he turns, he meets a stranger's eye,
His suppliants scorn him, and his followers fly;
Now drops at once the pride of awful state,
The golden canopy, the glittering plate,
The regal palace, the luxurious board,
The liveried army, and the menial Lord.

With age, with cares, with maladies opprest,
He seeks the refuge of monastic rest;
Grief aids disease, remembered folly stings,
And his last sighs reproach the faith of kings.”*

* Vanity of Human Wishes.

THOMAS MORE was born in Milk-street, Cheapside, in the city of London, in the year 1480, or nine years after the birth of Cardinal Wolsey. He was the son of Sir John More, one of the justices of the Court of King's Bench. Sir John lived to the advanced age of ninety, dying in 1533, only two years before his great son, who had so much reverence for him, that when he was Chancellor of England, in passing through Westminster Hall to the Chancery, he never failed to fall on his knees and ask his father's blessing if he saw the old man sitting in the court. Thomas was educated at St. Anthony's school in Threadneedle-street, one of the many free schools which then existed in London, " to teach all that will come." The master of St. Anthony's was Nicholas Hart, a scholar of some celebrity. About his fifteenth year young More was placed in the household of Cardinal Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England. This was in accordance

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with the custom of those times, when the sons even of great noblemen were sent to be brought up in the houses of great prelates. Thus, as we have seen in the life of Cardinal Wolsey, the young Earl of Northumberland had been trained in that great churchman's household. These prelates seem always to have entertained some men of learning, from whose instructions the young men committed to their charge or service derived many advan tages. In after times More neatly characterised Morton as a man of great natural wit, very well learned, and honorable in behaviour, lacking nowise ways to win favor." The Cardinal, who loved natural wit in others, became much attached to him. At Christmas there were merry plays given in the lord cardinal's palace. "At Christmas-tide," says his son-in-law and biographer, Roper, "More would suddenly sometimes step in among the players, and, never studying for the matter, make a part of his own there presently among them, which made the lookers on more sport than all the players beside. In whose wit and towardness the Cardinal much delighting, would often say of him to the nobles that dined with him- This child here, waiting at the table, whosoever shall live to see it, will prove a marvellous man.'"* When Thomas More entered the household of the pri mate Morton he became known to the learned John Colet, the founder of St. Paul's school, who used to say

"There was but one wit in England, and that was young Thomas More." Having remained about two years with the Cardinal, More, in 1497, went to Oxford. He had rooms in St. Mary's Hall, but carried on his studies at Canterbury College. Here he studied Greek, which was now beginning to be publicly taught in the University, though not without strong opposition. More was uncommonly fortunate in his instructors; his Greek professor was the learned and pains-taking Grocyn, one of the great revivers of true classical literature, a native of Bristol, an alumnus of Winchester school, and a student of New College, Oxford, whose great object it had been

* Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More, edited by Singer,