The cairn

Chapter 85: Sir Thomas More.

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About This Book

A compact miscellany of short essays, anecdotes, prayers, poems, and biographical sketches that collects reflections on grief, maternal love, benevolence, virtue, taste, and historical episodes. The pieces alternate personal memories, moral aphorisms, humorous and touching anecdotes, and brief portraits of public figures, often framed as letters, epitaphs, or short narratives. Recurring themes include the effects of sorrow and joy, domestic affection, charity, the vicissitudes of fortune, and the consolations of faith and art. The tone moves between intimate recollection and light moralizing, presenting varied, self-contained vignettes meant to instruct, console, and amuse.

Sir Thomas More.

During his confinement in the Tower, Sir Thomas wrote the following lines on the wall of his prison chamber, with a coal, for ink he was not allowed.

“Ey, flatterynge fortune, looke you never so fayre,

Nor never so pleasantly begin to smyle,

Although thou wouldst my ruynes all repayre,

During my life thou shalt not me beguyle;

Trust, I shall, God, to enter in a while

Thye haven of heaven, sure and uniforme,

Ever after thie calme, looke I for noe storme.”

Of the several foreigners entertained and patronised by Sir Thomas More, Erasmus was the most esteemed: but he was irritated and offended by an epigram addressed to him from Holland, to which place Erasmus had taken a horse of Sir Thomas More’s, sent for the purpose of conveying him to the coast.