passage by þe grace of god, hoo haffe yow and alle yowris in his gracius kepyng body and soule. Worshipfull Syr, haffe me excuset of myn endytyng for I can do none other wyse bot as corse of merchandise askes.
Vreten at Cales the xiiij day of June
By yowr pore bedeman
Symonde L. 🜨
Endorsed.
To my Right Worshipfull and … Syr and my gode master Thomas Thorpe in þe medyll Temple yn London.
A Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir Thomas More
THE chief sources here used for More's letters are the following :
I. Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, Oxford, 1906- .
4 volumes.
II. The Workes of Sir Thomas More Knyght, sometyme Lorde
Chauncellour of England, wrytten by him in the Englysh
tonge, London, 1557.
III. Thomas Stapleton : ' Vita Thomae Mori ' in Tres Thomae,
Douay, 1588.
Stapleton carried manuscript letters of More with him to
Douay. These he incorporated, in whole or in part, in his Vita
Thomae Mori, published when the Roman Catholics were most
hopeful, just before the sailing of the Armada. His extracts
are often very brief ; and the few which can be compared with
the complete letters preserved elsewhere are found sometimes
not to give the most interesting part of the letter. (See cap. iii.
845", Introduction, and W. H. Hutton, Sir Thomas More, 1885,
p. vi.)
For most of the English letters those preserved in the
British Museum and the Public Record Office, and epitomized in
J. S. Brewer's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII no opening
words are given ; the formal phrases being in many cases almost
identical. Twenty of the Latin letters (3-5, 14, 24, 59, 64, 74,
80-4, 93, 95, 152, 155-6, 177, 204) are printed by Jortin in his
Life of Erasmus, 1760, vol. ii. I am greatly indebted to M. Del-
court for allowing me to use his manuscript notes of More's
correspondence ; and to Professor de Vocht of Louvain for
communicating to me his discoveries among the letters of Crane-
velt. 1 ELIZABETH FRANCES ROGERS.
1. I. i. 114.
Erasmus to More. Vix vllis ... 28 October 1499, Oxford.
1 I have to thank the Library of Princeton University for the loan of a beautiful
copy of More's English works, and am particularly grateful to Mr. Percy S. Allen of
Merton College, who has generously read the proofs and made valuable suggestions.
