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 formally appointed the Mercers' Company, and no ecclesiastical corporation, the governing body, and he desired the active governors to be ' married citizens ' a sign that his views on marriage had changed since he criticised the Epistle to the Corinthians. He wisely gave permission to the school authorities to alter the statutes in the future as occasion might require. This important business was completed on 18 June 1518, when he handed the book of statutes to Lilly. He next super-intended the erection of a monument for himself in St. Paul's Cathedral, with the simple inscription ' Joannes Coletus,' and he began building a mansion for himself (afterwards tenanted by Wolsey) in the precincts of the Charterhouse at Sheen. On 1 Sept. 1518 he presented to Cardinal Wolsey a thoroughly revised version of the statutes and customs of St. Paul's Cathedral, together with an exhaustive list of the duties attaching to every office, but the new statutes were not accepted by the chapter nor confirmed by the bishop. The book containing them was at one time extant in St. Paul's Cathedral Library, and a portion of it appears in Dugdale's ' History of St. Paul's, p. 360. The original document is not now known to exist. Colet's fame had by this time, spread to Germany, and he was agreeably surprised to receive in May 1519 a letter eulogising his labours from Marquard von Hatstein, canon of Mainz, and a connection of Ulrich von Hutten. Before 11 Sept. following Colet was seized with a mortal illness, and on 16 Sept. he died. Wood states that he was at the time lodging at Sheen. His disease seems to have been dropsy, complicated by a disorder of the liver. He was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, but the Mercers' Company erected a more elaborate monument over his grave than the one he had designed for the purpose. It included a bust with several prose inscriptions in both Latin and English and elegiacs by William Lilly. In 1575-6 and 1617-18 the Mercers' Company restored and embellished it with new marble, but it was destroyed in the fire of 1666. In 1680 Colet's coffin was found under the walls of the old cathedral, and some inquisitive members of the Royal Society examined it without much result. An engraving of the tomb appears in Dugdale's ' History of St. Paul's Cathedral,' and is reproduced in Knight's ' Life of Colet.' A headless bust found in the cathedral vaults in 1809 was engraved in Churton's ' Life of Nowell,' p. 380, as the remains of Nowell's tomb, but there is good reason to believe that this was a fragment of Colet's monument (Notes and Queries, 5th ser. iii. 340). Erasmus passionately bewailed Colet's death in letters to his English friends, and Leland eulogises him in his ' Encomia,' 1549, p. 74.

Colet's last will is dated 22 Aug. 1518. No reference was made here to the Virgin Mary or to saints, and no money was appointed for masses for his soul. Most of his realty he had previously alienated, under dates 8 July 1511 and 10 June 1514, to the Mercers' Company for the endowment of St. Paul's School, but such portions as he retained he bequeathed to his mother's relative, Edmund Knevet, Serjeant-porter to Henry VIII, and to John Colet, son of his uncle William, and small money legacies and books were assigned to his friends, Dr. Aleyn, Dr. Morgan, Thomas Lupset, his amanuensis, and William Garrard, who, with his mother and Nicholas Curleus, was an executor. Erasmus is not mentioned, but in his later years Colet had allowed him a pension. St. Paul's School was rebuilt in 1670 on its original site after the fire of 1666 ; the second building was pulled down in 1823-4. A third building took its place and was demolished in 1884 on the removal of the school to new buildings at Hammersmith.

The bust on Colet's monument was doubtless a portrait of the dean, but it is indistinct in the extant engraving supplied by Dugdale. In a manuscript volume containing the gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, which was copied out under Colet's direction, and was presented by Archbishop Parker to the Cambridge University Library, there is a finely illuminated drawing containing three figures, one of which is subscribed ' Effigies ipsa D. Johis Coletti, Decani S. Pauli.' In 1585 an artist named Segar painted (from the bust on the tomb) another portrait of the dean on the cover of the book of St. Paul's School statutes, which is now among the Mercers' Company archives, and this is reproduced in Mr. Gardiner's 'Register of the School,' 1884. A fine drawing in coloured chalk by Holbein, at Windsor, is also stated to be a portrait of Colet; but as Holbein did not come to England till 1525, it could not have been drawn from the life. Erasmus describes Colet as tall and comely.

Colet's achievements seem slight compared with his posthumous fame. On education alone, where he diminished the ecclesiastical control at the same time that he increased the religious tone, did he exert a practical influence. He printed very few of his books, and their effect must have been consequently small. 'As for John Colet,' wrote Harding to Jewell, 'he hath never a word to show, for he wrote no workes.' His knowledge of Greek the chief source of the New Learning was slight. Hearne contended on slender grounds that he knew nothing of it till he was fifty.