Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/160

 verily, quoth I. Did he tell you, quoth he, of the revelations that she had concerning the King's Grace? Nay forsooth, quoth I, nor if he would have done, I would not have given him the hearing; nor verily no more I would indeed, for sith she hath been with the King's Grace her self, and told him, me-thought it a thing needless to tell me, or to any man else. And when Father Rich perceived that I would not hear her revelations concerning the King's Grace, he talked on a little of her vertue, and let her revelations alone; and therewith my supper was set upon the board, where I required him to sit with me; but he would in no wise tarry, but departed to London. After that night I talked with him twice, once in mine own house, another time in his own garden at, the Friars, at every time a great space, but not of any revelations touching the King's Grace, but only of other mean folk, I knew not whom, of which things, some were very strange, and some were very childish. But albeit, that he said, he had seen her lie in her trance in great pains, and that he had at other times taken great spiritual comfort in her communication; yet did he never tell me that she had told him those tales her self; for if he had, I would, for the tale of Mary Magdalene which he told me, and for the tale of the Hostie, with which, as I have heard she said she was houseled at the King's mass at Calice: if I had heard it of him, as told unto himself by her mouth for a revelation, I would have both liked him and her the worse. But whether ever I heard the same tale of Rich or of Risby, or of neither of them both, but of some other man since she was in hold, in good faith I cannot tell; but I wot well when or wheresoever I heard it, me thought it a tale too marvellous to be true, and very likely that she had told some man her dream, which told it out for a revelation. And in effect, I little doubted but that some of these tales that were told of her were untrue; but yet, sith I never heard them reported as spoken by her own mouth, I thought nevertheless that many of them might be true, and she a very vertuous woman too; assome lyes be peradventure written of some that be saints in heaven, and yet many miracles indeed done by them for all that.

After this, I being upon a day at Sion, and talking with