Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/225



Thomas had issue by his first wife Jane, the daughter of John Colt, of Colt's Hall in Essex, one son, named after his grandfather John, and three daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cecilia. Sir Thomas had the three daughters first, and his wife very much desired a boy. At last he had this son who proved little better than an ideot, as is shown in the countenance of his picture at Well-hall. Upon which Sir Thomas, it is said, told his Lady, She had prayed so long for a boy, that she had now one who would be a boy as long as he lived. However he had all the advantages that a good and ingenious education could give him, by which his natural parts seem to have been improv'd. Among Erasmus's Letters we have one written to him by that great man, in which he stiles him a youth of great hopes, and tells him, that he might not seem to make him no returns for his little presents, and so many of his friendly letters, he now sent him a nut, which he would not have him despise as a trifle, since it was a very elegant one, to wit an Ovidian nut. Altho' were it otherwise he could not be thought to