Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/27

 in quo cum annis 54 fideliter ministrasset idem Officium filio suo primogenito Thomæ reliquit. Fuit is Gulielmus domi forisque munificens, mitis, misericors, incarceratorum, oppressorum, et pauperum baculus. Genuit ex Margareta uxore quam unicam habuit) filios duos et filias tres, ex ijs vidit in vita sua nepotes et pronepotes, uxorem in virili aetate amisit, viduatus uxore castissime vixit annis 33. Tandem, completis in pace diebus, decessit in senectute bona ab omnibus desideratus die quarto mensis Jan. Anno Christi salvatoris 1577. aetatis vero sue 82.

Mr. Roper seems to have been very well qualified for a writer of Sir Thomas's Life, but his affection for him has had some influence on his pen, so as instead of a history, he has wrote a panegyric. As great and as good a man as Sir Thomas was, it's certain he was not altogether without his foibles. The principal of these seems to me to have been too great an affectation of singularity. Somewhat of this appeared in his very dress; he used, we are told, to wear his gown awry upon one shoulder, and so to appear as if one shoulder was higher than the other. Archbishop Cranmer seems to have been of this mind that Sir Thomas was somewhat too conceited and desirous of esteem, and therfore wherein he had once said his mind, would not vary therefrom that he might not for ever distain or blemish his fame and estimation.