Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/33

 where priestes be to familiare and bere all the rule beinge at meall tyde, bedde and borde within the place. Nether came these nonnis then unto my howse in Antwerpe I take God to recorde. And as for Dicke Purser, who attended upon me at London 8 or 9 daies, veryly the chylde lay with me that lytell whyle and fetched me meat, whom I taught to say by herte his pater Noster, Ave, and Credo yn Englyshe, wyth the two prayers folowynge in the Ortulus anime, to saye them in the morninge and evenynge, and thys, yn good faith, was all the heresie that I taught him. I had ben an undiscreit maister so sodenly in so lytell space to have taken forthe the chylde oute of his pater noster unto the sacrament of the Auter, seynge the chylde was not yet of so ful age as to come unto Goddis borde. But this lowde lye his Maister More souked owt of the boyes botickis to fede his ungracious affectis when he whipped him naked tayd unto the tree of his trowthe.'

Sir Thomas's zeal against supposed heresie was reported to have carried him too far in his resentments against the persons of those who favoured it. His Confutation of Tindal's Answer to his Dialogues, is a proof of this: since there he tells a parcel of stories of Sir Thomas Hitton, Richard Bayfelde, George Constantine, Thomas Bylney, andTewksberry, most of them burnt, as serve to very little other purpose than representing those men as the weakest fools as well as the most vicious and hardned knaves.

All parties, it has been observed, have got a scurvy trick of lying for the truth. But it is not at all to be wonderd that they make no scruple of telling a lie,