Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/87

 Bullen) to cast fantasy unto one of the French king's sisters. Which thing (because of the enmity and war that was at that time between the French king and the emperor, whom, for the cause before remembered, he mortally maligned) he was very desirous to procure. And for the better achieving thereof requested Longland Bishop of Lincoln, being ghostly father to the king, to put a scruple into his grace's head, that it was not lawful for him to marry his brother's wife. Which the king not sorry to hear of, opened it first to Sir Thomas More, whose counsel he required therein, showing him certain places of Scripture that seemed somewhat to serve his appetite. Which when he had perused, and thereupon, as one that never had professed the study of divinity, himself excused to be unmeet many ways