Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/93

 and Sir Thomas More from Cambray the king was as earnest of persuading Sir Thomas More to agree to the matter of his marriage as before, by many and divers ways provoking him thereunto, for which, as it was thought, he the rather soon after made him Lord Chancellor, and farther declaring unto him that though at his going over sea to Cambray he was in utter despair thereof, yet he had conceived since some good hope to compass it. For albeit his marriage, being against the positive laws of the church, and against the written law of God, was holpen by the dispensation, yet was there another thing found out of late, he said, whereby his marriage appeared to be so directly against the law of nature that it could in no wise by the church be dispensable, as Doctor Stokesley, whom he had then [newly] preferred to be Bishop of London, and in that case chiefly credited, was able to instruct him: with whom he prayed him in that point to confer. But for all his conference with him he saw nothing of such force as could induce him to change his opinion therein. Which notwithstanding, the bishop showed himself in his report of him to the king's highness so good and