came before his presence in a priuye [private] closet, he demaunded "what they had to saye, or to shew him" One of them said "yat there was a boke come to their hands, which they were there to shew his grace." When he saw it, hee demaunded " if any of them could read it." "Yea" sayd George Elyot, "if it please your grace to heare it," "I thought so" sayd the kyng, "for if neede were thou canst say it without booke."
The whole booke beyng read out, the kyng made a long pause, and then sayd, "if a man should pull downe an old stone wall and begyn at the lower part, the vpper part thereof might chaunce to fall vpon his head:" and then he tooke the booke and put it into his deske, and commaunded them vpon their allegiance, that they should not tell to any man, that he had sene the booke.
III
O this account we may add two notices. Sir T. More replying in his Apology to the "Pacifier" [Christopher Saint Germain] in the spring of 1533, gives at fol. 124, the following account of our Author's death—
And these men in the iudgement of thys pytuouse pacyfyer be not dyscrete / but yet they haue he sayth a good zele though. And thys good zele hadde, ye wote well, Simon Fysshe when he made the supplycacyon of beggers. But god gaue hym such grace afterwarde, that he was sory for that good zele, and repented hym selfe and came into the chyrche agayne, and forsoke and forsware all the whole hyll of those heresyes, out of whiche the fountayne of that same good zele sprange. [Also at p. 881, Workes. Ed. 1557.]
This is contrary to the tenour of everything else that we know of the man: but Sir T. More, possessing such excellent means of obtaining information, may nevertheless be true.
