SIR THOMAS MORE.
9
Thomas More returned to the bishop no more, and had not the king soon after died, he was determined to have gone over sea, thinking that being in the king's indignation he could not live in England without great danger.
After this he was made one of the [1]under sheriffs of London, by which office and his learning together (as I have heard him say) he gained without grief not so little as four hundred pounds by the year: sith there was at that time in none of the prince's courts of the laws of this realm any matter of importance in controversy wherein he was not with the one party of counsel. Of whom, for his learning, wisdom, knowledge and experience, men had such estimation, that before he came into the service of King Henry the Eighth,
- ↑ Of this his being so fully employed he gives the following account to his friend Peter Giles in a Letter to him prefixed to his Utopia. Dum causas forenses assidue alias ago, alias audio, alias arbiter finio, alias judex dirimo, dum hic officij causa visitur, ille negocij; dum foris totum ferme diem alijs impartior, reliquum meis relinquo mihi, hoc est literis, nihil.
In urbe Londinensi in qua natus est, annos aliquot Judicem egit in causis civilibus. Id munus, ut minimum habet oneris (nam non sedetur nisi die Jovis usque ad Prandium) ita cum primis honorificum habetur. Nemo plures causas absolvit, nemo se gessit integrius, remissa plerisque pecunia quam ex Præscripto debent qui litigant. Siquidem ante litis contestationem actor deponit tres drachmas, totidem reus, nec amplius quicquam fas est exigere. His moribus effecit ut Civitati suæ longe charissimus esset. Decreverat autem hac fortuna esse contentus, quæ et satis haberet autoritatis, nec tamen esset gravibus obnoxia periculis. Erasmi Epist.
