Lettes of Thomas More. 628. 19 Aug 1517. London. Deventer MS. 91, f, 94. E. p. 177: F. p. 317: HN: Lond. vii, 4 : LB. 522.

Thomas More Eramus. S.P.D.

The procrastination of our Polgrani's departure every day caused you to receive both my letters and those of others much later than either I wanted or you ought, for it seemed most convenient to relate mine to you, who had brought yours to me. Thus it was necessary to add to the former those present, by whom the reason for the delay may be apparent to you, and at the same time to understand what is now going on with us: who, if ever else, we are now most engaged in sorrow and distress, with many dying on every side, almost all who are at Oxford, who are at Cambridge, and who are in London , are, within a few days, prostrate, having lost many of their best and most honorable friends; and in these (which I am sorry to be a pain to you also) our Ammonius Andrew, in whom both letters and all good things will do a great loss. He seemed to himself greatly protected against the contagion of his diet by moderation; by which act he thought that, when he fell into almost no one whose whole family had not labored, no one of his own had yet touched that evil: which he boasted to me and to many besides, not very many hours before he was extinguished. For in this sweat no one perishes except on the first day.

I and my wife and children were still untouched, and the rest of the family were all recovered. I assure you that there is less danger in the battle than in the city. Now, as I hear, he begins to follow Caleti, when we are pushed out to him to serve on the mission; as if it were little to have lived in the contagion, unless we also follow. But what should you do? What the lot will bring is ferendurn. I put my mind to everything that happened. Goodbye

Dilatus ad procrastinatus Polgrani nostri quotidie iturieiltis discessus effecit ut et meas literas et aliorum serius multo quam aut ego volebam aut tu debebas acciperes, Videbatur enim commodissime relaturus ad te meas, qui tuas ad me attulisset. Sic necesse fuit prioribus praesentes addere, quibus constare tibi dilationis ratio possit, simul uti quid nunc agatur apud nos intalligas: qui si unquam alias, nunc maxime in maerore et peiculo versamur, multis undique morientibus, omnibus fere qui Oxoniae, qui Cantabrigiae, qui Londini, sunt, intra paucos dies decumbentibus, amissis plurimis optimis atque honestissimis amicis; atque in his (quod tibi quoque dolori esse doleo) Andrea nostro Ammonio, in quo et literae et omnes boni magnam fecere iacturam. Is valde sibi videbatur adversus contagionem victus moderatione munitus; qua factum putauit ut, quum in nullum pene incideret cuius non tota familia laborauerat, neminem adhuc e suis id maluin attigerit: id quad ipse et mihi et multis praeterea iactauit non admodum multis horis antequam extinctus est. Nam hoc sudore nemo nisi primo die perit.

Ego uxorque ac liberi adhuc intacti, reliqua familia tota reualuit. Hoc tibi affirmo, minus periculi in acie quam in urbe esse. Nunc, ut audio, seuire Caleti incipit, quum nos eo extrudimur legatione functuri; tanquam parum sit in contagione vixisse, nisi sequamur etiam. Sed quid facias? Quod sors feret, ferendurn est. Ego animun mihi in omnem euentum composui. Tu vale. Raptim Londini 19th Angnsti, [M.D.XX.]

I and my wife and children were still untouched, and the rest of the family were all recovered. I assure you that there is less danger in the battle than in the city. Now, as I hear, he begins to follow Caleti, when we are pushed out to him to serve on the mission; as if it were little to have lived in the contagion, unless we also follow. But what should you do? What the lot will bring is ferendurn. I put my mind to everything that happened. Goodbye

Note. Ammonius' death can be dated in 1517 from. Ep. 642 and many other lettorg. From evidonce now available it is possible to decide between 17 and 18 August as the precise day (cf. Ep. 218 intro). On 17 August he signed his will (Knight, Life of Cole p. 213), presumably at Westminator. A letter from Vannes (p. 76) to Wolsey states that his death occurred, after twenty hours' illness (of, Ep. 639. 22n) at 9 pm. (hesterna nocte hora nona; Brewer ii. 3602. Cf. also Ep. 624.). This must have been 17 August; for his death was to Foxe at St, Cross, by Winchester, on 18 August; when he wrote to Claymond, President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, informing him of the fact, and conferring upon him the living of Bishop's Cleve, in Gloucostershiro, which he had givon to Ammonius only fifteen days before, on a vacancy arising through the sweating-sickness (Orig. letter at C.C.C.). It may be noted that Ammonius' canonry ab Westminster was filled with almost equal promptitude, being conferred by Henry upon Linnacre on 19 August. (Brewer ii. 3624). And the purpose of Vannes' letter cited above (clearly 18 August) to ask for one of Ammonius' benefices.

Pepy's Diary. 19 Aug 1661. At the office all the morning; at noon the children are sent for by their mother my Lady Sandwich (age 36) to dinner, and my wife goes along with them by coach, and she to my father's and dines there, and from thence with them to see Mrs. Cordery, who do invite them before my father goes into the country, and thither I should have gone too but that I am sent for to the Privy Seal, and there I found a thing of my Lord Chancellor's (age 52)¹ to be sealed this afternoon, and so I am forced to go to Worcester House, where severall Lords are met in Council this afternoon. And while I am waiting there, in comes the King in a plain common riding-suit and velvet cap, in which he seemed a very ordinary man to one that had not known him. Here I staid till at last, hearing that my Lord Privy Seal had not the seal here, Mr. Moore and I hired a coach and went to Chelsy, and there at an alehouse sat and drank and past the time till my Lord Privy Seal came to his house, and so we to him and examined and sealed the thing, and so homewards, but when we came to look for our coach we found it gone, so we were fain to walk home afoot and saved our money.

Note 1. This "thing" was probably one of those large grants which Clarendon quietly, or, as he himself says, "without noise or scandal", procured from the king. Besides lands and manors, Clarendon states at one time that the king gave him a "little billet into his hand, that contained a warrant of his own hand-writing to Sir Stephen Fox (age 34) to pay to the Chancellor the sum of £20,000, (approximately 10 million dollars in the year 2000) of which nobody could have notice". In 1662 he received £5,000 out of the money voted to the king by the Parliament of Ireland, as he mentions in his vindication of himself against the impeachment of the Commons; and we shall see that Pepys, in February, 1664, names another sum of £20,000 given to the Chancellor to clear the mortgage upon Clarendon Park; and this last sum, it was believed, was paid from the money received from France by the sale of Dunkirk. B.

Pepy's Diary. 19 Aug 1665. Slept till 8 o'clock, and then up and met with letters from the King (age 35) and Lord Arlington (age 47), for the removal of our office to Greenwich, Kent [Map]. I also wrote letters, and made myself ready to go to Sir G. Carteret (age 55), at Windsor; and having borrowed a horse of Mr. Blackbrough, sent him to wait for me at the Duke of Albemarle's (age 56) door: when, on a sudden, a letter comes to us from the Duke of Albemarle (age 56), to tell us that the fleete is all come back to Solebay [Map], and are presently to be dispatched back again. Whereupon I presently by water to the Duke of Albemarle (age 56) to know what news; and there I saw a letter from my Lord Sandwich (age 40) to the Duke of Albemarle (age 56), and also from Sir W. Coventry (age 37) and Teddiman; how my Lord having commanded Teddiman with twenty-two ships¹.

Note 1. A news letter of August 19th (Salisbury), gives the following account of this affair:-"The Earl of Sandwich being on the Norway coast, ordered Sir Thomas Teddeman with 20 ships to attack 50 Dutch merchant ships in Bergen harbour; six convoyers had so placed themselves that only four or five of the ships could be reached at once. The Governor of Bergen fired on our ships, and placed 100 pieces of ordnance and two regiments of foot on the rocks to attack them, but they got clear without the loss of a ship, only 500 men killed or wounded, five or six captains among them. The fleet has gone to Sole Bay to repair losses and be ready to encounter the Dutch fleet, which is gone northward" (Calendar of State Papers, 1664-65, pp. 526, 527). Medals were struck in Holland, the inscription in Dutch on one of these is thus translated: "Thus we arrest the pride of the English, who extend their piracy even against their friends, and who insulting the forts of Norway, violate the rights of the harbours of King Frederick; but, for the reward of their audacity, see their vessels destroyed by the balls of the Dutch" (Hawkins's "Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland", ed. Franks and Grueber, 1885, vol. i., p. 508). Sir Gilbert Talbot's "True Narrative of the Earl of Sandwich's Attempt upon Bergen with the English Fleet on the 3rd of August, 1665, and the Cause of his Miscarriage thereupon", is in the British Museum (Harl. MS., No. 6859). It is printed in "Archaeologia", vol. xxii., p. 33. The Earl of Rochester, Kent [Map] also gave an account of the action in a letter to his mother (Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography", fourth edition, vol. iv., p. 611). Sir John Denham (age 50), in his "Advice to a Painter", gives a long satirical account of the affair. A coloured drawing of the attack upon Bergen, on vellum, showing the range of the ships engaged, is in the British Museum. Shortly after the Bergen affair forty of the Dutch merchant vessels, on their way to Holland, fell into the hands of the English, and in Penn's "Memorials of Sir William Pen (age 44)", vol. ii., p. 364, is a list of the prizes taken on the 3rd and 4th September. The troubles connected with these prizes and the disgrace into which Lord Sandwich (age 40) fell are fully set forth in subsequent pages of the Diary. Evelyn writes in his Diary (November 27th, 1665): "There was no small suspicion of my Lord Sandwich (age 40) having permitted divers commanders who were at ye taking of ye East India prizes to break bulk and take to themselves jewels, silkes, &c., tho' I believe some whom I could name fill'd their pockets, my Lo. Sandwich himself had the least share. However, he underwent the blame, and it created him enemies, and prepossess'd ye Lo. Generall (Duke of Albemarle (age 56)), for he spake to me of it with much zeale and concerne, and I believe laid load enough on Lo. Sandwich at Oxford". (of which but fifteen could get thither, and of those fifteen but eight or nine could come up to play) to go to Bergen; where, after several messages to and fro from the Governor of the Castle, urging that Teddiman ought not to come thither with more than five ships, and desiring time to think of it, all the while he suffering the Dutch ships to land their guns to their best advantage; Teddiman on the second pretence, began to play at the Dutch ships, (wherof ten East India-men,) and in three hours' time (the town and castle, without any provocation, playing on our ships,) they did cut all our cables, so as the wind being off the land, did force us to go out, and rendered our fire-ships useless; without doing any thing, but what hurt of course our guns must have done them: we having lost five commanders, besides Mr. Edward Montagu, and Mr. Windham. This Mr. Windham had entered into a formal engagement with the Earl of Rochester, Kent [Map], "not without ceremonies of religion, that if either of them died, he should appear, and give the other notice of the future state, if there was any". He was probably one of the brothers of Sir William Wyndham, Bart. See Wordsworth's "Ecclesiastical Biography", fourth. edition, vol. iv., p. 615. B.