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Excerpt from Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, Vol. 2 of 10: From the Earliest Times Till the Reign of King George IV (Classic Reprint)This extraordinary man, so interesting in his life and in his death, was born in the year 1480, near the end of the reign of Edward IV. He was the son of Sir John More, a Judge of the Court of King's Bench, who lived to see him Lord Chancellor. The father's descent is not known; but he was of an honour able though not distinguished family, and he was entitled to bear arms, a privilege which showed him to be of gentle blood, and of the class which in every other country except ours is considered noble. The old Judge was famous for a facetious turn, which he transmitted to his son. There is only one of his sayings handed down to us, and this, we must hope, was meant rather as a compliment to the good qualities of his own partner for life than as a satire on the fair sex. He would compare the multitude of women which are to be chosen for wives unto a bag full of snakes, having among them eel: now, if a man should put his hand into this bag, he may chance to light on the eel; but it is a hundred to one he shall be stung by a snake.e The future Chancellor sprung from that rank of life which is most favourable to mental cultivation, and which has produced the greatest number of eminent men in England; for, while we have instances of gifted individuals overcoming the disadvantages of high birth and affluence as well as of obscurity and poverty, our Cecils and Walpoles, our Bacons and Mores, have mostly had good education and breed ing under a father's care, — with habits of frugality, and the necessity for industry, energy, and perseverance to gain dis tinction in the world. |
