To most of the biographies of More a certain fragrance
of incense clings, which is not the incense which a grateful
posterity burns to men who have done gallant service
for mankind, but the incense which the Catholic Church
burns to its saints in order to intoxicate the senses of the
faithful.

More, in fact, died a Catholic martyr, and the Catholic
Church has not produced so many eminent thinkers
and outstanding personalities since the Reformation that
it could become tired of extolling the fame of More to its
own greater glory. Not everything that More did or wrote
was glorious in the sight of the Catholic Church, and for
this reason the biographies of More are somewhat one-
sided.

The most unprejudiced is the earliest of his biographies,
written by his son-in-law, William Roper, probably in
the year 1557.

Roper lived in More's house for sixteen years; he is
an honest fellow, simple and sober, and we may place full
reliance on his narrative. But Roper was too small a

-81-