[26] R.C.  Christie, Etienne Dolet, ch. xxiv.

But public morals ever lag behind private; and in the sixteenth century private standards of truth and honour were not so high as they are now.  Here again we may find one main cause in the absence of personal security.  In these days of settled government, when thought and speech are free, it is scarcely possible to realize what men’s outlook upon life must have been when walls had ears and a man’s foes might be those of his own household.  In Henry VII’s reign England had not had time to forget the Wars of the Roses, and claimants to the throne were still occasionally executed in the Tower.  Even under the mighty hand of Henry VIII ministers rose and fell with alarming rapidity.  When princes contend, private men do well to hold their peace; lest light utterances be brought up against them so soon as Fortune’s wheel has swung to the top those that were underneath.  In matters of faith, too, it was supremely necessary to be careful; for unguarded words might arouse suspicions of heresy, to be followed by the frightful penalties with which heresy was extirpated.  On great questions, therefore, men must have kept their tongues and thoughts in a strict reserve:  candour and openness, those valuable solvents of social humours, can only have been practised by the unwise.

Truth is one of those things in which to him that hath shall be given.  It is a common jest in the East that professional witnesses come daily to the law-courts waiting to be hired by either side.  The harder truth is to discover, with the less are men content.  With many inducements to dissimulation and no great expectations of personal honesty, men are likely to traffic with expediency and to be adept in justifying themselves when they forsake the truth.

Some examples of this may be found in Erasmus’ letters.  When he was in Italy in 1509, Henry VII died.  His English patron, Lord Mountjoy, was intimate with Henry VIII.  A few weeks after the accession a letter from Mountjoy reached Erasmus, inviting him to return to England and promising much in the young king’s name.  The letter was in fact written by Ammonius, an Italian, who afterwards became Latin secretary to the king.  He was recognized as one of the best scholars of the day; and there can be no doubt that the letter was his composition.  Mountjoy was a sufficiently keen scholar to sit up late at night over his books, and to be chosen as a companion to the young Prince Henry in his studies; but such autograph letters by him as survive show that he wrote with difficulty even in English, and it is impossible to suppose that he would have kept an accomplished Latinist in his employ merely to act as copyist to his effusions.  Moreover, Erasmus, writing a few years later, says that he recognized the letter as Ammonius’ work, not from the handwriting, which he had forgotten, but from the style.  Nevertheless he allowed it to be published in 1519 as his patron’s.