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[MORE, Sir Thomas]. William ROPER (1496-1578). Manuscript copy of Roper's 'Life of Sir Thomas More', written in an early 17th-century secretary hand, without title, inscribed on first page at the head in an italic hand, 'In hoc signo + vinces', 63 numbered pages, folio; annotation in an early 18th-century hand on first blank recording the loan of the manuscript to 'Mr Hearne who published it at Oxon in 8vo', annotation in a different hand above, half brown morocco. Provenance. Edward Burton (of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1716); John Burns (signature, 1921).
The manuscript includes the complete text of the biography of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, beginning 'Fforasmuch as Sir Thomas Moore Knight, sometime L[or]d Chancel[lou]r of England, a man of singular vertue and of a cleane unspotted conscience and witnesseth Erasmus more pure and white than the whitest snow, and of such an Angelicall witt as England he sayth never had the like before, nor never shall againe...' William Roper (1496-1578), was married to More's erudite daughter, Margaret; his sympathetic account of More, first published in Paris in 1626 as The Mirror of verture in worldly Greatness, is the earliest biography.
Thomas Hearne (1678-1735), Deputy Keeper of the Bodleian Library, published the present manuscript, with other material relating to Sir Thomas More in 1716. His preface describes the present manuscript as belonging to Edward Burton of Oriel College, Oxford, 'juvene perhumano omnisque antiquitatis studiosissimo'; he suggests that the inscription at the head ('In hoc signo + vinces') indicates that it was copied directly from the autograph or from an exact transcript.
The manuscript includes the complete text of the biography of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law, beginning 'Fforasmuch as Sir Thomas Moore Knight, sometime L[or]d Chancel[lou]r of England, a man of singular vertue and of a cleane unspotted conscience and witnesseth Erasmus more pure and white than the whitest snow, and of such an Angelicall witt as England he sayth never had the like before, nor never shall againe...' William Roper (1496-1578), was married to More's erudite daughter, Margaret; his sympathetic account of More, first published in Paris in 1626 as The Mirror of verture in worldly Greatness, is the earliest biography.
Thomas Hearne (1678-1735), Deputy Keeper of the Bodleian Library, published the present manuscript, with other material relating to Sir Thomas More in 1716. His preface describes the present manuscript as belonging to Edward Burton of Oriel College, Oxford, 'juvene perhumano omnisque antiquitatis studiosissimo'; he suggests that the inscription at the head ('In hoc signo + vinces') indicates that it was copied directly from the autograph or from an exact transcript.
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