ty by attending divine service, and he was still occupied with his
religious exercises when his Grace of Norfolk entered the church, and to
his inexpressible astonishment saw the keeper of the king's conscience
in the flowing raiment of a chorister, and heard him give "Glory to God
in the highest!" as though he were a hired singer. "God's body! God's
body! My Lord Chancellor a parish clerk?--a parish clerk?" was the
duke's testy expostulation with the Chancellor. Whereupon More, with
gentle gravity, answered, "Nay; your grace may not think that the
king--your master and mine--will with me, for serving his Master, be
offended, and thereby account his office dishonored." Not only was it
More's custom to sing in the church choir, but he used also to bear a
cross in religious processions; and on being urged to mount horse when
he followed the rood in Rogation week round the parish boundaries, he
answered, "It beseemeth not the servant to follow his master prancing on
a cock-horse, his master going on foot." Few incidents in Sir Thomas
More's remarkable career point more forcibly to the vast difference
between the social manners of the sixteenth century and those of the
present day. If Lord Chelmsford were to recreate himself with leading
the choristers in Margaret Street, and after service were seen walking
homewards in an ecclesiastical dress, it is more than probable that
public opinion would declare him a fit companion for the lunatics of
whose interests he has been made the official guardian. Society felt
some surprise as well as gratification when Sir Roundell Palmer recently
published his 'Book of Praise;' but if the Attorney General, instead of
printing his select hymns had seen fit to exemplify their beauties with
his own voice from the stall of a church-singer, the piety of his
conduct would have scarcely reconciled Lord Palmerston to its dangerous
eccentricity.

Amongst Elizabethan lawyers, Chief Justice Dyer was by no means singular
for his love of music, though Whetstone's lines have given exceptional
celebrity to his melodious proficiency:--

"For publique good, when care had cloid his minde,
The only joye, for to repose his sprights,
Was musique sweet, which showd him well inclind;
For he doth in musique much delight,
A conscience hath disposed to do most right:
The reason is, her sound within our eare,
A sympathie of heaven we thinke we heare."

Like James Dyer, Francis Bacon fo