onquer the emotions which he feared would rouse within him a riot of
impious passions. With fasting and cruel discipline he would fain have
killed the devil that agitated him, whenever he passed a pretty girl in
the street. As a lay Carthusian he wore a hair-shirt next his skin,
disciplined his bare back with scourges, slept on the cold ground or a
hard bench, and by a score other strong measures sought to preserve his
spiritual by ruining his bodily health. But nature was too powerful for
unwholesome doctrine and usage, and before he rashly took a celibatic
vow, he knelt to fair Jane Colt--and rising, kissed her on the lips.

When spiritual counsel had removed his conscientious objections to
matrimony, he could not condescend to marry for love, but must,
forsooth, choose his wife in obedience to considerations of compassion
and mercy. Loving her younger sister, he paid his addresses to Jane,
because he shrunk from the injustice of putting the junior above the
older of the two girls. "Sir Thomas having determined, by the advice and
direction of his ghostly father, to be a married man, there was at that
time a pleasant conceited gentleman of an ancient family in Essex, one
Mr. John Colt, of New Hall, that invited him into his house, being much
delighted in his company, proffering unto him the choice of any of his
daughters, who were young gentlewomen of very good carriage, good
complexions, and very religiously inclined; whose honest and sweet
conversation and virtuous education enticed Sir Thomas not a little; and
although his affection most served him to the second, for that he
thought her the fairest and best favored, yet when he thought within
himself that it would be a grief and some blemish to the eldest to have
the younger sister preferred before her, he, out of a kind of
compassion, settled his fancy upon the eldest, and soon after married
her with all his friends' good liking."

The marriage was a fair happy union, but its duration was short. After
giving birth to four children Jane died, leaving the young husband, who
had instructed her sedulously, to mourn her sincerely. That his sorrow
was poignant may be easily believed; for her death deprived him of a
docile pupil, as well as a dutiful wife.

"Virginem duxit admodum puellam," Erasmus says of his friend, "claro
genere natam, rudem adhuc utpote ruri inter parentes ac sorores semper
habitam, quo magis illi liceret illam ad suos mores fingere. Hanc et
literis