rced by the plague or for reasons of study or health, and
wherever I have lived (I shall say this of myself, arrogantly perhaps,
but truthfully) I have been commended by the most highly commended and
praised by the most praised. There is no land, neither Spain nor Italy
nor Germany nor France nor England nor Scotland, which does not summon
me to partake of its hospitality. And if I am not liked by all (which is
not my aim), at all events I am liked in the highest places of all. At
Rome there was no cardinal who did not welcome me like a brother; in
particular the Cardinal of St. George,[50] the Cardinal of Bologna,[51]
Cardinal Grimani, the Cardinal of Nantes,[52] and the present Pope,[53]
not to mention bishops, archdeacons and men of learning. And this honour
was not a tribute to wealth, which even now I neither possess nor
desire; nor to ambition, a failing to which I have ever been a stranger;
but solely to learning, which our countrymen ridicule, while the
Italians worship it. In England there is no bishop who is not glad to be
greeted by me, who does not desire my company, who does not want me in
his home. The King himself, a little before his father's death, when I
was in Italy, wrote a most affectionate letter to me with his own hand,
and now too speaks often of me in the most honourable and affectionate
terms; and whenever I greet him he welcomes me most courteously and
looks at me in a most friendly fashion, making it plain that his
feelings for me are as friendly as his speeches. And he has often
commissioned his Almoner[54] to find a benefice for me. The Queen sought
to take me as her tutor. Everyone knows that, if I were prepared to live
even a few months at Court, he would heap on me as many benefices as I
cared for; but I put my leisure and my learned labours before
everything. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Primate of all England and
Chancellor of the Realm, a good and learned man, could not treat me with
more affection were I his father or brother. And that you may understand
that he is sincere in this, he gave me a living of nearly 100 nobles,
which afterwards at my wish he changed into a pension of 100 crowns on
my resignation; in addition he has given me more than 400 nobles during
the last few years, although I never asked for anything. He gave me 150
nobles in one day. I received more than 100 nobles from other bishops in
freely offered gifts. Mountjoy, a baron of the realm, formerly my pupil,
giv