ncealment, and that all may know how far from
mendacious, how veritable on the contrary, or at least not
unfounded, was that report which arose about you: take, I say, this
in brief,--that I have ascertained, not by report alone, but by
testimony than which none can be surer, that you managed the
bringing out of the whole book entitled _Regii Sanguinis
Clamor_, and corrected the printer's proofs, and composed,
either alone, or in association with one or two others, the Epistle
to Charles II. which bears Ulac's name. Of this your own name
'ALEXANDER MORUS,' subscribed to some copies of that Epistle, has
been too clear and ocular proof to many witnesses of the fact for
you to be able to deny the charge or to get rid of it.... There are
several who have heard yourself either admit, on interrogation,
that that Epistle is yours, or declare the fact spontaneously....
If you ask on what evidence I, at such a distance, make these
statements, and how they can have become so certain to myself, I
reply that it is not on the evidence of rumour merely, but partly
on that of most scrupulous witnesses who have most solemnly made
the assertions to myself personally, partly on that of letters
written either to myself or to others. I will quote the very words
of the letters, but will not give the names of the writers,
considering that unnecessary in matters of such notoriety
independently. Here you have first an extract from a letter to me
from the Hague, the writer of which is a man of probity and had no
common means of investigating this affair:--'I have ascertained
beyond doubt (_exploratissimum mihi est_) that Morus himself
offered the copy of the _Clamor Regii Sanguinis_ to some other
printers before Ulac received it, that he superintended the
correction of the errors of the press, and that, as soon as the
book was finished, copies were given and distributed by him to not
a few.'... Take again the following, which a highly honourable and
intelligent man in Amsterdam writes as certainly known to himself
and as abundantly witnessed there:--'It is most certain that almost
all through these parts have regarded Morus as the author of the
book called _Regii Sanguinis Clamor_; for he corrected the
sheets as they came from the press, and some copies bore the name
of Morus subscribed to the Dedicatory Epistle, of which also he
was the author. He himself told a certain