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the Ld. Chancellor More was wont to recreate himself and contemplate.

It was at More's house in Chelsea that Holbein was first presented to Henry VIII.; and, according to tradition, Erasmus was also a visitor there. He says:

Sir James Mackintosh's Life of More.

With him you might imagine yourself in the Academy of Plato. But I should do injustice to his house by comparing it to the Academy of Plato, where numbers and geometrical figures and sometimes moral virtues were the subject of discussion; it would be more just to call it a school and an exercise of the Christian religion. All its inhabitants, male and female, applied their leisure to liberal studies and profitable reading, although piety was their first care. No wrangling, no idle word, was heard in it; no one was idle ; every one did his duty with alacrity, and not without a temperate cheerfulness.

This description of More's household by Erasmus may have referred to the Bucklersbury mansion, with which he was also undoubtedly familiar.

Faulkner's Chelsea, vol. i. chap. ii.

The old mansion [Sir Thomas More's] stood at the north end of Beaufort Row, extending westward at the distance of about one hundred yards from the water-side. Some fragments of the walls, doors, and windows, and parts of the foundation are still [1829] to be seen adjoining to the burying-ground belonging to the Moravian Society. Till within a very few years the ground remained in a state that might have admitted of ascertaining the site of the Hawkins's house [Sir Thomas More's]; but buildings have now vol. i. p. 42. shut it out from search, and nought remains but the name, Beaufort Row, to tell how it was once honored.

Miss

Anecdotes,

The house was built in 1521. In the old chronicles of Chelsea it was known as Buckingham House in 1527, and was called Beaufort House in 1682. It was immediately facing the present Battersea Bridge, a little back from the river and about where Beaufort Street now runs. It was purchased by Sir Hans Sloane, and taken down in 1740.

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More was imprisoned in the Tower for thirteen months, and arraigned at Westminster Hall, May 7, 1535. was beheaded on Tower Hill.

He

Sir Thomas

1726.

The head of Sir Thomas More was putt upon London Bridge where, as trayter's heads are sett upon poles, and having remained some moneths there being to be cast into the T. More's Thames, because roome should be made for diverse Life of others who in plentiful sorte suffered martyrdome for More, the same supremacie ; shortly after it was brought by his daughter Margarett, least as she stoutly affirmed before the Councill, being called before them for the same matter it should be foode for fishes which she buried where she thought fittest. After he [More] was beheaded, his trunke was interred in Chelsey Church, near the middle of the south wall, where was some slight monument erected, which being Lives of worn by time, about 1644, Sir Lawrence of Persons: Chelsey (no kinne to him) at his own proper costs and charges erected to his memorie a handsome inscription of marble.

Aubrey's

Eminent

More.

This inscription was written by More himself, as Erasmus has shown. It has several times been renewed.

History of London,

vol. ii. :

Suburbs.

In the old parish church near the river More's monument still stands [1883]. The church is an interesting building of the most mixed character. So far, happily, not very much hurt Loftie's by restorers. More made a chapel for his family tomb at the east end of the south aisle, and put up a black slab to record the fact. It has been twice improved,' The Western and is said to have originally contained a reference to his persecution of heresy, for which a blank is now left in the renewed inscription, just the kind of evasion one can imagine the straightforward chancellor would himself have particularly disliked. The architectural ornaments of the monument are in what was then the new Italian style. It is uncertain where More is buried. Some say here; some say in the Tower Chapel.

His head was carried by his daughter to Canterbury, and buried in the Roper Vault in St. Dunstan's Church there.

ARTHUR MURPHY.

1727-1805.

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ARTHUR MURPHY, Walpole's writing actor,' who was

nevertheless 'very good company,' was a clerk in a banking-house in the City,' and an unsuccessful player. On quitting the stage he determined to study law, was refused a call by the Benchers of Gray's Inn and the Temple because of his connection with the dramatic profession, but was admitted a barrister by the Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1757. He occupied chambers at No. 1 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, for upwards of a quarter of a century. The old house, in 1885, remained as in Murphy's time.

During the latter years of his life Murphy lived at Hammersmith, at the end of the Mall and on the Terrace overlooking the river.' This was afterwards called Hammersmith Terrace; and Murphy's house, the last one at the west end of the row, was standing in 1885. Its back windows look directly upon the Thames.

Murphy died at No. 14 Queen's Row, Knightsbridge, in a house little changed in 1885, when it was No. 59 Brompton Road, and was buried by the side of his mother in the parish Church of St. Paul, Queen Street, Hammersmith.

Murphy was a member of the Beefsteak Society, which met in his time in Covent Garden Theatre (see CHURCHILL, p. 51). He frequented Tom's Coffee House, No. 17 Russell Street, Covent Garden (see CIBBER, p. 55), the Bedford under the Piazza, Covent Garden' (see CHURCHILL, p. 51), and George's in the Strand,' which stood at No. 213 Strand, near Essex Street and opposite the New Law Courts.

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