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x Introduction until he attracted the notice of the Bishop of Cambray, who took him as a secretary and then sent him to the University of Paris. Once free, Erasmus was not to be caught again. He remained a priest, but he would not re-enter the monastery. In Paris he lived poorly and worked hard, chiefly at his own studies, though he was driven to teach that he might have money to buy books. Relief came from this drudgery when one of his pupils, Lord Mountjoy, invited him to England. He stayed in London, went down to a country house in Hertfordshire, and visited the Ropers in their home at Well Hall in Kent : whence he walked with More to Eltham and was received at the Palace by the royal children. In the autumn he paid a short visit to Oxford, and stayed in St. Mary’s College, the house of his order. It was at this time that he formed his life-long friendships with Colet, Grocyn, Linacre, and More ; to whom were added later Warham and Fisher, William Latimer, Tunstall and Pace. Like all scholars of the Renaissance he had long had the ambition to go to Italy, but poverty had kept him distant. His
