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Introduction xi English friends determined to satisfy his desire, and between them gave him money for the journey. But he had reckoned without the law revived by Henry VII, forbidding the export of precious metals; the custom-house officers at Dover took his gold, and left him to embark with a limp purse and an angry heart. It was a bitter blow, one which Erasmus could never forgive nor forget; and years afterwards he wrote of his spoliation as vehemently as if the incident had but just happened. Italy out of his reach, Erasmus had to settle again at Paris, with occasional flights to the Netherlands or to Orleans, when plague raged in the capital. In 1505 his English friends persuaded him to revisit them, and arranged a more successful plan for reaching his Italian goal. The sons of Boerio, the Genoese physician of Henry VII, were returning home, and Erasmus was appointed their tutor. At last in the summer of 1506 he could cross the Alps. The first step was to take his doctor’s degree at Turin, and then the party went on to Bologna. His studies there were rudely interrupted by the papal siege, which drove him and his pupils
