Elyot had suffered some disappointments as a courtier in the days of Wolsey, who lavished the royal favours on churchmen. In a letter to Lord Cromwell, he describes himself with a very narrow income, supporting his establishment, "equal to any knight in the country where I dwell who have much more to live on;" but a new office, involving considerable expense in its maintenance, to which he had been just appointed, he declares would be his ruin, having already discharged "five honest and tall personages."--"I wot not by what malice of fortune I am constrained to be in that office, whereunto is, as it were, appendent loss of money and good name, all sharpness and diligence in justice now-a-days being everywhere odious." And this was at a time when "I trusted to live quietly, and by little and little to repay my creditors, and _to reconcile myself to mine old studies_." This letter conveys a favourable impression of the real character of this learned man; but Elyot had condescended abjectly to join with the herd in the general scramble for the monastic lands; and if he feigned poverty, the degradation is not less. There are cruel epochs in a great revolution; moments of trial which too often exhibit the lofty philosopher shrinking into one of the people. It is probable that he succeeded in his petition, for I find his name among the commissioners appointed to make a general inquiry after lands belonging to the Church, as also to the colleges of the universities, in 1534. But in this day of weakness Elyot sunk far lower than petitioning for suppressed lands. Elyot was suspected of inclining to Popery, and being adverse to the new order of affairs. His former close intimacy with Sir Thomas More contributed to this suspicion, and now, it is sad to relate, he renounces this ancient and honourable friendship! Peter denied his Master. "I beseech your good lordship now to lay apart the remembrance of the amity betwixt me and Sir Thomas More, which was but _usque ad aras_, as is the proverb, considering that I was never so much addicted unto him as I was unto truth and fidelity towards my sovereign lord." Was the influence of such illustrious friendships to be confined to chimney-corners? Had Elyot not listened to the wisdom, and revered the immutable fortitude, of "his great friend and crony?"--he, the stern moralist, who, in his "Governor," had written a remarkable chapter on "the constancy of friends," and had illustrated that passion by the romantic tale of Titus and Gesippus, where the personal trials of both parties far exceed those of the Damon and Pythias of antiquity, and are so eloquently developed and so exquisitely narrated by the great Italian novelist.