MS in the Chapel of the Relics
Autograph volume of writings by Sir Thomas More while imprisoned in the Tower (17 April 1534 to 6 July 1535, but before 12 June 1535 when he was denied writing materials), left unfinished, 161 leaves. 1534-5.
ff. 1r-156r
• *MrT 19: Sir Thomas More, De tristitia Christi
Autograph draft, with extensive revisions, entitled ‘De tristitia tedio pauore et oratione Christi ante captionem eius’, together with rough notes and drafts for the same work.
First published, as Expositio passionis Domini, in Thomae Mori...omnia...latina opera (Louvain, 1565). Mary Basset's English translation, An exposicion of a parte of the passion of our saviour Iesus Christe, published in Workes (London, 1557), pp. 1350-1404. Yale, Vol. 14, Parts I & II.
ff. 156v-61v
• *MrT 23: Sir Thomas More, Devout Instructions, Meditations and Prayers
Autograph devotional notes in Latin out of which was apparently assembled the Latin ‘godly instruccion’ (beginning ‘Vita per offensam dei seruata erit...’), on the last gathering of the MS.
Workes (1557), pp. 1405-7. Edited from this MS in Yale, Vol. 13, pp. 209-11. Facsimiles of ff. 158r, 159v, in Thomas More's Prayer Book (Yale, 1969), pp. xxx, xxxii; of ff. 156v-61v in Yale, Vol. 14, Part I, and see Part II, 744-5.
Devout Instructions &c. first published in Workes (London, 1557), pp. 1405-18. Yale, Vol. 13, with English translation.