 In 1499 Erasmus accompanied one of his pupils, William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, to England. The visit led to important connections. He made life-long friends, among them the humanists William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, who inspired him to take up the study of Greek, and John Colet who shared his scorn for scholastic theology and drew him toward biblical studies. He was on close terms also with Thomas More, later Lord Chancellor of England, with whom he collaborated on translations of Lucian, and he found a patron in William Warham, archbishop of Canterbury, who granted him an ecclesiastical benefice in Aldington, Kent. His illegitimate birth disqualified Erasmus from taking up benefices, but he received a papal dispensation through the intervention of the nuncio Andrea Ammonio, another of his English connections. Eventually he drew a steady income from pensions and benefices. A stipend, which he received as councilor to Charles V, was paid only irregularly, however.