her father, by her earnest suit at length got leave
to go unto him. At whose coming, after the seven
psalms and litany said^ (which whensoever she
came unto him, ere he fell in talk of any worldly
matter, he used accustomably to say with her),
among other communication he said unto her : ' I
believe, Meg, that they that have put me here ween
that they have done me a high displeasure ; but I
assure thee on my faith, mine own good daughter,
if it had not been for my wife and ye that be my
children, I would not have failed long ere this, to
have closed myself in as strait a room and straiter
too. But since I have come hither without mine
own desert, I trust that God of His goodness will
discharge me of my care, and with His gracious
help supply my lack among you. I find no cause,
I thank God, Meg, to reckon myself in worse case

1 I.e. of course, the seven penitential psalms and Litany of the
Saints.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



209



here than at home, for methinks God maketh me a
wanton and setteth me on His lap and dandleth
me.' . . . And at another time, when he had first
questioned with my wife a while of the order of his
wife, children, and state of house in his absence,
he asked her how Queen Anne did. ' In faith,
father,' quoth she, 'never better.' 'Never better,
Me,^ ! ' quoth he ; ' alas ! Meg, alas ! it pitieth me
to remember into what misery she shall shortly
come."'i

It was to Margaret that he had written, with a
piece of charcoal, this most beautiful letter, a short
time after his committal to the Tower :

" Mine own good daughter, our Lord be thanked
I am in good health of body and in good quiet of
mind : and of worldly things I no more desire than
I have. I beseech Him make you all merry in the
hope of Heaven. And such things as I somewhat
longed to talk with you all concerning the world to
come, our Lord put them into your minds, as I
trust He doth and better too, by His Holy Spirit,
who bless j-ou and preserve you all. Written with
a coal by your tender loving father, who in his
prayers forgetteth none of you all, nor your babes,
nor your nurses, nor your good husbands, nor your
good husbands' shrewd wives, nor your father's
shrewd wife neither, nor our other friends. And
thus fare ye heartily well, for lack of paper.'"-

' Roper, pp. 83, 84. Cresacre More makes him add: "These
dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads
off like footballs. But it will not be long ere her head will dance
the like dance." (p. 231.)

2 English IVor/ts, p. 1430. •

O



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



Alas, that this beloved daughter should have
been the instrument of his keenest trial ! She had
herself taken the oath with the condition, "as far as
was lawful," and she wrote to urge him to do the
same. He replied sadly, " I hear many terrible
things towards me ; but surely they all touched me
never so near, nor were they so grievous unto me,
as to see you^ my well-beloved child, in such
vehement piteous manner, labour to persuade unto
me the thing, wherein I have, of pure necessity for
respect unto mine own soul, so often given you so
precise an answer before."

Stapleton gives us a rhunie of her arguments.
He was more bound to the King, she urged, than
any man in England, and therefore ought the rather
to obey his will in a case that was not evidently
repugnant to God's law. Now it did not seem
credible that all the wise and learned men of
England should all impugn the will of God, and
that therefore he should beware of how he pinned
his soul upon Bishop Fisher. Besides, how could he
a layman go against the judgment of almost all the
Bishops and Doctors of the realm ; should he not
rather accommodate his conscience to theirs, was
it not presumption to set himself up against them
all ? He answered her with beautiful humility but
with invincible firmness. He condemned no one,
for taking the oath, " for some may do it upon
temporal hopes, or fear of great losses, for which I
will never think any have taken it ; for I imagine
that nobody is so frail and fearful as m}'self. Some
may hope, that God will not impute it unto them



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



for a sin, because they do it by constraint. Some
may hope to do penance presently after, and others
are of opinion that God is not offended with our
mouth, so our heart be pure, but as for my part, I
dare not jeopardy myself upon these vain hopes."
As to the numbers against him, he had on his side
many more in other parts of Christendom and all
the doctors of the Church.^

It is easy to forgive the devoted daughter for
her efforts to save that beloved life, and indeed it
is clear that she did not really wish him to do
anything against his conscience.

In reply to a beautiful letter in which her father
urged her to cease from labouring to change his
mind, saying that his only grief ("and that a deadly
grief and much more deadly than to hear of mine
own death, for the fear thereof, I thank our Lord,
the fear of hell, the hope of heaven, and the Passion
of Christ daily more and more assuage ") was to
think that his dear ones might suffer through his
steadfastness, she replied in beautiful and loving
words :

" Father, what think you hath been our comfort
since your departing from us ? Surely the experi-
ence we have had of your life past, and godly
conversation, and wholesome counsel and virtuous
example, and a surety not only of the continuance
of that same, but also a great increase by the

' Cresacre More, p. 230. " But go we now to them that are
dead before and that are, I trust, in Heaven ; I am sure that it is not
the fewer part of them that, all the time while they lived, thought in
some of the things that way that I think now."



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



goodness of our Lord, to the great rest and gladness
of your heart, devoid of all earthly dregs, and
garnished with the noble vesture of heavenly virtues,
a pleasant palace for the Holy Spirit of God to rest
in, who defend you (as I doubt not, good father, but
of His goodness He will) from all trouble of mind
and body, and give me, your most loving, obedient
daughter and handmaid, and all us your children
and friends, to follow that that we praise in you,
and to our only comfort remember and commune
together of you, that we may in conclusion meet
with you, mine own dear father, in the bliss of
Heaven, to which our most merciful Lord hath
bought us with His Precious Blood."

Poor Lady More however could not understand
her husband at all. When she came to see him she
reproached him roundly for preferring to stay
among the rats and mice in a close, filthy prison
when he might be enjoying his liberty, the good-will
of the King, and the company of his family in his
"right fair house" at Chelsea.

" I muse what a God's name you mean here still
thus fondly to tarry," she cried in her vexation.

Sir Thomas listened to her quietly, and then
said, cheerfully, " I pray thee, good Mistress Alice,
tell me one thing."

" What is that ? " saith she.

" Is not this house as near heaven as mine own ? "

"Tilly vally, tilly vally," quoth she, in her
homely fashion. "Bone Dens, man, will this gear
never be left ? "



BLESSED THOMAS MORE 213



" Well then, Mistress Alice, if it be so," quoth
he, " it is very well. For I see no great cause why
I should much joy in my house or -in anything
thereunto belonging, when if I should but seven
years lie buried under the ground and then arise
and come hither again, I should not fail to find
some therein that would bid me get out of doors
and tell me it was none of mine. ^What cause have
I then to like such a house as would so soon forget
his master ? "

" Again, tell me, Mistress Alice, how long do
}0u think we may live and enjoy it ? "

" Some twenty years," said she.

"Truly," replied he, "if you had said some
thousand years it had been somewhat ; and yet he
were a very bad merchant that would put himself
in danger to lose eternity for a thousand years ;
how much the rather, if we are not sure to enjoy
it one day to an end."-^

Another time she much lamented that his cell
door was shut on him at night and made fast by
the jailer. "For by my troth," quoth she, "if the
door should be shut upon me, I would ween it would
shut up my breath." At that word of hers the
prisoner laughed in his mind ; but he durst not
laugh aloud nor say nothing to her, for somewhat
indeed he stood in awe of her, and had his finding-
there much part of her charity for alms, but he
could not but laugh inwardly, while he wist well
enough that she used on the inside to shut every

' Roper, p. Sg ; Cresacre More, p. 237.

- His finding, i.e., that which had to be found, his sustenance.



214 BLESSED THOMAS MORE

night full surely her own chamber to her, both
doors and windows too, and used not to open them
of all the long night." ^

Yet his privations and sufferings in the Tower
were in reality no laughing matter. Besides his
old disease of the breast, which he had pleaded as
an excuse, in order to resign the Chancellorship,
he was slowly dying of gravel and stone, and
suffered agonies at night from cramp. According
to the strange custom of those da\s, he had to pay
heavily for his board and lodging in the prison,"'
and yet for the smallest comforts he had to depend
on the charity of friends outside. Nevertheless, he
was always himself, cheerful and smiling, with a
merry jest for his friends ; as when he told the
Lieutenant of the Tower, who excused himself for
the poor cheer he was obliged to make him (lest
he should incur the King's displeasure), " Assure
yourself, I do not mislike my cheer, but whensoever
I do, then thrust me out of your doors." Nor did he
neglect his old mortifications. He still wore his
rough hair-shirt in the prison-cell, and still was
wont on certain days " to punish his body with
whips and knotted cords." Thus brightly and
peacefully did he prepare himself for martyrdom.

His enemies however would not leave him in
peace. His imprisonment grew more rigorous as
they saw his constancy unchanged. No visits were
allowed to be paid him. The greatest trial however

^ Dialogue of Comjovt, bk. iii. ch. 20. Apud Bridgett, p. 366.
- Ten shillings a week for himself and five shillings a week
for his servant.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE 215

was to be deprived of the services of the Church.
Though forbidden to assist at Holy Mass, he never-
theless still strove to keep the feasts and festivals
by uniting himself in spirit with the Church.
Stapleton tells us that he was accustomed to dress
more carefully when the great feasts came round.

Thus the weary months wore away, and when
Parliament met again in November he was still in
his prison-cell.

This Parliament had the miserable task set it
of justifying, as far as might be, the injustice
already committed. It was accordingly voted that
the oath, which had already been administered to
the prisoners of the Tower, was to be reputed
the very oath intended by the Act of Succession.
At the same time, More was attainted of misprision
of treason,^ grants of land made to him in 1522 and
1525, were resumed ; he was declared to be a sower
of sedition and guilty of gross ingratitude to his
royal benefactor.

At the end of the 3'ear Lady More and his
children petitioned Henry for his pardon and
release on the ground of his sickness and their
poverty. They pleaded that his offence sprang not
from malice or obstinacy, but " of such a long con-
tinued deep-rooted scruple as passeth his power
to avoid and put away." In May, 1535, the
appeal was renewed. Lady More had been put
to such distress that she had been obliged to sell
her clothes to pay her husband's fees for board

' Save for a pension from the Order of St. John of Jerusalem
he was now utterly penniless. (Hutton, p. 253.)



2i6 BLESSED THOMAS MORE

in prison. But Henry was obdurate. By his side
was one who had sworn More's destruction ever
since the day he had refused to be present at her
coronation. Meanwhile Parliament proceeded in
its fell work of destruction. The title of Supreme
Head of the Church of England was conferred on
the King, and it was made high treason for any
person, after the ist day of February next following
[1535, according to our style] , " maliciously to wish,
will, or desire, by words or writing," to deny any
of the royal titles, or to slanderously and maliciously
publish or pronounce " that the King was a heretic,
schismatic, tyrant, infidel, or usurper of the crown."

'* It was a wonderful surrender of liberty," writes
Canon Dixon, " this law to make words high
treason ; and by historians who cannot understand
why the guardians of the realm should have yielded
such tremendous power into the King's hands, it
is assumed that there was some terrible crisis,
struggle, or danger impending, which was to be
met by extraordinary measures. The truth is, that
these extraordinary measures were taken in order
to create a crisis."^

More's position was thus daily becoming more
dangerous. Parliament had made it high treason
to " imagine " anything against the royal titles.
If the prudent confessor would not speak or write,
at least his silence might be interpreted as a
" malicious wish, will, or desire," and thus his life

1 Dixon, vol. i. p. 234.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE 217

was at last brought by law within the King's
power. ^

But it was sought, if possible, to make him speak.
In April, 1535, Cromwell went to the Tower and
asked the prisoner for his opinion on these statutes ;
were they lawful in his eyes or no ? More declared
himself a faithful subject of the King, and declined
any further answer. On May the 7th the scene was
repeated. Cromwell threatened that the King would
compel Sir Thomas to give a precise reply. To
this he replied that it would be hard to make him
choose betw^een the loss of his soul and the destruc-
tion of his body — a saying on which much stress
was laid at his trial. Cromwell, who was accom-
panied by Cranmer, Audley, the Duke of Suffolk,
and the Earl of Wiltshire, Anne Boleyn's father,
tried every expedient to make him commit himself.
At last, baffled by the unvarying prudence of his
answers, they brutally taunted him with cowardice.
" Why did he not speak out against the statute
if he cared not for life ? It appeared well that he
was not content to die." More answered with
noble simplicity: " I have not been a man of such
holy living that I might be bold to offer myself to
death, lest God for my presumption might suffer
me to fall." This is the true spirit of the martyrs.
They are not fakirs who rush blindly on death, they
do not expose themselves to it without necessity,
but when the alternative is put before them of
apostasy or death they cheerfully and sweetly
choose the latter, counting it all joy to suffer
' Hutton, p. 254.



21 8 BLESSED THOMAS MORE

tribulation in the cause of Christ. So was it with
Blessed Thomas. To the repeated examinations
with which his persecutors wearied him,^ his
answers were marked by consummate prudence,
as of one who was determined in no way to provoke
persecution, but quietly to wait on the Providence
of God.

Meanwhile he turned with more zeal than ever
to the composition of devotional treatises, a medi-
tation on the Passion of our Lord, a Devotional
Preparation for Holy Communion, and the incom-
parable Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation. " Of
these writings, it may be said that tedious as
the style may appear to modern readers, there are
no more deeply devotional works in the English
language."^ They are "masterpieces, rich in
devotional feeling, in genuine eloquence, and in
brilliant wit."'^ The Dialogue of Comfort has
happily been reprinted in our own da}^, so that
it is better known to the modern reader than most
of the martyr's writings, but still far less known
than it deserves to be. Father Bridgett truly says
that it is " one of the most instructive and in-
teresting books ever written 'to justify the ways
of God to men.' Its earnest and pathetic argu-
ments are relieved by mirth, yet its very mirth
is pathos when we remember the writer and the
time and place of its composition."^

1 Another took place on June the 3rd, and two more during the
following days.

- Hutton, p. 255.

^ W. S. Lilly, Renaissance Types, p. 358.

* Bridgett, p. 395.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE 219

He was still engaged upon his treatise on the
Passion when the end came. " He had just reached
the words, 'They laid hands on Jesus,' when the
hands of Henry's officials were laid on his books,
and he knew that the time of his own passion had
come."

The reason, or rather the excuse, for depriving
the m.artyr of his last solace, was the discovery that
a correspondence had taken place between him and
his fellow-prisoner, Bishop Fisher. Though nothing
material could be discovered from repeated ex-
aminations as to these letters, they were made the
pretext for more rigorous measures. Even Margaret
Roper was henceforth denied access to her father.^

He, however, nothing daunted, closed the
shutters of his cell and sat in darkness, the better
to meditate on the joys of Heaven. When asked
the reason by the lieutenant, he replied, merrily :
" When all the wares are gone the shop windows
might as well be shut." " Yet still by stealth,"
says Cresacre More, " he would get little pieces
of paper, in which he would write divers letters
with a coal, of which my father left me one, which
I account as a precious jewel, afterwards drawn
over by my grandfather's son with ink."^

It was when his books were being taken away
that the famous conversation with Rich, the
Solicitor General, took place, which served in his

' Their last meeting seems to have been on May the 4th, when
they witnessed together the setting forth of the Blessed Carthusians
for their place of martyrdom.

- P. 240.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



enemies' hands to bring the martyr to the longed-
for end.

I will quote Roper's account of it.^

" j\Ir. Rich, afterward Lord Rich, ... Sir
Richard Southwell, and one Mr. Palmer, servant
to the Secretary, w^ere sent to Sir Thomas More
unto the Tower to fetch away his books from him.
And while Sir Richard Southwell and Mr. Palmer
were busy in the trussing up of his books, Mr. Rich,
pretending friendly talk with him, among other
things of a set course, as it seemed, said thus unto
him, ' Forasmuch as it is well known, Mr. More,
that you are a man both wise and learned as well
in the laws of the realm as otherwise, I pray you
therefore, sir, let me be so bold as of good-will to
put unto you this case : Admit there were, sir,'
quoth he, ' an Act of Parliament that the realm
should take me for King, would not you, Mr. More,
take me for King ? ' ' Yes, sir,' quoth Sir Thomas
More, ' that would I.' ' I put the case further,' quoth
Mr, Rich, ' that there were an Act of Parliament
that all the realm should take me for Pope, would
you not then, Mr. More, take me for Pope ? ' ' For
answer, sir,' quoth Sir Thomas More, 'to your first
case, the Parliament may well-, Mr. Rich, meddle
with the state of temporal princes ; but to make
answer to your other case, I will put you this case :
Suppose the Parliament would make a law that
God should not be God, would you then say that
God were not God?' 'No, sir,' quoth he, 'that
would I not ; sith no Parliament may make any
1 It took place on the 12th uf June. (Roper, p. 90.)



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



such law.' ' No more,' said Sir Thomas More (as
Mr. Rich reported of him), ' could the Parliament
make the Kin,s^ Supreme Head of the Church.'

" Upon whose only report was Sir Thomas More
indicted of high treason on the statute^ to deny the
King to be Supreme Head of the Church, unto
which indictment were put these heinous words,
maliciously, traitovoudy, and devilishly.'''

The end was indeed near. On June the 19th, the
three holy Carthusians, William Exmew, Humphrey
Middlemore, and Sebastian Newdigate, were dragged
out to die, and on the 22nd, the feast of St. Alban,
our protomartyr, a still more illustrious victim,
suffered in the person of Cardinal Fisher. Royal
orders were issued bidding the preachers dwell on
his horrible treasons and at the same time on those
of More. The martyr learned the tidings with the
utmost calmness.

On July the ist, he was himself indicted of high
treason at Westminster Hall. A special com-
mission of oyer and temninev had been issued for
the purpose five days earlier to Audley, the Dukes
of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn's
father and brother, four other peers and ten judges.
The indictment was of immense length. It re-
hearsed that the prisoner had in divers ways
infringed the Act of Supremacy, and relied for
proof on his answers to the Council while in the
Tower, and on the alleged conversation with Rich.
More, owing to his infirmities (he was almost a

' 2C Henry VIII. c. 13.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE



dying man) was allowed to be seated.^ With
much dignity he denied the principal charges.
He had never maliciously opposed the King's
second marriage, he had not advised Fisher to
disobey the Act of Supremacy, nor had he described
that Act as a two-edged sword, approval of which
ruined the soul, and disapproval the body. Rich,
who was called to give his account of the conver-
sation in the Tower, he denounced as a perjurer.-
" If I were a man, my lords, that did not regard an
oath, I need not stand in this place at this time as
an accused person. And if this oath of yours,
Mr. Rich, be true, then I pray that I may never
see the face of God, which I would not say were it
otherwise to win the whole world."

As to his having while in prison refused to the
King "maliciously, falsely, and traitorously" his
title of Supreme Head, the only proof that his
enemies had to bring, besides Rich's perjured
testimony, was his own reply to the Secretary and
Council, that as he was dead to the world he did
not care to think of such things, but only of the
Passion of Christ. " I reply," urged the martyr

1 " He was very weak from long imprisonment, and as he
leant upon his staff, his hair now gray and his beard long, his face
still cheerful and content, many must have thought of the strong
man who five years before, as Lord High Chancellor of England, in
that same Court of King's Bench, had knelt down every morning
to ask his father's blessing." (Hutton, p. 262.)

■- He added that Rich was well known to have the reputation
of being "very light of his tongue, a great dicer and of no
commendable fame." And that he knew him well, for they long
had lived in the same parish, and that he was the last person he
would have thought of confiding in.



BLESSED THOMAS MORE 223

quietly, " that your statute cannot condemn me to
death for such silence, for neither your statute nor
any laws in the world punish people except for
words and deeds — surely not for keeping silence."

Nevertheless the jury returned a verdict of guilty,
without even the pretence of deliberating. The
trial was one of those which Lord Macaulay aptly
designated as " murder preceded by mummery,"
and as the martyr well knew, the condemnation
was inevitable. Sentence was accordingly pro-
nounced by the Chancellor " according to the
tenor of the new law." He was sentenced to
be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, to
suffer the disgusting and horrible butchery author-
ized by English law for those found guilty of high
treason, and he heard the terrible sentence with the
utmost serenity.

Then at last he spoke out.^ Hitherto he had
had good reason to hold his peace. But now
that the iniquitous sentence had fallen, it was the
time to speak, and so Sir Thomas More bore solemn
witness before God and man to the glorious cause
for which he was about to suffer, to the ancient
faith of England which King and Parliament
were seeking to destroy. Westminster Hall never
heard words more solemn and more momentous

1 Roper (p. 94) says that he interrupted the Chancellor, who
was beginning to pronounce sentence by reminding him that he
had not complied with the formality of asking the prisoner if he
had anything to say why judgment should not be passed against
him, and that it was then that he spoke out so boldly. But Roper
was not in court. The French account in Castelnau's Memoirs is
by an eye-witness and says he spoke after the sentence.



224 BLESSED THOMAS MORE



than those which fell from the lips of this broken
prematurely aged man standing before his wicked
judges. Thus he spoke, and in him spoke the laity
of old England, true to the ancient paths.