Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/473

 Next came the turn of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More, who with three fellow-prisoners, Dr Wilson, Abell, and Fetherstone, priests lately most intimate in the Royal household, were warned that they must swear to the Statutes both of Succession and Supremacy. All declined to do so. Six weeks were given them to consider the matter; and visits were paid by Cromwell and other councillors to More and Fisher in the Tower to shake their constancy; but all in vain. Fisher denied that the King was Supreme Head of the Church of England; More said he would not meddle with such questions. Fisher was condemned on June 17, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 22nd. The King was all the more resolved on his death because the Pope had made him a Cardinal on May 20. On July 1 More was brought up for trial on a complex indictment, one article of which showed that he did not, like Fisher, expressly repudiate the King's ecclesiastical supremacy, but only kept silence when questioned about it. He made, as might be expected, an admirable defence, but in vain; and after his condemnation he declared frankly as to the statute that it was against his conscience, as he could never find, in all his studies, that a temporal lord ought to be head of the spiritualty. He was sentenced to undergo a traitor's death at Tybum; but it was commuted by the King to simple decapitation on Tower Hill, where he suffered on July 6.

These executions filled the world with horror, both at home and abroad. The Emperor Charles V is said to have declared that he would rather have lost the best city in his dominions than such a councillor as Sir Thomas More. In Italy More was vehemently lamented, and men related with admiration the touching devotion of his daughter, Margaret Roper, who broke through the guards to embrace him on his way to the Tower. He was indeed a man to inspire affection far beyond his own family circle. Full of domestic feeling, yet no less full of incomparable wit and humour, dragged into the service of the Court against his will on account of his high legal abilities and intellectual gifts, he had refused to yield one inch to solicitations against the cause of right and conscience. A true saint without a touch of austerity, save that which he practised on himself in secret, he lived in the world as one who understood it perfectly, with a breadth of view and an innate cheerfulness of temper which no external terrors could depress. Of a mind altogether healthy, he was not beguiled by superstition or corrupted by gifts, but held his course straight on. Brought up in the household of Cardinal Morton, he had early devoted himself to learning, and became the special friend of Erasmus. His learning was entirely without pedantry, even as his humour was without gall. He loved men, he loved animals, he loved mechanism, and every influence that tended to humanise or advance society. He had served his King in diplomatic missions with an ability that was fully appreciated, and as Lord Chancellor with an integrity that was