Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/445

Rh 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, the solicitor-general, he denounced as a perjurer. The jury at once returned a verdict of guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged at Tyburn. Before leaving the court More denied that any approved doctor of the church had admitted that a temporal lord could or ought to be head of the spirituality; when the papal authority was first threatened he had devoted seven years to a study of its history, and had arrived at the conclusion that it was grounded on divine law and prescription; he confessed that he had never consented to the king's union with Queen Anne (cf. 3rd Rep. of Deputy-Keeper of Records, pp. 240-1; Mémoires de Michel de Castelnau, ed. J. Le Laboureur (1731), i. 415-18; Letters and Papers, viii. 385 sq.; Archæologia, xxvii. 361-74). His favourite daughter, Margaret, met him on the Tower wharf as he came from Westminster, and he gave her his blessing and words of comfort. On 5 July he wrote her his last letter (in English), full of kindly remembrances to her and other members of his household, and at the same time he thanked in Latin an Italian friend, Antonio Bonvisi, for his sympathy. Later in the day the king commuted the sentence of hanging to that of beheading—a favour which More grimly expressed the hope that his friends might be spared—and before nine o'clock next morning he was executed on Tower Hill. His composure on the scaffold is probably without parallel. ‘I pray thee see me safely up,’ he said to the lieutenant on reaching the steps, ‘and for my coming down let me shift for myself.’ With a light-hearted jest he encouraged the headsman to perform his duty fearlessly (cf., Spectator, No. 449). He moved his beard from the block with the remark that ‘it had never committed treason’, told the bystanders that he died ‘in and for the faith of the catholic church,’ and prayed God to send the king good counsel. The king gave permission to his wife and children to attend his funeral.

More's body was buried in the church of St. Peter in the Tower; and, according to a Latin life of Fisher written in Queen Mary's reign (Arundel MS. 152, f. 233), Fisher's body, after lying seven years in All-hallows' churchyard, was removed to More's grave. Cresacre More states that Fisher's body was re-interred beside that of More within a fortnight of the former's death. More had, in 1532, set up a tomb for himself in Chelsea Church (cf . . Epist. 426 in App.), and Weever and Fuller both assert that his headless corpse was ultimately conveyed thither by his daughter. Neither Stapleton nor Cresacre More gives any hint of this; and William Roper, in his will (4 Jan. 1577-8), speaks of the More vault at Chelsea as the spot where his father-in-law ‘did mind to be buried,’ but clearly implies that he was buried elsewhere. More's head, after being parboiled, as was customary, was affixed to a pole and exhibited on London Bridge. In November 1535 it was reported to have turned black and been thrown into the river (Letters and Papers, ix. 294). Sir Richard Morison [q. v.], in his answer to Cochlæus, written in 1536, speaks of it as being still on the bridge in that year. But, according to Stapleton, it was privately purchased by his daughter Margaret within a month of its exposure, and she preserved it in spices till her death in 1544. She was buried in Chelsea Church, and the head is doubtfully said to have been buried with her. On the other hand, her husband, who had property in the parish of St. Dunstan's, Canterbury, was buried in 1578 in what was known as the Roper chancel in the church there. An ancient leaden box discovered in the Roper vault was opened in June 1824, and contained a head, which was assumed to be More's (Gent. Mag. 1824, i. 626;, pp. 436-7).

Catholic Europe was startled by the news of More's death. Cardinal Pole asserted in his ‘Pro Ecclesiæ Unitatis Defensione,’ f. xciii, which he forwarded to Henry soon afterwards, that utter strangers wept at hearing the news. Pope Paul III extolled him as ‘excelling in sacred learning and courageous in the defence of truth,’ and prepared a bull excommunicating Henry for the crime. Charles V declared that had he had such a councillor he would have preferred to lose his best city. In order to allay the threatening excitement, the English ambassadors at foreign courts were instructed to announce that More and Fisher were found traitors by due course of law (Letters and Papers, ix. 70;, Memorials, . i. 360). An illustrated ‘Expositio fidelis de Morte Thomæ Mori et quorundam aliorum insignium Virorum in Anglia’ appeared at Paris in 1535 and Antwerp in 1536, and described in detail the martyr's death. Versions were also issued in French, Spanish, and German (Letters and Papers, ix. 395-6). The Latin poets on the continent freely drew parallels between More and Socrates, Seneca, Aristides, Boethius, or Cato (cf. prefatory verses in Opera Omnia, 1689).

Gregory XIII, on succeeding to the papacy