Page:The Life of Sir Thomas More (William Roper, ed by Samuel Singer).djvu/120

 to add his consent. To this Sir Thomas More mildly made answer, saying, "No man living is there, my lords, that would with better will do the thing that should be acceptable to the king's highness than I, which must needs confess his manifold benefits and bountiful goodness, most benignly bestowed upon me. Howbeit, I verily hoped I should never have heard of this matter more, considering that I have, from time to time always from the beginning, so plainly and truly declared my mind unto his grace, which his highness ever seemed to me, like a most gracious prince, very well to accept, never minding, as he said, to molest me more therewith. Since which time any further thing that was able to move me to any change could I never find: and if I could there is none in all the world that would have been gladder of it than I." Many things more were there of like sort uttered on both sides. But in the end when they saw they could by no manner of persuasions remove him from his former determination, then began they more terribly to touch him, telling him that the king's highness had given them in commandment if they could by no gentleness win him, in his name with his great ingratitude to charge him: that never was there servant to his sovereign so villainous, nor subject to his prince so traitorous as he. For he by his subtle sinister sleights most unnaturally procuring and provoking him to set forth a book of