Volume II Part 36 (1/2)

”My lords,” he said, ”I have but to say that, like as the blessed Apostle St. Paul was present at the death of the martyr Stephen, keeping their clothes that stoned him, and yet they be now both saints in heaven, and there shall continue friends for ever, so I trust, and shall therefore pray, that though your lords.h.i.+ps have been on earth my judges, yet we may hereafter meet in heaven together to our everlasting salvation; and G.o.d preserve you all, especially my sovereign lord the king, and grant him faithful councillors.”

[Sidenote: He returns to the Tower.]

[Sidenote: Margaret Roper.]

He then left the hall, and to spare him the exertion of the walk he was allowed to return by water. At the Tower stairs one of those scenes occurred which have cast so rich a pathos round the closing story of this ill.u.s.trious man. ”When Sir Thomas,” writes the grandson, ”was now come to the Tower wharf, his best beloved child, my aunt Roper, desirous to see her father, whom she feared she should never see in this world after, to have his last blessing, gave there attendance to meet him; whom as soon as she had espied she ran hastily unto him, and without consideration or care for herself, pa.s.sing through the midst of the throng and guard of men, who with bills and halberts compa.s.sed him round, there openly in the sight of them all embraced him, and took him about the neck and kissed him, not able to say any word but 'Oh, my father! oh, my father!' He, liking well her most natural and dear affection towards him, gave her his fatherly blessing; telling her that whatsoever he should suffer, though he were innocent, yet it was not without the will of G.o.d; and that He knew well enough all the secrets of her heart, counselling her to accommodate her will to G.o.d's blessed pleasure, and to be patient for his loss.

”She was no sooner parted from him, and had gone scarce ten steps, when she, not satisfied with the former farewell, like one who had forgot herself, ravished with the entire love of so worthy a father, having neither respect to herself nor to the press of people about him, suddenly turned back, and ran hastily to him, and took him about the neck and divers times together kissed him; whereat he spoke not a word, but carrying still his gravity, tears fell also from his eyes; yea, there were very few in all the troop who could refrain hereat from weeping, no, not the guard themselves. Yet at last with a full heart she was severed from him, at which time another of our women embraced him; and my aunt's maid Dorothy Collis did the like, of whom he said after, it was homely but very lovingly done. All these and also my grandfather witnessed that they smelt a most odoriferous smell to come from him, according to that of Isaac, 'The scent of my son is as the scent of a field which the Lord has blessed.'”[461]

[Sidenote: The last days in the Tower.]

More's relation with this daughter forms the most beautiful feature in his history. His letters to her in early life are of unequalled grace, and she was perhaps the only person whom he very deeply loved. He never saw her again. The four days which remained to him he spent in prayer and in severe bodily discipline. On the night of the 5th of July, although he did not know the time which had been fixed for his execution, yet with an instinctive feeling that it was near, he sent her his hair s.h.i.+rt and whip, as having no more need for them, with a parting blessing of affection.

He then lay down and slept quietly. At daybreak he was awoke by the entrance of Sir Thomas Pope, who had come to confirm his antic.i.p.ations, and to tell him it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at nine o'clock that morning. He received the news with utter composure. ”I am much bounden to the king,” he said, ”for the benefits and honours he has bestowed upon me; and so help me G.o.d, most of all am I bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid me so shortly out of the miseries of this present world.”

Pope told him the king desired that he would not ”use many words on the scaffold.” ”Mr. Pope,” he answered, ”you do well to give me warning, for otherwise I had purposed somewhat to have spoken; but no matter wherewith his Grace should have cause to be offended. Howbeit, whatever I intended, I shall obey his Highness's command.”

He afterwards discussed the arrangements for his funeral, at which he begged that his family might be present; and when all was settled, Pope rose to leave him. He was an old friend. He took More's hand and wrung it, and quite overcome, burst into tears.

”Quiet yourself, Mr. Pope,” More said, ”and be not discomforted, for I trust we shall once see each other full merrily, when we shall live and love together in eternal bliss.”[462]

As soon as he was alone he dressed in his most elaborate costume. It was for the benefit, he said, of the executioner who was to do him so great a service. Sir William Kingston remonstrated, and with some difficulty induced him to put on a plainer suit; but that his intended liberality should not fail, he sent the man a gold angel in compensation, ”as a token that he maliced him nothing, but rather loved him extremely.”

[Sidenote: He leaves the Tower.]

”So about nine of the clock he was brought by the Lieutenant out of the Tower, his beard being long, which fas.h.i.+on he had never before used, his face pale and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes often towards heaven.” He had been unpopular as a judge, and one or two persons in the crowd were insolent to him; but the distance was short and soon over, as all else was nearly over now.

[Sidenote: On the scaffold.]

[Sidenote: Death.]

The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot upon the ladder. ”See me safe up,” he said to Kingston. ”For my coming down I can s.h.i.+ft for myself.” He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic church, and a faithful servant of G.o.d and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. ”Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,” he said. ”Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.” The executioner offered to tie his eyes. ”I will cover them myself,” he said; and binding them in a cloth which he had brought with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay while he moved aside his beard. ”Pity that should be cut,” he murmured, ”that has not committed treason.” With which strange words, the strangest perhaps ever uttered at such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom closed for ever.

”So,” concludes his biographer, ”with alacrity and spiritual joy he received the fatal axe, which no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul was carried by angels into everlasting glory, where a crown of martyrdom was placed upon him which can never fade nor decay; and then he found those words true which he had often spoken, that a man may lose his head and have no harm.”[463]

This was the execution of Sir Thomas More, an act which was sounded out into the far corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder as well for the circ.u.mstances under which it was perpetrated, as for the preternatural composure with which it was borne. Something of his calmness may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their colour from the simplicity of his faith; and never was there a Christian's victory over death more grandly evidenced than in that last scene lighted with its lambent humour.

History will rather dwell upon the incidents of the execution than attempt a sentence upon those who willed that it should be. It was at once most piteous and most inevitable. The hour of retribution had come at length, when at the hands of the Roman church was to be required all the righteous blood which it had shed, from the blood of Raymond of Toulouse to the blood of the last victim who had blackened into ashes at Smithfield. The voices crying underneath the altar had been heard upon the throne of the Most High, and woe to the generation of which the dark account had been demanded.

[Sidenote: The effect of these executions in Europe.]

In whatever light, however, we may now think of these things, the effect in Europe was instantaneous and electrical. The irritation which had accompanied the excommunication by Clement had died away in the difficulty of executing the censures. The papal party had endeavoured to persuade themselves that the king was acting under a pa.s.sing caprice.

They had believed that the body of the people remained essentially Catholic; and they had trusted to time, to discontent, to mutiny, to the consequences of what they chose to regard as the mere indulgence of criminal pa.s.sion, to bring Henry to his senses. To threats and anathemas, therefore, had again succeeded fair words and promises, and intrigues and flatteries; and the pope and his advisers, so long accustomed themselves to promise and to mean nothing, to fulminate censures in form, and to treat human life as a foolish farce upon the stage, had dreamed that others were like themselves. In the rough awakening out of their delusion, as with a stroke of lightning, popes, cardinals, kings, emperors, amba.s.sadors, were startled into seriousness; and, the diplomatic meshwork all rent and broken, they fell at once each into their places, with a sense suddenly forced upon them that it was no child's play any longer. The King of England was in earnest, it seemed.

The a.s.sumption of the supremacy was a fixed purpose, which he was prepared to make a question of life and death; and with this resolution they must thenceforward make their account.

[Sidenote: The news arrives at Rome of the deaths of the Carthusians.]

On the 1st of June, Ca.s.salis wrote[464] from Rome that the French amba.s.sador had received a letter concerning certain friars who had been put to death in England for denying the king to be Head of the Church.

The letter had been read in the consistory, and was reported to be written in a tone of the deepest commiseration. There had been much conversation about it, the French bishops having been louder than any in their denunciations; and the form of the execution was described as having been most barbarous. Some of the cardinals had said that they envied the monks their deaths in such a cause, and wished that they had been with them. ”I desired my informant,” Ca.s.salis said, ”to suggest to these cardinals, that, if they were so anxious on the subject, they had better pay a visit to England.” And he concluded, in cipher, ”I cannot tell very well what to think of the French. An Italian told me he had heard the Most Christian king himself say, that although he was obliged to press upon the pope the requests of the king of England, yet that these requests were preposterous, and could not be granted.”

[Sidenote: And of Fisher, which the pope will make of more account than the martyrdom of Becket.]