Accordingly, the aged prelate was brought out of the Tower on the 22nd of June, 1535, and beheaded. His head was stuck upon London Bridge, with his face turned towards the Kentish hills, amid which he had spent so many pleasant years. The body of the old bishop was stripped, and left naked on the spot till evening, when it was carried away by the guards, and buried in Allhallows churchyard at Barking. Such was the manner in which this supreme head of the Church treated his former tutor, and one of the most accomplished and pious men in Christendom.
More, the scholar, the wit, the genius, raised reluctantly to the chancellorship, had there so far deteriorated from the noble mood in which he had written his "Utopia" as to have become, contrary to all its doctrines and spirit, a persecutor. On the 14th of June he was visited in the Tower by Doctors Aldridge, Layton, Curwen, and Mr. Bedle, and there strictly interrogated in the presence of Pelstede, Whalley, and Rice, as to whether he had held any correspondence since he came into the Tower with Bishop Fisher, or others, and what had become of the letters he had received. He replied that George, the lieutenant's servant, had put them into the fire, against his wish, saying there was no better keeper than the fire. He was then asked whether he would not acknowledge the lawfulness of the king's marriage, and his headship of the Church. He declined to give an answer.
At length, on the 1st of July, he was brought out of the Tower, and was conducted on foot through the streets of London to Westminster. He was wrapped only in a coarse woollen garment, his hair had grown grey, his face was pale and emaciated, for he had been nearly a year a close prisoner. This was thought well calculated to teach a lesson of obedience to the people; when they saw how the king handled even ex-chancellors and cardinals. When he arrived, bowed with suffering, and supporting himself on a staff, in that hall where he had presided with so much dignity, all who saw him were struck with astonishment. In order to confound him, and prevent the dreaded effect of his eloquence, his enemies had caused the indictment against him to be drawn out an immense length, and the charges to be grossly exaggerated and enveloped in clouds of words. Sentence of death was pronounced upon him, and he rose to address the Court. In the rudest manner they attempted to silence him, and twice, by their clamour, they succeeded; but the firmness of the noble victim at length triumphed, and he told them that he could now openly avow what he had before concealed from every human being, that the oath of supremacy was contrary to English law. He declared that he had no enmity against his judges. There would, he observed, have always been a scene of contention, and he prayed that as Paul had consented to the death of Stephen, and yet was afterwards called to tread in the same path, and ascend to the same heaven, so might he and they yet meet there. "And so," he added, in conclusion, "may God preserve you all, and especially my lord the king, and send him good counsel."
As he turned from the bar, his son rushed through the hall, fell upon his knees, and implored his blessing; and, on approaching the Tower Wharf, his daughter, Margaret Roper, forced her way through the guard which surrounded him, and, clasping him round the neck, wept and sobbed aloud. The noble man, now clothed with all the calm dignity of the Christian philosopher, summoned fortitude enough to take a loving and a final farewell of her; but as he was moved on, the distracted daughter turned back, and, flying once more through the crowd, hung on his neck in the abandonment of grief. This was too much for his stoicism; he shed tears, whilst with deep emotion he repeated his blessing, and uttered words of Christian consolation. The people and the guards were so deeply affected, that they too burst into tears, and it was some time before the officers could summon resolution to part the father and his child.
On the 6th of July he was summoned to execution, and informed that the king, as an especial favour, had commuted his punishment from hanging, drawing, and quartering, to decapitation. On this Sir Thomas, who had now taken his leave of the world, and met death with the cheerful humour of a man who is well assured that he is on the threshold of a better, replied with his wonted promptitude of wit, "God preserve all my friends from such favour." As he was about to ascend the scaffold, some one expressed a fear lest it should break down, for it appeared weak. "Mr. Lieutenant," said More, smiling, "see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself." The executioner then approached, and asked his forgiveness. More embraced him, and said, "Friend, thou wilt render me the greatest service in the power of any mortal; but," putting an angel into his hand, "my neck is so short, that I fear thou wilt gain little credit in the way of thy profession." The same fear of the eloquence of the illustrious victim which had attempted to stop his mouth on the trial, now forbade him to address the multitude; he therefore contented himself with saying that he died a faithful subject to the king, and a true Catholic before God. He then prayed, and, laying his head upon the block, bade the executioner stay his hand a moment while he put back his beard. For "that," said he, "has never committed any treason." His head was severed at a single blow, and was, like Fisher's, fixed on London Bridge.
But it was not merely in lopping off the heads of honest statesmen and prelates that Henry VIII. now displayed the powers of supreme head over the Church. There was a more tempting prey which allured his avaricious soul, and promised to recruit his exhausted treasury. These were the monasteries, convents, and abbeys. These institutions had grown excessively corrupt through time. Without depending on the reports of Henry's commissioners, whose business it was to make out a case for him against them, there is abundant evidence in contemporary writings that the monks, nuns, and friars were grown extremely sensual and corrupt. Rage and cupidity alike urged Henry to imitate the Reformers of Germany, and seize the spoils of this wealthy body. Cromwell—whom he had appointed Vicar-General, a strange office for a layman—went the whole length with him in those views; nay, he was the man who first turned his eyes on this great attractive mass of wealth, and hallooed him to the spoil. He had told him that, if once he was established by Parliament as head of the Church, all that opulence was his. There can be no doubt that it was to carry out this seizure that Cromwell was put into that very office of Vicar-General, as the only man to do the business, and he went to work upon it with right good will.
The first thing was to appoint a commission, and to obtain such a report as should induce Parliament to pass an act of suppression of the religious houses, and the forfeiture of all their property to the Crown. The Archbishop of Paris, years before, had confidently affirmed, that whenever Wolsey should fall, the spoliation of the Church would quickly follow. To expedite this matter as much as possible, the whole kingdom was divided into districts, and to each district was appointed a couple of commissioners, who were armed with eighty-six questions to propound to the monastic orders. As acknowledgment of the supremacy of the king and approbation of his marriage were made requisites of compliance, there was little chance of escape for any monastery, be its morals what they might.
The visitors had secret instructions to seek, in the first place, the lesser houses, and to exhort the inmates voluntarily to surrender them to the king, and, where they did not succeed, to collect such a body of evidence as should warrant the suppression of those houses; but after zealously labouring at this object through the winter, they could only prevail on seven small houses to surrender. A report was then prepared, which considerably surprised the public by stating that the lesser houses were abandoned to the most shameful sloth and immorality, but that the large and more opulent ones, contrary to all human experience, were more orderly. The secret of this representation was, that the abbots and priors of the great houses were lords of Parliament, and were, therefore, present to expose any false statement.
On the 4th of March, 1536, a bill was passed hastily through both Houses, transferring to the king and his heirs all monastic establishments the clear value of which did not exceed £200 per annum. It was calculated that this bill—which, however, did not pass the Commons till Henry had sent for them, and told them that he would apply his favourite remedy for stiff necks—would dissolve no less than 380 communities, and add £32,000 to the annual income of the Crown, besides the presents received of £100,000 in money, plate, and jewels. The cause of these presents was a clause in the Act of Parliament, which left it to the discretion of the king to found any of these houses anew; a clause which was actively worked by Cromwell and his commissioners, and, by the hopes they inspired, drew large sums from the menaced brethren, part of which lodged in the pockets of the minister and his agents, and part reached the Crown. Cromwell amassed a large fortune from such sources.
The Parliament, which had now sat seven years, and which was one of the most slavish and base bodies that ever were brought together—having yielded every popular right and privilege which the imperious monarch demanded, and augmented the Royal prerogative to a pitch of actual absolutism; having altered the succession, changed the system of ecclesiastical government, abolished a great number of the ancient religious houses without thereby much benefiting the Crown—was now dismissed, having done that for this worthless king which should cost some of his successors their thrones or their heads, and a braver and more honourable generation the blood of its best men to undo again.