"On the day when Sir Thomas More came from Westminster to the Tower-ward, my wife, desirous to see her father, whom she thought she should never see in this world after, and also to have his final blessing, gave attendance about the wharf where she knew he should pass before he could enter into the Tower. As soon as she saw him, after his blessing upon her knees reverently received, hastening toward him without care or consideration of herself, passing in amongst the throng and company of the guard, she ran to him and took him about the neck and kissed him; who, well liking her most natural and dear daughterly affection toward him, gave her his fatherly blessing and godly words of comfort beside; from whom, after she was departed, not satisfied with the former sight of him, and like one that had forgotten herself, being all ravished with the entire love of her father, suddenly turned back again, ran to him as before, took him about the neck, and divers times kissed him lovingly, till at last, with a full and heavy heart, she was fain to depart from him; the beholding thereof was to many that were present so lamentable, and mostly so to me, that for very sorrow we could not forbear to weep with her. The wife of John Harris, Sir Thomas's secretary, was moved to such a transport of grief, that she suddenly flew to his neck and kissed him, as he had reclined his head on his daughter's shoulder; and he who, in the midst of the greatest straits, had ever a merry manner of speaking, cried, 'This is kind, albeit rather unpolitely done.'"
"And the day he suffered," I asked, "what was this good daughter's behavior?"
"She went," quoth he, "to the different churches, and distributed abundant alms to the poor. When she had given all her money away, she withdrew to pray in a certain church, where she on a sudden did remember she had no linen in which to wrap up her father's body. She had heard that the remains of the Bishop of Rochester had been thrown into the ground, without priest, cross, lights, or shroud, for the dread of the king had prevented his relations from attempting to bury him. But Margaret resolved her father's body should not meet with such unchristian treatment. Her maid advised her to buy some linen in the next shop, albeit having given away all her money to the poor, there was no likelihood she should get credit from strangers. She ventured, howsoever, and having agreed about the price, she put her hand in her pocket, which she knew was empty, to show she forgot the money, and ask credit under that pretence. But to her surprise, she found in her purse the exact price of the linen, neither more or less; and so buried the martyr of Christ with honor, nor was there any one so inhuman found as to hinder her."
"Mr. Roper," I said, when he had ended his recital, "methinks this angelic lady's trial was most hard: but how much harder should it yet have been if you, her husband, had been in a like peril at that time as her father?"
A half kind of melancholy, half smiling look came into the good old man's face as he answered:
"Her father was Sir Thomas More, and he so worthy of a daughter's passionate love, and the affection betwixt them so entire and absolute, compounded of filial love on her part, unmitigated reverence, and unrestrained confidence, that there was left in her heart no great space for wifely doating. But to be moderately affectioned by such a woman, and to stand next in her esteem to her incomparable father, was of greater honor and worth to her unworthy husband, than should have been the undivided, yea idolatrous, love of one not so perfect as herself."
After a pause, during which his thoughts, I ween, reverted to the past, and mine investigated mine own soul, I said to Mr. Roper:
"Think you, sir, that love to be idolatrous which is indeed so absolute that it should be no difficulty to die for him who doth inspire it; which would prefer a prison in his company, howsoever dark and loathsome (yea consider it a very paradise), to the beautifullest palace in the world, which without him would seem nothing but a vile dungeon; which should with a good-will suffer all the torments in the world for to see the object of its affection enjoy good men's esteem on earth, and a noble place in heaven; but which should be, nevertheless, founded and so wholly built up on a high estimate of his virtues; on the quality he holdeth of God's servant; on the likeness of Christ stamped on his soul, and each day exemplified in his manner of living, that albeit to lose his love or his company in this world should be like the uprooting of all happiness and turning the brightness of noonday to the darkness of the night, it should a thousand times rather endure this mishap than that the least shade or approach of a stain should alter the unsullied opinion till then held of his perfections?"
Mr. Roper smiled, and said that was a too weighty question to answer at once; for he should be loth to condemn or yet altogether to absolve from some degree of overweeningness such an affection as I described, which did seem indeed to savor somewhat of excess; but yet if noble in its uses and held in subjection to the higher claims of the Creator, whose perfections the creature doth at best only imperfectly mirror, it might be commendable and a means of attaining ourselves to the like virtues we doated on in another.
As he did utter these words a servant came into the parlor, and whispered in mine ear: