[452] Ibid. p. 616.
[453] Historia Martyrum Anglorum.
[454] Report of the Trial of John Fisher: Baga de Secretis: Appendix to the Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Records.
[455] If his opinions had been insufficient for his destruction, there was an influence at court which left no hope to him: the influence of one whose ways and doings were better known then than they have been known to her modern admirers. "On a time," writes his grandson, "when he had questioned my aunt Roper of his wife and children, and the state of his house in his absence, he asked her at last how Queen Anne did. 'In faith, father,' said she, 'never better. There is nothing else at the court but dancing and sporting.' 'Never better?' said he; 'alas, Meg, alas, it pitieth me to remember unto what misery she will shortly come. These dances of hers will prove such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footballs, but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.'"—More's Life of More, p. 244.
[456] The composition of the commission is remarkable. When Fisher was tried, Lord Exeter sate upon it. On the trial of More, Lord Exeter was absent, but his place was taken by his cousin, Lord Montague, Reginald Pole's eldest brother, and Lady Salisbury's son. Willingly or unwillingly, the opposition nobles were made participes criminis in both these executions.
[457] I take my account of the indictment from the government record. It is, therefore, their own statement of their own case.—Trial of Sir Thomas More: Baga de Secretis, pouch 7, bundle 3.
[458] Fisher had unhappily used these words on his own examination; and the identity of language was held a proof of traitorous confederacy.
[459] If this was the constitutional theory, "divine right" was a Stuart fiction.
[460] More's Life of More, p. 271
[461] More's Life of More, pp. 276, 277.