Many people, who could hardly understand what the king meant, were really burnt alive, according to that wicked law: but the thing that showed Henry’s badness more than any other, was his ordering Sir Thomas More’s head to be cut off, because he would not do as the king wished, nor say what he did not think was true. But I will write a chapter about that good man on purpose, after we have done with this wicked King Henry.
Besides putting Sir Thomas More to death, the king cut off the heads of Bishop Fisher, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montague, Sir Edward Nevil, and, most shocking of all, the head of an old lady with grey hairs, named Margaret Plantagenet, only because her son, Reginald Pole, afterwards called Cardinal Pole, would not come to England when Henry invited him.
I dare say you are tired of reading of so much wickedness. I am sure I am tired of writing it, and I will only mention one thing more. A few days before Henry died he ordered the Earl of Surrey’s head to be cut off.
This Earl of Surrey was the most polite and pleasant, and clever young gentleman in England. But Henry was afraid that he would give trouble to his little son after his death. He was also going to cut off the head of Surrey’s father, the old Duke of Norfolk, but the king died that night, before that was to have been done, and so the Duke was saved. I do not believe that there was one person in England who could be sorry when Henry died. Even now, whenever his name is mentioned, we think of everything that is wicked.
CHAPTER XL.
How Sir Thomas More studied law, and became an orator; the wise and good men who visited him; how he was for some time in the King’s favor, but was afterwards imprisoned and put to death because he would not do everything the King wished.
Well, my dear little Arthur, we have done with the cruel King Henry the Eighth, and I am going to keep my promise, and write a little chapter about Sir Thomas More.
We read in the chapter about Henry the Seventh, that in his reign the young gentlemen of England began to study and read, and even to write books, instead of spending all their time in fighting or hunting. And I told you that Thomas Linacre, the great physician, taught a great many gentlemen at Oxford to read and write Greek, and that Sir Thomas More was one of his scholars.
Sir Thomas More’s father wished him to be a lawyer, and, though he did not like it himself, he left his other learning and studied law to please his father, and he became a great lawyer.
He was handsome and good-natured, very cheerful, and fond of laughing. He had a pleasant voice, and it is said that he was the first Englishman who could be called an ORATOR, that is, a man who can speak well before a great number of others (as a clergyman does when he preaches in a large church), and either teach them or persuade them to think or do as he wishes.