'What now, Mother Eve?' he answered.
'What now, Mother Eve?' he answered. 'Sit not musing with some serpent in your breast, or some new persuasion to offer Father Adam the apple yet once again.'
'I have sworn myself,' said she, and at this More laughed and replied:
'That was like Eve, too, for she offered Adam no worse fruit than she had eaten herself.'
Finding that his daughter's persuasions were useless, the king and council sent Cromwell to see if by fair words or threats he could induce More to declare that the king was head of the church. But, try as he might, nothing either treasonable or submissive could be wrung from the prisoner.
'I am the king's true, faithful subject, and pray for his highness, and all his, and all the realm,' said sir Thomas. 'I do nobody none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, but wish everybody good, and if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live. And I am dying already, and have since I came here been many times in the case that I thought to die within one hour. And therefore my poor body is at the king's pleasure.' Then Cromwell took his leave 'full gently,' promising to make report to the king.
Lord Cromwell having failed also, the whole council next came and put forth all their skill, with no better result; and it was then determined to bring sir Thomas out of the Tower, and to try him at Westminster on the charge of treason. Neither the prisoner nor the judges had any doubt as to what the verdict would be; but whatever his thoughts as to the future, More must have rejoiced to be rowing once more on the Thames, with the air and sunlight all around him, and after a year's confinement even the sight of Westminster Hall and the assembly met together, as he knew, to doom him would have been full of interest. He was allowed a chair, for his legs were so swollen that he could hardly have stood; and then began the trial which a late lord chancellor has called 'the blackest crime under the name of the law ever committed in England.' At the close, sentence was passed. More had been proved guilty of treason, and was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn.
The constable of the Tower, sir William Kingston, sir Thomas's 'very dear friend,' conducted the condemned man back to prison, and so sorrowful was the constable's face that any man would have thought that it was he who was condemned to death. Margaret Roper was waiting on the wharf, and as her father landed from the barge she flung herself into his arms, 'having neither respect to herself, nor to the press of people that were about him.' He whispered some words of comfort and gave her his blessing, and 'the beholding thereof was to many present so lamentable that it made them to weep.'