“That is the custom,” said a voice loudly enough.
“The jury examines the documents,” said another; “that is always done.”
“My lord judge! my lord advocate! it is necessary, it is customary—indispensable—”
Audley looked angrily at Rich. “Gentlemen, the jurors are perfectly right,” he cried in a shrill voice; “but these letters have been destroyed. They will proceed to examine other documents; then the witnesses of these facts will be heard.”
“Silence! silence!” cried the court usher.
“Gentlemen, do not interrupt the court,” said Cromwell gravely; “we should listen religiously to the least word of the prisoner’s defence.”
And thus he stifled by his awful voice the truth which had been excited in those troubled hearts.
Fatigued and weary, More kept silence; he was thinking, moreover, of his letters to the Bishop of Rochester. “If I had spoken more strongly to my friend,” he sorrowfully reflected, “perhaps he would not have succumbed. My God and my only Saviour! behold the afflictions that overwhelm my soul; for I fear I have only listened to the cowardly prudence of the children of men. And yet what could I do?”
More reproached himself with not having done enough, with having been mistaken. He groaned in spirit and humbled himself to the dust before God; whereas this tribunal by which he was being judged, in the face of which he found himself placed, before which he was traduced, was composed of men whom avarice, fear, and ambition caused to walk rapidly and firmly, without remorse and without shame, in the road, strewn with thorns, of vice, falsehood, and slavery.
“Speak on,” said Cromwell, provoked by his silence; “they will not dare to interrupt you again.”