All at once he turned toward the lord chief-justice, Fitz-James.
“Why,” said he, “Sir John, do you not assist me with your opinion? Could it be true that our sentence were unlawful? Speak! Are you not the lord chief-justice?”
At this question a frightful apprehension arose in the soul of the weak judge; he was conscious of the adroit snare into which he had been drawn. They questioned him directly; they placed in the hollow of his hand the weights which were to turn the balance and decide the fate of Sir Thomas, his benefactor and friend. He paled visibly and answered nothing.
“Well!” said Cromwell, “the chancellor interrogates you, my lord, and it seems you hesitate in your reply!”
If he had had courage, he might, perhaps, have saved More; it failed him. “I think,” he answered in an evasive way, less odious perhaps, but none the less criminal, “that if the statute of Parliament was illegal, the process of law would be equally so.”
“Assuredly,” said Cromwell with a bitter smile, “this is very judicious. If there was no law, there could be no criminal; and if there was no day, there would be no night—there are some things which reason themselves so naturally that we cannot but concede them.” As he said these words, he passed to the chancellor the sentence of condemnation.
Audley read it in a very loud tone, which he lowered, however, when he came to the details of the execution, which set forth that Sir Thomas, after having been carried back to the Tower by Lieutenant Kingston, should be dragged through the streets of the city on a hurdle; led afterward to Tyburn,
where, after having been hanged by the neck, he should be taken down, when half dead, from the gallows, to be disembowelled and his entrails cast into the fire; after which his body should be cut into four pieces, to be placed above the gates of the city, the head excepted, because the head must be exposed on London Bridge in an iron cage.
While the sentence was being read the face of Sir Thomas More remained impassible. At the end only a slight start seemed to denote some feeling. He lowered his head, and it was seen, by an almost imperceptible movement of his lips, that he prayed.
A profound silence reigned around him, and it seemed that no human voice or respiration dared be raised in the presence of such cool atrocity.