the same language as More, a proof of a conspiracy between them. What Fisher had said he knew not: but it could not excite surprise, if the similarity of their case had suggested to each similar ideas. This he could affirm with truth, that whatever might be his own opinion, he had never communicated it to any, not even to his dearest friends.

This defence, how reasonable soever it may appear, availed nothing. New charges were brought forward. Rich, the solicitor-general, deposed that, in a private conversation in the tower, More had said: "The parliament cannot make the king head of the church, because it is a civil tribunal, without any spiritual authority." It was in vain that the prisoner denied this statement, showing that such a declaration was inconsistent with the caution which he had always observed; and maintained that no one acquainted with the former character of Rich would believe him, even on his oath. It was in vain that the two witnesses, who were brought to support the charge, eluded the expectation of the accuser, by declaring, that, though they were in the room, they did not attend to the conversation: the judges maintained that the silence of the prisoner was a sufficient proof of malicious intention; and the jury, without reading over the copy of the indictment which had been given them, returned a verdict of guilty.

As soon as the sentence had been pronounced, More attempted, and, after two interruptions, was suffered to address the court. He would now, he said, openly avow, what he had hitherto concealed from every human being, his conviction that the oath of supremacy was unlawful. it was indeed, painful to him to differ from the noble lords whom he saw on the bench; but his conscience compelled him to bear testimony to the truth. This world, however, had always been a scene of dissension and he still cherished a hope that the day would come, when both he and they, like Stephen and Saul, would be of the same sentiment in heaven. As he returned from the bar, his son threw himself on his knees, and begged his father's blessing; and, as he walked back to the tower, his daughter Margaret twice rushed through the guards, folded him in her arms, and, unable to speak, bathed him with her tears. When told that the king, as a special favour, had commuted his punishment to decapitation, "God," he replied, "preserve all my friends from such favours!"

After the lapse of five days from his trial, he was brought forth for execution, on Tower-hill, on the 6th of July, 1535. His firmness did not for a moment desert him, nor even his usual flow of humour. When ascending the stairs of the scaffold, and observing they were weak, he desired one of the sheriff's officers to give him his hand to help him up, saying, "When I come down again, let me shift for myself as well as I can." On the scaffold, the executioner asked his forgiveness. He kissed him, saying, "Thou wilt render me to-day the greatest service in the power of any mortal; but," (putting an angel into his hand,) "my neck is so short that I fear thou wilt gain little credit in the way of thy profession." As he was not permitted to address the spectators, he contented himself with declaring that he died a faithful subject to the king, and a sure Catholic before God. When he had laid his head on the block to receive the mortal stroke, he perceived that

'Roper.

his beard had got under his chin, whereupon hastily rising up, he bade the executioner stay a little till he had put his beard aside, since, having committed no treason, it was not just it should be cut off. At one blow his head was severed from his body. This was at first interred in the tower, but his daughter Margaret afterward obtained it and deposited it in the chancel of the church at Chelsea, where a monument, with an inscription written by himself, had been some time previously erected. His head, after an exposure of fourteen days on London bridge, was also procured by Margaret Roper, and placed by her in a vault belonging to her husband's family, under a chapel adjoining to St Dunstan's church, in Canterbury.

Thus fell Sir Thomas More, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, a martyr to the papal supremacy in England, and to a conscientious adherence to the Roman Catholic religion, in all its substantial character. Reformation of gross abuses and corruptions he would have admitted; but innovation he firmly opposed. Doubtless he was sincere, and must therefore be respected for his consistency. He had, indeed, abetted the numerous and cruel persecutions of the reformed, and had endeavoured most strenuously to suppress the writings of Luther in England, and the new translation of the Scriptures, by Tindal, into English. This he no doubt did on principle, thinking that he "was thereby doing God service" and however we may lament his error, we should impute it chiefly to the darkness of the age in which he lived. With this concession, still it must be admitted that such men as More should have been divested of prejudice sufficient to allow the darkness to be dissipated by the day-spring of divine truth, nor have attempted to perpetuate the gloom of monkish ignorance and superstition overspreading a nation. The glorious light of truth and liberty was then dawning upon our land, by the diffusion of the holy scriptures, and it was in vain that every effort was made by authority to extinguish the heavenly beams. Tonstal, bishop of London, employed one Packington, an English merchant, to buy up one half of Tindal's first edition of his New Testament, for the purpose of burning the copies in Cheapside. This enabled Tindal to print a second and improved edition, which was imported from Antwerp. Lord-chancellor More, inquiring who it was that supported and encouraged Tindal, was told that it was the bishop of London, who had bought up half the old impression. This raised the laugh against More and the bishop. But they should have seen the impolicy of continuing their system of persecution against such a cause. And it seems the more strange that Sir Thomas More should have promoted such bloody persecutions, which must have been abhorrent to his nature, when he says, in his Utopia, written in younger years, that "the Utopians allow liberty of conscience, and force their religion upon nobody: that they hinder none from a sober inquiry into truth, nor use any violence upon the account of a different belief." These very Utopians, in the persons of the reformed, he and his colleagues burned at the stake. Three centuries, however, have converted the fabulous laws of Utopia into the established principles of Christendom ; and Sir Thomas More would now be as strenuous an advocate for liberty of conscience as he was formerly a conscientious persecutor of conscientious sufferers.

Sir Thomas More was a man of literary habits and character, as well

as a man of business. Besides maintaining constant correspondence with the learned in Europe, he wrote many works, principally of a polemical character: his Utopia, however, is the only work which distinguishes him as a writer. His English works were collected and published by order of Queen Mary, in 1557; his Latin, at Basil, in 1563, and at Louvain, in 1566. On the whole, for integrity, disinterestedness, domestic affection, and diligence and fidelity in great public duties, Sir Thomas More stands a pattern and an ornament to the English nation.

Cromwell, Earl of Essex.

DIED A. D. 1540.

THE father of this distinguished minister of Henry VIII. followed the humble business of a blacksmith, at Putney, in the county of Surrey. At his native place, young Cromwell received an imperfect education, and thereafter, prompted, perhaps, by an ardour of disposition destined to open up his way to the lofty station which he subsequently filled, he left his country for the continent. At Antwerp, he found employment in the English factory. He afterwards served under the duke of Bourbon, and is said to have been present at the sack of Rome, in 1528. This connection may have had some influence in leading him to those Protestant sentiments which he afterwards professed.'

On returning to England, Cromwell became a confidential servant to Cardinal Wolsey, with whose falling glories his name has been so indissolubly combined by Shakspeare, not without historical reason, though perhaps not without the licence of a poet in regard to the details. The actual part which Cromwell took on occasion of his master's fall corresponded with the tribute to his fidelity which the dramatist puts into the mouth of Wolsey. It is recorded, to the honour of the former, that when the fallen minister was unable to pay his servants during his residence at Esher, Cromwell proposed that a subscription should be made among those who had shared in the cardinal's bounty -which subscription was carried into effect, and headed by Cromwell himself. On another occasion, when the charge against the cardinal,

"Of this sect," says Sir Thomas More, speaking of the Lutherans, "was the great part of those ungracious people, which of late entered Rome with the duke of Bourbon."--Dialogue touching the pestilent sect of Luther. In regard to the number here stated by Sir Thomas, however, Sir James Mackintosh, in his life of Sir Thomas More, (Lives of British Statesmen,) remarks, that it is "a violent exaggeration."

*King Henry VIII., Act II., Sc. 2. It is by a conception at once moral and pathetic, that the cardinal, bereft of his honours by the powerful hand that conferred them, is in this scene represented as inculcating on a faithful servant, likely to rise at court, a more virtuous course than that which he himself had pursued. From history, how. ever, it appears to have been to Kingston, the constable of the tower, soon before the cardinal's death, that he uttered those celebrated expressions, addressed, in the play, to Cromwell :

"Had I but served my God with half the zeal

I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."

It may be added, that the compliment which, in the course of this scene, Wolsey pays to the king,-"I know his noble nature,”—and also the allusions to the likelihood that Cromwell would rise at court, correspond to other parts of the same interview with Sir W. Kingston, as may be seen from Hume's History of England, ch. xxx.

agreed to by the house of lords in November, 1529, came down to the house of commons, Cromwell defended his master's cause in a style which has not only gained him honour, but has been considered as having occasioned the triumph of Wolsey over the articles in question, and laid a foundation for Cromwell's own advancement at the court of Henry.

On Wolsey's death, Cromwell devoted himself to the service of the king, to whom he is said to have been recommended by Sir Cristopher Hales and Sir John Russel, the latter of whom had been indebted to him for an escape from danger on the continent. Shortly after giving a bold specimen of his political skill, and of his disposition, it may be, to gratify his master, by drawing from the clergy, with royal authority, the sum of £118,840, on the allegation, that the oath of allegiance to the pope, taken by the bishops at their consecration, was illegal, he received the honour of knighthood, and was admitted to the privy council. To use the words of Shakspeare,

"There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."

Cromwell, it seems, had "taken the current when it served," and we have now to follow him in a triumphant course of political advancement. In 1534, he was appointed secretary of state, and also master of the rolls. The same year, he became chancellor of the university of Cambridge. When the validity of the king's second marriage was opposed by Sir Thomas More, Cromwell, as a friend of that bigotted, but gentle and illustrious man, united with Cranmer, in attempting to prevail on him to yield in his resistance. Nor was their friendly attempt entirely without effect, though it was with such as ultimately proved insufficient to save Sir Thomas from his speedily approaching fate. Cromwell seemed to perceive the result of More's refusal, and declared that he would rather that his son had lost his head than that his friend should have declined the oath proposed to him. "Cromwell," adds a late biographer of More,3 with undue severity perhaps, "Cromwell was not a good man, but the gentle virtue of More subdued even the bad." Sir Thomas himself acknowledges that Cromwell "tenderly favoured him."

The attachment of Fisher, bishop of Rochester, to the delusion of 'the Maid of Kent,' was another subject that, about this time, occupied the attention of Cromwell, who wrote the bishop a letter, urging him to ask the king's forgiveness, but sharp and severe in style, to a degree, indeed, which, in our own day would be reckoned insolent. In 1534, Henry, on being invested with ecclesiastical supremacy in England, appointed Cromwell his vicar-general and vice-gerent, in virtue of which, the king's supremacy was in a great degree committed to the minister, who carried on, by means of commissioners, a severe inquiry into the state of the English monasteries. Much discontent was created by the sweeping measures against the ecclesiastical institutions which Henry and his minister pursued. Cromwell, accordingly, was looked

Sir James Mackintosh, in Lives of British Statesmen, p. 91. Burnet says, that for two years Cromwell was only vicar-general, but that after receiving a second commission in July 1536, he was called vice-gerent,

on with particular dislike, and in the northern rebellion of 1586, it was proposed by an assembly of the rebels, as one of their terms of agreement with the king, that he, as well as Audeley, the lord-chancellor, should be excluded from the next parliament. The king, in his reply to their address, denied that he had fewer of noble birth in his council then than were in it when he came to the crown, and stated that he and his council had thought it expedient to have members who understood English law and foreign treaties, and had accordingly brought in the lord-chancellor and Cromwell. Nor, probably, did the latter stretch his power to the utmost against the Romanists.5

When, amidst the ecclesiastical convulsions of Henry's eventful reign, religious doctrines were to be settled as well as religious institutions changed, the vicar-general supported the reformation by publish ing certain articles of faith at decided variance with the Romish creed, -by encouraging a new translation of the Bible,-by prohibiting, in the king's name, pilgrimages, and other superstitions,—and by joining the duke of Suffolk and others in remonstrating with Henry against cruelty in the execution of the six articles' against heresy, passed in 1539. That infamous law the vicar-general himself had not succeeded in effectually resisting-whether or not from excess of caution in a matter which roused even Cranmer's mind to public opposition, it may be impossible to say. But five hundred persons being imprisoned in 1539, for the breach of these articles, Cromwell, along with Audeley and others, remonstrated with the king. Henry pardoned the prisoners, and, says Burnet, "I find no further proceeding upon this statute until Cromwell fell." " When this act was passed, the king sent Cromwell, and also the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, to console Cranmer for his disappointment on the occasion. If this, however, was an act of cordiality towards the archbishop, it seems to have failed of promoting friendly feeling between Cromwell and the duke of Norfolk; for it is recorded by Burnet,' that on the former remarking that he had never liked the manners of his master Wolsey, and that, although the cardinal had meant, if created pope, to make him his admiral, he had resolved not to accept of the office and abandon his country, the duke declared that he lied.

That Cromwell was, in many points attached to the doctrine of the Protestants there is no sufficient reason to deny. But, in 1538, he pronounced sentence against the schoolmaster Lambert, after the debate between the king and that reputed heretic, respecting the corporeal presence, had failed of leading the latter to recant. He had now been advanced to the peerage, and that honour, besides his appointment to the office of keeper of the privy-seal, and, thereafter, to that of chiefjustice and the order of the garter, was crowned at last with the title of earl of Essex and the official post of lord-high-chamberlain; previously to which appointments he had been pronounced, in virtue of his ecclesiastical office, first in precedence of the officers of state. But the attainment of lofty honours prepared for his more miserable fall. He had taken an active part in recommending to the king a marriage with Anne of Cleves, in order, it is supposed, to subdue the popish party, which had gained considerable influence at court. The marriage took • History of the Reformation, book iii. • Burnet, book iii.

6

Burnet, book iii.

Ibid.