"Well," said Sir Thomas, with his usual good humour, "God forbid the king should extend any more such mercy to those I hold dear, and preserve my posterity from similar pardons! For the rest, Master Pope, I thank you for your tidings; I am bound to his grace, who, by putting me here, has afforded me time and opportunity to prepare for my end. I beseech you, my good friend, to move his majesty that my daughter Roper may be present at my

burial.'

"The king is content," said Pope deeply moved, "that all your family should attend, provided you use not many words on the scaffold."

"It is well I was informed," said More; "for I had purposed to have spoken; but I am ready to conform to his highness' pleasure. Nay, quiet yourself, good Master Pope," he continued, as the other wrung his hand; "for I trust we shall yet live and love God together in eternal bliss."

When he was alone, More carefully attired himself in a gown of silk camlet, which he had received as a present from one Anthony Bonvise, a merchant of Lucca: it was so costly that Sir William Kingston advised him not to wear it, as he whose property it would become was but a javill (villain).

"Shall I account him a javill," said More, "who is this day to work me so singular a benefit? Nay, if it were cloth-of-gold, I should think it well bestowed. Did not St. Cyprian, the martyred Bishop of Carthage, bestow on his executioner thirty pieces? and shall I grudge a garment?"

Kingston, however, persisted; yet, although Sir Thomas yielded, he sent the headsman an angel out of his scanty store to prove he bore him no ill-will.

When the crowd assembled round the scaffold on Tower Hill caught sight of their former favourite, his beard unshaved, his face pale and sharpened, and holding a red cross in his hand, they pressed eagerly round him, whilst audible expressions of indignation were heard on every side. A poor woman pushed through the throng, offering him a cup of wine; but he gently put her aside,

saying, "Christ at His Passion drank not wine, but gall and vinegar."

He, however, met with many insults. One female cried out that he had wrongfully judged her cause when lord chancellor; to which he calmly replied, that "if he were now to give sentence, he would not alter his decision."

Whilst preparing to mount the scaffold, an unwonted bustle took place at the very verge of the dense mass, and it was evident the guards were endeavouring to keep some person back; their halberds, however, were beaten aside, and with almost superhuman strength a man forced himself through the press, grasping the prisoner's robe as he prepared to ascend the steps, and demanding with the voice and action of a maniac, "Do you know me, More? do you know the man you rescued from the devil? Pray for me! pray for me! I have wandered round son; if I had seen you, you had cured me again.'

your pri"It is John Hales of Winchester," said one of the guard. "He says Sir Thomas More cured him by his prayers of the black fever, and that since he has been in confinement the fits have returned worse than ever."

"He did more for me," said Hales, tenaciously retaining his hold, "than all the college of physicians. Pray for me, More! pray for me! Do you not remember me?"

"I do remember you," said More soothingly; "I will pray for you on the scaffold: go and live in peace; the fits will not return."

The man obeyed; when the prisoner finding himself too weak to ascend, said to Kingston, who was by his side, "I beseech you, see me safe up; my coming down I will take care of myself."

He then knelt, and recited the Miserere; after which he embraced the executioner, saying, "No mortal man could have done me a greater service than thou wilt this day. Pluck up thy spirit, and fear not to perform thy office. My neck is very short; take heed thou strike not awry, to save thy credit."

He covered his eyes himself, and laying his head on the block removed his beard, saying, "This at least never committed treason."

There was a dull heavy sound, a gush of warm bright blood, and the soul of Sir Thomas More passed to God upon the very day which he had so earnestly desired.

His body was to be interred in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower; and it so chanced, that on her way from Chelsea thither, to prepare it for burial, Margaret had emptied her purse in distributing alms to the poor, whom she desired to pray for her father's soul. On entering the fortress, accompanied by Mistress Clement and Dorothy Collie, they found the girl had forgotten to bring a sheet, whilst amongst them all they had not a single penny. Dorothy at last induced her mistress to accompany her to a shop in East Smithfield, where, having agreed upon the price of some linen, Margaret put her hand into her pocket, in hopes that by seeming to look for money they would give her credit, when, to her great surprise, she found in her purse the exact sum required, though she knew herself to have been without a cross.

After remaining about a month on London Bridge, the head of Sir Thomas More was purchased by his daughter, who concealed it, "lest," as she boldly avowed to the council, "it should, like that of the martyred Bishop of Rochester, become food for the fishes." For this she suffered a short imprisonment, but persisted in preserving her secret, until finding herself at the point of death, she ordered the precious relic to be placed in her arms, and expired.

When Cromwell announced to Henry that Sir Thomas More had perished, he was for a moment panic-stricken, throwing all the blame on Anne Boleyn; but speedily recovering, he endeavoured by his pen to remove the odium which the death of two such men had attached to his name. Finding himself execrated, not only by churchman and scholar, but by every sovereign in Christendom, he gave up the attempt; and by making his kingdom the theatre of fresh scenes of slaughter strove to efface the memory of those by which they had been preceded.

The carrying out an organised system of plunder was about to be intrusted to Cromwell; Luther's orgies at the hostelry of the Black Eagle at Wittemberg were re-acted

at Whitehall; the most gross slanders against the monastic establishments were rife amongst Henry's boon companions; and ere the axe had emptied the state-prisons of the victims to the oath of supremacy which they enclosed, the blood-hounds of Cromwell were let loose, the banner of religious reform was unfurled, and the peaceful homesteads of England became the prey of lawless rapine and desolation, which rendered her a spectacle to all Europe. Men gazed in astonishment at the monarch, whose fiery passions once let loose left their seared and blackened traces over the unhappy kingdom whose laws he had set at naught, and with still greater astonishment at the weak and degraded sons of those mighty barons who had wrested from the weak yet less guilty John the glorious charter, now so unblushingly outraged.

IT had been predicted by the Bishop of Paris that the disgrace of Wolsey would be followed by the spoliation of the clerical and monastic bodies. This prophecy was speedily verified by the bill for the suppression of the smaller monasteries, which was hurried through the two houses at the bidding of Cromwell. Henry, supreme head of the Church, had delegated his spiritual authority to his favourite, under the title of "royal vice-regent, vicar-general, and commissary," allotting him precedence over the lords spiritual and temporal, to the equal dissatisfaction of the haughty Norfolk and the more politic Archbishop of Canterbury.

The result of the visitation of the religious houses was (as might be expected) the dispersion of about three hundred and eighty communities: the shrines, sacred vessels, reliquaries, even the bindings of the books, were broken up and sold by auction; the proceeds being sent to the augmentation office established in London for the express purpose. The larger establishments, whose ruin was accelerated by the insurrection of Aske, were purchased or shared amongst the king's creatures, who were so greedy, that Cromwell, after gathering in for himself a plentiful harvest, had some difficulty in satisfying their rapacity; and Henry began to discover that his own share was likely to prove but slender. The Benedictine abbeys of Ramsey, Huntingdon, St. Neots, and that of the Cistercians at Saltrey, had fallen to the lot of the vicar-general; Sir Thomas Audley had obtained the monastery of St.