Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
We close Mrs. Hall's pleasant sketches of Sir Thomas More and his
localities, with a brief description of a scene in his prison, which the
pencil of Mr. Herbert, of the Royal Academy, has beautifully depicted.
It must be remembered that More was a zealous Roman Catholic. He was
committed to the Tower in 1534, by the licentious Henry VIII., partly to
punish him for refusing to assist that monarch in his marriage with
Anne Boleyn, "the pretty fool," as Mrs. Hall calls her; but particularly
because he declined to acknowledge the king's ecclesiastical supremacy
as head of the Reformed Church. There he remained until his execution
the following year. "During his imprisonment," says his son-in-law and
biographer, Roper, who married his favorite daughter Margaret, "one day,
looking from his window, he saw four monks (who also had refused the
oath of supremacy) going to their execution, and regretting that he
could not bear them company, said: 'Look, Megge, dost thou not see that
these blessed fathers be now going as cheerful to their death, as
bridegrooms to their marriage? By which thou may'st see, myne own good
daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have spent
all their days in a religious, hard, and penitential life, and such as
have (as thy poore father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure
and ease;'" and so he proceeded to enlarge on their merits and
martyrdom. His grandson, Cresacre More, referring to this scene, says,
"By which most humble and heavenly meditation, we may easily guess what
a spirit of charity he had gotten by often meditation, that every sight
brought him new matter to practice most heroical resolutions."
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER.]
FOOTNOTES:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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