The trial was soon over, for the king had decided on More’s death when Fisher was executed, ordering the preachers to set forth to the people the treasons of the late Bishop of Rochester and of Sir Thomas More; “joining them together though the later was still untried.”[91] The jury, after a quarter of an hour’s absence, declared him guilty of death for maliciously contravening the statute, and sentence was pronounced by the chancellor “according to the tenour of the new law.” Death being now in sight, and faith having been kept with his conscience, More has no longer any reason to observe silence. To the usual question whether he has anything to say against the sentence, he replied, that for the seven years he had studied the matter he could not find that supremacy in a church belonged to a layman, or to any but the see of Rome, as granted personally by our Lord when on earth to St. Peter and his successors; and that, as the city of London could not make a law against the laws of the realm of England, so England could not make a law contrary to the general law of Christ’s Catholic Church; and that the Magna Charta of England said that “the English Church should be free to enjoy all its rights,” as the king had sworn at his consecration. Interrupted by the chancellor with the inquiry whether he wished to be considered wiser and better than all the bishops and nobles of the realm who had sworn to the king’s supremacy, More retorted, “For one bishop of your opinion, my lord, I have a hundred saints of mine; and for one parliament of yours, and God knows of what kind, I have all the general councils for a thousand years.” The Duke of Norfolk said that now his malice was clear. On the sixth of July, 1535, Sir Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill, for the king remitted the ferocious mutilations that accompanied the executions for treason at Tyburn. “The scaffold was very unsteady, and putting his feet on the ladder, he said, merrily, to the lieutenant of the Tower: “I pray thee see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”[92] Then, with a simple request to the people standing round to pray for him, and to bear witness that he died a Catholic for the faith of the Catholic Church, a friendly word to the executioner, and a last prayer--the 51st Psalm--the axe fell, and More was dead.