"Verily, daughter, I never intend to pin my soul at another man's back, not even the best man that I know this day living. For I know not whither he may hap to carry it. There is no man living of whom, while he liveth, I may make myself sure. Some may do for favor, and some may do for fear, and so might they carry my soul a wrong way. And some might hap to frame himself a conscience, and think that if he did it for fear God would forgive it. And some may peradventure think that they will repent and be shriven thereof, and that so shall God remit it to them. And some may be, peradventure, of the mind that, if they say one thing and think the while contrary, God more regardeth the heart than the tongue; and that, therefore, their oath goeth upon what they think and not upon what they say. But in good faith, Margaret, I can use no such ways in so great a matter." In spite of this, Margaret still urged that he was not asked to swear against his conscience in order to keep others company, but instructed to reform his conscience by the {240} considerations that such and so many men consider the oath lawful, and even a duty since Parliament required it. Bridgett, in his "Life of Sir Thomas More," gives some details of the conclusion of the discussion that have a very human interest: "When he saw his daughter, after this discussion, sitting very sadly, not from any fear she had about his soul, but at the temporal consequences she foresaw, he smiled again and exclaimed: 'How now, daughter Margaret? What now, Mother Eve? Where is your mind now? Sit not musing with some serpent in your breast, upon some new persuasion to offer Father Adam the apple yet once again.' "'In good faith, father,' replied Margaret, 'I can no further go. For since the example of so many wise men cannot move you, I see not what to say more, unless I should look to persuade you with the reason that Master Harry Pattenson made.' (It will be remembered that Pattenson was More's fool, now in the service of the Lord Mayor.) 'For,' continued Margaret, 'he met one day one of our men, and when he had asked where you were, and heard that you were in the Tower still, he waxed angry with you and said: "Why, what aileth him that he will not swear? Wherefore should he stick to swear? I have sworn the oath myself." And so,' says Margaret, 'have I sworn.' At this More laughed and said 'that word was like Eve too, for she offered Adam no worse fruit than she had eaten herself.'"