One day the Lieutenant asking him why he kept his prison room so dark, More answered, “When all the wares are gone, the shop windows are to be shut up.” Early in the next year (1535) his wife was allowed to see him; she urged him to conform to the King’s wishes, but it is needless to say that he declined to do so. And when he was told that the King had been mercifully pleased to allow him, as having held the highest office in the realm, to be beheaded instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered, Sir Thomas laughingly said, “God forbid the King shall use any more such mercy to any of my friends.” [Illustration: _A Daughter of Sir Thomas More, supposed to be Mʳˢ. Roper_ (_From the original drawing by Holbein_)] There are few more touching scenes in the history of the Tower than that when, after his final trial, More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, made her way through the crowd to give her father a farewell embrace when he landed at the fortress, and to receive his last blessing. Kneeling before him, the poor creature could only say again and again, “Oh, my father! oh, my father!” Those standing around, hardened as they were to scenes of cruelty, could not help being moved at the piteous sight. Early on the morning of the 6th July Sir Thomas Pope, an old friend of More’s, entered his prison to tell him that the hour for his execution was fixed for nine o’clock that day. As in the case of Fisher, Sir Thomas More was asked not to “use many words” on the scaffold, for the King feared the effect of a speech from his old friend upon the public. At parting Sir Thomas said to Pope, who was deeply moved, “Be not discomfited, for I trust that we shall in Heaven see each other full merrily, where we shall be sure to live together in joyful bliss eternally” (Roper’s “Life of Sir T. More”). Punctually at nine o’clock Sir Thomas left his prison. He was dressed in an old frieze cloak; his beard had grown long, and his face and form were thin and worn; in his hand he carried a red cross. At what appears to have been a kind of public-house, near the gate of the Tower, a woman came out and offered him a glass of wine, but he refused it, saying, “Marry, my good wife, I will not drink now, my Master had vinegar and gall, and not wine given Him to drink.” Another woman asked him for some papers that she had given him to keep for her when he was Lord Chancellor: to her he said that she must have patience for an hour, “and by that time the King’s Majesty will rid me of the care I have of thy papers, and all other matters whatsoever.”