less the prison at their liberties, they ceased not both
to practise an insurrection within the realm, and also to use all the
devices to them possible in outward parts, as well to defame and slander
his Majesty, and his most virtuous doings and proceedings, as also to
procure the impeachment and other destruction of his most royal
person."[446] Cromwell speaks also of their having been engaged in
definite schemes, the object of which was rebellion;[447] and although
we have here the _ex parte_ statement of the government, and although
such a charge would have been held to be justified by a proof that they
had spoken generally against the Act of Supremacy, it may be allowed to
prove that so far they were really guilty; and it is equally certain
that for these two men to have spoken against the act was to have lent
encouragement to the party of insurrection, the most powerful which that
party could have received.

Thus, by another necessity, Fisher and More, at the beginning of May,
were called upon for their submission. It was a hard case, for the
bishop was sinking into the grave with age and sickness, and More had
the highest reputation of any living man. But they had chosen to make
themselves conspicuous as confessors for Catholic truth; though
prisoners in the Tower, they were in fact the most effectual champions
of the papal claims; and if their disobedience had been passed over, the
statute could have been enforced against no one.

[Sidenote: May 7. A deputation of the council waits upon them in the
Tower. They refuse to admit the supremacy.]

The same course was followed as with the Carthusian monks. On the 7th of
May a deputation of the council waited on the prisoners in the Tower,
for an acknowledgment of the supremacy. They refused: Fisher, after a
brief hesitation, peremptorily; More declining to answer, but also
giving an indirect denial. After repeated efforts had been made to move
them, and made in vain, their own language, as in the preceding trials,
furnished material for their indictment; and the law officers of the
crown who were to conduct the prosecution were the witnesses under whose
evidence they were to be tried. It was a strange proceeding, to be
excused only, if excused at all, by the pressure of the times.[448]

[Sidenote: The government delay their trial.]

Either the king or his ministers, however, were slow in making up their
minds. With the Carthusians, nine days only were allowed to el