by the juries which
tried the prisoners; Fisher went to the scaffold on 22nd June, and
More on 6th July. Condemned justly or not by the law, both sought
their death in a quarrel which is as old as the hills and will last
till the crack of doom. Where shall we place the limits of conscience,
and where those of the national will? Is conscience a luxury which
only a king may enjoy in peace? Fisher and More refused to accommodate
theirs to Acts of Parliament, but neither believed conscience to be
the supreme tribunal.[937] More admitted that in temporal matters his
conscience was bound by the laws of England; in spiritual matters the
conscience of all was bound by the will of Christendom; and on that
ground both Fisher and he rejected the plea of conscience when urged
by heretics condemned to the flames. The dispute, indeed, passes the
wit of man to decide. If conscience must reign supreme, all government
is a _pis aller_, and in anarchy the true millennium must be found. If
conscience is deposed, man sinks to the level of the lower creation.
Human society can only be based on compromise, and compromise itself
is a matter of conscience. Fisher and More protested by their death
against a principle which they had practised in life; both they and
the heretics whom they persecuted proclaimed, as Antigone had done
thousands of years before,[938] that they could not obey laws (p. 334)
which they could not believe God had made.

[Footnote 933: _L. and P._, viii., 52; Rymer, xiv.,
549.]

[Footnote 934: The general idea that Fisher and
More were executed for refusing to take an oath
prescribed in the Act of Supremacy is technically
inaccurate. No oath is there prescribed, and not
till 1536 was it made high treason to refuse to
take the oath of supremacy; even then the oath was
to be administered only to civil and ecclesiastical
officers. The Act under which they were executed
was 26 Henry VIII., c. 13, and the common mistake
arises from a confusion between the oath to the
succession and the oath of supremacy.]

[Footnote 935: _L. and P._, viii., 876.]

[Footnote 936: _L. and P._, iv., 6199; vi., 1164,
1249. He told Chapuys t