remained until his execution
the following year. "During his imprisonment," says his son-in-law and
biographer, Roper, who married his favorite daughter Margaret, "one day,
looking from his window, he saw four monks (who also had refused the
oath of supremacy) going to their execution, and regretting that he
could not bear them company, said: 'Look, Megge, dost thou not see that
these blessed fathers be now going as cheerful to their death, as
bridegrooms to their marriage? By which thou may'st see, myne own good
daughter, what a great difference there is between such as have spent
all their days in a religious, hard, and penitential life, and such as
have (as thy poore father hath done) consumed all their time in pleasure
and ease;'" and so he proceeded to enlarge on their merits and
martyrdom. His grandson, Cresacre More, referring to this scene, says,
"By which most humble and heavenly meditation, we may easily guess what
a spirit of charity he had gotten by often meditation, that every sight
brought him new matter to practice most heroical resolutions."

[Illustration: SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS DAUGHTER.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] After the death of More, this favorite home of his, where he had so
frequently gathered "a choice company of men distinguished by their
genius and learning," passed into the rapacious hands of his bad
sovereign, and by him was presented to Sir William Pawlet, ultimately
Lord High Treasurer and Marquis of Winchester; from his hands it passed
into Lord Dacre's, to whom succeeded Lord Burghley; then followed his
son, the Earl of Salisbury, as its master; from him it passed
successively to the Earl of Lincoln, Sir Arthur Gorges, the Earl of
Middlesex, Villiers duke of Buckingham, Sir Bulstrode Whitelock, the
second Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Bristol, the Duke of Beaufort,
and ultimately to Sir Hans Slonne, who obtained it in 1738, and after
keeping it for two years razed it to the ground; an unhappy want of
reverence on the part of the great naturalist for the home of so many
great men. There is a print of it by J. Knyff, in 1699, which is copied
(p. 292); it shows some old features, but it had then been enlarged and
altered. Erasmus has well described it as it was in More's lifetime. It
had "a chapel, a library, and a gallery, called the New Buildings, a
good distance from his main house, wherein his custom was to busy
himself in prayer and meditation, whensoever he was at leisure."
Heywood, in