evidence of their indolence and misconduct.[535] Language of
this kind boded ill for the "Christian Brethren;" and the choice of
Wolsey's successor for the office of chancellor soon confirmed their
apprehensions; Wolsey had chastised them with whips; Sir Thomas More would
chastise them with scorpions; and the philosopher of the _Utopia_, the
friend of Erasmus, whose life was of blameless beauty, whose genius was
cultivated to the highest attainable perfection, was to prove to the world
that the spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the
bigot, of the fanatic, but may co-exist with the fairest graces of the
human character. The lives of remarkable men usually illustrate some
emphatic truth. Sir Thomas More may be said to have lived to illustrate the
necessary tendencies of Romanism in an honest mind convinced of its truth;
to show that the test of sincerity in a man who professes to regard
orthodoxy as an essential of salvation, is not the readiness to endure
persecution, but the courage which will venture to inflict it.

The seals were delivered to the new chancellor in November, 1529. By his
oath on entering office he was bound to exert himself to the utmost for the
suppression of heretics:[536] he was bound, however, equally to obey the
conditions under which the law allowed them to be suppressed. Unfortunately
for his reputation as a judge, he permitted the hatred of "that kind of
men," which he did not conceal that he felt,[537] to obscure his conscience
on this important feature of his duty, and tempt him to imitate the worst
iniquities of the bishops. I do not intend in this place to relate the
stories of his cruelties in his house at Chelsea,[538] which he himself
partially denied, and which at least we may hope were exaggerated. Being
obliged to confine myself to specific instances, I choose rather those on
which the evidence is not open to question; and which prove against More,
not the zealous execution of a cruel law, for which we may not fairly hold
him responsible, but a disregard, in the highest degree censurable, of his
obligations as a judge.

The acts under which heretics were liable to punishment, were the 15th of
the 2nd of Henry IV., and the 1st of the 2nd of Henry V.

By the act of Henry IV., the bishops were bound to bring offenders to trial
in open court, within three months of their arrest, if there were no lawful
impediment. If conviction followed, they might imprison at