equired to withdraw their declaration; they were
told that the statute was not to be disputed. They persisted. They were
allowed a night to reflect, and they spent it on their knees in prayer. In
the morning they were recalled; their courage held, and they were
sentenced to die, with another friar who had spoken and written to similar
purpose.

They had thrown down a challenge to the Government; the challenge was
accepted, and the execution marked the importance of the occasion. They
were not a handful of insignificant priests, they were the advanced guard
of insurrection; and to allow them to triumph was to admit defeat. They
were conducted through the streets by an armed force. The Duke of Norfolk,
the Duke of Richmond, Henry's illegitimate son, Lord Wiltshire, and Lord
Rochford attended at the scaffold. Sir Henry Norris was also there,
masked, with forty of the Royal Guard on horseback. At the scaffold they
were again offered a chance of life; again they refused, and died
gallantly. The struggle had begun for the Crown of England. In claiming
the supremacy for the Pope, these men had abjured their allegiance to the
King whom the Pope had excommunicated. Conscience was nothing--motive was
nothing. Conscience was not allowed as a plea when a Lutheran was
threatened with the stake. In all civil conflicts high motives are to be
found on both sides, and in earnest times words are not used without
meaning. The Statute of Supremacy was Henry's defence against an attempt
to deprive him of his crown and deprive the kingdom of its independence.
To disobey the law was treason; and the penalty of treason was death.[321]

Chapuys in telling the story urged it as a proof to Charles that there was
no hope of the King's repentance. It was now expected that More and
Fisher, and perhaps the Queen and Princess, would be called on also to
acknowledge the supremacy, and, if they refused, would suffer the same
fate. The King's Ministers, Chapuys said, were known to have often
reproached the King, and to have told him it was a shame for him and the
kingdom not to punish them as traitors. Anne Boleyn was fiercer and
haughtier than ever she was.[322] Sir Thomas More was under the same
impression that Anne had been instigator of the severities. She would take
his head from him, he said, and then added, prophetically, that her own
would follow. The presence of her father and brother and her favourite
Norris at the execution of the Carthusians