impossible to continue to be Lord
Chancellor; so he gave up his office, even though it meant that he would
have to change all his way of living and be a poor man again. Lady More
used to go to service in Chelsea church, and More sat in another part of
the same church, and on Sundays she used to wait to hear that her
husband was outside before she got up to go, and in order to let her
know this a footman used to come and open the pew-door for her, and say:
'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.'

There is a story told that on the Sunday after More had given up being
Chancellor he had not spoken to his wife about it, for he knew she would
be very angry, and he always loved a joke; so he himself walked up the
aisle and held open the pew-door, and said: 'Madam, the Chancellor has
gone.' At first Lady More could not understand him, but when she did,
and knew that he was no longer Chancellor, she was very angry indeed.

Now, More said they must send away some of their servants and live very
plainly, and Margaret and her husband went into a little house near; and
so badly off were the Mores that they could not afford fires, and when
the weather grew colder, More and his wife and children used to gather
together in one room and burn a great bundle of fern just to make a big
blaze and send them warm to bed. But through it all More was quite
happy. He had never wanted to be a great man: he preferred to live
simply with those he loved; but he was not long to be allowed to do even
that.

Henry devised a plan by which he could put More in prison. He drew up a
long paper saying that the King was the head of the Church, and that
whatever he did was right, and that if he chose to divorce his wife he
could do it, because the power was in his own hands; and then he
summoned all the bishops and More to sign this.

Sir Thomas More knew quite well what this meant, that it was only a plan
to get hold of him, for he could not sign what he did not think. It was
on a spring morning that he left his house to go down to Lambeth Palace,
where the paper was lying ready to be signed, and he knew quite well
that it was very likely he should never come back; and he was quite
right: he never did come back. He said good-bye to his children and
stepped into his barge. When he got to Lambeth he found that all the men
there assembled had signed except one called Bishop Fisher. Now, Fisher
and More were Roman Catholics; that is to say, that they still believe