Various - Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850.

He took great delight in beautifying Chelsea Church, although he had a private chapel of his own; and when last there they told us the painted window had been his gift. It must have been a rare sight to see the chancellor of England sitting with the choir; and yet there was a fair share of pomp in the manner of his servitor bowing at his lady's pew, when the service of the mass was ended, and saying, "My lord is gone before ." But the day after he resigned the great seal of England (of which his wife knew nothing), Sir Thomas presented himself at the pew-door, and, after the fashion of his servitor, quaintly said, "Madam, my lord is gone." The vain woman could not comprehend his meaning, which, when, during their short walk home, he fully explained, she was greatly pained thereby, lamenting it with exceeding bitterness of spirit.

We fancied we could trace a gothic door or window in the wall; but our great desire would have been to discover the water-gate from which he took his departure the morning he was summoned to Lambeth to take the oath of supremacy. True to what he believed right, he offered up his prayers and confessions in Chelsea Church, and then, returning to his own house, took an affectionate farewell of his wife and children, forbidding them to accompany hum to the water-gate, as was their custom, fearing, doubtless, that his mighty heart could not sustain a prolonged interview. Who could paint the silent parting between him and all he loved so well – the boat waiting at the foot of the stairs – the rowers in their rich liveries, while their hearts, heavy with apprehension for the fate of him they served, still trusted that nothing could be found to harm so good a master – the pale and earnest countenance of "son Roper," wondering at the calmness, at such a time, which more than all other things, bespeaks the master mind. For a moment his hand lingered on the gate, and in fastening the simple latch his fingers trembled, and then he took his seat by his son's side; and in another moment the boat was flying through the waters. For some time he spoke no word, but communed with and strengthened his great heart by holy thoughts; then looking straight into his son Roper's eyes, while his own brightened with a glorious triumph, he exclaimed in the fullness of his rich-toned voice, "I thank our Lord the field is won." It was no wonder that, overwhelmed with apprehension, his son-in-law could not apprehend his meaning then, but afterward bethought him that he signified how he had conquered the world.

The abbot of Westminster took him that same day into custody, on his refusal to "take the king as head of his Church;" and upon his repeating this refusal four days afterward, he was committed to the Tower. Then, indeed, these heretofore bowers of bliss echoed to the weak and wavering complaints of his proud wife, who disturbed him also in his prison by her desires, so vain and so worldly, when compared with the elevated feelings of his dear daughter Margaret.

How did the fond, foolish woman seek to shake his purpose! "Seeing," she said, "you have a house at Chelsea, a right fair house, your library, your gallery, your garden, your orchard, and all other necessaries so handsome about you, where you might in company with me, your wife, your children, and household, be merry, I marvel that you who have been always taken for so wise a man, can be content thus to be shut up among mice and rats, and, too, when you might be abroad at your liberty, and with the favor and good-will both of the king and his council, if you would but do as all the bishops and best learned men of the realm have done."

And then not even angered by her folly, seeing how little was given her to understand, he asked her if the house in Chelsea was any nearer Heaven than the gloomy one he then occupied? ending his pleasant yet wise parleying with a simple question:

"Tell me," he said, "good Mistress Alice, how long do you think might we live and enjoy that same house?"

She answered, "Some twenty years."

"Truly," he replied, "if you had said some thousand years, it might have been somewhat; and yet he were a very bad merchant who would put himself in danger to lose eternity for a thousand years. How much the rather if we are not sure to enjoy it one day to an end?"

It is for the glory of women that his daughter Margaret, while she loved and honored him past all telling, strengthened his noble nature; for, writing him during his fifteen months' imprisonment in the Tower, she asks, in words not to be forgotten, "What do you think, most dear father, doth comfort us at Chelsey, in this your absence? Surely, the remembrance of your manner of life passed among us – your holy conversation – your wholesome counsels – your examples of virtue, of which there is hope that they do not only persevere with you, but that they are, by God's grace, much more increased."

After the endurance of fifteen months' imprisonment, he was arraigned, tried, and found guilty of denying the king's supremacy.

Alack! is there no painter of English history bold enough to immortalize himself by painting this trial? Sir Thomas More was beheaded on Tower Hill, in the bright sunshine of the month of July, on its fifth day, 1535, the king remitting the disgusting quartering of the quivering flesh, because of his "high office." When told of the king's "mercy," "Now, God forbid," he said, "the king should use anymore such to any of my friends; and God bless all my posterity from such pardons."

One man of all the crowd who wept at his death, reproached him with a decision he had given in Chancery. More, nothing discomposed, replied, that if it were still to do, he would give the same decision. This happened twelve months before. And, while the last scene was enacting on Tower-Hill, the king, who had walked in this very garden with his arm round the neck, which, by his command, the ax had severed, was playing at Tables in Whitehall, Queen Anne Bullen looking on; and when told that Sir Thomas More was dead, casting his eyes upon the pretty fool that had glittered in his pageants, he said, "Thou art the cause of this man's death." The COWARD! to seek to turn upon a thing so weak as that, the heavy sin which clung to his own soul!

Some say the body lies in Chelsea Church, beneath the tomb we have sketched – the epitaph having been written by himself before he anticipated the manner of his death. 3 3 Wood and Weaver both affirm that the body of More was first deposited in the Tower Chapel, but was subsequently obtained by his devoted and accomplished daughter, Margaret Roper, and re-interred in Chelsea Church, in the tomb he had finished in 1532, the year in which he had surrendered the chancellorship, and resolved to abide the issue of his conscientious opposition to the king's wishes, as if he felt that the tomb should then be prepared. It is too long to insert; but the lines at the conclusion are very like the man. The epitaph and poetry are in Latin: we give the translation:

Others tell that his remains were interred in the Tower, 4 4 Faulkner, in his history of Chelsea, adheres to this opinion, and says that the tomb in that church is but "an empty cenotaph." His grandson, in his Life, says, "his body was buried in the Chapel of St. Peter, in the Tower, in the belfry, or, as some say, as one entereth into the vestry;" and he does not notice the story of his daughter's re-interment of it elsewhere. and some record that the head was sought and preserved by that same daughter Margaret, who caused it to be buried in the family vault of the Ropers in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury; 5 5 The Ropers lived at Canterbury, in St Dunstan's-street. The house is destroyed, and a brewery occupies its site; but the picturesque old gateway, of red brick, still remains, and is engraved above. Margaret Roper, the noble-hearted, learned, and favorite daughter of More resided here with her husband, until her death, in 1544, nine years after the execution of her father, when she was buried in the family vault at St. Dunstan's, where she had reverently placed the head of her father. The story of her piety is thus told by Cresacre More, in his life of his grandfather, Sir Thomas: "His head having remained about a month upon London Bridge, and being to be cast into the Thames, because room should be made for divers others, who, in plentiful sort, suffered martyrdom for the same supremacy, shortly after, it was bought by his daughter Margaret, lest, as she stoutly affirmed before the council, being called before them after for the matter, it should be food for fishes; which she buried, where she thought fittest." Anthony-a-Wood says, that she preserved it in a leaden box, and placed it in her tomb "with great devotion;" and in 1715, Dr. Rawlinson told Hearne the antiquary, that he had seen it there "inclosed in an iron grate." This was fully confirmed in 1835, when the chancel of the church being repaired, the Roper vault was opened, and several persons descended into it, and saw the skull in a leaden box, something like a bee-hive, open in the front, and which was placed in a square recess, in the wall, with an iron-grating before it. A drawing was made, which was engraved in the Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1837, which we have copied in our initial letter; Summerly, in his Handbook to Canterbury, says: "In the print there, however, the opening in the leaden box, inclosing the head, is made oval, whereas it should be in the form of a triangle." We have therefore so corrected our copy. and they add a pretty legend how that, when his head was upon London Bridge, Margaret would be rowed beneath it, and, nothing horrified at the sight, say aloud, "That head has layde many a time in my lappe; would to God, would to God, it would fall into my lappe as I pass under now," and the head did so fall, and she carried it in her "lappe" until she placed it in her husband's, "son Roper's" vault, at Canterbury.