AND so was he by Master Lieutenant brought out of the Tower, and from thence led towards the place of execution. Where, going up the scaffold, which was so weak that it was ready to fall, he said merrily to the Lieutenant: “I pray you, Master Lieutenant, see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.”
Then desired he all the people thereabout to pray for him, and to bear witness with him, that he should now there suffer death in and for the faith of the holy Catholic Church.* Which done, he kneeled down, and, after his prayers said, turned to the executioner with a cheerful countenance, and said unto him: “Pluck up thy spirits, man, and be not afraid to do thine office: my neck is very short, take heed, therefore, thou strike not awry, for saving of thine honesty.”* So passed Sir Thomas More out of this world to God, upon the very same day which he most desired.*
abridged
* Roper says that Pope had passed on to More a number of ‘requests’ from Henry, one of which was to keep any farewell short. “‘The king’s pleasure is farther,’ quoth Master Pope ‘that at your execution, you shall not use many words.’ ‘Master Pope,’ quoth he, ‘you do well to give me warning of his grace’s pleasure, for otherwise, at that time, had I purposed somewhat to have spoken; but of no matter wherewith his grace, or any other, should have had cause to be offended.’” It is difficult, however, to think of any speech he could have made that would have been more uncomfortable to the King than the twenty or thirty words he uttered.
* Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his Apophthegms (No. 183) recalls another quip: “Sir Thomas More, (who was a man, in all his life-time, that had an excellent vein in jesting) at the very instant of his death, having a pretty long beard, after his head was upon the block, lift it up again, and gently drew his beard aside, and said ‘This hath not offended the king.’”
* It was nine o’clock on July 6th, 1535, what Roper called ‘the Utas of St Peter’, the eighth day after the feast of St Peter and St Paul on June 29th — in the Eastern churches it would be called the leave-taking of the feast. The day was to More a symbol of the See of Rome, which had revitalised the English Church through Pope St Gregory the Great in 597. See The Baptism of Kent. Sir Thomas himself had suffered the grief of seeing the English Reformation take shape, including the Submission of the Clergy in 1523, the Act of Supremacy in 1534 that declared Henry to be Head of the Church of England, and the early stages of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.