ll persons; and this oath contained an acknowledgment that the
marriage with Catherine was against Scripture, and invalid from the
beginning.

Henry had long known More's belief on this point; and the summons to
take this oath was simply a summons to death. More was at his house at
Chelsea when the summons called him to Lambeth, to the house where he
had bandied fun with Warham and Erasmus or bent over the easel of
Holbein. For a moment there may have been some passing impulse to yield.
But it was soon over. Triumphant in all else, the monarchy was to find
its power stop short at the conscience of man. The great battle of
spiritual freedom, the battle of the Protestant against Mary, of the
Catholic against Elizabeth, of the Puritan against Charles, of the
Independent against the Presbyterian, began at the moment when More
refused to bend or to deny his convictions at a king's bidding.

"I thank the Lord," More said with a sudden start as the boat dropped
silently down the river from his garden steps in the early morning, "I
thank the Lord that the field is won." At Lambeth, Cranmer and his
fellow-commissioners tendered to him the new oath of allegiance; but, as
they expected, it was refused. They bade him walk in the garden, that he
might reconsider his reply. The day was hot, and More seated himself in
a window from which he could look down into the crowded court. Even in
the presence of death, the quick sympathy of his nature could enjoy the
humor and life of the throng below.

"I saw," he said afterward, "Master Latimer very merry in the court, for
he laughed and took one or twain by the neck so handsomely that if they
had been women I should have weened that he waxed wanton." The crowd
below was chiefly of priests, rectors, and vicars, pressing to take the
oath that More found harder than death. He bore them no grudge for it.
When he heard the voice of one who was known to have boggled hard at the
oath, a little while before, calling loudly and ostentatiously for
drink, he only noted him with his peculiar humor. "He drank," More
supposed, "either from dryness or from gladness," or "to show _quod ille
notus erat Pontifici_."

He was called in again at last, but only repeated his refusal. It was in
vain that Cranmer plied him with distinctions which perplexed even the
subtle wit of the ex-chancellor; More remained unshaken and passed to
the Tower. He was followed there by Bishop Fisher of Rochester, the most
aged