knew that he could do better service to the Queen and the Catholic Church by his death than by his life. Cromwell told Chapuys that "the Bishop of Rome was the cause of his punishment, for having made a Cardinal of the King's worst enemy." He was "greatly pitied of the people." The pity would have been less had his real conduct been revealed.
A nobler victim followed. In the lists of those who were prepared to take arms against the King there is no mention of the name of Sir Thomas More; but he had been Fisher's intimate friend and companion, and he could hardly have been ignorant of a conspiracy with which Fisher had been so closely concerned; while malice might be inferred without injustice from an acquaintance with dangerous purposes which he had not revealed. He paid the penalty of the society to which he had attached himself. He, even more than the Bishop of Rochester, was the chief of the party most opposed to the Reformation. He had distinguished himself as Chancellor by his zeal against the Lutherans, and, if that party had won the day, they would have gone to work as they did afterwards when Mary became Queen. No one knew better than More the need in which the Church stood of the surgeon's hand; no one saw clearer the fox's face under the monk's cowl: but, like other moderate reformers, he detested impatient enthusiasts who spoilt their cause by extravagance. He felt towards the Protestantism which was spreading in England as Burke felt towards the Convention and the Jacobin Club, and while More lived and defied the statute the vast middle party in the nation which was yet undecided found encouragement in opposition from his example. His execution has been uniformly condemned by historians as an act of wanton tyranny. It was
