to the king's pleasure. For by God's body, Master More, Indignatio principis mors est. Is that all, my lord, quoth he? Then in good faith the difference between your grace and me is but this, that I shall die to day and you tomorrow.
So fell it out, within a month, or thereabout, after the making of the Statute for the Oath of the Supremacy and Matrimony, that all the priests of London and Westminster, and no temporal men but he, were sent for to appear at Lambeth before the Bishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and Secretary Cromwell, commissioners appointed there to tender the [1]oath unto them. Then Sir Thomas More, as his accustomed manner was always ere he entered into any matter of importance, (as when he was first chosen of the king's privy council, when he was sent ambassador, appointed Speaker of the parliament, made Lord Chancellor, or when he took any like weighty matter upon him) to go
- ↑ This oath for maintaining the succession was required to be taken by all men and women throughout the realm. Mr. Justice Rastell observes that Mrs. Margaret Roper took it with this exception, as farre as woulde stande with the lawe of God. And it is said of Harry Patinson, Sir Thomas's quondam fool, that meeting, one day, one of Mr. Roper's servants he asked where Sir Thomas was, and being told he was still in the Tower, he grew very angry and said, "Why, what eyleth him that he will not sweare? Wherefore should he sticke to sweare? I have sworne the oathe my self."
