U5 · Acceptance

Thomas More — the man who would not swear

Sir Thomas More, once Lord Chancellor of England, was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534 for refusing to swear the oath that made Henry VIII head of the Church in England. He would not attack the oath and he would not take it; he simply kept silent. These come from his correspondence with his daughter Margaret Roper during his imprisonment in the Tower — his own letters, and her own account of a conversation with him. First, from prison, weighing the death he could see coming:

And I thank our Lord (Meg) since I am come hither I set by death every day less than other. For though a man leese of his years in this world, it is more than manifold recompensed by coming the sooner to heaven. And though it be a pain to die while a man is in health, yet see I very few that in sickness die with ease. And finally, very sure am I that whensoever the time shall come that may hap to come, God wot how soon, in which I should lie sick in my deathbed by nature, I shall then think that God had done much for me, if he had suffered me to die before by the color of such a law.

Yet he did not trust his own courage. He knew that even the strongest man can break, and said so plainly:

And yet I know well for all this mine own frailty, and that Saint Peter which feared it much less than I, fell in such fear soon after, that at the word of a simple girl he forsook and foreswore our Savior. And therefore am I not (Meg) so mad, as to warrant myself to stand. But I shall pray, and I pray thee mine own good daughter to pray with me, that it may please God that hath given me this mind, to give me the grace to keep it.

He had reckoned the cost through many sleepless nights, and still would not turn:

I accounted, Marget, full surely many a restless night, while my wife slept, and weened that I had slept too, what peril was possible for to fall to me, so far forth that I am sure there can come none above. And in devising, Daughter, thereupon, I had a full heavy heart. But yet (I thank our Lord) for all that, I never thought to change, though the very uttermost should hap me that my fear ran upon.

Margaret, who loved him, pressed him: might he not one day wish he had yielded, when it was too late to turn back? He answered her:

Too late, Daughter … Margaret? I beseech our Lord, that if ever I make such a change, it may be too late, indeed. For well I wot the change cannot be good for my soul, that change I say that should grow but by fear. And therefore I pray God that in this world I never have good of such change.

Then he was summoned before the King’s Council and pressed to declare, one way or the other, whether the oath was lawful. To say yes was to betray his conscience; to say no was to be condemned for treason. He would say neither. He sent Margaret this account of the day:

Forasmuch, dearly beloved daughter, as it is likely that you either have heard or shortly shall hear that the Council was here this day, and that I was before them, I have thought it necessary to send you word how the matter standeth. And verily to be short I perceive little difference between this time and the last, for as far as I can see the whole purpose is either to drive me to say precisely the one way, or else precisely the other.

And so he had sent them now in his name upon mine allegiance to command me to make a plain and terminate answer whether I thought the statute lawful or not, and that I should either acknowledge and confess it lawful that his Highness should be Supreme Head of the Church of England, or else to utter plainly my malignity. Whereto I answered that I had no malignity and therefore I could none utter. And as to the matter I could none other answer make than I had before made. I thanked God that my case was such in this matter through the clearness of mine own conscience that though I might have pain I could not have harm, for a man may in such case leese his head and have no harm.

To this it was said by my Lord Chancellor and Master Secretary both that the King might by his laws compel me to make a plain answer thereto, either the one way or the other. Whereunto I answered … For if it so were that my conscience gave me against the statutes … then I nothing doing nor nothing saying against the statute, it were a very hard thing to compel me to say either precisely with it against my conscience to the loss of my soul, or precisely against it to the destruction of my body. … The difference standeth between heading and hell.

And in conclusion they offered me an oath by which I should be sworn to make true answer to such things as should be asked me on the King’s behalf, concerning the King’s own person. Whereto I answered that verily I never purposed to swear any book oath more while I lived. … Whereupon I refused the oath … It was also said unto me that if I had as lief be out of the world as in it … why did I not speak even out plain against the statute … Whereto I answered as the truth is, that I have not been a man of such holy living as I might be bold to offer myself to death, lest God for my presumption might suffer me to fall, and therefore I put not myself forward but draw back. Howbeit if God draw me to it himself, then trust I in his great mercy, that he shall not fail to give me grace and strength.

His last letter to Margaret was written with a coal the day before his execution, 5 July 1535:

Our Lord bless you good daughter and your good husband and your little boy and all yours and all my children and all my godchildren and all our friends. … I cumber you good Margaret much, but I would be sorry, if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is St. Thomas’ eve, and the utas of Saint Peter and therefore tomorrow long I to go to God, it were a day very meet and convenient for me. I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy. Farewell my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven.

Joan of Arc — the answers she would not take back

Joan of Arc was a farm girl of Domrémy who, at seventeen, led French armies to lift the siege of Orleans. Captured and sold to the English, she was tried for heresy at Rouen in 1431. Where More guarded his silence, Joan answered everything. Years before, a soldier who escorted her to the King remembered the village girl who first told him her mission:

No one in the world — neither kings, nor dukes, nor the daughter of the King of Scotland, nor any others — can recover the kingdom of France; there is no succour to be expected save from me; but, nevertheless, I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my proper estate: it is, however, necessary that I should go, and do this, because my Lord wills that I should do it.

At her trial, asked about the Voice that had sent her, she answered with plain directness:

Pass that by. I was thirteen when I had a Voice from God for my help and guidance. The first time that I heard this Voice, I was very much frightened; it was mid-day, in the summer, in my father’s garden. … I heard this Voice to my right, towards the Church; rarely do I hear it without its being accompanied also by a light. This light comes from the same side as the Voice. … Since I came into France I have often heard this Voice.

Her judges set a trap: to claim she was in a state of grace was presumption, to deny it was to condemn herself. She replied:

If I am, may God so keep me. If I am not, may God so place me. I would rather die than not be in the love of God.

Before her English judges she did not soften the truth:

Of the love or hate God may have for the English, or of what He will do for their souls, I know nothing; but I know quite well that they will be put out of France, except those who shall die there, and that God will send victory to the French against the English.

She foretold their defeat with a certainty that unsettled the court:

Before seven years are passed, the English will lose a greater wager than they have already done at Orleans; they will lose everything in France. … I know it by revelation, as clearly as I know that you are before me at this moment.

Her Voices, she said, had already told her how it would end, and told her to accept it:

My Voices have told me that I shall be delivered by a great victory; and they add: “Be resigned; have no care for thy martyrdom; thou wilt come in the end to the Kingdom of Paradise.” They have told me this simply, absolutely, and without fail. What is meant by my martyrdom is the pain and adversity that I suffer in prison; I do not know if I shall have still greater suffering to bear; for that I refer me to God.

She had already faced death once by her own choice. Held in a high tower, she had leapt from it rather than be handed to the English. Asked why:

I had heard that the people of Compiègne, all, to the age of seven years, were to be put to fire and sword; and I would rather have died than live after such a destruction of good people. That was one of the reasons. The other was that I knew I was sold to the English; and I had rather die than be in the hands of my enemies, the English.

Asked whether she would take back what she had said of her Voices:

What I have always said in the Trial, and held, I wish still to say and maintain. If I were condemned, if I saw the fire lighted, the faggots prepared, and the executioner ready to kindle the fire, and if I myself were in the fire, I would not say otherwise, and would maintain to the death all I have said.

Then came the one moment she faltered. On the scaffold, with the fire before her, she had signed a recantation to be spared, and been led back to prison. Days later she withdrew it, knowing that returned her to the stake:

The great pity it is, this treason to which I have consented, to abjure and recant in order to save my life! I have damned myself to save my life! … All I said and revoked, I said for fear of the fire. … I revoked nothing that was not against the truth. I would rather do penance once for all — that is die — than endure any longer the suffering of a prison.

Her acceptance did not come without terror. On the morning she was told she would burn that very day, a friar in the prison heard her cry out:

Alas! am I to be so horribly and cruelly treated? Alas! that my body, whole and entire, which has never been corrupted, should to-day be consumed and burned to ashes! Ah! I would far rather have my head cut off, seven times over, than be thus burned!

She was nineteen years old. She went to the fire anyway. Jean Massieu, the priest who attended her to the end, testified to her last hour:

When she was given over by the Church, I was still with her; and with great devotion she asked to have a Cross; and, hearing this, an Englishman who was there present made a little cross of wood with the ends of a stick, which he gave her, and devoutly she received and kissed it, making piteous lamentations and acknowledgments to God, Our Redeemer. … And she put the said Cross in her bosom, between her person and her clothing. And, besides, she asked me humbly that I would get for her the Church Cross, so that she might see it continually until death. … The which, being brought, she embraced closely and long, and kept it till she was fastened to the stake. … And thus she was led and fastened to the stake, continuing her praises and devout lamentations to God and His Saints; and with her last word, in dying, she cried, with a loud voice: “Jesus!”

A friar who was also present saw the executioner come to them afterward, stricken and moved with a marvellous repentance. He recorded the man’s own words:

The executioner, about four hours after the burning, said that he had never been so afraid in executing any criminal as in the burning of the Maid.