1535
We have seen how dim and doubtful was the belief that upbore the grave
and beautiful Antigone in her self-sacrifice; but there have been women
who have been as brave and devoted in their care of the mortal remains
of their friends--not from the heathen fancy that the weal of the dead
depended on such rites, but from their earnest love, and with a fuller
trust beyond.
Such was the spirit of Beatrix, a noble maiden of Rome, who shared the
Christian faith of her two brothers, Simplicius and Faustinus, at the
end of the third century. For many years there had been no persecution,
and the Christians were living at peace, worshipping freely, and
venturing even to raise churches. Young people had grown up to whom the
being thrown to the lions, beheaded, or burnt for the faith's sake, was
but a story of the times gone by. But under the Emperor Diocletian all
was changed. The old heathen gods must be worshipped, incense must
be burnt to the statue of the Emperor, or torture and death were the
punishment. The two brothers Simplicius and Faustinus were thus asked
to deny their faith, and resolutely refused. They were cruelly tortured,
and at length beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the tawny waters
of the Tiber. Their sister Beatrix had taken refuge with a poor devout
Christian woman, named Lucina. But she did not desert her brothers in
death; she made her way in secret to the bank of the river, watching
to see whether the stream might bear down the corpses so dear to her.
Driven along, so as to rest upon the bank, she found them at last, and,
by the help of Lucina, she laid them in the grave in the cemetery called
Ad Ursum Pileatum. For seven months she remained in her shelter, but she
was at last denounced, and was brought before the tribunal, where she
made answer that nothing should induce her to adore gods made of wood
and stone. She was strangled in her prison, and her corpse being cast
out, was taken home by Lucina, and buried beside her brothers. It was,
indeed, a favorite charitable work of the Christian widows at Rome to
provide for the burial of the martyrs; and as for the most part they
were poor old obscure women, they could perform this good work with far
less notice than could persons of more mark.
But nearer home, our own country shows a truly Christian Antigone,
resembling the Greek lady, both in her dutifulness to the living, and in
her tender care for the dead. This was Margaret, the favorite daughter
of sir Thomas More, the true-hearted, faithful statesman of King Henry
VIII.
Margaret's home had been an exceedingly happy one. Her father, Sir
Thomas More, was a man of the utmost worth, and was both earnestly
religious and conscientious, and of a sweetness of manner and
playfulness of fancy that endeared him to everyone. He was one of the
most affectionate and dutiful of sons to his aged father, Sir John More;
and when the son was Lord Chancellor, while the father was only a judge,
Sir Thomas, on his way to his court, never failed to kneel down before
his father in public, and ask his blessing. Never was the old saying,
that a dutiful child had dutiful children, better exemplified than in
the More family. In the times when it was usual for parents to be very
stern with children, and keep them at a great distance, sometimes making
them stand in their presence, and striking them for any slight offence,
Sir Thomas More thought it his duty to be friendly and affectionate with
them, to talk to them, and to enter into their confidence; and he was
rewarded with their full love and duty.
He had four children--Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John. His much-
loved wife died when they were all very young, and he thought it for
their good to marry a widow, Mrs. Alice Middleton, with one daughter
named Margaret, and he likewise adopted an orphan called Margaret Giggs.
With this household he lived in a beautiful large house at Chelsea, with
well-trimmed gardens sloping down to the Thames; and this was the resort
of the most learned and able men, both English and visitors from abroad,
who delighted in pacing the shady walks, listening to the wit and wisdom
of Sir Thomas, or conversing with the daughters, who had been highly
educated, and had much of their father's humor and sprightliness.
Even Henry VIII. himself, then one of the most brilliant and graceful
gentlemen of his time, would sometimes arrive in his royal barge, and
talk theology or astronomy with Sir Thomas; or, it might be, crack jests
with him and his daughters, or listen to the music in which all were
skilled, even Lady More having been persuaded in her old age to learn
to play on various instruments, including the flute. The daughters were
early given in marriage, and with their husbands, continued to live
under their father's roof. Margaret's husband was William Roper, a young
lawyer, of whom Sir Thomas was very fond, and his household at Chelsea
was thus a large and joyous family home of children and grandchildren,
delighting in the kind, bright smiles of the open face under the square
cap, that the great painter Holbein has sent down to us as a familiar
sight.
But these glad days were not to last for ever. The trying times of the
reign of Henry VIII. were beginning, and the question had been stirred
whether the King's marriage with Katherine of Aragon had been a lawful
one. When Sir Thomas More found that the King was determined to take his
own course, and to divorce himself without permission from the Pope, it
was against his conscience to remain in office when acts were being
done which he could not think right or lawful. He therefore resigned his
office as Lord Chancellor, and, feeling himself free from the load
and temptation, his gay spirits rose higher than ever. His manner of
communicating the change to his wife, who had been very proud of his
state and dignity, was thus. At church, when the service was over, it
had always been the custom for one of his attendants to summon Lady More
by coming to her closet door, and saying, 'Madam, my lord is gone.' On
the day after his resignation, he himself stepped up, and with a low
bow said, 'Madam, my lord is gone,' for in good soothe he was no longer
Chancellor, but only plain Sir Thomas.
He thoroughly enjoyed his leisure, but he was not long left in
tranquillity. When Anne Boleyn was crowned, he was invited to be
present, and twenty pounds were offered him to buy a suitably splendid
dress for the occasion; but his conscience would not allow him to
accept the invitation, though he well knew the terrible peril he ran by
offending the King and Queen. Thenceforth there was a determination
to ruin him. First, he was accused of taking bribes when administering
justice. It was said that a gilt cup had been given to him as a New
Year's gift, by one lady, and a pair of gloves filled with gold coins by
another; but it turned out, on examination, that he had drunk the wine
out of the cup, and accepted the gloves, because it was ill manners to
refuse a lady's gift, yet he had in both cases given back the gold.
Next, a charge was brought that he had been leaguing with a half-crazy
woman called the Nun of Kent, who had said violent things about the
King. He was sent for to be examined by Henry and his Council, and this
he well knew was the interview on which his safety would turn, since the
accusation was a mere pretext, and the real purpose of the King was to
see whether he would go along with him in breaking away from Rome--a
proceeding that Sir Thomas, both as churchman and as lawyer, could not
think legal. Whether we agree or not in his views, it must always be
remembered that he ran into danger by speaking the truth, and doing what
he thought right. He really loved his master, and he knew the humor of
Henry VIII., and the temptation was sore; but when he came down from his
conference with the King in the Tower, and was rowed down the river to
Chelsea, he was so merry that William Roper, who had been waiting for
him in the boat, thought he must be safe, and said, as they landed and
walked up the garden--
'I trust, sir, all is well, since you are so merry?'
'It is so, indeed, son, thank God!'
'Are you then, sir, put out of the bill?'
'Wouldest thou know, son why I am so joyful? In good faith I rejoice
that I have given the devil a foul fall; because I have with those lords
gone so far that without great shame I can never go back,' he answered,
meaning that he had been enabled to hold so firmly to his opinions, and
speak them out so boldly, that henceforth the temptation to dissemble
them and please the King would be much lessened. That he had held his
purpose in spite of the weakness of mortal nature, was true joy to him,
though he was so well aware of the consequences that when his daughter
Margaret came to him the next day with the glad tidings that the charge
against him had been given up, he calmly answered her, 'In faith, Meg,
what is put off is not given up.'
One day, when he had asked Margaret how the world went with the new
Queen, and she replied, 'In faith, father, never better; there is
nothing else in the court but dancing and sporting,' he replied, with
sad foresight, 'Never better. Alas, Meg! it pitieth me to remember unto
what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come. These dances of hers will
prove such dances that she will spurn off our heads like footballs, but
it will not be long ere her head will take the same dance.'
So entirely did he expect to be summoned by a pursuivant that he thought
it would lessen the fright of his family if a sham summons were brought.
So he caused a great knocking to be made while all were at dinner, and
the sham pursuivant went through all the forms of citing him, and the
whole household were in much alarm, till he explained the jest; but the
earnest came only a few days afterwards. On the 13th of April of 1534,
arrived the real pursuivant to summon him to Lambeth, there to take the
oath of supremacy, declaring that the King was the head of the Church
of England, and that the Pope had no authority there. He knew what
the refusal would bring on him. He went first to church, and then,
not trusting himself to be unmanned by his love for his children and
grandchildren, instead of letting them, as usual, come down to the water
side, with tender kisses and merry farewells, he shut the wicket gate
of the garden upon them all, and only allowed his son-in-law Roper to
accompany him, whispering into his ear, 'I thank our Lord, the field is
won.'
Conscience had triumphed over affection, and he was thankful, though for
the last time he looked on the trees he had planted, and the happy home
he had loved. Before the council, he undertook to swear to some clauses
in the oath which were connected with the safety of the realm; but he
refused to take that part of the oath which related to the King's
power over the Church. It is said that the King would thus have been
satisfied, but that the Queen urged him further. At any rate, after
being four days under the charge of the Abbot of Westminister, Sir
Thomas was sent to the Tower of London. There his wife--a plain, dull
woman, utterly unable to understand the point of conscience--came and
scolded him for being so foolish as to lie there in a close, filthy
prison, and be shut up with rats and mice, instead of enjoying the favor
of the King. He heard all she had to say, and answered, 'I pray thee,
good Mrs. Alice, tell me one thing--is not this house as near heaven
as my own?' To which she had no better answer than 'Tilly vally, tilly
vally.' But, in spite of her folly, she loved him faithfully; and
when all his property was seized, she sold even her clothes to obtain
necessaries for him in prison.
His chief comfort was, however, in visits and letters from his daughter
Margaret, who was fully able to enter into the spirit that preferred
death to transgression. He was tried in Westminster Hall, on the 1st of
July, and, as he had fully expected, sentenced to death. He was taken
back along the river to the Tower. On the wharf his loving Margaret was
waiting for her last look. She broke through the guard of soldiers
with bills and halberds, threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him,
unable to say any word but 'Oh, my father!--oh, my father!' He blessed
her, and told her that whatsoever she might suffer, it was not without
the will of God, and she must therefore be patient. After having once
parted with him, she suddenly turned back again, ran to him, and,
clinging round his neck, kissed him over and over again--a sight at
which the guards themselves wept. She never saw him again; but the night
before his execution he wrote to her a letter with a piece of charcoal,
with tender remembrances to all the family, and saying to her, 'I never
liked your manner better than when you kissed me last; for I am most
pleased when daughterly love and dear charity have no leisure to look
to worldly courtesy.' He likewise made it his especial request that she
might be permitted to be present at his burial.
His hope was sure and steadfast, and his heart so firm that he did not
even cease from humorous sayings. When he mounted the crazy ladder of
the scaffold he said, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up;
and for my coming down let me shift for myself.' And he desired the
executioner to give him time to put his beard out of the way of the
stroke, 'since that had never offended his Highness'.
His body was given to his family, and laid in the tomb he had already
prepared in Chelsea Church; but the head was set up on a pole on London
Bridge. The calm, sweet features were little changed, and the loving
daughter gathered courage as she looked up at them. How she contrived
the deed, is not known; but before many days had passed, the head was
no longer there, and Mrs. Roper was said to have taken it away. She was
sent for to the Council, and accused of the stealing of her father's
head. She shrank not from avowing that thus it had been, and that the
head was in her own possession. One story says that, as she was passing
under the bridge in a boat, she looked up, and said, 'That head has
often lain in my lap; I would that it would now fall into it.' And at
that moment it actually fell, and she received it. It is far more likely
that she went by design, at the same time as some faithful friend on the
bridge, who detached the precious head, and dropped it down to her in
her boat beneath. Be this as it may, she owned before the cruel-hearted
Council that she had taken away and cherished the head of the man whom
they had slain as a traitor. However, Henry VIII. was not a Creon, and
our Christian Antigone was dismissed unhurt by the Council, and allowed
to retain possession of her treasure. She caused it to be embalmed, kept
it with her wherever she went, and when, nine years afterwards, she died
(in the year 1544), it was laid in her coffin in the 'Roper aisle' of
St. Dunstan's Church, at Canterbury.