In a fortnight five were dead and the rest at the point of death, "almost despatched," Cromwell's envoy wrote to him, "by the hand of God, of which, considering their behaviour, I am not sorry." Their death was soon followed by that of More.

The interval of imprisonment had failed to break his resolution, and the new statute sufficed to bring him to the block.
With Fisher he was convicted of denying the king's title as only supreme head of the Church.

The old Bishop approached the scaffold with a book of the New Testament in his hand.

He opened it at a venture ere he knelt, and read, "This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God." In July More followed his fellow-prisoner to the block.

Just before the fatal blow he moved his beard carefully from the reach of the doomsman's axe.