"I marvel," said she to him one day, "that you, who have been alway hitherto taken for wise, should now so play the fool as to lie here in this close filthy prison, and be content to be shut up amongst mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, if you would but do as the bishops have done ?" But More saw his duty from a different point of view: it was not a mere matter of personal comfort with him; and the expostulations of his wife were of no avail.

He gently put her aside, saying cheerfully, "Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own ?"--to which she contemptuously rejoined: "Tilly vally--tilly vally!" More's daughter, Margaret Roper, on the contrary, encouraged her father to stand firm in his principles, and dutifully consoled and cheered him during his long confinement.

Deprived of pen-and-ink, he wrote his letters to her with a piece of coal, saying in one of them: "If I were to declare in writing how much pleasure your daughterly loving letters gave me, a PECK OF COALS would not suffice to make the pens." More was a martyr to veracity: he would not swear a false oath; and he perished because he was sincere.

When his head had been struck off, it was placed on London Bridge, in accordance with the barbarous practice of the times.

Margaret Roper had the courage to ask for the head to be taken down and given to her, and, carrying her affection for her father beyond the grave, she desired that it might be buried with her when she died; and long after, when Margaret Roper's tomb was opened, the precious relic was observed lying on the dust of what had been her bosom.
Martin Luther was not called upon to lay down his life for his faith; but, from the day that he declared himself against the Pope, he daily ran the risk of losing it.