But fortune, which had been long propitious to our author, began now to change sides, and try him as well with affliction as prosperity, in both which characters, his behaviour, integrity and courage were irreproachable.  The amorous monarch King Henry VIII, at last obtained from his Parliament and Council a divorce from his lawful wife, and being passionately fond of Anna Bullen, he married her, and declared her Queen of England:  This marriage Sir Thomas had always opposed, and held it unlawful for his Sovereign to have another wife during his first wife’s life.  The Queen who was of a petulant disposition, and elated with her new dignity could not withhold her resentment against him, but animated all her relations, and the parties inclined to the protestant interest, to persecute him with rigour.  Not long after the divorce, the Council gave authority for the publication of a book, in which the reasons why this divorce was granted were laid down; an answer was soon published, with which Sir Thomas More was charged as the author, of which report however he sufficiently cleared himself in a letter to Mr. Cromwel, then secretary, and a great favourite with King Henry.  In the parliament held in the year 1534, there was an oath, framed, called the Oath of Supremacy, in which all English subjects should renounce the pope’s authority, and swear also to the succession of Queen Ann’s children, and lady Mary illegitimate.  This oath was given to all the clergy as well bishops as priests, but no lay-man except Sir Thomas More was desired to take it; he was summoned to appear at Lambeth before archbishop Cranmer, the Lord Chancellor Audley, Mr. Secretary Cromwel, and the abbot of Westminster, appointed commissioners by the King to tender this oath.  More absolutely refused to take it, from a principle of conscience:  and after various expostulations he was ordered into the custody of the abbot of Westminster; and soon after he was sent to the tower, and the lieutenant had strict charge to prevent his writing, or holding conversation with any persons but those sent by the secretary.  The Lord Chancellor, duke of Norfolk, and Mr. Cromwel paid him frequent visits, and pressed:  him to take the oath, which he still refused.  About a year after his commitment to the tower, by the importunity of Queen Ann, he was arraign’d at the King’s Bench Bar, for obstinately refusing, the oath of supremacy, and wilfully and obstinately opposing the King’s second marriage.  He went to the court leaning on his staff, because he had been much weakened by his imprisonment; his judges were, Audley, Lord Chancellor; Fitz James, Chief Justice; Sir John Baldwin, Sir Richard Leister, Sir John Port, Sir John Spelman, Sir Walter Luke, Sir Anthony Fitzherbert:  The King’s attorney opened against him with a very opprobrious libel; the chief evidence were Mr. secretary Cromwell, to whom he had uttered some disrespectful expressions of the King’s authority, the duke of Suffolk and earl of Wiltshire:  He