From the Humanym archive

Thomas More to Margaret Roper, 1535

The night before his execution, Thomas More writes a farewell letter to his daughter Margaret, sending blessings and small keepsakes to his family.

This letter was written the night before Thomas More's execution.

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. Recommend me when you may to my good daughter Cecily whom I beseech our Lord to comfort, and I send her my blessing and to all her children and pray her to pray for me. I send her an handkercher and God comfort my good son her husband. My good daughter Daunce hath the picture in parchment that you delivered me from my Lady Conyers, her name is on the back side. Shew her that I heartily pray her that you may send it in my name to her again for a token from me to pray for me.

I like special well Dorothy Colly, I pray you be good unto her. I would wit whether this be she that you wrote me of. If not, I pray you be good to the other as you may in her affliction, and to my good daughter Joan Aleyn to give her I pray you some kind answer, for she sued hither to me this day to pray you be good to her.

I cumber you, good Margaret, much, but I would be sorry, if it should be any longer than tomorrow, for it is Saint Thomas' Even and the Vtas 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 not leisure to look to worldly courtesy.

Fare well my dear child and pray for me, and I shall for you and all your friends that we may merrily meet in heaven. I thank you for your great cost.

I send now unto my good daughter Clement her algorism stone and I send her and my good son and all hers God's blessing and mine.

I pray you at time convenient recommend me to my good son John More. I liked well his natural fashion. Our Lord bless him and his good wife my loving daughter, to whom I pray him be good, as he hath great cause, and that if the land of mine come to his hand, he break not my will concerning his sister Daunce. And our Lord bless Thomas and Austin and all that they shall have.

Why this letter

Thomas More was Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor until he refused to accept the king as head of the Church in England, for which he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and, in July 1535, executed. Margaret Roper was his eldest and favorite daughter, who had visited him often in prison and shared his religious convictions. Written on the eve of his death with a piece of coal, since he had been denied pen and paper, this letter sends blessings, small personal keepsakes, and messages to his large extended family, addressed by name one by one. More was later canonized by the Catholic Church as a martyr.

Provenance

Author
Thomas More (1478–1535)
To
Margaret Roper, his daughter
Written
5 July 1535
Source
The Trial of Sir Thomas More: Selected Letters, Famous Trials, ed. Douglas O. Linder
Rights
Public domain — Thomas More died in 1535; this text follows the transcription hosted by this project.

More's letters were first printed in his collected English Works (1557). This text follows The Last Letters of Thomas More, edited by Alvaro de Silva (2000), as transcribed by Professor Douglas O. Linder for his Famous Trials site.

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