  More was confined in the Tower of London from April 1534 until his execution on 6 July 1535, and during this period he wrote several works, notably A Dialogue of Comfort and the unfinished Latin meditation De tristitia Christi (“The Sadness of Christ”). The letters written at this time to his daughter Margaret Roper offer a direct insight into his thoughts, but of particular interest is the letter of Margaret to her step-sister Alice Alington (Corr., Letter 206), in which More's voice is unmistakeably present. Both the Dialogue and De tristitia face the issue of suffering, but they transcend private anxiety and are clearly intended for wider circulation. In the Dialogue More returns to his preferred fictional form, setting it in Hungary, as the elderly Antony and his nephew Vincent anticipate persecution in the aftermath of the Ottoman invasion of their country.  The parallel with More's situation is clear: should one accommodate or follow conscience? The older man's serene progress towards acceptance of temporary suffering for a higher good is set against the counterpoint of the younger man's hesitation. Unlike any classical treatment of consolation, More admits the role of grace; but grace still assumes our synergistic response, and this is his primary concern: it is necessary to gather comfort and courage, “and let it sink into the heart” (CWM 12, 296). By right imagining—a form of internalized rhetoric—an abstract argument is transformed into “a habitual, fast, and deep-rooted purpose”. A key motif is that of the prison: in an apparent allusion to Plato's myth of the cave, More distinguishes between actual confinement in a cell, rated as a prison in the opinion of the common people, and the more philosophical view that the whole earth is, in effect, a prison and all its inhabitants under sentence of death (CWM 12, 269–70). The wise prisoner, however narrowly confined, is free as long as he can quiet his mind and is content to be where he is.  Though More's wife finds his prison claustrophobic, the only difference between his cell and her chamber is that his lock is outside, while hers is inside (CWM 12, 277). Given More's relatively lonely stand against royal policy, conscience is a crucial term for him, as it touches on the soundness of his own motives, especially when these are criticized as over-scrupulous; and in the beast fable of Mother Maud he playfully navigates a course between the scrupulous conscience and the over-large or elastic conscience (CWM 12, 114–20). In Letter 206 of the Correspondence, attributed to Margaret but clearly based on More's own words, “conscience” occurs more than forty times. Margaret, cast as Eve, conveys the view of Sir Thomas Audley, More's successor as Chancellor, that he is driven by “a right simple scruple”: with the exceptions of More and Bishop Fisher, all others have been content to take the oath. In response, More insists that he acts from an informed conscience, one shaped by many years of study and reflection. Above all, he acts on his own conscience, and he carefully distinguishes his position even from that of Fisher— “I never intend…to pin my soul to another man's back”. The responsibility must be his alone. While he notes that some of the most learned men who have taken the oath had previously affirmed the contrary, he will not impugn their motives or condemn any other man's conscience; but for his own part, he is content “to lose goods, land, and life too, rather than swear against my conscience”. It was on the basis of this meticulous self-examination that More went to the scaffold.