Alas! Sweet mother, why do you weep? Why do you lament? Why do you take so heavily my honourable death? Know you not that we are born once to die, and that always in this life we may not live? Know you not how vain, how wicked, how inconstant, how miserable this life of ours is? Do you not consider my calling, my estate, my profession? Do you not remember that I am going to a place of all pleasure and felicity? Why then do you weep? Why do you mourn? Why do you cry out?
But perhaps you will say, I weep not so much for your death as I do for that you are hanged, drawn, and quartered. My sweet mother, it is the favourablest, honourablest, and happiest death that ever could have chanced unto me.
I die not for knavery, but for verity; I die not for treason, but for religion; I die not for any ill demeanour or offence committed, but only for my Faith, for my conscience, for my priesthood, for my blessed Saviour Jesus Christ; and, to tell you truth, if I had ten thousand lives, I am bound to lose them all rather than to break my faith, to lose my soul, to offend my God.
--Blessed William Hart in his final letter to his mother
