From The Sadness of Christ:
A cruel delight it is and very unnatural, to rejoice and take comfort at others’ woe and misery.
Never the more cause hath any man to rejoice or to account his luck the better, for having power upon
anybody’s life or death, as the traitor trowed he had, when he had gotten this band of soldiers unto him.
Since of this may every man be right sure, that whomsoever he slayeth, by death shall he him follow. Yea
and so uncertain is the hour of death, that the party that so boldly boasteth to despatch another first, may
fortune for all that to go before himself; as it here fared by Judas, who delivered Christ to the Jews to be
put to death, and yet did he first miserably murder himself.
Perhaps Saint Thomas was thinking of his persecutor, Thomas Cromwell, who did follow him to the headman’s block five years after More’s execution.
Reportedly, it took three blows of the axe to sever Cromwell’s head. His body was laid to rest near to St. Thomas’s. I wonder if it was a sign that they eventually “merrily met in heaven,” as I’m sure St. Thomas would have prayed that they did.