As stories of executions hit the news in recent weeks, I thought of St. Thomas More, who went to the scaffold more joyfully than most and even kissed his executioner.

“I forgive you right readily,” Robert Bolt’s More tells the executioner in the film version of Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, handing the axeman a coin. “Be not afraid of your office; you send me to God.”

The coin was tradition in that era – executioners asked for forgiveness, and those executed gave the executioner a coin to ensure the act was swift.