Passage in Tennyson

The following extract from Sir James Mackintosh's *History of England* vol. ii. p. 185., will explain this passage: "The love of Margaret Roper continued to display itself in those outwardly unavailing tokens of tenderness to his (her father, Sir Thomas More's) remains, by which affection seeks to perpetuate itself; ineffectually, indeed, for the object, but very effectually for softening the heart and exalting the soul. She procured his head be taken down from London Bridge, where more odious passions had struggled in pursuit of a species of infernal immortality by placing it. She kept it dur…