LIFE OF BLESSED JOHN FISHER.
 
 Ml obstal 
 
 JJermiasu <uperionim. 
 
 EDUARD. O'LAVERTY, C.SS.R. 
 
 Censor Deputatvs. 
 
 Imprimatur. 
 
 HENRICUS EDUARDUS, 
 Archiep. Westmon. 
 
 2 Feb., 1888.
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER 
 
 From Hotht'in'x xlcelc/t niu.rt e in flie S9* yf.nr vf 
 thf Bishops age aiid eight years before his Martyrfittm.
 
 LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER, 
 
 BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, 
 CARDINAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH, 
 
 AND 
 
 MARTYR UNDER HENRY VIII. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. [T^_E. BRIDGETT, 
 
 OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEEMER. 
 
 LONDON : BURNS & GATES, LIMITED. 
 
 NEW YORK : CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO. 
 
 1890.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE, vii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Early Years, i 
 
 II. Cambridge, ... ... ... ... ... ... 17 
 
 III. The Bishop in his Diocese, 53 
 
 IV. Extra-Diocesan Labours, 71 
 
 V. Fisher and Erasmus, 91 
 
 VI. Preacher and Writer, ... 105 
 
 VII. The Divorce, 141 
 
 VIII. Parliamentary Struggles, 1529, 178 
 
 IX. Supreme Head, 191 
 
 X. The Beginnings of Sorrows, ... ... ... ... 212 
 
 XI. The Holy Maid of Kent, 234 
 
 XII. The Oath of Succession, 264 
 
 XIII. In the Tower, 287 
 
 XIV. The New Supremacy, 305 
 
 XV. Royal Snares, 332 
 
 XVI. Papal Honours, 354 
 
 XVII. The Trial, 361 
 
 XVIII. The Martyrdom, 388 
 
 XIX. Contemporary Judgments, 412 
 
 XX. Lessons of the Martyrdom, 429 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE, ,. 445
 
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 THE name of JOHN FISHER, the learned theologian, 
 the saintly prelate, the heroic martyr, is familiar to 
 everyone who has acquired the mere outlines of 
 history ; yet many deep students of the period in 
 which he lived will be ready to confess that their 
 knowledge is restricted to a few facts of his life, and 
 perhaps the details of his death. The days in which 
 his lot was cast were evil, and a man of his noble 
 character could occupy no very conspicuous place in 
 them, except by contrast, protestation, and martyr- 
 dom. He could not fill the foreground like Luther, 
 Calvin, and Cranmer, or even like Cardinal Wolsey or 
 Bishop Stephen Gardiner. And though the same 
 remark applies to his friend and fellow-martyr Sir 
 Thomas More, yet there were many circumstances 
 that made the character of the latter more generally 
 attractive to the biographer and to the reader. It 
 was a new thing at that period for a layman to rival 
 the best ecclesiastics in learning, eloquence, and 
 theology, as well as in law and in statesmanship, 
 The chancellor's charming family life, where virtue and 
 letters, religion and wit, united with patriarchal 
 simplicity, was, if not a new development of the social
 
 Vili BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 system, yet a return, after ages of ignorance and 
 barbarism, to the best Christian traditions of the days 
 of St. Basil and St. Paulinus. In his own family, too, 
 the Blessed Thomas More found those who were 
 capable of recording, as well as appreciating, his 
 virtues, and of telling the incidents of his life and 
 death throughout Europe. Thus multitudes are 
 acquainted with the words and acts, the public and 
 private life of More, whose knowledge of Fisher is 
 merely that he was a learned and virtuous bishop, 
 tyranically put to death by Henry VIII. The 
 memories of the two martyrs are typified in the fate 
 of their pictures. The picture of Sir Thomas and his 
 household, by Holbein, still fresh, and often repro- 
 duced, by the engraver, has made us all familiar with 
 his gracious and noble aspect ; while more than one 
 old canvas or panel, without a history, and showing 
 only a pale, ascetic face on a faded background, left 
 the beholder uncertain whether he had been gazing on 
 a Warham, a Tunstal, or a Fisher. 
 
 But it is not yet too late. After lying long for- 
 gotten, an authentic portrait of the martyr bishop was 
 found by Queen Caroline in a secret drawer in the 
 royal palace, and we now know how he looked in 
 1527 ; for the sketch is by Holbein's faithful pencil.* 
 And so, too, by the opening of the national and of 
 foreign archives, and the diligence of their guardians, 
 documents unknown for centuries have once more 
 been brought to light, and enable the student to fill 
 in many details of Fisher's life and character. 
 
 * See infra, p. 15.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 To the present writer no books are of such living 
 interest as these great volumes of State Papers. 
 But I am quite aware how few share this taste, and 
 that for the great majority of readers the facts em- 
 bodied in ancient records cannot be said to have been 
 " brought to light " until someone has gathered them 
 out, and grouped them together, and clothed them in 
 modern form. 
 
 Using an author's privilege to say somewhat of 
 himself, or at least of his motives and labours, in a 
 Preface, I will now state how I have been led to write 
 this life, and how far I am indebted to previous 
 biographers. Although the recent decree of the 
 Sovereign Pontiff permitting the public cultus of the 
 Blessed John Fisher* has been the occasion and 
 impulse of my work, I formed the resolution only 
 because I had previously made many of the necessary- 
 studies and gathered most of the materials. When, 
 just forty years since, I first entered the refectory or 
 hall of St. John's College, Cambridge, my attention 
 was at once arrested by the portraits of the foundress, 
 Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII., and of her 
 confessor, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester ; and the 
 quaint rebus of a fish and an ear (of corn) in the coat- 
 of-arms of the latter, in the chapel window, somewhat 
 distracted my mind amid psalms and prayer. I 
 wished at once to know something of those worthies ; 
 and as the senior tutor of my college, Dr. Hymers, 
 had reprinted Fisher's funeral sermon ot Lady Mar- 
 garet, with notes, I was soon able not so much to 
 * See at the end of this Preface.
 
 X BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 satisfy as to excite still more my curiosity. It was 
 certainly not the intention of the editor, a clergyman 
 of the Protestant Church of England, that the perusal 
 of his reprint should lead any student of St. John's 
 College a step back to the Catholicity of Bishop 
 Fisher. Yet such was the case. I soon purchased a 
 copy of the first edition of Fisher's first treatise 
 against Luther, printed in 1523, and, without entering 
 very deeply into controversy, I received a deep 
 impression of the violence and malice of the Re- 
 formers, and a gentle drawing towards the defenders 
 of the old faith, which all subsequent studies increased. 
 Though I read no more of Fisher's writings at that 
 time, his spotless character and heroic death gave 
 weight to other arguments, which made me refuse 
 the oath of royal supremacy then required for a 
 degree, and thus obliged me to leave Cambridge 
 in 1850 and seek reconciliation with the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 I never forgot those first impressions, and at intervals 
 have made myself familiar with the whole of Fisher's 
 writings, both in Latin and in English. I had also 
 read the Life of Fisher by Dr. Baily, printed in 1655, 
 and the much larger Life by the Protestant Lewis. 
 Some years ago I entertained a thought of editing the 
 original MS. Life of Fisher by Dr. Hall, of which a 
 transcript had been placed at my disposal, and for 
 that purpose I had searched the Epistles of Erasmus 
 and a good deal of the literature of the early days of 
 Henry. It was, however, reported that the Early 
 English Text .Society was engaged upon this MS., and v
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 I left the work to hands which I hope will prove as 
 competent as they have been dilatory. 
 
 Among Protestant writers, the first to do complete 
 justice to the character of Bishop Fisher, and to in- 
 vestigate correctly his judicial murder, was Mr. Bruce. 
 " It is a shame to our biographers," wrote that gentle- 
 man in a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries in 
 1831, " that there does not at this time exist a life of 
 Bishop Fisher of any value or authority. Dr. Fiddes, 
 Lewis, the biographer of Caxton, and Mr. Alban 
 Butler were all engaged upon the subject, but without 
 any profitable result. Of Fiddes' collections I know 
 nothing. Mr. Lewis' work was some time since in 
 the hands of the Rev. Theodore Williams, and Mr. 
 Alban Butler's collections were in the possession of 
 Mr. Charles Butler, but have been destroyed. In the 
 meantime Dr. Baily's, or rather Dr. Hall's, Life of 
 Fisher, printed in 1655, and now seldom met with, is 
 the only book upon the subject 
 
 " I have abstained," he adds, " as much as possible 
 from having recourse to Hall's work, because I was 
 desirous of ascertaining how much might be gathered 
 from other sources, either to corroborate or contradict 
 his statements. The result is, in most instances, 
 favourable to his correctness, although many things 
 in his volume are clearly fabulous.* His account of 
 the trial and execution of Fisher, which is copied into 
 our State Trials, appears to me to be written in a 
 
 * It must be noticed that he is speaking of Baily's Hall. I do not 
 think he would have said this of the genuine Hall, of whom I will 
 psak immediately.
 
 Xll BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 style so plain and simple, and with such an air of 
 truth, that if considered merely as a composition it 
 ought to render the book of considerable value." * 
 
 Since Mr. Bruce wrote his Essay, the Life of Fisher, 
 left in MS. by the Rev. John Lewis, has been published 
 with an Introduction by Mr. Hudson Turner. It 
 contains a large Appendix of valuable documents, 
 but Mr. Lewis' own narrative is written throughout 
 in an antagonistic spirit. Mr. Bruce, without having 
 seen it, refuted its principal misrepresentations. I 
 have made much use of Lewis' collections, but have 
 generally abstained from historical controversy. The 
 best answer is the simple record of historic facts. 
 
 Dr. Baily's Life of Fisher I have altogether put 
 aside, having access to the original Life by Dr. Hall, 
 to which Baily added nothing but verbiage and 
 blunders.-}- Of Hall's Life, however, I must say 
 something, since for some incidents he is the only 
 authority. His MS. has not yet been published, 
 except in Baily's adaptation, and I do not find that 
 anyone has examined its real value. Baily made 
 several additions, some of which are palpably false 
 and have brought discredit on Hall, from whom they 
 were supposed to be taken. I have pointed these out 
 
 * Archceologla, vol. xxv., p. 88. 
 
 f Dr. Thomas Baily, son of a Protestant bishop, had been sub- 
 dean of Wells. He became a Catholic during the Commonwealth. 
 Sir Wingfield Bodenham had lent him a MS. of Hall's Life of Fisher. 
 He made a copy introducing what he doubtless considered improve- 
 ments. Wood says: " He sold his copy to a bookseller for a small 
 sum of money, who caused it to be printed at London under the 
 name of Thomas Bayly, D.D.". Of this there have been several 
 editions London, 1655, 1739, 1740 ; Dublin, 1740 ; and London, 1835.
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 in their proper places. The value of this English 
 life, its sources, and its authorship I shall discuss in 
 full in the Appendix. Though it has supplied me 
 with many interesting details, yet I have tried to 
 work independently of it as much as possible. It 
 will be seen that by far the greater part of this Life is 
 drawn from papers the authenticity of which is be- 
 yond questions. 
 
 As regards official or state records, it may be men- 
 tioned, for those unfamiliar with such matters, that a 
 collection of the principal documents of the reign of 
 Henry VIII. was published by the Government from 
 1830 to 1852 in eleven volumes. These are com- 
 monly quoted as State Papers of Henry VIII. They 
 must not be confounded with Letters and Papers of 
 Henry VIII., still in course of publication. These 
 latter are Calendars of documents rather than tran- 
 scripts ; but they are on a much larger scale, and 
 cover a wider field than the former. Nor are they 
 altogether like other Calendars printed for the Master 
 of the Rolls. Owing to the exceptional importance 
 of that period of history, a great latitude was given to 
 Mr. Brewer, the first editor, and since his death to 
 Mr. Gairdner, to indicate, abridge, or print in full, not 
 only papers in the Record Office, but whatever docu- 
 ments, MS. or already printed, would illustrate the 
 public transactions in England in that reign. This 
 great work has fortunately been brought down beyond 
 the death of Bishop Fisher. 
 
 Among these new sources for the history of our 
 holy Martyr none are more important or interesting
 
 Xiv BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 than the despatches of Eustache Chapuys, the ambas- 
 sador of the Emperor Charles V. at the Court of 
 Henry VIII., from the end of 1529 until after the 
 death of Fisher. Mr. Paul Friedmann has defended 
 his accuracy against the animadversions of Mr. 
 Froude : " Partial his accounts may be ; he may 
 blame that which to many people appears right ; he 
 may call his adversaries bad names ; and he may take 
 pleasure in repeating the malevolent gossip of the 
 town. But his statements as to facts are always 
 made as he takes care to show on what seems to 
 him good authority, and I have found no 'untrue 
 accounts in his letters '." * The letters of Chapuys 
 are printed at least for the period on which I am 
 engaged in an English translation by Don Pascual 
 de Gayangos in the Spanish Calendars, published for 
 the Master of the Rolls, and again, though slightly 
 abridged, in the Letters and Papers, edited by Mr. 
 Gairdner. I have preferred, as a rule, the translation 
 of Mr. Gairdner ; but as M. De Gayangos is more full, 
 I have occasionally given his version, especially when 
 by his quoting the original French I felt assured of 
 his accuracy. 
 
 I must now leave my work to the reader. I have 
 spared no pains in getting together the materials, and 
 have sought accuracy above all things. If I have in 
 
 * Preface to Anne Boleyn : a Chapter in English History, by Paul 
 Friedmann (1884), p. 12. Mr. Froude, who had seen a few of the 
 letters -of Chapuys, says : " In some instances his accounts can be 
 proved untrue ". But of this he gives no proof, and his own reputa- 
 tion for accuracy is not so great as to give weight to his mere state- 
 ment, especially against one whom he calls a " bitter Catholic ".
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 the latter part of the work somewhat overloaded my 
 pages with dates, it was because there is nothing in 
 which historians of this period are more deficient, 
 v/hile the importance of an event or the very meaning 
 of a term such as, for example, Supreme Head 
 may depend on the year or month in which the event 
 occurred or the term was used. For the beginnings 
 of the schism in England are a real Evolution, as will 
 be shown in the proper place. 
 
 I have not forgotten that I am writing the life of a 
 saint ; but for that reason I have above all things 
 eschewed imaginary details and general panegyrics. 
 The facts must be carefully ascertained and fully 
 stated before the lesson can be drawn. A saint is not 
 an author's puppet, like the hero of a novel, that he 
 should make him speak and act according to his will. 
 I am very conscious of want of skill in grouping 
 authentic details into a consistent whole, and in giving 
 interest to the dry labours of an antiquary. Yet I 
 hope that I have moulded in clay a faithful, if some- 
 what rude, likeness, which a more skilful hand may 
 reproduce in marble, perhaps in smaller size, and 
 without my blemishes.
 
 Translation. 
 
 DECREE 
 
 [OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES] 
 
 CONFIRMING THE HONOUR GIVEN TO THE 
 BLESSED MARTYRS, 
 
 JOHN CARDINAL FISHER, THOMAS MORE, 
 
 AND OTHERS, 
 
 PUT TO DEATH IN ENGLAND FOR THE FAITH 
 FROM THE YEAR 1535 TO 1583. 
 
 ENGLAND, once called the Island of Saints and the Dowry of the 
 Virgin Mother of God, as even from the first ages of the Church it 
 had been renowned for the sufferings of many Martyrs, so also, when 
 it was torn by the fearful schism of the sixteenth century from the 
 obedience and communion of the Roman See, was not without the 
 testimony of those who, for the dignity of this See, and for the truth 
 of the orthodox Faith, did not hesitate to lay down their lives by the 
 shedding of their blood.* 
 
 In this most noble band of Martyrs nothing whatever is wanting 
 to its completeness or its honour : neither the grandeur of the Roman 
 purple, nor the venerable dignity of Bishops, nor the fortitude of the 
 Clergy both secular and regular, nor the invincible firmness of the 
 weaker sex. Eminent amongst them is JOHN FISHER, Bishop of 
 Rochester and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, whom Paul III. 
 speaks of in his Letters as conspicuous for sanctity, celebrated for 
 learning, venerable by age, an honour and an ornament to the 
 
 * Gregory XIII. Constitution, Qnoniam divinae bonitatl. May ist, I57Q-
 
 XViii BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 kingdom, and to the Clergy of the whole world. With him must be 
 named the layman THOMAS MORE, Chancellor of England, whom the 
 same Pontiff deservedly extols, as excelling in sacred learning, and 
 courageous in the defence of truth. The most authoritative ecclesi- 
 astical historians, therefore, are unanimously of opinion that they all 
 shed their blood for the defence, restoration, and preservation of the 
 Catholic Faith. Gregory XIII. even granted in their honour several 
 privileges appertaining to public and ecclesiastical worship ; and 
 chiefly that of using their relics in the consecration of altars, when 
 relics of ancient Holy Martyrs could not be had. Moreover, after he 
 had caused the sufferings of the Christian Martyrs to be painted in 
 fresco by Nicholas Circiniani in the Church of St. Stephen on the 
 Coelian Hill, he permitted also the Martyrs of the Church in England, 
 both of ancient and of more recent times, to be represented in like 
 manner by the same artist in the English Church of the Most Holy 
 Trinity in Rome, including those who, from the the year 1535 to 1583, 
 had died under King Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, for the 
 Catholic Faith and for the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff. The re- 
 presentations of these martyrdoms painted in the said Church 
 remained, with the knowledge and approbation of the Roman 
 , Pontiffs who succeeded Gregory XIII., for two centuries, until, about 
 the end of the last century, they were destroyed by wicked men. 
 But copies of them still remained ; for in the year 1584, by privilege 
 of the said Gregory XIII., they had been engraved at Rome on 
 copper-plate with the title : Sufferings of the Holy Martyrs who, in 
 ancient and more recent times of persecution, have been put to death in 
 England for Christ, and for professing the truth of the Catholic 
 Faith. From this record, either by inscriptions placed beneath them, 
 or by other sure indications, many of these Martyrs are known by 
 name ; that is to say, fifty-four. They are, 
 
 Those who suffered death under King Henry VIII. : John Fisher, 
 Bishop of Rochester, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church ; Thomas 
 More, Chancellor of England ; Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, 
 mother of Cardinal Pole ; Richard Reynolds, of the Order of St. 
 Bridget ; John Haile, Priest ; eighteen Carthusians, namely, 
 John Houghton, Augustine Webster, Robert Laurence, William 
 Exmciv, Humphrey Middlcmore, Sebastian Newdigate, John Rochester, 
 James Walworth, William Gramvood, John Dcrvy t Robert Salt,
 
 DECREE OF CONGREGATION OF SACRED RITES. XIX 
 
 Walter Picrson, Thomas Green, Thomas Scryven, Thomas Redyng, 
 Thomas Johnson, Richard Bere, and William Home ; John Forest, 
 Priest of the Order of St. Francis ; John Stone, of the Order of St. 
 Augustine ; four Secular Priests, Thomas Abel, Edward Powel, 
 Richard Fetherston, John Larke ; and German Gardiner, a layman. 
 
 Those who suffered under Elizabeth : Priests, Cutlibert Maytte, 
 John Nelson, Everard Hanse, Rodolph Sherwin, John Payne, 
 Thomas Ford, John Shert, Robert Johnson, William Fylby, Luke 
 Kirby, Laurence Richardson, William Lacy, Richard Kirkman, 
 James Hudson or Tompson, William Hart, Richard Thirkcld, 
 
 Thomas Woodhouse, and Plumtree. Also three Priests of the 
 
 Society of Jesus, Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant, and Thomas 
 Cottam. Lastly, John Storey, Doctor of Laws; John Felton, and 
 Thomas Sherwood, laymen. 
 
 Until lately, the Cause of these Martyrs had never been officially 
 treated. Some time ago, in the year 1860, Cardinal Nicholas Wise- 
 man, of illustrious memory, Archbishop of Westminster, and the 
 other Bishops of England, petitioned the Sovereign Pontiff Pius IX., 
 of sacred memory, to institute for the whole of England a Festival in 
 honour of all Holy Martyrs, that is to say, even of those ivho, though 
 not yet declared to be such, have in latter times, for their defence of 
 the Catholic Religion, and especially for asserting the authority of the 
 Apostolic See, fallen by the hands of wicked men and resisted unto 
 blood. But as, according to the prevailing practice of the Congrega- 
 tion of Sacred Rites, a Festival can be instituted in regard only to 
 those Servants of God to whom ecclesiastical honour (cultus) has 
 been already given and rightly sanctioned by the Apostolic See, the 
 said petition was not granted. Wherefore, in these last years, a new 
 petition was presented to Our Holy Father the Sovereign Pontiff Leo 
 XIII., by His Eminence Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, the 
 present Archbishop of Westminster, and the other Bishops of England, 
 together with the Ordinary Process which had been there completed, 
 and other authentic documents, in which were contained the proofs 
 of Martyrdom as to those who suffered from the year 1535 to 1583, 
 and also the aforesaid concessions of the Roman Pontiffs in regard to 
 those above-mentioned. 
 
 Our Holy Father was pleased to commit the examination of the 
 whole matter to a Special Congregation, consisting of several
 
 XX BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church and of Officials of the Congre- 
 gation of Sacred Rites, the examination to be preceded by a Dis- 
 quisition, to be drawn up by the Right Reverend Augustine Caprara, 
 Promoter of the Holy Faith. In this Special Congregation, assembled 
 at the Vatican on the 4th day of December of the present year, 
 the undersigned Cardinal Dominic Bartolini, Prefect of the said 
 Sacred Congregation, who had charge of the Cause, proposed the 
 following question : " Whether, by reason of the special concessions of 
 the Roman Pontiffs, in regard to the earlier Martyrs of England who, 
 from the year 1535 to 1583, suffered death for the Catholic Faith, and 
 for the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff in the Church, and whose Mar- 
 tyrdoms were formerly painted, by authority of the Sovereign Pontiff 
 Gregory XIII., in the English Church of the Most Holy Trinity in 
 Rome, and in the year 1584 were engraved at Rome on copper-plate 
 by privilege of the same Pontiff there is evidence of the concession of 
 public ecclesiastical honour, or of this being a case excepted by the 
 Decrees of Pope Urban VIII., of Sacred Memory, in the matter and 
 to the effect under consideration ". The Most Eminent and Most 
 Reverend Fathers, and the Official Prelates, after hearing the written 
 and oral report of the aforesaid Promoter of the Holy Faith, and after 
 the matter in regard to the 54 Martyrs above-named had been fully 
 discussed, were of opinion that the answer to be given was : 
 "Affirmatively, or That it is proved to be a case excepted ". 
 
 The undersigned Secretary having made a faithful report of all 
 that precedes to Our Holy Father POPE LEO XIII., His Holiness 
 vouchsafed to approve the decision of the Sacred Special Congrega- 
 tion, on the gth day of December, 1886. 
 
 The present Decree was issued on this 2gth day of December, 
 sacred to the Martyr Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury, whose faith 
 and constancy these Blessed Martyrs so strenuously imitated. 
 D. CARDINAL BARTOLINI, 
 
 PREFECT OF THE CONGREGATION OF SACRKD RITES. 
 LAURENCE SALVATI, 
 
 Secretary. 
 L. 4- S.
 
 LIFE OF BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY YEARS. 
 
 THIS work is not a history of the times of the martyred 
 Bishop of Rochester, but an arrangement of such 
 authentic details concerning his life, labour, and 
 sufferings as can now be gathered together. Before, however, 
 considering the details of that life, it will be useful to locate 
 it, so to say, as a whole, among our historical associations ; 
 and for this purpose it is important to observe that, although 
 his martyrdom connects him with the well-known epoch of 
 the Reformation, he belongs to an earlier, less familiar, and 
 very different period. 
 
 There is a passage in his writings which will enable us to 
 look at that period from his own point of view, and in which 
 he has unconsciously sketched his own position in it as by 
 the words of a seer. In the first decade of the sixteenth 
 century, preaching on the Seven Penitential Psalms, he 
 came to these words : Tu exurgens misereberis Ston, quia 
 tempns miserendi ejus, quia venit tempus * " Thou shalt 
 arise and have mercy upon Sion, for it is time to have 
 
 * Ps. ci. 14. 
 i
 
 2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER, 
 
 mercy upon it, for the time is come". These words led 
 him to review and to bewail the state of Christendom, and 
 to pray for its re-establishment : 
 
 "The religion of Christian Faith is greatly diminished; 
 we be very few; and whereas sometime we were spread 
 almost through the world, now we be thrust down into a 
 very straight angle or corner. Our enemies hold away 
 from us Asia and Africa, two of the greatest parts of the 
 world. Also they hold from us a great portion of this 
 part, called Europe, which we now inhabit, so that scant 
 the sixth part of that we had in possession before is left 
 unto us. Besides this, our enemies daily lay await to have 
 this little portion. Therefore, good Lord, without Thou 
 help, the name of Christian men shall utterly be destroyed 
 and fordone. , . . Therefore, merciful Lord, exercise Thy 
 mercy, show it indeed upon thy Church, quid tempus est 
 miserendi ejus. If there be many righteous people in Thy 
 Church militant, hear us, wretched sinners, for the love of 
 them ; be merciful unto Sion, that is to say, to all Thy Church. 
 If in Thy Church be but a few righteous persons, so much 
 the more is our wretchedness, and the more need we have 
 of Thy mercy." 
 
 He then reminds our Lord of His promise that the 
 Gospel should be preached throughout the whole world, as 
 a testimony to all nations, and prays Him to raise up men 
 fit for such a work. He recalls how the Apostles were but 
 soft and yielding clay till they were baked hard by the fire 
 of the Holy Ghost. He then proceeds as follows : 
 
 " So, good Lord, do now in like manner again with Thy 
 Church militant. Change and make the soft and slippery 
 earth into hard stones. Set in Thy Church strong and 
 mighty pillars, that may suffer and endure great labours 
 watching, poverty, thirst, hunger, cold, and heat which also 
 shall not fear the threatenings of princes, persecution, 
 neither death, but always persuade and think with them-
 
 EARLY YEARS. 3 
 
 selves to suffer, with a good will, slanders, shame, and all 
 kinds of torments, for the glory and laud of Thy Holy 
 Name. By this manner, good Lord, the truth of Thy 
 Gospel shall be preached throughout all the world. . . . 
 
 " Oh ! if it would please our Lord God to show this great 
 goodness and mercy in our days, the memorial of His so 
 doing ought, of very right, to be left in perpetual writing, 
 never to be forgotten of all our posterity, that every generation 
 might love and worship Him time without end." * 
 
 These last words refer to the verse of the Psalm on 
 which he was commenting : " Let those things be written 
 unto another generation, and the people that shall be 
 created shall praise the Lord ". The preacher did not 
 foresee, when uttering them, that they would be the justifi- 
 cation for writing his own life. His words, coming from 
 the depths of his heart, described himself, his aspirations 
 and resolutions; and the Providence of God over him 
 makes them now read like a prophecy. But they are here 
 quoted rather as showing the period, in the Church's and 
 in England's history, in which that Providence had placed 
 his whole life. 
 
 The sad tone in which he speaks of the narrowing of 
 Christendom reminds us that his birth, early in the second 
 half of the fifteenth century, almost coincides with the 
 taking of Constantinople by the Turks. The boy must 
 have heard from his parents and teachers, with awe, of that 
 great calamity of recent occurrence, which seemed to 
 threaten the very existence of Christianity. The fear of 
 his youth was to endure and increase throughout his life. He 
 beheld with a bleeding heart the continual encroachments 
 of the infidels, the continual division and quarrels of 
 
 * English Works of John Fisher (Early English Text Society), 
 pp. 171, 178, 191. In this and future quotations I modernise the 
 spelling, but change the words as little as possible. These sermons 
 were first printed by Pynson in 1505.
 
 4 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Christian princes. A few years after the discourse above 
 quoted, he had to grieve over the taking of Belgrade and of 
 Rhodes, but he was not to live to triumph at the heroic 
 defence of Malta and the victory of Lepanto. 
 
 If he watched with anxiety the attacks of " our enemies," 
 as he calls the Mahommedans, from without, he had no 
 reason as yet to fear defection from within. Whatever he 
 might deplore in the state of England, and whatever 
 chastisements he might anticipate and seek to avert, he 
 did not and could not contemplate at that period the 
 schism and heresy that were so soon after his death to 
 separate his country for centuries from Catholic Christen- 
 dom. Since his childhood he had heard of perhaps had 
 been an eye-witness of the ravages of civil war ; and, though 
 the red and white roses had been intertwined, and peace 
 restored to the land twenty years before he preached those 
 sermons, that hateful strife had caused a confusion so 
 universal, and had so lowered the morality of both the 
 clergy and laity, and the discipline of monastic life, that 
 the preacher might well be allowed to make the supposition 
 that there were "but few righteous people in the Church 
 militant " in England. Nor would anything he might hear 
 of the state of religion in France or Spain, Germany or 
 Italy, make such a supposition very extreme, even when 
 extended, as it was by him, to the Church in general. 
 
 The inspired and prophetic prayer that he makes, that 
 God would now at last come to the succour of His suffering 
 Church, and send great and apostolic men to rebuild her 
 walls and extend her territories, was fully granted, but the 
 fruits were not to be seen by him in this life. He had 
 heard, of course, of the discovery of new lands in the 
 western ocean by Columbus in 1492, and he may not 
 improbably have himself conversed with Sebastian Cabot, 
 the discoverer of Newfoundland, when that brave sailor was 
 in England in 1497. In the privy purse expenses of
 
 EARLY YEARS. 5 
 
 Henry VII. for loth August, 1497, is an entry of 10 "to 
 him that found the new Isle," and again, in 8th April, 1504, 
 of 2, as gift " to a priest that goeth to the new Island " ; 
 and, considering the relations of Fisher at that time with 
 the King's mother, the Lady Margaret, which brought him 
 often to Court, it is not unlikely that he bade God-speed to 
 that very priest, and may have had a dim vision of a new 
 sphere and of better days for the Church, than in that 
 "strait angle or corner" of Europe in which it was then 
 cooped up. At the time he uttered that prayer for apostolic 
 men, St. Ignatius, a youth of fourteen, was a page in the Court 
 of Ferdinand the Catholic. He was still "the soft and slippery 
 earth," but the fire of the Holy Ghost would before many years 
 bake and harden him into one of the strong pillars of the 
 Church. And two years after his prayer, the great Apostle 
 of the Indies, St. Francis Xavier, was born. Their names 
 were never heard on earth by Fisher; but those who believe 
 in the power of prayer, and who remember the words, "Beg 
 the Lord of the harvest that He send labourers into His 
 harvest," will not doubt that He who destined the gift to 
 His Church inspired the prayer, which in God's ordinary 
 Providence is the condition of all great graces.* 
 
 The life of Fisher began amidst the horrors of civil war, 
 and ended amid the horrors, far greater to a soul like his, of 
 religious rebellion and impiety. The darkness of night 
 seemed to him to be gathering more deeply over the world 
 and the Church. He was not permitted to see the streaks 
 of dawn which had already begun to appear. But he 
 was himself, both in life and death, "a burning and a 
 shining light," all the brighter by contrast with the shades 
 around. 
 
 * On the words of the 2nd Psalm : Postula a me et dabo tibl gentcs 
 in possessioiiem tuam " Ask of Me and I will give thee the gentiles 
 for Thine inheritance," Suarez remarks that prayer was a condition 
 even of the promises made to the Incarnate Son of God.
 
 6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 These reflections may appear more fitted for a retrospect 
 of a life already narrated, than for an introduction to one 
 not yet known to the reader ; yet there is an advantage in 
 reading the details of a life lived long ago, with that general 
 knowledge of its surroundings with which we approach the 
 study of the life of one of our own times. 
 
 Dr. Hall places the birth of John Fisher in the year 1459. 
 If this is correct, he would have been about seventy-six at 
 the time of his death, on 22nd June, 1535. But the Bishop 
 of Faenza, who was Papal Nuncio in Paris, and who had 
 known the Bishop of Rochester in England, writes on the 
 very day of his death : " The English call him a valetu- 
 dinarian of ninety, reckoning him twenty-five years older 
 than he is".* If he was really only sixty-five at the time 
 of his death, he must have been born in 1470 or 1469; 
 and this calculation corresponds with his own saying, that 
 he was very young when made bishop : Qui paucos annos 
 habuerim ; for if he was born in 1459, he would have been 
 about forty-five years old, when raised to the episcopate, 
 which he could scarcely have called an early age,f espe- 
 cially in those days, when youths were often made bishops, 
 and when men were called old at fifty, and were marvels of 
 longevity at sixty. % Another reason, which seems to show 
 
 * Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. viii. , No. 909. He 
 repeats the same thing in another letter, No. 910. 
 
 f- Fisher thus spoke in a solemn academical address to Henry VII. 
 in 1506. Henry was then only forty-nine, yet he was considered old ; 
 and Fisher, being then engaged in eulogising his great wisdom and 
 experience, would not have spoken of himself as having been too young 
 to be made a bishop at the age of forty-five. I am here supposing 
 that this speech was made by Fisher in 1506, and not by John Blyth, 
 Bishop of Salisbury, in 1495, as it was conjectured by Mr. Gairdner, 
 in Letters and Papers of Richard and Henry VII. See the proofs 
 in Professor Mayor's notes to Cooper's Memoir of Lady Margaret, 
 p. 249. and in this vol., ch. ii. 
 
 J " Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," was only fifty-
 
 EARLY YEARS. 7 
 
 that Hall has dated the birth of John Fisher too soon, is 
 that he is known to have taken his bachelor's degree in 
 1487. Had he been born in 1459, he would then have 
 been twenty-eight, whereas eighteen was a much more 
 usual age for graduating in those days. We may con- 
 clude, then, from these two facts, that the Bishop of 
 Faenza's statement is correct, and, as it was made con- 
 trary to appearances and general opinion, we must suppose 
 he would not have made it without good grounds. I ven- 
 ture, then, to place the birth of the future martyr in the 
 year 1468 or 1469. 
 
 The place of his birth was Beverly, in the East Riding 
 of Yorkshire, at present a decayed town, but then, owing to 
 its magnificent collegiate church and ecclesiastical esta- 
 blishment, of considerable importance.* His parents were 
 Robert and Agnes Fisher. They had four children, as we 
 learn from the father's will, made shortly before his 
 death in 1470. If the date above assigned for his birth 
 is correct, John was the youngest.f He had a brother 
 Robert, who remained a layman and died a few months 
 before the bishop. We shall find him an inmate of the 
 bishop's palace at Rochester, acting as his steward, and 
 afterwards supporting the bishop at his own great cost 
 when in prison. In a list of debts J due to the bishop at 
 his attainder, there is mention of a Ralph Fisher as well as 
 
 nine when he died. St. Teresa says St. Peter of Alcantara was a 
 very old man when she first knew him, yet he was not sixty. 
 
 * Leland, in 1539, writes : " The town of Beverly is large and well 
 builded of wood. It is not walled." 
 
 t Lewis, in his Life of Fisher, says he was the eldest, but gives no 
 authority. He says the father died in 1477, whereas the will (given 
 by him in App.) says 1470. As Robert received his father's name, 
 it is probable that he was the eldest son. 
 
 J See Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol . viii. 888. In the 
 same document we find Robert, John, and Edward White as indebted 
 to the bishop.
 
 8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Robert, and this may have been the name of another 
 brother.* Edward White is spoken of as the bishop's 
 brother-in-law, and since by his mother's second marriage he 
 had only one sister (who became a nun), one of the children 
 of Robert Fisher must have been a daughter.! His fathers 
 sister Ellen had married Thomas Wickliffe, as we find from 
 the will to be given immediately. The Wickliffes, iri spite 
 of the heresiarch, remained very staunch Catholics ; and a 
 great part of the inhabitants of the village of Wyeliffe, in 
 the North Riding of Yorkshire, are Catholics to this day. 
 Robert Fisher appears to have resided in St. Mary's Parish 
 in Beverly, and was by trade a mercer. He died when 
 " his children were of a very tender age," writes Dr. Hall. 
 John, in fact, according to the computation we have adopted, 
 was only a year old ; according to Hall's he would be eleven. 
 The will of Robert Fisher was drawn up in Latin, and 
 runs as follows : " In the name of God, Amen. The 3oth 
 day of June in the year of our Lord 1470, I, Robert Fisher 
 of Beverly, mercer, being in good mind, make my last will in 
 this way. First, I bequeath my soul to Almighty God and to 
 the Blessed Mary, His Mother, and to all the saints of the 
 heavenly court, and my body to be buried in the Church of 
 the Blessed Virgin Mary at Beverly before the crucifix. 
 Then I give and bequeath to each alms-house in Beverly 
 20 pence. J I give and bequeath for tithes forgotten 20 
 
 * Mr. Lewis (Life of Fisher, i. 4), mentions some letters of frater- 
 nity obtained for John and Ralph Fisher, brothers, from the hospital 
 of the Holy Trinity. He doubts whether it is the same John Fisher. 
 
 f Robert Fisher and Edward White generosi literati infra Ebora- 
 censem oriundi et infra Roffensem dioceses commemorantes, are wit- 
 nesses to a deed in October 1519, together with the bishop (Memoir 
 of Lady Margaret, p. 161). After his brother-in-law's death Edward 
 White went abroad (Letters and Papers, xi. 524). He is said to be 
 of Lynne-Bishop. (Also Ib. 1247, "*) 
 
 I We may multiply all these sums by twelve at least to find their 
 equivalents in modern money.
 
 EARLY YEARS. 9 
 
 pence. I bequeath to the fabric of the collegiate church of 
 S. John of Beverly 20 pence. I bequeath to the fabric of 
 the cathedral church of St. Peter's, York, 8 pence. I give 
 and bequeath to each of the two houses of the Franciscans 
 at Beverly 33. 4d. I give to the chaplain of Holy Trinity 
 to pray for my soul 133. 4d. I will that a fit chaplain cele- 
 brate for my soul during one year. I bequeath to Sir 
 Robert Cook,* vicar of the Church of the Blessed Virgin 
 Mary, 6s. 8d. I bequeath to John Plumber, chaplain, 6s. 8d. 
 ^ bequeath to Thomas Wickliffe, my brother, 6s. 8d. I 
 bequeath to my sister Ellen, his wife, 6s. 8d. I bequeath 
 to my brother William 403. which he owes me by bond, and 
 besides his bond I leave him 145. I bequeath to the abbot 
 and convent f of Hagnaby in Lincolnshire los. for one trental 
 of masses J to be celebrated there for my soul. I/em, I 
 bequeath to dementia Charington 23. Item, to the fabric 
 of the church of Holtoft in Lincolnshire 33. 4d. Item, I 
 bequeath to each of my children of my own property (de mea 
 propria parte) 2 133. 4d., and should one of them chance 
 to die while under age, then the portion of the deceased 
 to be divided equally between the three survivors. The 
 residue of all my goods not hitherto disposed of or be- 
 queathed, after the payment of my funeral expenses and 
 debts, I give and bequeath to Agnes my wife, which Agnes 
 and John Siglestorn I appoint executors of this my last will 
 and testament, and William Fisher, my brother, and Thomas 
 Wickliffe, trustees (supervisores), the witnesses (of my will) 
 
 * Priests without a university degree are always called Sir with the 
 Christian name (in Latin Dominiis), but graduates Master or Master 
 Doctor. The word Reverend was not in use, except in the formal 
 address of a bishop : the Reverend Father in God. 
 
 t Convent in that period means community. It was never applied 
 to a building either for men or women. 
 
 J That is, one each day for a month. A groat, or 4d., was the 
 usual honorary of the priest, equivalent to four or five shillings in 
 present value.
 
 10 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 being Robert Cook, vicar of the Church of the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary, John Wollar, John Copy, and others. 
 
 "The present will was proved on the 26th day of June 
 in the above year (1470), and the administration granted to 
 the executors therein named, having taken the oath required 
 by law." * 
 
 Agnes Fisher does not seem to have acted unwisely nor 
 unkindly to her children in marrying again. Her second 
 husband's name was White, and by him she had three 
 sons, John,f Thomas, and Richard, and a daughter named 
 Elizabeth. This Elizabeth White became a nun in the 
 Dominican monastery of Dartford, in her brother's diocese 
 of Rochester. For her he wrote two treatises when in 
 prison. 
 
 This is all I have been able to discover about the family, 
 and the glimpse, slight as it is, shows them united in affec- 
 tion to the end.t 
 
 Education was easily obtained in a town like Beverly, and 
 John most probably received his first training for the priest- 
 hood in the grammar school attached to the collegiate church 
 of St. John. His early writing, some of which may be still 
 seen in the proctor's books at Cambridge, is noted as very 
 
 * The Latin is given by Lewis (ii. 253). There is an error in one 
 of the dates, for the will is made on 3oth of June and proved on 26th. 
 Perhaps the first date should be 2oth. The mention of two churches 
 in Lincolnshire perhaps points to the birthplace of Robert Fisher. 
 The patronymic Fisher would indicate a seaside origin, and Hagnaby 
 was not far from the German Ocean. The name of Fisher was not 
 among the burgesses of Beverly in the middle of the i5th century, so 
 that Robert Fisher may have been born elsewhere. 
 
 t The name John may perhaps have been given to the Blessed 
 John Fisher in honour of St. John of Beverly, Archbishop of York. 
 Fisher's mother called her eldest son by her second husband by the 
 same name. 
 
 J John Fisher occurs as Protestant curate of the Minster at Beverly 
 in 1579, probably a relative of the martyr, since the name was not 
 common in that town.
 
 EARLY YEARS. II 
 
 good, and his elegant Latinity may be taken as a proof of 
 his diligence in early years ; for though it was not learnt 
 altogether at school, it is seldom that much progress is made 
 in higher studies when the foundation has been carelessly 
 laid. 
 
 Were I writing the life of a mere scholar like Erasmus, or 
 of a learned and zealous priest like Colet, it might be 
 fitting to speak with some detail here of the grammar school 
 education in England, before printed books had come into 
 general use, and to dwell on whatever other influences, 
 secular or religious, would have helped to form the mind 
 and character of a clever, studious, and pious boy, in a town 
 such as Beverly; and following him to Cambridge, there 
 might be something picturesque to tell as to the horses, the 
 roads, the inns, the company, when a youth left his home 
 for the first time for what was then so long and venturesome 
 a journey. But I am engaged on the life of a martyr, and 
 there will be so much to say of his public career and later 
 life, that I feel bound to confine myself, in his earlier years, 
 to such special facts as have been recorded of Fisher per- 
 sonally, leaving it to my readers to fill up the details of the 
 picture. 
 
 The range of study in those days was narrow and the 
 grammar school had soon taught whatever it was capable of 
 teaching. It was usual for boys to enter the universities at 
 the age of fourteen or fifteen.* John Fisher was sent to 
 Cambridge in the year 1483. Were the usual date assigned 
 to his birth correct, he would then have been twenty-three 
 or twenty-four years old, which is utterly improbable, since 
 nothing has been recorded or can be reasonably con- 
 
 * History of the University of Cambridge, by Professor J. Bass 
 Mullinger, vol. i. 346. To this book I may refer in general for an 
 account of the life of mediaeval students, as well as for a complete 
 investigation of Fisher's influence on Cambridge, in the first quarter 
 of the sixteenth century.
 
 12 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 jectured to account for so unusual a delay. We are 
 therefore confirmed in the opinion that he was born about 
 1469. There is a somewhat uncertain tradition* that at his 
 first entrance into the university he was a member of a new 
 foundation called " God's House," which was subsequently 
 by his influence refounded as Christ's College. If this was 
 the case the connection did not last long, for he was certainly 
 in his first years at Cambridge under the care of William de 
 Melton, fellow of Michael House. This college stood on a 
 part of the ground now occupied by Trinity ; it was indeed 
 at a period after Fisher's death absorbed into that founda- 
 tion of Henry VIII. 
 
 William de Melton was a native of Yorkshire, and perhaps 
 a friend of Fisher's parents. He was eminent in his day as 
 a philosopher, a theologian, and a preacher. He was elected 
 Master of his college in 1495, an ^ shortly afterwards Chan- 
 cellor of York. Fisher always speaks of him with affection 
 and reverence.f The following passage of one of his con- 
 troversial wo^ks carries us back to his undergraduate days : 
 " My master, William Melton, Chancellor of York, a man 
 eminent both for holiness and for every kind of erudition, used 
 often to admonish me when I was a boy and attended his 
 lectures on Euclid, that if I looked on the least letter of any 
 geometrical figure as superfluous, I had not seized the true 
 and full meaning of Euclid. But if the disciple of Euclid 
 must be so careful in points of geometry, certainly the dis- 
 ciple of Christ must weigh well each word of his Divine 
 Master, and be thoroughly convinced that there is not a 
 word without its purpose." + Another allusion to his youth 
 
 * Cooper's Memoir of Lady Margaret, p. 100. 
 
 f 1 In 1527, Fisher, in preface to Book I. of his treatise against 
 (Ecolampadius, says : " Meltonus . . . theologus eximius de quibus- 
 dam capitibus heresuni Lutheri scripsit, sed liber ejus hauddum praelo 
 commissus est". Melton died in 1528. 
 
 Proccmmm in 5 librum contra (Ecolampadium (1527).
 
 EARLY YEARS. 13 
 
 is found in a treatise against Luther : " Now I begin to see 
 by experience the truth of what I heard as a boy, that 
 heretics must be avoided at least for this reason, that other 
 heretics arise from their ashes. I see that John Huss lives 
 again in you. But God in His Providence has mercifully 
 provided this remedy, that you can never agree together. . . . 
 Blessed be God who reduces you to confusion, by that very 
 spirit of division that you strive to introduce into the 
 Church." * 
 
 Fisher became Bachelor of Arts in 1487, and three years 
 after took his degree of Master (1491), and was soon chosen 
 Fellow of his college,f a proof both of his learning and of 
 the esteem in which he was held. 
 
 He must have been ordained priest on the title of his 
 fellowship. Never perhaps lived a man in England who 
 more thoroughly illustrated the heavenly chaiacter of the 
 Christian priesthood, as his own pen has described it. He 
 wrote as follows in his defence of the priesthood against 
 Luther: " God's Providence has arranged that the inferior 
 or earthly bodies, prone to change and to corruption, should 
 be refreshed, vivified, and perpetuated by the influence of 
 the higher or heavenly bodies, to which he has given not 
 only greater durability, but also the virtue of shining, illumi- 
 nating, warming, moistening, enlivening, thundering, and 
 lightening. So it is in the Church ; and therefore the Holy 
 Ghost in the Psalms compares the Apostles and other 
 ministers of God to the heavens, the people to the earth. 
 ' The heavens show forth the glory of God.' Like heavenly 
 bodies, the ministers of God illuminate by the splendour of 
 their lives, warm by the ardour of their charity, moisten by 
 their counsels, vivify by their promises, thunder by their 
 threats, flash by their miracles. This was so not only in the 
 days of the Apostles ; the Church is ever one and the same, 
 
 "* Confutatio Assertionis Lutherans, Art. 30 (1523). 
 t Lewis i., 4.
 
 14 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 and now stands in need of these ministries no less than 
 then."* No words could better describe his own beneficent 
 influence, first on the University of Cambridge, then on his 
 diocese, and finally on the whole of England and on the 
 Church throughout the world. We will confine ourselves 
 in the next chapter to his influence on his university. 
 
 But now that he has arrived at full age, let us try to get a 
 glimpse of him. I know not why biographers generally 
 describe their heroes after relating their deaths. It is 
 surely a help to have, in one's imagination, while reading a 
 life, some genuine picture of its subject. I take the follow- 
 ing description from Dr. Hall : " In stature of body he was 
 tall and comely, exceeding the common and middle sort of 
 men, for he was to the quantity of six feet in height, and 
 being therewith very slender and lean, was nevertheless 
 upright and well-formed, straight-backed, big-jointed, and 
 strongly sinewed. His hair by nature black, though in his 
 later time, through age and imprisonment, turned to 
 hoariness, or rather to whiteness. His eyes long and 
 round, neither full black nor full grey, but of a mixed colour 
 between both. His forehead smooth and large; his nose 
 of a good and even proportion ; somewhat wide-mouthed 
 and big-jawed, as one ordained to utter speech much, 
 wherein was, notwithstanding, a certain comeliness ; his skin 
 somewhat tawny, mixed with many blue veins. His face, 
 hands, and all his body so bare of flesh, as is almost 
 incredible, which came the rather (as may be thought) by 
 the great abstinence and penance he used upon himself 
 many years together, even from his youth. In his counte- 
 nance he bore such a reverend gravity, and therewith in 
 his doings exercised such discreet severity, that not only of 
 his equals, but even of his superiors, he was both honoured 
 and feared. 
 
 " In speech he was very mild, temperate, and modest, 
 * De Sacerdotio, Congressus ii., Tertium Axioma.
 
 EARLY YEARS. 15 
 
 saving in matters of God and his charge, [and in the 
 affairs] which then began to trouble the world, and therein 
 he would be earnest above his accustomed order. Bui 
 vainly or without cause he would never speak ; neither was 
 his ordinary talk of common worldly matters, but rather of 
 the Divinity and high power of God, of the joys of heaven 
 and the pains of hell, of the glorious death of martyrs and 
 strait life of confessors, with such-like virtuous and profit- 
 able talk, which he always uttered with such a heavenly 
 grace that his words were always a great edifying in his 
 hearers." 
 
 Hoping that the reader may, from the facts to be related, 
 be able to paint in his own mind a correct image of the 
 soul and character of Fisher, I will add a few words re- 
 garding the various portraits that profess to give a likeness 
 of his body. 
 
 There is one now (1888) in the Hall of St. John's, Cam- 
 bridge, which represents "a very mortified and meagre 
 personage with a crucifix before him ".* This was pre- 
 sented to Baker, the well-known antiquary, by the Mar- 
 quis of Bath. It is either not Fisher at all or a mere fancy 
 portrait. A bearded portrait, belonging to Major Brooks, 
 in 1866 was shown in the Portrait Exhibition as an original 
 portrait of the Bishop of Rochester, by Holbein. Accord- 
 ing to Dr. Woltmann, it is neither by Holbein, nor does it 
 represent Fisher. Holbein is not known to have painted 
 any portrait of Fisher, but there still exist two beautiful 
 sketches in red chalk made by his hand. One of these is 
 in her Majesty's collection at Windsor, the other in the 
 British Museum. These were made in the year 1527, when 
 the bishop was about fifty-eight years old (according to the 
 computation we have adopted). Dr. Woltmann says: "The 
 worn countenance, with its honest, modest, but anxiously 
 conscientious expression, shows completely the man, whose 
 
 * Cole, quoted by Turner, in his Introduction to Lewis, i., xxvi.
 
 1 6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 wonderful purity of life, combined with profound and 
 unostentatious learning, as well as incredible kindliness of 
 demeanour towards high and low, is extolled by Erasmus ".* 
 The frontispiece of this volume is from the drawing in 
 the Windsor collection. A former keeper has written the 
 following words on it : // Epyscopo de Resesterfo tagilato t /'/ 
 capo Fan?- 1535 (The Bishop of Rochester was beheaded 
 in the year 1535 %). 
 
 * Holbein and his Time (Eng. Tr., p. 313). 
 
 + Sic, forfu tagliato. 
 
 + These words, in the lower part of the drawing, do not appear in 
 the frontispiece, which is shorter. They are hard to decipher, but 
 the words "Bishop of Rochester" are quite clear. I am indebted 
 to the courtesy of the Secretary of the Science and Art Department, 
 at South Kensington, for leave to reproduce this portrait by the auto- 
 type process.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 IN a Latin oration addressed to Henry VII., in 1506, 
 Fisher, speaking as chancellor of the university, extolled 
 its antiquity and past grandeurs, but deplored the state- 
 to which it had been reduced before the king came to its 
 succour. He described what he had seen and experienced 
 in the following words : " Either from continual lawsuits 
 and wrongs inflicted by the town, or from long-continued 
 pestilence, by which we lost many of our more cultured 
 men, and no less than ten grave and very learned doctors, 
 or from the want of any patrons and benefactors of arts and 
 letters, studies had begun generally to languish, so that 
 many were deliberating how they might best get away. We 
 should indeed have fallen into utter desolation, had not 
 your majesty, like the orient from on high, looked down 
 upon us." * No doubt King Henry VII. was a real bene- 
 factor to the University of Cambridge, both by his personal 
 interest and visits, and by his munificence t in carrying on 
 the splendid foundation of St Mary and St. Nicolas (more 
 commonly called King's College), begun by Henry VI. 
 But while it is probable that much of this interest and 
 generosity was due directly or indirectly to Fisher's influence, 
 it is certain that Fisher himself, by the advice he gave to 
 the king's mother, the Lady Margaret, and his own co- 
 
 * Lewis, ii. 269. 
 
 f This, however, was principally by money left at his death.
 
 l8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 operation in her royal bounties, proved himself one of the 
 greatest benefactors Cambridge has ever known. This noble 
 lady had so great a place in the life of Fisher, as well as he 
 in hers, that it is necessary to say a few words of her history 
 and character. 
 
 Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. , was the 
 only child of John Beaufort, the first Duke of Somerset, 
 who was grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, 
 and great-grandson of Edward the Third. She had been 
 married in childhood (as was the custom) to the son of the 
 Duke of Suffolk, but did not ratify the marriage when of age 
 to consent, and was given to Edmund ap Tudor, Earl of 
 Richmond, brother of Henry VI. Her husband dying in 
 1456, not many months after his marriage, left her a widow 
 at the age of thirteen. Their child, subsequently King 
 Henry VII., was born after his father's death, on 28th 
 January, 1457.* In 1459 she married Lord Henry Stafford, 
 her second and third cousin, being like herself descended 
 from Henry III. He died in 1482. She took for her third 
 husband (or her fourth, if we include the matrimonial con- 
 tract of her childhood), Thomas, Lord Stanley, afterwards 
 Earl of Derby, also her third cousin. Thus she became 
 Countess of Derby as well as Richmond. It was through her 
 intervention that the wars of the Roses came to an end, by 
 the alliance of her son Henry, Earl of Richmond (and by 
 the victory of Bosworth in 1485, King Henry VII.), with 
 Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV. A contemporary 
 poet called the Lady Margaret "mother, author, plotter, 
 counsellor of union ".t 
 
 * The bishop declared in her own presence and that of her son 
 that he was born before she had completed her fourteenth year. 
 Lewis, ii. 265. 
 
 f Mr. Cooper, the well-known author of the Annals of Cambridge 
 and of Athena Cantabrigienses, left in MS. a Memoir of the Lady 
 Margaret. It is rather a chronological series of every document he
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 1 9 
 
 The first mention of Fisher in connection with the 
 Countess of Richmond is in 1495. So great was his repu- 
 tation in the university, that in 1494 he had been chosen 
 senior proctor. Business of the university took him to the 
 Court, which was then at Greenwich. The Proctor's Book 
 contains the note of the expenses of this journey in his own 
 handwriting (in Latin) : "For the hire of two horses for n 
 days, 7 shillings ; for breakfast before passing to Greenwich, 
 3 pence ; boat-hire, 4 pence. I dined with the lady, mother 
 of the king. I supped with the chancellor," &c.* 
 
 The acquaintance then, or perhaps previously, begun 
 between the young priest and this noble lady must have 
 continued and ripened into mutual esteem, though we have 
 no record of it for the next seven years. In the meantime 
 Fisher continued to reside at Cambridge, and in 1497 was 
 chosen Master of Michael House, in place of Dr. Melton, t 
 On the 5th Jury, in the year 1501, he commenced Doctor 
 of Divinity, and on the i5th was chosen vice-chancellor of 
 the university^ In 1502 the Countess of Richmond made 
 him her chaplain and her confessor in the place of Dr. 
 Richard Fitzjames, promoted to be Bishop of Rochester. 
 
 could discover touching on her in any way than a life. It is, how- 
 ever, a valuable compilation, and has been edited with appendices and 
 notes with the greatest care by Professor Mayor, and published at the 
 expense of Christ's and St. John's Colleges. 
 
 Another Life was published in 1839, by Miss Halsted. It is 
 written in a sympathetic spirit, and does justice, as far as was in the 
 power of a Protestant writer, both to the Countess and to her con- 
 fessor, the Bishop of Rochester. 
 
 * Lewis, L 5. 
 
 t Lewis throws doubts on this, but Mr. Bass Mullinger gives it as 
 quite certain. Cooper and others make Fisher Vicar of Northallerton 
 in Yorkshire. Probably some other John Fisher has been mlg^lrMi 
 for the future Bishop of Rochester. He declared more than once that 
 he was unbeneficed when made bishop. 
 
 * Proctor's Book apud Lewis. 
 
 % He was afterwards Bishop of Chicester, and lastly of London.
 
 20 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 This holy lady was much older than her spiritual father, and 
 while she loved, esteemed, and cherished him with the affec- 
 tion of a mother, she yet obeyed him with the docility of a 
 child, not only after her husband's death making a public 
 vow of chastity in his hands,* but also a vow of obedience : 
 " To the intent all her works might be more acceptable and 
 of greater merit in the sight of God," says Fisher in her 
 funeral sermon, " such godly things she would take by 
 obedience, which obedience she promised to the fore-named 
 father, my lord of London [Dr. Fitzjames], for the time of 
 his being with her, and afterwards in like wise unto me ". 
 On the other hand, her confessor declared publicly, in the 
 statutes for the fellows of St. John's of his foundation, that 
 "he was indebted to her as to his own mother/' and willed 
 therefore that she should be prayed for at mass like him- 
 self.t 
 
 The first fruits, as regards the university, of Fisher's 
 guidance of the Countess of Richmond, who had long 
 since devoted both herself and her great riches to every 
 kind of good works, was the endowment of a readership in 
 divinity in both Cambridge and Oxford. The foundation 
 charters bear date the 8th September, 1503, the feast of 
 the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to which Lady 
 Margaret seems to have had a special devotion. J Dr. John 
 
 * Widows frequently made such public vows. . . . They received 
 mantle, scapular, veil, and ring. (See form of blessing in Bishop 
 Lacy's Pontifical.) There is an example of this vow in Bishop Fisher's 
 register, April 21, 1510. (See Lewis's Life of Fisher, vol. i. 42.) 
 Lady Margaret " obtained her husband's licence a long time before 
 he died " to take the same vow in the hands of Dr. Fitzjames ; after 
 his death she renewed it to Dr. Fisher. (See her Funeral Sermon (E. 
 E. Text Soc. Ed.), p. 294.) 
 
 t Memoir of Lady Margaret, p. 248. 
 
 See the digression on Our Blessed Lady on the feast of her 
 Nativity in the sermons on the Penitential Psalms, preached by 
 Bishop Fisher in presence of the Countess, p. 44.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 21 
 
 Fisher was the first reader appointed at Cambridge. His 
 duties were sufficiently onerous. He was bound to read 
 such works of divinity as the chancellor or vice-chancellor, 
 with the college of doctors, should judge necessary, for an 
 hour daily throughout term, and up to the 8th Septem- 
 ber in the long vacation, but to cease in Lent if the chan- 
 cellor thought fit, in order to be occupied in preaching. He 
 was to receive no fee besides his salary, which was ^13 6s. 
 8d., paid half-yearly,* a fair endowment in days when the 
 average income of a chantry priest was not more than ^5. 
 Owing to his duties as vice-chancellor, Fisher soon resigned 
 this lectureship. 
 
 Another foundation of the countess followed in 1504. 
 This was of a preacher "to the praise and honour of the 
 Holy Name of Jesus and the Annunciation of the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary ". He was to preach six sermons annually 
 viz., once in the course of two years on some Sunday at St. 
 Paul's Cross, if the preacher can obtain permission, other- 
 wise, at St. Margaret's, Westminster; but if not able to 
 preach there, then in one of the more notable churches of 
 the city of London, and once during the same term of two 
 years on some feast day in each of the churches of Ware 
 and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire ; Bassingbourne, Orwell, and 
 Babraham in Cambridgeshire ; Maxey, St. James Deeping, 
 St. John Deeping, Bourn, Boston, and Swineshead in Lin- 
 colnshire. The stipend was ;io per annum, and the 
 preacher was to be unbeneficed, but a perpetual fellow of 
 some college in Cambridge.t 
 
 A matter of even greater importance than these was the 
 foundation of Christ's College at Cambridge. William Bing- 
 ham, parson of St. John Zachary in London, had begun a 
 college called God's House, and had resigned the honour 
 of founder to Henry VI. But the king, being occupied in 
 the greater foundation of his own magnificent College of St. 
 
 * Memoir uf Lady Margaret, p. 89. f Ibid., p. 93.
 
 22 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Mary and St. Nicolas (King's), left that of God's House 
 incomplete. Its revenues were only sufficient for the 
 maintenance of a proctor and four fellows. Previous to 
 placing herself under Dr. Fisher's direction, the Countess of 
 Richmond had planned a magnificent chantry foundation for 
 herself and the king at Westminster, and had received from 
 the king the necessary licences in mortmain. Fisher judged 
 that it would be more for the glory of God to devote her 
 bounty to the promotion of learning.* The countess agreed, 
 but as it was necessary to obtain the king's approval, she 
 committed the negotiation to Dr. Fisher, with the result 
 that appears in the following letter of the king to his 
 mother : 
 
 " MADAM, my most entirely well-beloved lady and 
 mother, I recommend me unto you in the most humble 
 and lowly wise that I can, beseeching you of your daily and 
 continual blessings. By your confessor, the bearer, I have 
 received your good and most loving writing, and by the 
 same have heard at good leisure such evidence as he would 
 show unto me on your behalf, and thereupon have sped him 
 in every behalf without delay, according to your noble petition 
 and desire, which resteth in two principal points : the one 
 for a general pardon for all manners and causes; the other 
 is for to alter and change part of a licence, which I have 
 given unto you before, for to be put into mortmain at 
 Westminster, and now to be converted into the University 
 of Cambridge, for your soul's health, &c. All which things, 
 according to your desire and pleasure, I have with all my 
 heart and goodwill given and granted unto you. And, 
 Madam, not only in this, but in all other things that I may 
 
 * In the Register at St. John's, it is expressly said: "By the 
 persuasions and counsel of the said reverend father the said princess 
 altered her mind from the said foundation in the said monastery to 
 the foundation of Christ's College in this university". Memoir of 
 Lady Margaret, p. 158.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 23 
 
 know should be to your honour and pleasure and weal of 
 your soul, I shall be as glad to please you as your heart can 
 desire it. And I know well I am as much bounden so to do as 
 any creature living, for the great and singular motherly love 
 and affection that it hath pleased you at all times to bear 
 towards me. Wherefore, mine own most loving mother, in 
 my most hearty manner I thank you, beseeching you of your 
 good continuance in the same. . . . Written at Greenwich, 
 the i)th day of July (1504?), with the hand of your most 
 humble and loving son, 
 
 "H. R."* 
 
 Under the authority of a licence obtained from the king, 
 ist May, 1505, the countess refounded God's House by the 
 title of Christ's College, for a master, twelve fellows, .and 
 forty-seven scholars. The countess reserved to herself cer- 
 tain chambers over those of the master, of which during her 
 absence Bishop Fisher (for he was now bishop, as will be 
 explained directly) was to have the use for his life, and on 
 his death they were to belong to the master. Bishop Fisher 
 was appointed visitor during his life, f 
 
 The king had been greatly impressed by what he had 
 seen of Dr. Fisher. He had been for some time uneasy in 
 conscience as to the men he had promoted to bishoprics. 
 It was one of the greatest abuses of those days, and the 
 main source of all the evils that abounded, that the selection 
 to the episcopal office having fallen into the hands of the 
 Sovereign, men were chosen whose qualifications were 
 merely those of courtiers or statesmen. The episcopal 
 revenues were looked on as means of supporting or reward- 
 ing foreign ambassadors or functionaries of the State, and 
 
 * Memoir of Lady Margaret, xrom copy in St. John's Register. 
 
 f For the statutes and other particulars, see Memoir of Lady Mar- 
 garet, pp. 100-104, anc ^ Muhinger's University of Cambridge, i. 446- 
 462.
 
 24 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 there were bishops who either never saw their dioceses or 
 were absent from them for years, drawing their revenues 
 and governing them by officials, with mere auxiliary or, 
 as they were called, suffragan bishops, to perform epis- 
 copal functions. The following letter, however, does 
 as much honour to King Henry VII. as it does to Dr. 
 Fisher : 
 
 " MADAM, An' I thought I should not offend you, which 
 I will never do wilfully, I am well minded to promote 
 Master Fisher, your confessor, to a bishopric ; and I assure 
 you, Madam, for none other cause, but for the great and 
 singular virtue, that I know and see in him, as well in cunning 
 [i.e., talent] and natural wisdom, and specially for his good 
 and virtuous living and conversation. And by the promotion 
 of such a man I know well it should encourage many others 
 to live virtuously and to take such ways as he doth, which 
 should be a good example to many others hereafter. How- 
 beit, without your pleasure known I will not move him nor 
 tempt him therein. And therefore I beseech you that I 
 may know your mind and your pleasure in that behalf, 
 which shall be followed as much as God will give me grace. 
 I have in my days promoted many a man unadvisedly, and 
 I would now make some recompense to promote some 
 good and virtuous men, which I doubt not should best 
 please God, who ever preserve you in good health and long 
 life."* 
 
 The countess was no doubt pleased by the honour con- 
 ferred on her confessor, and by her persuasion, as well as 
 that of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Fisher was 
 
 * The king promised his confessor, in the last Lent of his life, and 
 made known his promise to many persons, " that the promotions 
 of the Church that were of his disposition should from henceforth be 
 disposed to able men, such as were virtuous and well learned 1 '. 
 Fisher's Funeral Sermon of Henry VII., p. 271 (Ed. of E. E. Text 
 Society).
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 25 
 
 induced to accept, not the honour, but the "good work " of 
 a bishop. This may be an appropriate place to quote his 
 own words on the subject, though they were not written 
 until 1527. He dedicated his work, On the Truth of Christ's 
 Body and Blood in the Eucharist (against CEcolampadius), 
 to Fox, Bishop of Winchester first, Because he was the 
 founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and if there was 
 no truth in the Real Presence he would have given an empty 
 title to his college; and, secondly, for the reason that follows : 
 " Ever since our first acquaintance, your lordship had taken 
 so affectionate an interest in me, that I felt myself impelled 
 most ardently both to learning and to virtue. You also 
 recommended me to King Henry VII., who then, with the 
 greatest prudence, held the reins of this kingdom, so that 
 by the esteem he had for me from your frequent commen- 
 dations, and of his own mere motion, without any obsequious- 
 ness on my part, without the intercession of any (as he more 
 than once declared to myself), he gave me the bishopric of 
 Rochester, of which I am now the unworthy occupant. 
 There are, perhaps, many who believe that his mother, the 
 Countess of Richmond and Derby, that noble and incom- 
 parable lady, dear to me by so many titles, obtained the 
 bishopric for me by her prayers to her son. But the facts 
 are entirely different, as your lordship knows well, who 
 was the king's most intimate counsellor, as you were also 
 of the illustrious King Henry VIII., who now by most just 
 right of succession fills his father's throne, as long as your 
 health allowed you to frequent the Court. I do not say this 
 to diminish my debt of gratitude to that excellent lady. My 
 debts were indeed great. Were there no other besides the 
 great and sincere love which she bore to me above others 
 (as I know for a certainty), yet what favour could equal such 
 a love on the part of such a princess ? But besides her 
 love, she was most munificent towards me. For though 
 she conferred on me no ecclesiastical benefice, she had the
 
 26 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 desire, if it could be done, to enrich me, which she proved 
 not by words only, but by deeds ; among other instances, 
 when she was about to leave the world. Hosvever, as I have 
 spoken her praises in a funeral oration, I will not pursue the 
 subject here, though she could never be praised too much. 
 This only I will add, that though she chose me as her direc- 
 tor, to hear her confessions and to guide her life, yet I gladly 
 confess that I learnt more from her great virtue than ever I 
 could teach to her. But to return to your lordship, to 
 whom after the deceased king I owe whatever benefits have 
 accrued to me or mine from this bishopric, though others 
 may have greater revenues, yet I have the care of fewer 
 souls, so that as I must before long give an account of both, 
 I would not wish them one whit increased," &c.* 
 
 Reserving for a time the consideration of Dr. Fisher as a 
 bishop, it will be as well to conclude here what has to be 
 said regarding his benefits to the university. His appoint- 
 ment to Rochester did not sever his connection with Cam- 
 bridge, but gave him greater scope and influence. In the 
 year 1504 he was chosen to be chancellor, and was re- 
 elected for ten years successively, when he was chosen for 
 life, as will be related presently. This office did not require 
 residence in Cambridge, and was often conferred on those 
 who but rarely, if ever, visited the university. The authority, 
 however, was great and the duties many. 
 
 On the resignation of Dr. Wilkinson, president of Queens' 
 College, Cambridge, in April, 1505, the fellows at once 
 elected in his place the Bishop of Rochester.f (He had 
 
 * The bishop repeats almost the same thing in his statutes of St. 
 John's. There also he uses the word " citraobsequium aliquod," one of 
 the coincidences that prove the speech mentioned at the beginning of 
 this chapter to be his and not Dr. Blyth's. He there says: "Qui nun- 
 quam in curia obsequium prcestiterim". (See Professor Mayor's note 
 to Memoir cf Lady Margaret, p. 248.) 
 
 f Lewis, ii. 260.
 
 CAMIJKIDGE. 27 
 
 resigned the mastership of Michaelhouse on being appointed 
 chaplain to the countess.*) This college had been founded 
 in 1448, by Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI., and 
 having absorbed the hostel of St. Bernard, was dedicated to 
 St. Margaret and St. Bernard. It was then, as now, more 
 commonly spoken of as Queen's College. The bishop 
 retained this office only three years, for, according to Dr. 
 Hall, it had been offered to, and accepted by, him, prin- 
 cipally that he might have a residence at Cambridge when 
 he went there to superintend the building of Christ's 
 College. The foundation profited by his presidentship; for 
 t was his influence, no doubt, that led the Duke of 
 Buckingham, in June, 1505, to increase the endowment. 
 The duke did this, as he declares, at the instance of the 
 Countess of Richmond, who was connected with him by 
 marriage. In 1505, the countess paid a visit to Cambridge, 
 and was lodged in the president's house at Queens', f 
 
 On 22nd April, 1505, King Henry VII., being on a pil- 
 grimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, with his young son, 
 Henry, Prince of Wales, afterwards Henry VIII., arrived at 
 Cambridge on his way thither, and was met by the chancel- 
 lor within a quarter of a mile of the town, and conducted by 
 him to his lodgings in Queen's, from which, after an hour's 
 rest, vested in the robes of the Garter, as it was the eve of 
 St. George, he proceeded to King's College. Though the 
 magnificent chapel was still unfinished, the chancel was 
 fitted up and adorned with the escutcheons of the knights 
 of St. George, and the chancellor-bishop officiated at 
 solemn vespers, J as well as at high mass and vespers on the 
 following day. 
 
 * Hall's Life of Fisher (MS.). The date, however, is not certain. 
 His successor was not chosen until 1505 (Mullinger, i. 446). 
 
 f Memoir of Lady Margaret, p. 250. 
 
 } Ackermann, in his Cambridge, i. 254, only mentions the first 
 vespers, but the statutes required that all members of the order should
 
 28 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 The king prolonged his visit, and was present at the dis- 
 cussions throughout the various schools.* The next day he 
 provided a great banquet for the whole university. 
 
 In the following year he returned, with his mother, the 
 countess, and with his son, and the chancellor addressed 
 to him, in the Franciscan Church, t the Latin oration from 
 which we have already quoted. 
 
 Another great academical work, the foundation of St. 
 John's, was not merely due to the bishop's initiation, but 
 owed its completion entirely to his indefatigable labour. 
 This was, however, neither an entirely new work, nor, like 
 that of Christ's, the enlargement of a work of a similar kind. 
 It was the conversion of a religious house into a college of 
 secular priests and scholars. Some persons have maintained 
 that such transformations as this, of which we have another 
 example in Jesus College, Cambridge, by Bishop Alcock of 
 Ely, and a greater and more famous in Cardinal Wolsey's 
 foundations of Ipswich and Oxford, prepared the way for 
 
 keep the feast of St. George, either at Windsor, or wherever the 
 Sovereign might be, as he should appoint. They were bound to be 
 present at first vespers on the vigil ; at matins, procession, high mass, 
 and second vespers on the feast ; and at the solemn requiem on the 
 following day. Even though the feast of St. George could not be 
 celebrated on the 23rd April because of Holy Week or Easter Week, 
 the king and the knights still assisted on the 22nd and 23rd at the 
 solemnities of the Church, wearing the blue mantle and collar. (See 
 the statutes in the Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, 
 vol. i. 42, 43, and 299.) It adds to the mournful interest of the 
 noble chapel of King's, that the Blessed Fisher once atr least ponti- 
 ficated within its walls. 
 
 * " Anno superior! ad nos venisti, dignatus es disceptationibus in- 
 teresse, atque id per omnes omnium facultatum scholas ; neque id 
 fecisti cursim et perfunctorie, sed longo temporum tractu." Oratio 
 Cancellarii, anno 1506, habita. The speech is printed in Lewis, ii. 
 263. 
 
 tSee Memoir of Lady Margaret, pp. 108, 249. The large and 
 beautiful church of the Grey Friars was pulled down forty years 
 later, to make room for and provide materials for Trinity College.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 29 
 
 the general suppression of the monasteries. And it is no 
 doubt true that Thomas Cromwell may have conceived the 
 general project, as well as become familiar with the 
 methods of suppression, while he was Wolsey's agent. Yet, 
 in fact, there is no similarity between the two things, or, at 
 least, no greater similarity than there is between lawful 
 execution in the name of the State and private and indis- 
 criminate murder. Should a headsman take to the trade 
 of an assassin, the Government would surely not deserve 
 blame for giving him the taste of blood. During the French 
 wars, Henry V. transferred the property of some alien 
 priories from French to English monasteries, or at most from 
 the regular to the secular clergy. What resemblance has 
 he to Henry VITL, who plundered the monasteries and 
 squandered the proceeds in pageants and gambling, bribes 
 to his courtiers, and rewards to his tools ? The transference 
 from one ecclesiastical purpose to another was carried 
 out, not simply by the State, but with the full sanction of 
 the Sovereign Pontiff. That there was no abuse in any of 
 Wolsey's suppressions I would not maintain, but certainly 
 no such fault can be found in those in which Fisher co- 
 operated. He brought about the suppression of the " Hos- 
 pital " of St. John, in Cambridge, because it was involved 
 in most serious pecuniary difficulties, and its few remaining 
 members were living in total disregard of their rule and 
 character. The hospital, or Maison Dieu, at Ospringe, in 
 Kent, was also dissolved and given to the foundation 
 of the college. But it had been utterly abandoned and 
 left desolate \n the time of Edward IV., and had by royal 
 patent been granted in charge to seculars. The vested 
 interests of these were, however, entirely respected ; and, in 
 the transformation of both houses all spiritual obligations of 
 the former possessors were transferred to the members of 
 the new college. 
 
 At a somewhat later period, by the bishop's influence, two
 
 30 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 nunneries were suppressed and their property handed over 
 to St. John's. In these cases foundations once flourishing 
 had dwindled down to disorderly houses of two or three 
 inmates. Every effort at reform had been tried in vain by 
 their diocesans, one of whom was the bishop himself, and at 
 last, with the licence of the king and the approbation of the 
 Holy See, the nuns were pensioned upon other houses, and 
 the scandal together with the priories came to an end. 
 Nothing can better prove the reforming zeal of the bishop, 
 his justice and careful observance of every canonical rule, 
 than the documents still preserved regarding the suppression 
 of the Priory of Higham near Gravesend, in the diocese of 
 Rochester. Processes of law were not less tedious then 
 than now, and sixteen years of the bishop's life were con- 
 sumed before all the business connected with these trans- 
 formations could be thoroughly effected. He has himself 
 written an account t of his difficulties and labours in the 
 foundation of St. John's, but the details belong rather to a 
 history of the university or of the college than to his life. 
 
 The bishop was a great lover of the monastic state, as 
 appears by many places in his writings, and by many acts 
 of his life ; and if, out of reverence for it, he would cut off 
 incurable scandals, he would in no way lend himself to 
 any general measure of suppression. He did not live till 
 1536, or he would certainly have made a strenuous opposi- 
 tion to the parliamentary measures on this suject. Dr. 
 Hall indeed tells us that the question was first broached 
 in 1529, and gives us the bishop's speech in Convocation 
 which caused it to be laid aside for a time. " My lords," 
 he said, " I pray you take good heed what you do in hasty 
 granting to the king's demand in this great matter. It is 
 here required that we should grant unto him the small 
 abbeys for the ease of his charges; whereunto if we con- 
 descend, it is like the great will be demanded ere it be long 
 * Lewis, ii. 307. t Ibid., ii. 277.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 3 1 
 
 after. And, tnerefore, considering the manner ot this deal- 
 ing, it putteth me in remembrance of a fable, how the axe 
 that lacked a handle came on a time to the wood, and 
 making his moan to the great trees, how that for lack of a 
 handle to work withal he was fain to sit idle, he therefore 
 desired them to grant him some young sapling in the wood 
 to make him one. They, mistrusting no guile, forthwith 
 granted him a young small tree, whereof he shaped himself 
 a handle, and being at last a perfect axe in all parts he fell 
 to work, and so laboured in the wood, that in process of 
 time he left neither great tree nor small tree standing." 
 
 This speech is not, I think, mentioned elsewhere ; but as 
 we have not the debates of Convocation, a question like the 
 above may have been mooted and then laid aside, without 
 leaving other record than in the memories of those from 
 whom Dr. Hall gathered his information. 
 
 But to return to the foundation of St John's. While the 
 first steps were being taken in England and in Rome for the 
 transformation of St. John's Hospital into St. John's College, 
 the Lady Margaret died, 2Qth June, 1509. Her son, Henry 
 VII., had preceded her on 2ist April; and on each 
 occasion the Bishop of Rochester was selected to preach 
 the funeral sermon. Fisher was one of the executors named 
 in her will, in a codicil to which she stated her intention to 
 found a college, consisting of a master and fifty scholars, with 
 divers servants, and to provide buildings and endowments. 
 Baker says very truly that "had she not lodged this trust 
 in faithful hands, this great and good dowry must have died 
 with her ". The same zealous and careful historian adds : 
 "Though all was transacted and carried on in the name of 
 the executors, yet it ought never to be forgot that the Bishop 
 of Rochester was the sole or principal agent. The men 'of 
 quality amongst the executors, as they had little concern for 
 foundations of learning, so I scarce meet with any footsteps 
 of their agency herein. Bishop Fox, who had a great in-
 
 32 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 terest in the last reign, began to decline in this; and besides 
 he began now to have designs of his own, and to turn his 
 thoughts towards Oxford and his foundation there. The 
 two other executors of the clergy, Dr. Hornby and Mr. Hugh 
 Ashton, as they had a true zeal for the design, so they wanted 
 power, and though they were very useful instruments, yet 
 what they did was chiefly in subordination to Bishop Fisher. 
 Almost the whole weight of this affair leaned upon this good 
 bishop, whose interest was yet good, deservedly esteemed at 
 Rome, valued by the king, and reverenced by all good men."* 
 
 Leaving the details of the endowment and building of the 
 college to be sought for in the pages of Baker, I will merely 
 mention here that the chapel was consecrated by the Bishop 
 of Rochester, with the licence of the diocesan, the Bishop 
 of Ely, at the end of July, i5i6.f It was also to the Bishop 
 of Rochester that the executors of the foundress committed 
 the difficult work of drawing up the statutes. J 
 
 The benefactions of the bishop were not confined to influ- 
 ence and labour. He founded at Christ's College a solemn 
 annual commemoration and mass for his own soul and those 
 of his parents and his heirs, with a distribution to be made 
 to the fellows and scholars ; and at St. John's College he 
 founded four fellowships and two scholarships. On this 
 subject he must speak for himself. I translate some parts of 
 the statutes of his own foundation. In the preamble he 
 writes : " The noble princess, Lady Margaret, Countess of 
 
 * Baker's History of St. John's (ed. by Prof. Mayor), i. 66. 
 
 t The chapel was pulled down a few years since, and replaced by a 
 much larger one. The gate-tower belongs to the original college. 
 The arms of Lady Margaret, and the statue of St. John the Evan- 
 gelist, are seen over the gate. 
 
 J Early Statutes of St. John's (ed. by Prof. Mayor), 1857. The first 
 statutes of 1516 were very like those of Christ's College ; the second 
 statutes of 1524 more like those of Corpus Christi, Oxford, made by 
 his friend Bishop Fox, 
 
 Lewis, ii. 272.
 
 
 GATEWAY OF ST. JOHN'S.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 33 
 
 Richmond, the foundress of this college, in her great conde- 
 scension had a great desire to procure me a richer bishopric. 
 But when she saw that her approaching death would frustrate 
 this desire, she left me a no small sum of money to use 
 according to my own will and for my own purposes,* which 
 I mention lest anyone should think that I have made this 
 large endowment with other people's money. Now, as I 
 receive from the annual revenue of the bishopric of Rochester 
 quite enough for the decent maintenance of a prelate, and 
 since the college has sustained certain losses, I have con- 
 sidered that it was better that both that legacy of hers, and 
 also a considerable addition of my own, should be spent for 
 the good of my own soul, in the education of theologians, 
 than squandered on my relatives, or wickedly and uselessly 
 consumed for other vain purposes, according to the custom 
 of the world. And this I do, not only for my own soul, but 
 by my example to excite others to lend a helping hand to 
 the college." He then mentions that besides ^500 already 
 made over to the master and fellows for this purpose, and 
 besides the gift of valuable ornaments (for the chapel), he 
 makes over a sufficient sum to purchase land to the annual 
 value of ;6o.t Three of the fellows were to be of the 
 county of York, and one of the diocese of Rochester, two of 
 them at least to be already priests. He also appointed four 
 examiners in humanities, dialectics, mathematics, and philo- 
 sophy ; and two lecturers one in Greek for younger stu- 
 dents, and one in Hebrew for the more advanced. He 
 wishes twenty-four trentals of masses to be distributed 
 annually to the most virtuous and indigent priests in the 
 college, to be offered for his soul, leaving for each trental 
 ros.J For his Obit he appointed solemn office on the vigil, 
 
 * " Qua in privatum meum commodum uterer." 
 + 1 have already mentioned that we may multiply by ten (roughly) 
 to get modern value. 
 
 { That is, the usual stipend of a groat (4d.) = 45. 
 3
 
 34 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 with mass on the day itself, at both of which the master and 
 all fellows and scholars should assist, with lights burning on 
 the high altar and on his tomb ; the master to receive 
 on the occasion 6s. 8d., each fellow 33. 4d., each scholar 
 is.* 
 
 The chalices and other plate given by the bishop to the 
 college weighed 163 ounces, and, besides other things, a mag- 
 nificent suit of vestments of red cloth of gold the vestment 
 valued at 26, the cope at ^34. t From the mention of 
 the portcullis embroidered on these vestments, it is probable 
 that they had been a gift to himself from the Lady Margaret. 
 There is a passage in the bishop's explanation of the Peni- 
 tential Psalms, regarding the comparative insignificance of 
 rich vessels and robes in church, which might be misunder- 
 stood without this practical commentary. In the Apostles' 
 days, he says, "were no chalices of gold, but many golden 
 priests. Now be many chalices of gold, but almost no 
 golden priests."j The ambition and labour of the bishop 
 in all these foundations was to multiply golden priests. 
 
 His labours were not unappreciated. The university, as 
 has been already said, selected him as chancellor for many 
 years. In 1514, he thought it would be for its greater ad- 
 vantage to choose Wolsey instead. The senate reluctantly 
 acquiesced, and addressed to the retiring chancellor a most 
 honourable and affectionate letter. In his reply he deplores 
 the little he had been able to do, and promises them much 
 greater things from the zeal and power and influence of 
 Wolsey. He tells them that though he sets little or rather 
 
 * Lewis, ii. 287. 
 
 t A set of vestments costing ^600 would be extraordinary at the 
 present day. At Eton a chasuble, two tunicles, two copes of white 
 satin embroidered with gold, cost ^83 6s. 8d. in 1445, or more than 
 800 modern. (See Mr. Maxwell Lyte's History of Eton College, 
 p. 29.) 
 
 I have given the passage at length in my History of the Holy 
 Eucharist, vol. ii., ch. ix., "On Riches in Churches".
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 35 
 
 no value on the mere honour of being chancellor, he greatly 
 esteems the honour of being chosen to it by such a body. 
 He promises his help on every occasion, and prays that, 
 as the university has lately grown in collegiate buildings (St. 
 Mary's Church, King's College Chapel, Christ's and St. 
 John's Colleges), it may advance in learning and in virtue in 
 Christ. 
 
 Wolsey, who was then Bishop of Lincoln, declined the 
 honour on the score of his cares of State, but promised that 
 he would regard the university with the same affection and 
 interest as if he were chancellor. Thereupon, by unani- 
 mous vote, the dignity of chancellor was conferred on the 
 Bishop of Rochester for life. Notwithstanding his attainder 
 and imprisonment, the university did not consider that his 
 office was vacated ; and it was not till after his death that 
 another chancellor was chosen. Then, alas! in self-de- 
 fence, the university replaced him by Cromwell, the man 
 who, either as instigator or tool of the king's malice, had 
 hunted him to death.* 
 
 It would be both unnatural and foolish to have recalled 
 all these things, and not to ask ourselves what have been 
 the results of all the labours and sacrifices of Bishop Fisher 
 and Lady Margaret ; or whether those results are altogether 
 such as they would have approved, could they have been 
 anticipated. 
 
 God's providence brought these two holy souls into this 
 close relationship, not only for their mutual edification, but 
 for the good of the university, which still profits by their 
 zeal and generosity, though in many things it has cast aside 
 what they held dearer than life. It is impossible to speak 
 too highly of the eagerness shown by the two colleges of the 
 Lady Margaret's foundation, especially by St. John's, to 
 keep alive the memory of their noble foundress, and of her 
 
 * Mullinger's History of the University of Cambridge, ii. i.
 
 36 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 confessor and co-operator, Cardinal Fisher.* But though 
 the pictures of Lady Margaret in the attitude of prayer 
 adorn the wall and window of Christ's College chapel, and 
 her statue, with that of Fisher, occupies the porch of St. John's, 
 what boots it to recall the memory of their devotion, when 
 the great objects of their devotion are banished and pro- 
 scribed? The Blessed Eucharist that hung day and night 
 in the Pyx before the altars has been absent for three cen- 
 turies; the altar stones on which Fisher, with streaming 
 eyes, offered the Divine Sacrifice, have been broken in 
 pieces ; the Divine Sacrifice itself repudiated as idolatry and 
 an outrage to Jesus Christ ; devotion to Our Lady and to 
 God's saints has been cast away as folly and superstition. 
 The virtues of Cardinal Fisher and of the Countess of Rich- 
 mond are not denied, but on the contrary are generously 
 extolled, with the exception that, when their attachment to 
 doctrines and practices like the above cannot be passed over 
 without some allusion, a vague phrase like "attachment to 
 the tenets in which they had been brought up," or "the 
 superstitions of their times," is used as an excuse for them and 
 a plea for rejecting their example, f But this is disingenuous 
 and cowardly. If any one thing is historically certain, it is 
 
 * Her portrait at the present day (1888) hangs in the chapel of 
 Christ College and in the hall of St. John's. Quite recently a stained 
 glass window, representing Henry VII. and Lady Margaret in prayer 
 before St. Edward, which had been long ago removed from the window 
 of Christ's College chapel and cast aside, has been replaced. The 
 Memoir of Lady Margaret, by Mr. Cooper, edited with immense pains 
 by Professor Mayor of St. John's, has been printed at the joint ex- 
 pense of the two colleges. Professor Mayor's edition of Baker's 
 History of St. John's, and his Early Statutes of St. John's, and Pro- 
 fessor Babington's History of the Infirmary and Chapel of the Hospital 
 and College of St. John's, are all worthy monuments of esteem and 
 affection towards the illustrious founders. 
 
 T " He was a learned and devout man, much addicted to the super- 
 stitions in which he had been bred up." Burnet's Reform., book 
 iii., vol. i., p. 708.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 37 
 
 that neither Lady Margaret nor Bishop Fisher would have 
 spent their money and their labours on those scholastic 
 foundations, on preacherships and professorships, except for 
 the propagation of the Catholic Faith as they held it, and as 
 it is held by the Church at this day in communion with 
 Rome. Lady Margaret with her own hand translated and 
 had printed the fourth book of the Imitation of Christ to 
 teach devotion to the Real Presence. In her funeral sermon 
 Fisher thus spoke : " That this noble princess had full faith 
 in Jesus Christ it may appear if any will demand this 
 question of her that our Saviour demanded of Martha. He 
 said to her, ' Credis hoc ? ' ' Believest thou this ? ' What 
 is it that this gentlewoman would not believe, she that 
 ordained two continual readers in both the universities to 
 teach the holy divinity [i.e., doctrine] of Jesus, she that 
 ordained preachers perpetual to publish the doctrine and 
 faith of Christ Jesu, she that builded a college royal to the 
 honour of the name of Christ Jesu, and left till [to] her 
 executors another to be builded to maintain His faith and 
 doctrine ; besides all this, founded in the monastery of 
 Westminster, where her body lieth, three priests, to pray for 
 her perpetually ? She whom I have many times heard say, 
 that if the Christian princes would have warred upon the 
 enemies of His faith, she would be glad yet to go follow the 
 host and help to wash their clothes for the love of Jesus ? 
 She that did openly witness this same thing at the hour of 
 her death (which saying divers here present can record). 
 How heartily she answered, when the Holy Sacrament 
 containing the Blessed Jesu in It was holden before her, and 
 the question made until her, Whether she believed that there 
 was verily the Son of God that suffered His Blessed Passion 
 for her, and for all mankind upon the Cross ? many here 
 can bear record how with all her heart and soul she raised 
 her body to make answer thereunto, and confessed assuredly 
 that in the Sacrament was contained Christ Jesu the Son of
 
 38 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 God, that died for wretched sinners upon the Cross, in whom 
 wholly she put her trust and confidence. . . . And so, soon 
 after that she was aneled, she departed and yielded up her 
 spirit into the hands of our Lord. Who may not now take 
 evident likelihood and conjecture upon this, that the soul of 
 this noble woman, which so studiously in her life was occu- 
 pied in good works, and with a fast faith of Christ and the 
 Sacraments of His Church, was defended in that hour of 
 departing out from the body, was borne up into the country 
 above with the blessed angels deputed and ordained to that 
 holy mystery ? For if the hearty prayer of many persons, if 
 her own continual prayer in her lifetime, if the Sacraments 
 of the Church orderly taken, if indulgences and pardons 
 granted by divers popes, if true repentance and tears, if faith 
 and devotion in Christ Jesu, if charity to her neighbours, if 
 pity unto the poor, if forgiveness of injuries, or if good works 
 be available, as doubtless they be great likelihood, and 
 nlmost certain conjecture, we may take by them and all these 
 that so it is indeed." 
 
 In the funeral sermon of Lady Margaret's son, Henry 
 VII., Fisher said: "The cause of this hope was true belief 
 that he had in God, in His Church, and in the Sacraments 
 thereof, which he received all with marvellous devotion ; 
 namely, in the Sacrament of Penance, the Sacrament of the 
 Altar, and the Sacrament of Aneling. The Sacrament of 
 Penance, with a marvellous compassion and flow of tears, 
 that at some time he wept and sobbed by the space of three- 
 quarters of an hour. The Sacrament of the Altar he re- 
 ceived at Mid-Lent and again upon Easter-day, with so 
 great reverence that all that were present were astonyed 
 thereat ; for at his first enter into the closet where the Sacra- 
 ment was, he took off his bonnet, and kneeled down upon 
 his knees, and so crept forth devoutly till he came unto the 
 place self where he received the Sacrament. Two days next 
 before his departing, he was of that feebleness that he might
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 39 
 
 not receive It again; nevertheless he desired to see the 
 monstrant wherein It was contained. The good father, his 
 confessor, in goodly manner as was convenient, brought It 
 unto him ; he with such a reverence, with so many knockings 
 and beatings of his breast, with so quick and lively a coun- 
 tenance, with so desirous a heart, made his humble obeisance 
 thereunto ; with so great humbleness and devotion kissed, 
 not the self place where the Blessed Body of Our Lord was 
 contained, but the lowest part, the foot of the monstrant, 
 that all that stood about him scarcely might contain them 
 from tears and weeping. The Sacrament of Aneling, when 
 he well perceived that he began utterly to fail, he desirously 
 asked therefor, and heartily prayed that it might be adminis- 
 tered unto him ; wherein he made ready and offered every 
 part of his body by order, and as he might for weakness 
 turned himself at every time, and answered in the suffrages 
 thereof. That same day of his departing, he heard mass of 
 the glorious Virgin, the Mother of Christ, to whom always 
 in his life he had singular and special devotion. The image 
 of the crucifix many a time that day full devoutly he did 
 behold with great reverence, lifting up his head as he might, 
 holding up his hands before it, and often embracing it in 
 his arms, and with great devotion kissing it, and beating oft 
 his breast. Who may think that in this man there was not 
 perfect faith ? Who may suppose that by this manner of 
 dealing he faithfully believed not that the ear of Almighty 
 God was open unto him, and ready to hear him cry for 
 mercy, and assistant unto these same Sacrament^ which he 
 so devoutly received ? " 
 
 Such is Fisher's testimony to his own faith, and that of 
 King Henry VII., and of Lady Margaret. He has declared 
 frequently his own absolute conviction that the things which 
 his colleges now repudiate, and Margaret Professors now 
 denounce, are no accidental or indifferent matters, that 
 can be put aside, leaving the substance of Christian faith
 
 40 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 intact. " HE WHO GOES ABOUT TO TAKE THE HOLY SACRI- 
 FICE OF MASS FROM THE CHURCH PLOTS NO LESS A CALA- 
 MITY THAN IF HE TRIED TO SNATCH THE SUN FROM THE 
 
 UNIVERSE." * A few years passed, and men brought up in 
 his university, many of them fed by his bounty, blotted out 
 that sun. Pilkington, a fellow of St. John's, and afterwards 
 Bishop of Durham, knows no bounds in his scurrility when 
 he speaks of the holy Mass ; Grindal breaks altar-stones, 
 destroys vestments and missals, in the hope that the very 
 name and remembrance of the Holy Sacrifice may be obli- 
 terated; Parker classes together as equally unavailable for 
 his Protestant communion " profane cups, dishes, bowls, 
 and old massing chalices" ; and Latimer, preaching before 
 Edward VI., says : " All these that be mass-mongers be 
 deniers of Christ, which believe and trust in the Sacrifice of 
 the Mass and seek remission of their sins therein ; for this 
 opinion hath brought innumerable souls to the pit of 
 
 heir.t 
 
 Time went on, and some, at least, grew ashamed of this 
 violence. At the beginning of the i8th century, Thomas 
 Baker, a fellow of St. John's, after a long study of all 
 the documents in his college archives, thus wrote of the 
 Bishop of Rochester : " The college was first undertaken 
 by his advice, was endowed by his bounty or interest, pre- 
 served from ruin by his prudence and care, grew up and 
 flourished under his countenance and protection, and was at 
 last perfected by his conduct. In one word, he was the 
 best friend since the foundress, and greatest patron the 
 college ever had to this day. His full character I do not 
 
 * " Quo fit ut quisquis hoc sacrificium ab ecclesia tollere moliatur, 
 nihilo minorem ei jacturam intentat, quam si mundo solem eripere 
 studuerit. " Asscrtionum Regis Anglice Dcfensio, vi. 9. 
 
 + Pilkington, Works (Parker Soc.), passim ; Grindal, Injunctions 
 oi 1571, in Remains (Parker Soc.), pp. 123-144 ; Parker, Visitation 
 Article, No. 5 ; Wilkins, iv. 258 ; Latimer, Sermon on False Doctrine 
 (Parker Soc. Ed.), p. 522.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 4 1 
 
 meddle with. I must be no advocate for his private opinions, 
 and his private virtues do not want one." * 
 
 This is certainly the language of sincere gratitude and 
 admiration. Yet, is it consistent? Can the opinions 
 and the virtues be thus separated? What Baker calls 
 opinions were with Fisher articles of faith. They were, 
 moreover, the principles of conduct that moved him to 
 those virtues and those works that Baker justly praises. 
 Other men have founded colleges with equal generosity and 
 from different motives ; but Fisher's zeal and bounty had 
 one end in view to provide a body of learned and virtuous 
 Catholic priests. It is more than doubtful whether he 
 would have given either his time or his money for merely 
 secular science; and it is most certain that he would have 
 shuddered at the thought of endowing that form of religion 
 which Baker professed, and he did, in fact, die rather than 
 co-operate in its first beginnings. 
 
 When recording the suppression of St. John's Hospital, 
 Baker rightly said that its fate was "a lasting monument to 
 all future ages, and to all charitable and religious founda- 
 tions, not to neglect the rules or abuse the institutions 
 of their founders ". Yet, what fidelity to founders' wishes 
 can be found in the College of St. John, of Baker's day or 
 of our own? I do not speak of immoral life, but of change 
 of worship and of faith. Is it no neglect of a founder's 
 institutions to continue to teach logic and mathematics, 
 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but to teach another theology, 
 and not only to omit the prayers and masses that he made 
 a condition of his benefits, but to reject, repudiate, and 
 spurn them? 
 
 Baker drew much nearer to the faith of Fisher than most 
 of the members of his foundation, yet he addressed the 
 following lines to his founder : 
 
 * History of St. John's, p. 102.
 
 42 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 " To thee I dare appeal, if thou dost know 
 Or now concern'st thyself with things below; 
 Oft had I sent my fervent vows to heaven 
 Were this the time, or aught were now forgiven. 
 Oft had I pray'd for thee, as thou desires, 
 Could I believe thee hurt by purging fires. 
 Thy past desires they were, nor are they so, 
 'Twas thy mistaken wish when here below." 
 
 Baker was a fellow on the foundation of Hugh Ashton, 
 archdeacon of York, one of Lady Margaret's executors, 
 and a zealous co-operator with Fisher. It is probably to 
 him the above lines are addressed; for, in describing 
 the Ashton chantry in St. John's Chapel, he says : " Might 
 I choose my place of sepulture, I would lay my body there, 
 that as I owe the few comforts I enjoy to Mr. Ashton's 
 bounty, so I might not be separated from him in death. 
 May I wish him that happiness, which I dare not to pray for, 
 but which my hopes are he now enjoys ! I daily bless God 
 for him, and thankfully commemorate him ; and could I 
 think he now desired of me what his foundation requires, I 
 would follow him with my prayers and pursue him on my 
 knees." 
 
 This was written sincerely, and sounds, perhaps, plausible 
 and liberal. Yet, if it is thus allowed to interpret founders' 
 wills on one's private judgment, and presume on their 
 change of mind in an unseen world, not only may an 
 Anglican reject the holy Mass, but a deist may put 
 aside revelation, and an atheist the existence of God, on the 
 same plea. Strange that, during three centuries and a half, 
 this convenient eTrieirceia by which Protestants claimed the 
 right to enjoy the bounty of a Catholic founder, never led 
 them to extend that bounty to those for whom it was 
 expressly intended, who held the founder's faith, and would 
 have complied with his conditions. 
 
 The most recent historian of the University of Cambridge, 
 who is also a member of St. John's Mr. J. Bass Mullinger
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 43 
 
 though he has dealt out praise to Bishop Fisher with no 
 stinting hand, yet, in discussing the statutes drawn up by 
 him, has allowed himself the following reflection : " His life 
 presents us with more than one significant proof, how little 
 mere moral rectitude of purpose avails to preserve men 
 from pitiable superstition and fatal mistakes ". Pitiable 
 superstition is a strong but, at the same time, a very vague 
 word. To one man the belief in modern miracles is very 
 pitiable, while another pities the state of mind that can 
 despise the evidence for modern miracles and accept that 
 for the miracles of the Gospel. One thinks prayer to the 
 Blessed Virgin pitiable superstition, and another prayer to 
 Jesus Christ. A Unitarian sees no more superstition in 
 belief in Transubstantiation than in the Incarnation. To 
 Pilate, Our Lord's declaration that He came into the world 
 to give testimony to the Truth seemed pitiable superstition. 
 What was the special superstition of Bishop Fisher, that 
 provokes the pity and contempt even of his panegyrist, Mr. 
 Mullinger does not state. I am sure that he does not share 
 Pilate's absolute scepticism as to the attainability of any 
 truth whatever in matters supra-sensual, and that he does 
 not pity his founder merely because he held dogmatic truth. 
 His expression, then, can only mean that he differs from 
 him in certain details of belief. But would it not be more 
 modest to abstain from accusations of superstition and 
 indulgence in pity, until assured that his own standard of 
 judgment in these matters is something more solid and 
 lasting than the prevalent liberalism of English men of 
 culture in the igth century? The Rev. T. Mozley, in 
 his Reminiscences of Oxford, made a very apposite reflec- 
 tion. When on a visit to Normandy, he was startled by 
 certain popular forms of devotion to the Blessed Virgin. 
 He checked his first movement to brand it all as pitiable 
 superstition by this thought : " For more than a thousand 
 years saints, theologians, martyrs, the salt of the earth, the
 
 44 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 men that had held fast the faith and preserved it for us, and 
 that had continually rescued the civilised world from re- 
 lapsing into prehistoric savagery, had done what these 
 simple folk were doing. They had undoubtedly worshipped 
 and invoked the Virgin, and bound themselves in special 
 devotion to her service. But for the place long held by the 
 Blessed Virgin in the heart and mind of man, / should not 
 have been a fellow of Oriel, for Oriel would never have been, 
 and I should not have gone to Normandy ; nay, I am very 
 sure I should never have been at all." * 
 
 A similar train of thought ought to have occurred to the 
 fellows of St. John's, when they broke down the altars and 
 removed Our Lady's image, and renounced the pope's 
 supremacy. The pope, they said, has no more authority 
 outside his own see than any other bishop. Had it been 
 so, St. John's would never have been founded ; for the 
 Bishop of Ely had retracted the consent he had given to 
 the Lady Margaret to the suppression of the religious house 
 of St. John's, and it was only by the bull obtained from Julius 
 II. by the Bishop of Rochester, overriding the consent of 
 both king and diocesan, that the pious foundress's intention 
 could be carried out.f 
 
 Professor Mullinger also contrasts Dean Colet's "pro- 
 phetic liberality " in leaving the trustees of his school power 
 to modify his statutes with Fisher's "unreasoning dread of 
 change and pusillanimous anxiety to guard against all future 
 innovations whatever". But he seems to have misunder- 
 stood both Colet and Fisher. Most certainly Colet did not 
 anticipate changes of faith, nor give any licence to make 
 them, since the liberty he grants to trustees is founded on 
 
 * Reminiscences, ii., ch. cxxi., p. 351. Fisher writes as follows: 
 " Vae miseris illis qui virginis hujus gloriosse prsecellentiam vel pilo 
 minuere student, quod tamen a Lutheranis audio factitatum. Prop- 
 ter quod baud dubie manet eos ultio divina nisi maturius resipiscant" 
 (De Sacerd., col. 1294). This was written in 1526, 
 
 t Baker's St. yohn's, p. 66.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 45 
 
 his trust " in their fidelity and love that they have to God 
 and man, and also as believing verily that they shall always 
 dread the great wrath of God ". He foresaw the likelihood of 
 changes in scholastic methods and external circumstances, 
 and his permission to modify his statutes went no further. 
 And if Bishop Fisher made no such explicit provision, he 
 knew that there resides in the Holy See the requisite power 
 to make wholesome modifications according to the times. 
 He had invoked that power himself to change worn-out 
 religious foundations into a college of students ; and he 
 knew it would be equally open to future chancellors or 
 masters to apply to the Holy See for power to suppress 
 or add to, to modify or widen, the statutes drawn up by 
 himself. But he certainly did not foresee, nor would he 
 have consented, that his purpose of educating Catholic 
 priests in the Catholic Faith should be set aside, and that 
 his magnificent work should become the exclusive possession 
 of one among a number of Protestant sects. When a great 
 and munificent foundation has been so absolutely wrested 
 from its original purpose, that all those who have shared the 
 faith of its founders, and were willing to carry out their 
 founders' intentions, have been persistently shut out from it 
 for more than three centuries, more appropriate reflections 
 might have occurred to the historian of the university than 
 to bewail the illiberality and want of prophetical foresight 
 of one of its greatest benefactors.* 
 
 After this digression, if it is such, I return to the bishop's, 
 conduct as chancellor. One of his duties was to guard the 
 
 * As one who had to leave my college and my university without 
 a degree, in 1850, because I had returned to the faith of Blessed 
 John Fisher, I plead a right to make the above protest. I am told 
 that the exclusion is now at an end. Fenelon and Wesley figure 
 side by side among the decorative paintings of the new chapel of St. 
 John's, though it is reserved for Anglican liturgy! Why not make 
 Fisher walk hand in hand with Luther, and Lady Margaret with 
 Catharine Bora ?
 
 46 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 faith of the students and the orthodoxy of the teachers. 
 Dr. Hall has related at great length an incident which has 
 been travestied by his copyist Baily, and through him by 
 subsequent writers. The substance of Dr. Hall's narrative 
 is this. A Norman priest, named Peter of Valence, having 
 imbibed some of the errors of Luther, fled to England, and 
 sought to hide himself and propagate his heresy in Cam- 
 bridge. When Fisher, as chancellor, published a grant of 
 indulgences by Leo X., especially to such as should with- 
 stand the Lutheran heresies,* this Peter wrote in the night 
 over the grant : " Beatus vir cujus est nomen Domini spes 
 ejus et non respexit vanitates et insanias falsas (istas] " ; i.e., 
 " Blessed is the man whose hope is in the name of the 
 Lord, and who has not regarded vanity or mad follies " (such 
 as these). The chancellor, having failed to detect the author 
 of this outrage, published an excommunication, but with a 
 promise of pardon on condition, not " of an open acknow- 
 ledgment of his fault," as Lewis says, but of a secret con- 
 fession, the fact of which, but not the person, the confessor 
 should have leave to make known to the bishop, t As no 
 such acknowledgment was made, after the three usual ad- 
 monitions, the chancellor tried to read the excommunication, 
 but could not proceed for emotion, and again deferred the 
 matter. When, amidst a great concourse, he at last solemnly 
 published the censure, he did it " not without weeping and 
 lamentation, which struck such a fear into the hearts of 
 his hearers, when they heard his fearful and terrible 
 words, that most of them being present, especially of 
 the younger sort, looked when the ground should have 
 opened and swallowed [the culprit] up presently before 
 
 * Probably in 1521, not in 1515, as Lewis conjectures. 
 
 t " He moved the author to repentance," says Hall, " and by con- 
 fession of his fault to ask forgiveness at God's hands, which if he 
 would do by a certain da-/, so as himself mi^ht also have knowledge 
 thereof, he promised on God's behalf remission."
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 47 
 
 them, as a right reverend and worthy prelate once told 
 me, which then -was a young man and present at all 
 the business, such was the bitterness of his words and 
 gravity of his sentence. But although for that present time 
 the mind of the miserable man was so hardened with 
 obstinate stubbornness that it could by none of these means 
 be induced to repentance and confession of this so detestable 
 act, but still continued in that wilful blindness with deep 
 and close dissimulation for a space after, yet did not this holy 
 man's zealous words and pitiful tears spent in compassion of 
 the wretched soul altogether perish ; for not long after they 
 wrought so in him that they never went out of his mind, but 
 engendered such remorse of conscience in his heart, that 
 although mere necessity forced him hereafter to forsake the 
 university and become a servant* to Dr. Goodrich, then 
 Superintendent of Ely, a vehement heretic and ill-disposed 
 person, yet could he never be brought to think otherwise 
 but that he had sore offended Almighty God in contemning 
 Him in one of His so worthy vicars. Insomuch as when 
 any of his fellow-servants or others in that house would jest 
 at him, and put him in remembrance of his former act, as 
 many times they would, he would ever blame them for so 
 doing, rehearsing to them this verse of the Psalmist : ' De- 
 licta juventutis mese et ignorantias ne memineris Domine'." 
 (The sins of my youth and my ignorances remember not, O 
 Lord.)f 
 
 * The word "servant" was not confined to menials, but included all 
 officials in a large household, as a secretary, tutor, or chaplain. 
 
 t Dr. Hall's reputation as a historian, as I shall have frequently to 
 show, has much suffered by means of the changes in his narrative 
 made by Baily. His long account of this incident is no doubt accu- 
 rate, since he had the circumstances from an eye-witness. The clause 
 making this known is omitted by Baily. Baily's style is extravagant ; 
 while Hall simply relates that the bishop's emotion prevented him from 
 speaking. Baily says: "When the words began to sit heavy upon his 
 tongue, according to the weight of the sentence, the fire of love, as
 
 48 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 The respect paid to the bishop's learning, as well as the 
 need for it, is apparent from the following letter of Arch- 
 bishop Warham to Cardinal Wolsey. He writes that on 
 8th March, 1521, he has received letters from Oxford stating 
 that the university is infected with Lutheranism, and many 
 books forbidden by Wolsey had obtained circulation there. 
 He regrets that this should have happened in a place where 
 he was brought up, and of which he is now chancellor. The 
 university desires him to be a mean to Wolsey, that such 
 order may be taken for the examination of the suspected as 
 that it incur no infamy. He thinks it a pity that a small 
 number of incircumspect fools should endanger the whole 
 university with the charge of Lutheranism : a thing pleasant 
 to the Lutherans beyond sea, and a great encouragement to 
 them, if the two universities one of which, Oxford, has 
 been void of all heresies, and the other, Cambridge, boasts 
 that it has never been denied should embrace these here- 
 tical tenets. It would create great slander if all now sus- 
 pected were brought to London ; he desires, therefore, that 
 some commission may sit at Oxford, to examine not the 
 heads but the novices. The university will be glad if he 
 
 within some limbeck or beneath a balneo Mariae, kindling within his 
 breast, sent such a stream up into his mind, as suddenly distilled 
 into his eyes, which like an overflowing viol reverberates the stream 
 back again to the heart, till the heart surcharged sends these purer 
 spirits of compassion out of his mouth, which could only say that he 
 could read no further". Baily has also changed facts. He says that 
 after the excommunication Valence was taken notice of for his altered 
 countenance, left Cambridge, and fled as it were for sanctuary to Dr. 
 Goodrich, till, pursued by remorse, he returned to Cambridge, and wrote 
 up the words indicating his sorrow on the same place where he had 
 formerly written the scoff, that he was then absolved and ordained. 
 Mr. Lewis shows the impossibility of all this, since Goodrich was not 
 bishop till about a year before Fisher's death. But Hall says none 
 of these things. Valence wrote up no retractation ; he was not 
 absolved ; he was priest before he came to Cambridge ; yet nothing 
 is more likely than that after Fisher's martyrdom he should have felt 
 and expressed remorse even in Dr. Goodrich's household.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 49 
 
 will request the Bishop of Rochester or London (Tunstel) 
 to draw up a table of Lutheran writers who are to be avoided, 
 and send it down to Oxford.* 
 
 As yet only a few of Luther's books had appeared. He 
 had published his theses on Indulgences in 1518, but on 3rd 
 March, 1519, he had written a submissive letter to the pope, 
 and on i5th January, 1520, had written to the emperor, 
 Charles V. (just elected) that he would die an obedient child 
 of the Church. But on 2oth June he had published his 
 address to the Germans on the Christian state, and in 
 October his Captivity of Babykn, in which he utterly and 
 for ever broke away from all Catholic obedience and doc- 
 trine; and on nth December he publidy burnt the pope's 
 bull and the canon law at Wittenberg. But other heretics 
 were springing up, and wise men, even at these first begin- 
 nings of the Reformation, augured what would be its ulti- 
 mate results in genecal infidelity.! 
 
 It was therefore resolved that a public demonstration or 
 
 * The original is in the British Museum (Calig., book vi. 171), and is 
 printed by Ellis (3rd Series, i. 239) ; and by Brewer, Letters and 
 Papers, iii. 1193. 
 
 f- Cuthbert Tunstal, on 7th July, 1523, wrote to Erasmus : " Luther 
 has put forth a book on the abolition of the mass, which he never 
 understood. What can he do more unless he intends to write on 
 abolishing Christ? The man's malice leads in that direction, since 
 already the Blessed Virgin is abolished by his followers, as I hear " 
 (Inter Ep. Erasmi, 656). In his answer Erasmus says : " I hope 
 your prognostications regarding the end of this affair may turn out 
 false. But the Anabaptists (as they are called) are muttering anarchy, 
 and other monstrous doctrines are growing up, which if they spread 
 will make Luther seem almost orthodox. They say that baptism is 
 necessary neither for adults nor children. And if they persuade the 
 people, as some are trying to do, that there is nothing in the Eucharist 
 but bread and wine, I do not see what is left of the Sacraments. No 
 sect has yet risen which preaches impiously about Christ, but this 
 tumult of opinions has given courage to many to dare to speak blas- 
 phemously of Christ's Divine Nature, and to doubt about the authority 
 of the whole of Scripture." Ep. 793. 
 
 4
 
 50 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 protest against the German heresies should be made. A 
 number of books of Luther, Carlstadt, and others were 
 seized and brought to London, and the izth May (1521), 
 being the Sunday within the octave of the Ascension, was 
 appointed for their burning. The place chosen was St. 
 Paul's Cross. Cardinal Wolsey presided in great state. 
 The pope's ambassador and the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 were on his right, the imperial ambassador and the Bishop 
 of Durham on his left, and the rest of the bishops were 
 seated around.* The Bishop of Rochester had been selected 
 to preach, both on account of his learning and his fame as 
 an orator. I cannot consider his effort in this instance a 
 happy one. The great length of the sermon would not 
 have been found fault with in those days;f but it consists 
 of four parts with little unity of arrangement, and is rather a 
 theological treatise than a discourse to the people. Without 
 the coarseness of Luther or the buffoonery of Latimer, Fisher 
 might, by a simple and more popular sermon, have produced 
 greater effect. The sermon, however, was so well liked by 
 the king that his Latin secretary, Richard Pace, translated it 
 into Latin.J 
 
 Notwithstanding all precautions, heresy found its way into 
 both universities. This led to another sermon at St. Paul's, 
 preached by the Bishop of Rochester also, before Cardinal 
 Wolsey and a great number of bishops and abbots, on the 
 
 * Letters and Papers, Hi. 1274. 
 
 f When the sermons were preached at mass they were short 
 enough ; but the grand discourses pronounced on public occasions 
 such as this, and apart from all other religious service, were often of 
 enormous length. But their infrequency made this tolerable or even 
 agreeable. 
 
 After the king's quarrel with the pope, this sermon, which de- 
 fends the pope's supremacy, became extremely displeasing to the 
 king, and in more than one proclamation he ordered all copies to be 
 sent to Cromwell for destruction. Letters and Papers, viii. 55 and 
 ix. 963.
 
 CAMBRIDGE. 51 
 
 retractation of Dr. Barnes in 1527. This man was prior of 
 the Augustinians at Cambridge, and got mixed up with a 
 party of Lutherans there, though he always denied that he 
 held Lutheran doctrine. On Christmas Eve, 1525, he 
 preached a sermon on a text taken from the Epistle of the 
 day : " Let your moderation be known unto all men ". His 
 text, says Mr. Mullinger, " was one which might well have 
 made him to reflect before he indulged in acrimony and 
 satire. But controversial feeling was then running high in 
 the university, and among his audience the prior recognised 
 some who were not only hostile to the cause with which he 
 had identified his name, but also bitter personal enemies. 
 As he proceeded in his discourse his temper rose; he 
 launched into a series of bitter invectives against the whole 
 of the priestly order ; he attacked the bishops with peculiar 
 severity; nor did he bring his sermon to a conclusion before 
 he had indulged in sarcastic and singularly impolitic allu- 
 sions to the pillars and poleaxes of Wolsey himself."* He 
 was cited before the vice-chancellor, and at last sent for 
 to London, where he was examined by six bishops. "So 
 far as may be inferred," writes the same author, "Fisher 
 inclined to a favourable view of the matter ; and when the 
 first article, charging Barnes with contempt for the observance 
 of holy days, was read over, he declared that he for one 
 ' would not condemn it as heresy for a hundred pounds. 
 But,' he added, turning to the prior, ' it was a foolish thing 
 to preach this before all the butchers of Cambridge.'" 
 Severer views, however, prevailed on that or other 
 articles, and he was adjudged a heretic, but on his promise 
 to recant was condemned to bear a faggot. On Quinqua- 
 gesima Sunday, 1527, Barnes, with other penitents, came in 
 procession to the north door of St. Paul's, each bearing a 
 faggot, and after a sermon by the Bishop of Rochester before 
 eighteen bishops, with as many abbots and priors, they 
 * History of University, i. 576.
 
 52 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 made their confession of heresy, threw their faggots into the 
 fire, on which were heaped a great number of heretical books 
 and copies of Tyndall's New Testament, and at last the 
 bishop absolved them from their censures.* The sermon 
 preached on this occasion does not exist. 
 
 * Froude. ii. 43, who copies from Foxe.
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 
 
 WE have seen that Fisher's conception of the func- 
 tions of a priest was that of the influence of the 
 heavenly bodies on the earth : enlightening, 
 warming, fertilising. No one can call in question his bene- 
 ficent action on the University of Cambridge and the 
 general education of the clergy. But the doubt may have 
 occurred to some whether the presidency of a college, the 
 chancellorship of a university, and the superintendence of 
 new foundations were not works incompatible with the 
 duties of a bishop. We must now, therefore, consider him 
 as the chief pastor of his diocese. His episcopate was 
 unusually long, more than thirty years, and (a thing very 
 rare in those days) it was exercised over one flock only. It 
 is to be regretted that more details have not come down to 
 us on the subject of his pastoral and diocesan labours ; but 
 we know enough to be sure that no energy, spent elsewhere, 
 was at the expense of his primary duty to his own people. 
 He was known, not only throughout England, but to all 
 Europe, as the model of a perfect bishop. Writing to 
 Wolsey, in 1518, Erasmus calls Fisher "a Divine Prelate," 
 and to Reuchlin, in 1520, "There is not in that nation a 
 more learned man or a holier bishop ".* 
 
 * " Cum tantum absim ab illius divini praesulis eruditione " (Ep. 
 317 ; ed. Le Cleve, 1703). " Episcopus ille Anglus, quo non alius in 
 ca gente vel eruditior vir vel firaesul sanctior " (Ep, 541).
 
 54 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 We shall meet with abundance of such testimonies as we 
 proceed. That of Cardinal Pole expresses not only his own 
 opinion, but the universal esteem of all good men. In his 
 Apology, addressed to Charles V., he writes as follows : 
 " Nothing could be so reasonable a prejudice against the 
 new supremacy as the integrity of the leaders who opposed 
 it. If anyone had asked the king, before the violence of his 
 passions had hurried him out of the reach of reason and 
 reflection, whom of all the episcopal order he chiefly con- 
 sidered ? on whose affection and fidelity he most relied ? 
 he would, without any hesitation, have answered, The Bishop 
 of Rochester. When the question was not put to him, he 
 was accustomed, of his own accord, to glory that no other 
 prince or kingdom had so distinguished a prelate. Of this 
 I was witness, when, turning to me, on my return from my 
 travels, he said that he did not imagine I had met with 
 anyone, in foreign parts, who could be compared to him, 
 either for virtue or learning. 
 
 "This advantageous judgment of his prince was repaid 
 by an equal zeal and fidelity in the bishop. He constantly 
 professed, that besides the obligation common to all sub- 
 jects, he had that of the king being born in his diocese [at 
 Greenwich], and residing more frequently in it than else- 
 where; and that his majesty's grandmother, whose ghostly 
 father he had been, and who survived the late king and queen, 
 had recommended her grandson to his peculiar care. She 
 was a person of great prudence, who was aware of the 
 dangers of royalty, when it falls to the lot of youth ; and, 
 being about to leave the world, she, with many tears, 
 entreated the bishop, though several excellent men were 
 also present, to assist the king by his instructions and 
 advice, and desired her grandson to have a deference for 
 him preferably to all others, as what would most con- 
 tribute to his felicity both here and hereafter. He had, 
 moreover, this inducement to be vigilant in the king's
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 55 
 
 welfare, as he was the only surviving counsellor of his 
 late majesty."* 
 
 The fact here mentioned by Cardinal Pole, that Fisher 
 had a special regard for Henry, as for one of his own flock, 
 born in his diocese, and frequently residing there, shows 
 the view he cherished of his duties as a pastor. Let us 
 now go back to the time when he received this charge. 
 
 We have seen the letter in which Henry VII. expressed 
 to his mother his desire to raise her confessor to a bishopric, 
 as some atonement for other promotions made from worldly 
 motives. Fisher's Protestant biographer Lewis expresses 
 his surprise or displeasure, because, "notwithstanding 
 the bishop's so frequently, and with so much gratitude, 
 ascribing this his promotion to the king, and acknow- 
 ledging him for his patron, in the bishop's register it is 
 entered as entirely owing to the pope ". Yet one would 
 have thought a boy could distinguish between the right to 
 present to a benefice and the right to confer it. Is the 
 patron of a living among Anglicans the source of clerical 
 jurisdiction ? Would Fisher have been grateful to the king 
 for choosing him for presentation to the pope, if he had 
 considered such presentation as an invasion of papal pre- 
 rogative? The fact that the king's nominee was regularly 
 elected by those to whom the conge-ffilire was sent, may 
 be purged against the freedom of election on the part of 
 chapters or convents, but it has nothing to do with the 
 question of the confirmation by the Sovereign Pontiff. The 
 bishop's registrar followed the usual formula and expressed 
 the simple truth, when he set down the bishop's appoint- 
 ment to his See as emanating from the pope. The entry 
 ran as follows : " The Register of the Reverend Father in 
 Christ, my Lord John Fisher, doctor in theology, and by the 
 grace of God Bishop of Rochester. Our Most holy Father 
 
 * Apol. ad Carolum V. Cas., 20 (Philips' Trans.).
 
 56 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 in Christ, and Lord Julius, by Divine Providence second 
 .(of that name), when the cathedral-chuich of Rochester was 
 vacant by the translation of the Reverend Father in Christ, 
 Richard, to the cathedral-church of Chichester, appointed the 
 aforesaid venerable Father to be its bishop and pastor, as 
 appears by the bulls given m Rome at St. Peter's in the year 
 of Our Lord's Incarnation, 1504, the seventh indiction, and 
 the first year of his pontificate. He was consecrated by the 
 Reverend Father in Christ, Lord William, by Divine per- 
 mission, Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England 
 and legate of the Apostolic See, in his chapel within his 
 manor of Lambeth, in the diocese of Winchester, on Sunday 
 before the feast of St. Catharine, virgin, viz., on the 24th 
 day of November, in the aforesaid year, in the presence of 
 Master Hugh Ashton and Richard Collet, doctor of laws." 
 
 The assistant bishops were William Smith of Lincoln and 
 Richard Nylcke of Norwich. At the same time William 
 Barons, Bishop of London, was consecrated. He did not 
 survive a year. 
 
 The Bishop of Rochester chose Dr. Thomas Head to be 
 his Vicar-General, and in his person as his proxy was in- 
 stalled and enthroned in his cathedral-church on the 24th 
 April, 1505. The bishop seems to have been happy in the 
 choice of his officials. Nicolas Metcalf was his archdeacon 
 for at least twenty-four years, and rendered the greatest ser- 
 vice in the foundation of St. John's College, and as its third 
 master, from 1518 to 1537. Though he yielded when the 
 oath of supremacy was exacted, he was considered "a 
 papist," and, retiring from his office two years before his 
 death, we can have little doubt that by the prayers of the 
 holy martyr in heaven he repented of his weakness and was 
 reconciled with God and with the Church. Roger Ascham, 
 though a Protestant, speaks of him in the highest terms. 
 "He was a father to everyone in the college; there was 
 none so poor, if he had either will to goodness, or wit to
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 57 
 
 learning, that could lack being there, or should depart from 
 thence for any need. I am certain myself that money many 
 times was brought into young men's rooms by strangers that 
 they knew not. In which doing this worthy Nicolas 
 followed the steps of good old St. Nicolas, that learned 
 bishop. He was a Papist, indeed; but would to God, 
 among all us Protestants, I might once see but one that 
 would win like praise, in doing like good, for the advance- 
 ment of learning and virtue."* 
 
 Another of Bishop Fisher's intimate friends, who, like 
 Metcalf, imbibed his own spirit, was Dr. John Adison, his 
 chaplain. He was condemned with the bishop, as we shall 
 see, to perpetual imprisonment, in the affair of the Maid of 
 Kent, but must have been released ; for three years after his 
 master's death he wrote a book in defence of the supremacy 
 of the pope, t 
 
 Before entering on any particulars regarding Fisher's 
 episcopate, it may be well to say a few words with regard to 
 the oath which he, in common with all English bishops of 
 that day, took to the king. At his consecration he made, of 
 course, the usual oath of allegiance to the pope, as it is still 
 in the Roman Pontifical. But with it he took the following 
 oath of allegiance to the king : " I, John, Bishop of Roches- 
 ter, utterly renounce and clearly forsake all such clauses, 
 words, sentences, and grants which I have or shall have 
 hereafter of the pope's holiness, of and for the bishopric of 
 Rochester, that in any ways have been, are, or hereafter 
 may be hurtful or prejudicial to your highness, your heirs, 
 successors, dignity, privilege, or royal estate. And also I do 
 swear that I will be faithful and true, and faith and truth 
 will bear to you, my sovereign lord, and to your heirs, kings 
 of the said realm, of life and limb, and earthly worship, 
 
 * Ascham's Works, p. 315. 
 
 t See Cooper, Athence Cantab. It was to this book that Tunstal 
 of Durham and Stokesley of London made a reply.
 
 58 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 above all creatures, for to live and die with you and yours, 
 against all people. And diligently I shall be attendant on 
 all your affairs and business, according to my skill and 
 power ; and your counsel I shall keep, acknowledging myself 
 to hold my bishopric of you only,* beseeching you for the 
 temporalities of the same, promising as before that I shall 
 be a faithful, true, and obedient subject to your highness, 
 your heirs, and successors during life; and the services due 
 to your highness for the restitution of the temporalities of 
 the said bishopric I shall truly and obediently perform. So 
 help me God and the holy evangelists." 
 
 It has been asserted by Dr. Hook, the late historian of 
 the Archbishops of Canterbury, that this oath is exactly 
 parallel to the protest made by Cranmer at his consecration, 
 before taking the oath of obedience to the pope. Hence 
 either Fisher and the other bishops must share in the charge 
 of perjury cast by Catholics on Cranmer, or both they and 
 he must be freed from any such stain. But the two cases 
 differ entirely. When the bishops took the two customary 
 oaths, the pope was fully aware of that taken to the king, 
 and neither forbade it nor issued any protest against it. 
 Hence, even if the oath to the king had really limited any- 
 thing contained in that to the pope, the limitation being 
 known to the imposer or recipient of the oath, and tacitly 
 accepted by him, there would have been no shadow of per- 
 jury. In reality, however, there was no contradiction. The 
 caution or protest contained in the king's oath is not against 
 any promise contained in the papal oath, but against other 
 possible acts or words coming from Rome ; and though it 
 was certainly in no way honourable to the Sovereign Pontiff, 
 it was such as he could and did tolerate. But Cranmer's 
 protest was a real limitation of the very essence of the oath 
 about to be taken ; it was a private limitation, and, though 
 
 * Not, of course, the jurisdiction, but the temporalities, of which 
 there is mention in the next phrase.
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 
 
 59 
 
 made before witnesses, was utterly secret and unknown as 
 regarded the pope himself, by whom the oath was imposed. 
 Had he known it he would not have consented to Cranmer's 
 consecration. Burnet has said "that if Cranmer did not 
 wholly save his integrity, yet he intended to act fairly and 
 above board ". If any meaning can be attached to these 
 words, it is that, if he committed perjury, he took care to 
 have witnesses of his intention to commit perjury. As to 
 Fisher, we shall find him faithful to both king and pope, 
 obedient to each in his sphere, but paying court and flattery 
 to neither for any earthly gain. Let us now consider the 
 sphere of his episcopal action. 
 
 The diocese of Rochester, formed by St. Augustine him- 
 self, was the smallest in England. It consisted of ninety- 
 nine parishes, almost all in the western part of the county of 
 Kent. There were three deaneries Rochester, Mailing, 
 and Dartford, divided by the deanery of Shoreham, belong
 
 60 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 ing to Canterbury.* Rochester, the episcopal city, was 
 insignificant in size. Leland, writing soon after Fisher's 
 death, said : " The cathedral-church and the palace, with 
 other buildings there, occupieth half the space of the com- 
 pass within the walls of Rochester ".f In the time of 
 Queen Elizabeth there were but one hundred and forty-four 
 houses within the walls. But it was an ancient British and 
 Roman station or fortress, on the river Medway, where the 
 high road between Canterbury and London crosses it. It is 
 thirty-three miles from London and twenty-nine from Canter- 
 bury. It was called by the Romans Durobrivae or Duro- 
 brivis, contracted into Roibis, to which the Saxons added 
 ceaster (from castruni), and thus it became Hroveceaster, or 
 Rochester.;}: The ecclesiastical name is Roffa, whence 
 Bishop Fisher is commonly known among theologians as 
 Roffensis. Whatever importance it acquired after the Con- 
 quest, either as a city or a see, was due to the zeal and energy 
 of Bishop Gundulf, formerly a monk of Bee, and a friend of 
 Lanfranc and St. Anselm. He built, at least in part, the 
 castle whose massive ruins still overtop the cathedral. The 
 nave and other parts of the present cathedral are also his 
 work. The dedication of the church is to St. Andrew. At 
 his appointment to the see Gundulf found only three secular 
 canons, almost without endowment. By the advice and 
 assistance of Archbishop Lanfranc he replaced these by a 
 large body of Benedictine monks. The monks were 
 governed by a prior, the bishop, though not necessarily or 
 even usually a monk, standing to them, as it were, in the 
 place of an abbot. Though Gundulf obtained very con- 
 
 * The deanery of Shoreham on the map in the Vnlor Ecclesiasticus 
 comprises the parishes given in 1810 as " Peculiars," belonging to 
 Canterbury, though they are attributed to the deaneries of Rochester, 
 Mailing, and Dartford. 
 
 T Itinerary, vi. 9. 
 
 J Halsted's Kent, vol. iv.
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 6 1 
 
 siderable revenues, in the division which he made he gave 
 the far larger share to the monastery, so that the Bishop of 
 Rochester was the least wealthy in England, his revenues not 
 amounting to ^300 a year.* Fisher's six immediate prede- 
 cessors had been translated to richer sees. Far from seeking 
 to imitate them, Fisher used to say that it was safer to have 
 fewer souls and less money to account for, and that he 
 would not desert his poor old wife for the richest widow in 
 England. 
 
 In days when shops were still few, and society was less 
 subdivided than now, each man of position was obliged to 
 have a large body of retainers, and drew from his own estates 
 the maintenance of his family. A dwelling-house, sometimes 
 very humble, but sufficiently large to accommodate a fair 
 number of domestics, according to the rude mode of life 
 then common, would be erected on more than one of the 
 manors. The word palace, applied to a bishop's house, 
 should present to us no vision of princely magnificence. 
 The Bishop of Rochester had houses at Hailing, Bromly, 
 and Trottescliffe, at Rochester, adjoining the cathedral, and 
 at Lambeth, used when his duties in Parliament or Convoca- 
 tion called him to London. This house stood near the 
 river, not far from the present Westminster Bridge, and 
 was called La Place.f 
 
 The palace at Rochester had been rebuilt about 1450, 
 but owing to the neglect of Fisher's predecessors, and from 
 its situation too near the river, it was far from salubrious, 
 and Fisher was the last bishop who dwelt in it. The site is 
 
 * So valued at collection of subsidy, but in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, 
 made in 1535, the revenues are given as 411. Those of the monas- 
 tery of Rochester are 486, of the nunnery of Mailing 219, of the 
 nunnery of Dartford 380. 
 
 t It came into Henry VIII. 's hands not long after Fisher's death,, 
 and was granted to the Bishops of Carlisle, and thence called Carlisle 
 House. In 1647, ^ was sold by the Parliament and destroyed (See 
 Brayley's Surrey, p. 86.)
 
 62 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 now occupied by private houses, but the remains of one hall 
 of the old palace are still shown." * 
 
 Erasmus, who had resided there as Fisher's guest, gives 
 some description of it in the following letter, written to the 
 bishop on 4th September, 1524: "It was with the utmost 
 concern I read that part of your letter wherein you express 
 your fear of ever living to see my book arrive. My concern 
 was still heightened by the account your servant gave of the 
 ill state of your health. ... I shrewdly suspect that the state 
 of your health principally depends upon your situation. The 
 near approach of the tide, as well as the mud which is left 
 exposed at every reflux of the water, renders the climate 
 unwholesome. Your library, too, is surrounded with glass 
 windows, which let the keen air through the crevices. I 
 know how much time you spend in the library, which is to 
 you a very paradise. As to me, I could not live in such a 
 place three hours without being sick." f 
 
 The Protestant bishops who succeeded Fisher abandoned 
 both this house and that of Hailing, also on the river, for a 
 better palace which they built at Bromley. 
 
 On the 2?th April, 1534, immediately after the imprison- 
 ment of the bishop for refusing the Succession Oath, all his 
 goods being thereby confiscated to the Crown, commis- 
 sioners were sent to take an inventory of his palace furniture. 
 This document enables us to some extent to visit the bishop 
 at home, and gives a striking picture of episcopal poverty. 
 It deserves, therefore, to be given in all its detail. 
 
 " In his own bedchamber. A bedstead with a mattrass, a 
 counterpoint of red cloth lined with canvas. A celer and 
 tester of old red velvet nothing worth. A leather chair with 
 a cushion. An altar with a hanging of white and green satin 
 of Brydges (Bruges}, with Our Lord embroidered on it. 
 Two blue sarcenet curtains. A cupboard with a cloth. A 
 little chair covered with leather and a cushion. A close 
 
 * The Reliquary (New Series), vol. i., n. I. f />. xviii. 47.
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 63 
 
 stool and an old cushion upon it. An andiron, a fire pan, 
 and a fire shovel. 
 
 "In the great study within the same chamber. A long 
 spruce table and other tables. Three leather chairs. Fire 
 irons. Eight round desks and shelves for books.* 
 
 "In the north study. Divers glasses with waters and 
 syrups, and boxes of marmalade, which were delivered to 
 his servants. A table, four round desks and bookshelves. 
 
 " In the south gallery. Fifty glasses of divers sorts, with 
 a curtain of green and red say. 
 
 " In the chapel in the end of the south gallery. A cushion 
 in the seat of the chapel, the altar cloths, two pieces of old 
 velvet and a superaltare (altar-stone). Four gilt images with 
 a crucifix. 
 
 " In the broad gallery. Old hangings of green say. Old 
 carpets of tapestry set under the said books. An altar cloth 
 painted with green velvet and yellow damask. A St. John's 
 Head standing at the end of the altar. A pontifical book. 
 A painted cloth of the image of Jesus taken down from the 
 Cross. Two old sarcenets. 
 
 "In the old gallery. Certain old books pertaining to 
 divers monasteries. 
 
 " In the wardrobe. A kirtle of stamnel, a Spanish blan- 
 ket, a pair of coarse blankets, a limbeck to distil aqua vitcz, 
 with divers old trash. A trussing bedstead, a pair of sheets, 
 six boards, two pair of trestles. 
 
 "In the little study beside the wardrobe. Divers glasses 
 and boxes with syrups, sugar, stilled waters, and other certain 
 trash sent to my lord. 
 
 " In the great chapel. The altar hung with white sar- 
 cenet, with red sarcenet crosses, and under it two hangings 
 of yellow satin, of Brydges, and blue damask ; eight gilt 
 images upon the altar; two laten candlesticks. A diaper 
 -cloth upon the altar, and hanging over it. A pix, with a 
 * This is no doubt the library described l>y Erasmus.
 
 64 BLESSED JOH.V FISHER. 
 
 cloth hanging over it, garnished with gold, with tassels 01 
 red silk and gold.* At the ends of the altar, two curtains 
 of red sarcenet upon the desk where he sits. Two pieces of 
 tapestry, and two cushions covered with domexe. A mass 
 book. An old carpet on the ground before the altar. 
 Hangings of painted red say. An altar beneath, in the 
 same chapel, hung with old domexe, and a painted cloth of 
 the three kings of Coleyn. Five images of timber. A table 
 of Doomsday. A crucifix with the images of the Father and 
 Holy Ghost 
 
 " In the little cliamber next the great chapel. Hangings of 
 old painted doths, a great looking glass broken. An old 
 folding bed. 
 
 '* In the old dining chamber. Two leather chans. A black 
 velvet chair. A table and trestles. Two cupboards. Two 
 carpets in the windows. Two joined forms." 
 
 There is no need to enumerate the chairs, and trestles, 
 and boards in the other rooms. We have seen all the 
 finery of the house. 
 
 The inventory of the bishop's manor house at Hailing is 
 more scanty and still more wretched, t 
 
 Let the reader note especially one item : The figure of 
 the head of St. John the Baptist standing on the altar. We 
 shall see more of the meaning of this when we come to 
 the bishop's action regarding the king's divorce. 
 
 Such, then, was the sphere allotted for the bishop's 
 labours, and such the provision for his residence within that 
 sphere. All accounts agree that he never left it willingly. 
 He was very little at Court, and the only absence from his 
 diocese that we can trace during those many years was 
 
 * The hanging pix for the Blessed Sacrament, with its silk 
 covering, was almost universal in England before the i6th century. 
 
 + Litters and Papers, viL 557. The books were seized, and are not 
 in this inventory, nor the plate. The inventory fills ten pages. The 
 above are the principal items.
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 65 
 
 connected with university matters, or with his duties in 
 Parliament and Convocation. The bishop began by the 
 visitation of his diocese, correcting abuses, preaching, con- 
 firming, and relieving the needy. He was well persuaded, 
 as he had written just about this time, in his sermons on the 
 Penitential Psalms, that "all fear of God, also the contempt 
 of God, cometh and is grounded of the clergy ".* His first 
 care, therefore, was with them. He had complained in the 
 same sermons, when commenting on the words, Qui juxta 
 me erant de longe steterunt " My neighbours stood afar off," 
 that pastors, who ought to be the nearest neighbours of all, 
 stand aloof either by bodily absence or by silence. 
 " Bishops be absent from their dioceses and parsons from 
 their churches. . . . We use bye-paths and circumlocutions 
 in rebuking. We go nothing nigh to the matter, and so in 
 the mean season the people perish with their sins, "f As 
 we shall see the bishop devoid of all human fear, when he 
 has to resist the king in all the fury of his passions, we may 
 believe Dr. Hall, when he tells us that he was dauntless in 
 reproving scandalous pastors : " Sequestering all such as he 
 found unworthy to occupy that high function, he placed 
 others fitter in their room ; and all such as were accused 
 of any crime he put to their purgation, not sparing the 
 punishment of simony and heresy, with other crimes and 
 abuses ". 
 
 Dr. Hall, who has told us the names of the eye-witnesses 
 from whom he learnt what he relates, gives a beautiful 
 picture of the bishop's ordinary life : " He never omitted so 
 much as one collect of his daily service, and that he used 
 to say commonly to himself alone, without the help of any 
 chaplain, not in such speed or hasty manner to be at an end, 
 as many will do, but in most reverent and devout manner, so 
 distinctly and treatably pronouncing every word that he 
 
 * Penit. Psalms (E. E. T. Society), p. 179. f Ibid., p. 77. 
 
 5
 
 66 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 seemed a very devourer of heavenly food, never satiate nor 
 filled therewith. Insomuch as, talking on a time with a 
 Carthusian monk, who much commended his zeal and 
 diligent pains in compiling his book against Luther, he 
 answered again, saying that he wished that time of writing 
 had been spent in prayer, thinking that prayer would have 
 done more good and was of more merit. 
 
 " And to help this his devotion he caused a great hole to 
 be digged through the wall of his church of Rochester, 
 whereby he might the more commodiously have prospect 
 into the church at mass and evensong times. When he him- 
 self used to say mass, as many times he used to do, if he 
 were not letted by some urgent and great cause, ye might 
 then perceive in him such earnest devotion that many times 
 the tears would fall from his cheeks. 
 
 "And lest that the memory of death might hap to slip 
 from his mind, he always accustomed to set upon one end 
 of the altar a dead man's scull, which was also set before 
 him at his table as he dined or supped. And in all his 
 prayers and other talk he used continually a special reverence 
 to the Name of Jesus. 
 
 " Now to those his prayers he adjoined two wings which 
 were alms and fasting, by the help whereof they might 
 mount speedier to heaven. To poor sick persons he was a 
 physician, to the lame he was a staff, to poor widows an 
 advocate, to orphans a tutor, and to poor travellers a host. 
 Wheresoever he lay, either at Rochester or elsewhere, his 
 order was to inquire where any poor sick folks lay near him, 
 which after he once knew he would diligently visit them, 
 and where he saw any of them likely to die, he would preach 
 to them, teaching them the way to die with such godly 
 persuasions that for the most part he never departed till 
 the sick persons were well satisfied and contented with 
 death. 
 
 "Many times it was his chance to come to such poor
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 67 
 
 houses as for want of chimnies were very smoky, and thereby 
 so noisome that scant any man could abide in them.* 
 Nevertheless himself would then sit by the sick patient many 
 times the space of three or four hours together in the smoke, 
 when none of his servants were able to abide in the house, 
 but were fain to tarry without till his coming abroad. And 
 in some other poor houses where stairs were wanting, he 
 would never disdain to climb up by a ladder for such a good 
 purpose. And when he had given them such ghostly com- 
 fort as he thought expedient for their souls, he would at his 
 departure leave behind him his charitable alms, giving 
 charge to his steward and other officers daily to prepare 
 meat [i.e., food] convenient for them (if they were poor) 
 and send it unto them. Besides this he gave at his gate to 
 divers poor people (which were commonly no small number) 
 a daily alms of money, to some two pence, to some three 
 pence, to some four pence, to some six pence, and some 
 more, after the rate of their necessity.! That being done, 
 every of them was rewarded likewise with meat, which was daily 
 brought to the gate. And lest any fraud, partiality, or other 
 disorder might rise in distribution of the same, he provided 
 himself a place, whereunto immediately after dinner he 
 would resort, and there stand to see the division with his 
 own eyes. If any strangers came to him he would enter- 
 tain them at his table, according to their vocations [i.e. f 
 position], with such mirth as stood with the gravity of his 
 person, whose talk was always rather of learning or con- 
 
 * The fuel would be turf or wood at best. 
 
 ( Skilled labourers engaged in building the church at Eton in 
 1441 received only6d. a day, and other labourers 4d. (History of Eton 
 College, by H. Maxwell Lyte, p. 14). In the year 1515, we find from 
 the cellarer's accounts of the monastery of Holy Trinity, London, 
 that labourers' wages were sd., a pair of shoes 8d., hose (i.e., trousers) 
 lyd., two shirts as. 4d., a gallon of Rhenish wine is., of Malmsey 8d., 
 a quart of ink 4d., a preacher's honorary on the first Sunday of Lent 
 35. 4d. (Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ii. 115.
 
 68 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 templation than of worldly matters. And when he had no 
 strangers, his order was now and then to sit with his chap- 
 lains, which were commonly grave and learned men, among 
 whom he would put some great question of learning, not 
 only to provoke them to better consideration and deep 
 search of the hid mysteries of our religion, but also to spend 
 the time of repast in such talk that might be (as it was 
 indeed) pleasant, profitable, and comfortable to the waiters 
 and standers by. 
 
 "And yet was he so dainty and spare of time that he 
 would never bestow fully one hour at any meal. His diet at 
 table was, for all such as thither resorted, plentiful and good, 
 but for himself very mean. For upon such eating days as 
 were not fasted, although he would for his health use a 
 larger diet than at other times, yet was it with such temper- 
 ance that commonly he was wont to eat and drink by weight 
 and measure. And the most of his sustenance was thin 
 pottage, sodden with flesh, eating of the flesh itself very 
 sparingly. The ordinary fasts appointed by the Church he 
 kept very roundly,* and to them he joined many other 
 particular fasts of his own devotion, as appeared well by his 
 own thin and weak body, whereupon though much flesh was 
 not left, yet would he punish the very skin and bones upon 
 his back. He wore most commonly a shirt of hair, and 
 many times he would whip himself in most secret wise. 
 
 " When night was come, which commonly brings rest to 
 all creatures, then would he many times despatch away his 
 servants and fall to his prayers a long space. And after he 
 had ended the same, he laid him down upon a poor hard 
 couch of straw and mats, for other bed he used none, 
 provided at Rochester in his closet near the cathedral- 
 church, where he might look into the choir, and hear 
 Divine service. And being laid, he never rested above 
 
 * Every Friday was then a fast-day in England, besides very many 
 vigils.
 
 THE BISHOP IN HIS DIOCESE. 69 
 
 four hours at one time, but straightway rose and ended the 
 rest of his devout prayers. 
 
 " Thus lived he till towards his latter days, when, being 
 more grown into age, which is, as Cicero saith, a sickness 
 of itself, he was forced somewhat to relent of those hard 
 and severe fasts ; and the rather for that his body was much 
 weakened with a consumption, wherefore, by counsel of his 
 physician and licence of his ghostly father, he used upon 
 some fasting days to comfort himself with a little thin gruel 
 made for the purpose. 
 
 " The care that he had of his family was not small ; for 
 although his chief burden consisted in discharge of his 
 spiritual function, yet did he not neglect his temporal affairs. 
 Wherefore he took such order in his revenues, that one part 
 was bestowed upon reparation and maintenance of the 
 church, the second upon the relief of poverty and main- 
 tenance of scholars, and the third upon his household 
 expenses and buying of books, whereof he had great plenty. 
 And, lest the trouble of worldly business might be some 
 hindrance to his spiritual exercise, he used the help of his 
 brother Robert, a layman, whom he made steward as long 
 as his said brother lived ; giving him in charge so to order 
 his expenses that by no means he brought him in debt. 
 His servants used not to wear their apparel after any court- 
 like or wanton manner, but went in garments of a sad [i.e., 
 sober] and seemly colour, some in gowns and some in coats, 
 as the fashion then was ; whom he always exhorted to 
 frugality and thrift, and in any wise to beware of prodi- 
 gality. And where he marked any of them more given to 
 good husbandry than others, he would many times lend 
 them money, and never ask it again, and commonly when 
 it was offered him he did forgive it. If any of his house- 
 hold had committed a fault, as sometimes it happened, he 
 would first examine the matter himself, and, finding him 
 faulty, would, for the first time, but punish him with words
 
 70 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 only, but it Should be done with such a severity of speech 
 that whosoever came once before him was very unwilling to 
 come before him again for any such offence. So that, by 
 this means, his household continued in great quietness and 
 peace, every man knowing what belonged to his duty. 
 
 " Some among the rest, as they could get opportunity, would 
 apply their minds to study and learning, and those above 
 others he specially liked, and would many times support 
 them with his labour and sometimes with his money. But 
 where he saw any of them given to idleness and sloth, he 
 could by no means endure them in his house, because out 
 of that fountain many evils are commonly wont to spring. 
 In conclusion, his family was governed with such tem- 
 perance, devotion, and learning that his palace, for conti- 
 nency, seemed a very monastery, and for leatning a uni- 
 versity." * 
 
 Dr. Hall's MS.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 
 
 ON the i8th July, 1511, Pope Julius II. published 
 a Bull of Indiction for a general council, to meet 
 in the Lateran Church, on ipth April, 1512. 
 The bull is signed by the cardinals then present in Rome, 
 amongst whom was Christopher Bainbridge, Archbishop of 
 York, and Cardinal of St. Praxedis.* He was then resident 
 ambassador of the King of England. 
 
 The objects of this council, which is known as the 5th 
 Lateran, were the suppression of the schism of Louis XH., 
 peace between Christian princes, reformation of morals, and 
 defence of Christendom against the Turks. In November, 
 1511, Henry VIII. made a "holy league" with Ferdinand, 
 King of Arragon, and Joanna, Queen of Castile, against 
 France, the objects of which were the defence of the 
 Church and the acknowledgment of the Lateran Council, f 
 Though he had already his representative in Rome, in 
 Cardinal Bainbridge, he determined to send a special em- 
 bassy, or orators, as its members were called, and a com- 
 mission was issued, on 4th February, 1512, to Silvester de 
 Giglis (an Italian), Bishop of Worcester ; John Fisher, 
 Bishop of Rochester ; Thomas Docwra, Prior of the Knights 
 of SL John ; and Richard Kidderminster, Abbot of Wynch- 
 
 * In Colet's Councils, another Christopher, Cardinal of St. Peter 
 and Marcellinus, is entered as Eboracensis, p. 690. 
 + Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. i. 1980.
 
 72 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 combe, to proceed to Rome for the opening ot the council.* 
 For some reason not known to us the commission was 
 revoked, and another issued, on ist April, to the Bishop of 
 Worcester and Sir Robert Wingfield.t Even these, how- 
 ever, did not go, and England had no representative at the 
 opening except Cardinal Bainbridge. At some of the later 
 sessions we find the Bishop of Worcester present. J 
 
 By the absence of a bishop so wise, so learned, so holy, 
 and so fearless, there is no doubt the Church at large 
 suffered a loss. The incident is interesting as showing the 
 great esteem in which the bishop was held by the king. 
 Silvester de Giglis would have been no fit associate for such 
 a bishop, and was probably chosen as being an Italian, and 
 
 * Letters and Papers, i. 2085-3108. -r Ibid., i. 3109. 
 
 J There is much mystery about this embassy, and it may save 
 trouble to future explorers to unravel it as far as possible. Burnet, 
 in his History of Reform., i. 19, and Wharton, in Anglia Sacra, i. 
 382, Collier, in his History, iv. 5, Lord Herbert, and others, all 
 suppose that Fisher went to Rome. Baker, in his History of St. 
 John's, 5. 78, proves that he did not go ; so does Lewis, in his Life 
 of Fisher, i. 43. Mr. Brewer, however, in his Preface to vol. i. of 
 Letters and Papers, p. 95, writes : ' When the Bishop of Rochester, 
 the Prior of St. John, and the Abbot of Wynchcombe were sent as 
 ambassadors to the pope, 5th February, 1512, the first and second 
 received 800, the third 800 marks, for their expenses during one 
 hundred and sixty days," and he refers to the warrants directed to the 
 Treasurer of the Chamber. This would seem good evidence. Yet it 
 is certain that they did not go. Fisher himself, in his account of his 
 labour and difficulties in the foundation of St. John's, says : " Sixth, 
 After this I was moved by the king to prepare myself to go unto the 
 general council, for the realm, with my Lord of St. John and others. 
 . . . Seventh, When I was disappointed of that journey," &c. (Lewis, 
 ii. 279, 280). Again, there is no record of his presence in the acts of 
 the council. There is also evidence in the State Papers that Docwra 
 was in England in May, 1512 (i. 3173). Wingfield, instead of going 
 to Rome, was ambassador to the emperor. The " diets " of the 
 ambassadors were paid beforehand, as appears from the king's book 
 of payments, February, 1512 (Letters and Papers, ii. 1454). Of 
 course, when the commission was revoked, the money was refunded.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 73 
 
 versed in diplomacy. Fisher would have been a poor 
 diplomatist, and was selected to do honour to the English 
 Church, and to render service to the Church universal He 
 would have found in the Abbot of Winchcombe, Richard 
 Kidderminster, a man of congenial mind. A letter written 
 to him by Colet in 1497, represents him as learned and a 
 patron of learning, " ardent in the love of all sacred wisdom," 
 and of a sweet and hospitable character.* In 1521, like 
 Fisher, he wrote a treatise against Luther. 
 
 Thomas Docwra or Dokray, prior of the hospital of St. 
 John of Jerusalem in London, more commonly known as 
 Lord of St. John's, held as a knight the very highest place, 
 and had a seat in the House of Lords. He had been the 
 king's ambassador in France in 1510. He took part with 
 the Earl of Shrewsbury in the French wars in May, 1513. 
 
 The Council of Lateran was opened on 3rd May, 1512, 
 and continued its sessions at intervals. Pope Julius died 
 on 2ist February, 1513, but the council was continued 
 under Leo X. It was probably by the pope's desire that a 
 second project was entertained of sending special ambas- 
 sadors, and again the choice fell on Fisher and Docwra. 
 Wolsey alludes to their projected journey in a letter to De 
 Giglis, which Mr. Brewer has placed at the end of October, 
 I5i4.t On 3rd March, 1515, Polydore Vergil writes from 
 London to Adrian de Corneto, Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, 
 and Bishop of Bath : " The king's ambassadors leave on the 
 loth with letters for the cardinal. Perhaps it will not be 
 allowed without '\c permission of le. mi" (this was a cipher 
 designating Wolsey), " who are hateful to heaven and earth. 
 The Bishop of Rochester will be glad to visit him. Will 
 send by his hands the king's gift." j 
 
 * See Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, p. 45 (and ed.), and Knight's 
 Life qf Colet, p. 311. 
 t Letters, dxc., i. 5542. 
 I cannot reconcile the date assigned to this letter, with others (ii.
 
 74 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 The University of Cambridge wrote to him a most com- 
 plimentary letter, begging him to use his influence when at 
 Rome in its favour and in the confirmation of its privileges.* 
 
 On loth March, 1515, the bishop appointed William 
 Fresel, the prior of his cathedral, and Richard Chetham, 
 prior of Ledes in Kent, as his proctors during his absence 
 to confer benefices, to reconcile churches, license quaestors, 
 &c.t But these procuratorial letters, as well as letters of 
 introduction which he had obtained for presentation in 
 Rome, are now in the archives of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge, which proves that his journey was again prevented.^ 
 Wolsey was then intent on the cardinalate, and perhaps 
 Fisher was not judged a fitting agent in such a matter. 
 Whether for this or other reasons, his commission was a 
 second time revoked, and the Church lost his services. 
 
 Dr. Hall mentions a third projected visit to Rome. He 
 does not give the year, but from various circumstances 
 mentioned it must have been in 1518. "He was taken," 
 writes Dr. Hall, "with a great desire to travel to Rome, 
 there to salute the pope's holiness, and to visit the tombs 
 of the holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, with the rest of 
 the holy places and relics there. But you shall understand 
 that this was by him determined from the time that he first 
 received his bishopric, which by certain occasions was twice 
 
 238, 312), but the matter is of no importance. The letter of Polydore 
 was filled with scurrility against Wolsey. It was intercepted in Rome 
 and sent to Wolsey, who threw Polydore into prison. In prison he 
 wrote to Wolsey : " Lying in the shadow of death, he has heard of 
 Wolsey's elevation to the cardinal's throne. When it is allowed him 
 he will gaze and bow in adoration before him, and then my spirit will 
 rejoice in Thee, my God and Saviour." When he was set free and 
 arrived safe in Italy, he took his revenge on the cardinal and made up 
 by abuse for his adulation. (See Letters, &c., ii. 970.) 
 
 * Prid. Id., Feb., 1514 (i.e., 1515); Lewis, ii. 286. 
 
 t Lewis, ii. a86. 
 
 + Baker's History of St. John's, \. 75.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 75 
 
 before disappointed.* Whereupon, having now gotten (as 
 he thought) a good opportunity, he providently disposed his 
 household and all his other matters, and after leave obtained 
 of the king and his metropolitan, he began to prepare for 
 his journey to Rome. To this voyage he had chosen learned 
 company. But behold, when everything was ready and the 
 journey about to begin, all was suddenly disappointed, and 
 revoked for other business to be treated of at home, which 
 of necessity required his presence. 
 
 " The cause of his revocation was by means of a synod of 
 bishops then called by Cardinal Wolsey, who (having lately 
 before received his power legatine from the pope) at that 
 time ruled all things under the king also at his own will and 
 pleasure. To this synod the clergy of England assembled 
 themselves in great number, when it was expected that great 
 matters for the benefit of the Church of England should 
 have been proposed. Howbeit, all fell out otherwise. For, 
 as it appeared after, this council was called by my lord 
 cardinal rather to notify to the world his great authority, 
 and to be seen sitting in his Pontifical Seat, than for any 
 great good that he meant to do, which this learned man 
 perceived quickly. t 
 
 "Wherefore, having now good occasion to speak against 
 such enormities as he saw daily arising among the spiri- 
 
 * Dr. Hall has made no mention of the Council of Lateran, or the 
 intention to send the bishop there as king's orator, yet this statement 
 about the double "disappointment" is correct, and confirms the 
 accuracy of his information. This I mention because what follows 
 about the bishop's speech to the English bishops rests on his autho- 
 rity only, as far as I can discover. Baily has misplaced the matter 
 in 1522, after the publication of the king's book. 
 
 t The priests who, like Dr. Hall, remained faithful to the Catholic 
 cause after the overthrow of the Catholic religion in England were 
 very prone to throw the blame of what had happened on the pride 
 and ambition of Cardinal Wolsey, giving a sinister intention even to 
 his good works, perhaps unjustly.
 
 7 6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 tuality, and much the rather for that his words were among 
 the clergy alone, without any commixture of the laity, which 
 at that time began to hearken to any speaking against the 
 clergy, he there reproved very discreetly the ambition and 
 incontinency of the clergy, utterly condemning their vanity 
 in wearing of costly apparel, whereby he declared the goods 
 of the Church to be sinfully wasted, and scandal to be raised 
 among the people, seeing the tithes and other oblations, 
 given by the devotion of them and their ancestors to a good 
 purpose, so inordinately spent in indecent and superfluous 
 raiment, delicate fare, and other worldly vanity, which 
 matter he debated so largely, and framed his words after 
 such sort, that the cardinal perceived himself to be 
 touched to the very quick. For he affirmed this kind of 
 disorder to proceed through the example of the head, and 
 thereupon reproved his pomp, putting him in mind that it 
 stood better with the modesty of such a high pastor as he 
 was to eschew all worldly vanity, specially in this perilous 
 time, and by humility to make himself conformable and 
 like the image of God. 
 
 " ' For in this trade of life,' said he, ' neither can there be 
 any likelihood of perpetuity with safety of conscience, neither 
 yet any security of the clergy to continue, but such plain 
 and imminent dangers are like to ensue as never were 
 tasted or heard of before our days. For what should we 
 (said he) exhort our flocks to eschew and shun worldly 
 ambition, when we ourselves, that are bishops, do wholly 
 set our minds to the same things we forbid in them ? 
 What example of Christ our Saviour do we imitate, who 
 first executed doing, and after fell to teaching? If we 
 teach according to our doing, how absurd may our doctrine 
 be accounted ! If we teach one thing and do another, our 
 labour in teaching shall never benefit our flocks half so 
 much as our examples in doing shall hurt them. Who can 
 willingly suffer and bear with us, in whom (preaching humi-
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 7? 
 
 lity, sobriety, and contempt of the world) they may evidently 
 perceive haughtiness in mind, pride in gesture, sump- 
 tuousness in apparel, and damnable excess in all worldly 
 delicacies ? 
 
 " ' Truly, most reverend Fathers, what this vanity in tem- 
 poral things worketh in you, I know not. But sure I am 
 that in myself I perceive a great impediment to devotion, 
 and so have felt for a long time. For sundry times, when 
 I have settled and fully bent myself to the care of my flock 
 committed unto me, to visit my diocese, to govern my 
 church, and to answer the enemies of Christ, straightways 
 hath come a messenger for one cause or other, sent from 
 higher authority, by whom I have been called to other 
 business, and so left off my former purpose. And thus, by 
 tossing and going this way and that way, time hath passed, 
 and in the meanwhile nothing done but attending after 
 triumphs, receiving of ambassadors, haunting of princes' 
 courts, and such like, whereby great expenses rise, that 
 might better be spent many other ways.' 
 
 " He added, further, that whereas himself for sundry 
 causes secretly known to himself was thrice determined to 
 make his journey to Rome, and at every time had taken 
 full and perfect order for his cure, his household, and for 
 all other business till his return, still by occasion of these 
 worldly matters he was disappointed of his purpose. After 
 he had uttered these with many more such words in this 
 synod, they seemed all by their silence to be much astonied, 
 and to think well of his speeches ; but indeed by the sequel 
 of the matter it fell out that few were persuaded by his 
 counsel ; for no man upon this amended one whit of his 
 accustomed licentious life, no man became one hair the 
 more circumspect or watchful over his cure, and many were 
 of the mind that they thought it nothing necessary for them 
 to abate anything of their fair apparel for the reprehension 
 of a few, whom they thought too scrupulous, so that (excuses
 
 78 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 never wanting to cover sin) this holy father's words, spoken 
 with so good a zeal, were all lost and came to nothing for 
 that time." * 
 
 From this account of Dr. Hall it appears that according 
 to His usual providence God was pleased to send a warning 
 before His anger fell on the Church in England. Reforma- 
 tion was indeed needed, but not such reformation as has 
 falsely usurped the name. That has been in many respects 
 but a development and legal establishment of the evils 
 against which such men as Fisher raised their voices ; and 
 when it came it was welcomed by those of loose and un- 
 worthy life, and resisted by those whose life was holiest and 
 whose voice had been raised most boldly against abuses. 
 
 It would, however, be doing an injustice to the many 
 learned and excellent prelates who were Fisher's contem- 
 poraries if I let it be supposed that no serious effort was 
 made to remove scandals from the Church. The venerable 
 Bishop of Winchester, Richard Fox, had retired from Court, 
 and was labouring in the sanctification of his diocese, when 
 he heard that Wolsey, in 1527, was really resolved to take 
 stringent measures in a national council; thereupon he wrote 
 him a warm letter of thanks and encouragement.f The 
 miserable affair of the king's divorce came to thwart this 
 effort or project ; but on Wolsey's disgrace the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, having recovered the plenitude of his supre- 
 
 * This national and legatine synod was convoked on ist Mon- 
 day of Lent, 1518, and was to have concluded on gth September. 
 It was, however, interrupted by the plague, and was prorogued to ist 
 Monday in Lent, 1519. Constitutions were made and published, but 
 they have not come down to us. From the register of a diocesan 
 synod of Hereford, held in 1519, for the promulgation of the decrees 
 of the national synod, we find that, amongst other matters, they 
 regarded the dress of the clergy, and the life of candidates for ordina- 
 tion, &c. For greater facility they were published in English (Wilkins, 
 iii. 682). 
 
 + Wilkins, iii. 708.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 79 
 
 macy, took measures at once for the desired reforms. New 
 laws were not needed, but the enforcement of the old and 
 the abolition or curtailment of the innumerable exceptions 
 and dispensations. A Convocation or Provincial Council 
 of Canterbury, begun in November, 1529, and continued in 
 1531, drew up a code of decrees and instructions for prelates 
 and pastors, for religious orders and for preachers and 
 schoolmasters, as excellent and full as Fisher himself could 
 have desired.* But alas ! the king had other matters in 
 hand than the moral reform of clergy or laity. The decrees 
 were scarcely committed to paper before, by arts and threats, 
 he first deprived the clergy of their liberty, and then cast 
 them headlong into schism and heresy, as will be related in 
 a future chapter. 
 
 To go back to the synod of 1518. That the complaints 
 uttered by the Bishop of Rochester were not querulous and 
 censorious reproaches of other men, but the cry of agony of 
 a soul zealous for God's glory and men's salvation, may be 
 seen almost at a glance, when we recall the vain pomps and 
 pageantries of which the chronicles of those days are full, 
 and contrast the labour and expenses with which they were 
 carried out with the apathy and indolence with which every 
 attempt at reformation was received. 
 
 As Rochester was on the high road between Dover and 
 London, Fisher had perhaps more than his share of State 
 pageantry. He might not object to show honour to the 
 pope and king when a messenger passed bearing some token 
 from the former to the latter. Thus, in the first year of 
 Fisher's episcopate, Julius II. sent a sword and cap of 
 maintenance to Henry VII., which were received with 
 " many and great ceremonies," says Stow. In 1510, he sent 
 the golden rose to Henry VIII. In 1514, Leo X. sent him 
 the sword and cap, and Clement VII. a magnificent gold 
 
 * Wilkins, iii. 717-724.
 
 8o BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 rose-tree in 1524.* What these things involved may be 
 seen from the following order of the council (i2th May, 1514) : 
 
 "To MY LORD OF ROCHESTER, My Lord, we commend 
 us unto you in our hearty manner. So it is the king's 
 grace hath knowledge that an ambassador, sent from the 
 pope's holiness to his grace, with a sword and cap of 
 maintenance, is come to Calais, and intendeth immediately 
 to take shipping to arrive at Dover. Whereupon it is 
 appointed that the prior of Christ's Church of Canterbury 
 shall meet with the said ambassador beyond Canterbury, 
 and so to entertain him in his house, and af^rwards upon 
 monition to be given to him, shall conduct him to some 
 place convenient between Sittingbourne and Rochester, 
 where the king hath appointed that your lordship, the 
 Master of the Rolls, and Sir Thomas Boleyn shall meet with 
 him and so conduct him to London. . . . And in case ye 
 be not now at Rochester, ye will upon knowledge thereof 
 repair thither, where the Master of the Rolls and Sir Thomas 
 Boleyn shall be with you accordingly. And Jesu preserve 
 your lordship. At Baynard Castle the i2th day of May. 
 
 " P. NORFOLK, P. DORSET, Ri. WINTON, P. DURHAM." f 
 
 Such duties as the above belonged to the bishop's position, 
 and so, again, he might accept willingly enough the expensive 
 and onerous duties which devolved upon him when the 
 Cardinal's Hat was sent to Wolsey in November, 1515. 
 When Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sung mass 
 at Westminster, at the ceremony of investiture, there were 
 present the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, the Bishops 
 of Lincoln, Exeter, Winchester, Durham, Norwich, Ely, and 
 Llandaff, with the Abbots of Westminster, St. Alban's, Bury, 
 Glastonbury, Reading, Gloucester, Winchcombe, Tewkes- 
 
 * See on all these Cooper's Lady Margaret, p. 43. 
 t Lewis, ii. 297. For an account of the grand ceremonial at the 
 king's investiture, see Letters and Papers, i. 4835 and 5111.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 8 1 
 
 bury, and the Prior of Coventry. The Bishop of Rochester 
 acted as " crosier " to the archbishop. Dr. Colet, Dean of 
 St. Paul's, preached the sermon, of which the heralds, who 
 have treasured up all the ceremonial of that day of magni- 
 ficence, have only preserved this brief notice, that "a 
 cardinal represented the order of seraphim, which con- 
 tinually burneth in the love of the glorious Trinity, and 
 for their consideration a cardinal is only apparelled with 
 red, which colour only betokeneth nobleness". He ex- 
 horted Wolsey to execute righteousness to rich and poor, 
 and desired all people to pray for him.* Such functions as 
 these were ecclesiastical, but the bishop complained that he 
 had to go to great expense, or to submit to long interruption 
 of his work, for mere State pageantry. Thus, when the 
 Emperor Charles V. visited England, in May, 1522, he was 
 met by the king at Dover, and the two monarchs proceeded 
 by easy stages to London. At Canterbury the clergy and 
 religious lined the streets to the cathedral, where the Arch- 
 bishop, Warham, assisted by the Bishops of Rochester, 
 Bangor, and many others, met them. The emperor was 
 lodged at the archbishop's palace, the king at St. Augustine's. 
 The next stage was Sittingbourne, then Rochester, and at 
 Rochester they spent the Sunday, and were entertained by 
 the bishop. As the emperor's attendants alone amounted 
 to two thousand, and half the English nobility and prelacy, 
 with their followers, were also present, it is a marvellous 
 thing how all found beds in the little city of Rochester 
 and its neighbourhood. f 
 
 But this was little in comparison with the meeting between 
 Henry and Francis I. at the famous Field of the Cloth of 
 Gold, in 1520. I shall not transcribe the gorgeous de- 
 scriptions that have come down to us of that ceremonial. It 
 
 * Letters and Papers, ii. 1153-1248. 
 
 t The full account is given in Hall's Chronicle. Also in Letters 
 and Papers, iii. 2288. 
 
 6
 
 82 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 is enough, as regards the Bishop of Rochester, to say, that 
 though the meeting did not take place until the yth June, 
 the feast of Corpus Christi, arrangements were made long 
 before. On 26th March, it was notified to the bishop that 
 he was appointed to ride with the King of England, at the 
 embracing of the kings, together with the Bishops of 
 Durham, Ely, Chester, Exeter, and Hereford, the Archbishop 
 of Armagh, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Arch- 
 bishop of York and Legate (Wolsey). The list was after- 
 wards modified, but he retained his place, as being member of 
 the Privy Council. He was to have with him four chaplains 
 and twenty persons, eight of whom should be gentlemen. 
 He was to provide twelve horses to be transported beyond 
 the sea. It seems that a further change was made, and he 
 waited on the queen instead of the king.* 
 
 It is curious that, though he often proposed to visit Rome 
 and Germany, the only occasion on which he ever crossed the 
 sea was with this crowd of courtiers. The magnificence 
 of the ecclesiastical functions on Corpus Christi, and 
 especially on the Sunday within the octave, when the Bishop 
 of Rochester was one of the assistants at the mass cele- 
 brated by the cardinal, in the presence of the kings and 
 queens, and the nobility of the two countries, was equal to 
 that of the Court ceremonial ; but whether it caused much 
 joy to the heart of Fisher may well be questioned. His 
 words, preached in 1505, may have recurred to his memory: 
 " Our joy is the testimony of a clean conscience Gloria 
 nostra hcec est, testimonium conscientia nostrce. Which joy 
 without fail shone more bright in the poor Apostles than 
 doth now our clothes of silk and golden cups. . . . Truly, 
 neither gold, precious stones, nor glorious bodily garments 
 be not the cause wherefor kings and princes of the world 
 should dread God and His Church, for doubtless they have 
 
 * Rymer, xiii. 711 ; Letters and Papers, Hi. 702, 703, 734.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 83 
 
 far more worldly riches than we have. But holy doctrine, 
 good life, and example of honest conversation be the 
 occasions whereby good and holy men, also wicked and 
 cruel people, are moved to love and fear Almighty God."* 
 
 We may now bring together such notices as have been 
 preserved of the bishop's action in Convocation, previous to 
 the year 1530, which will require special attention. As 
 Convocation is an institution peculiar to England, and may 
 not be familiar to some of my readers, I will say a few words 
 as to its nature and functions. 
 
 Convocation was the name given to the assemblies of the 
 clergy in England, especially as called together by royal 
 authority and for State purposes ; when summoned by merely 
 ecclesiastical authority and for merely ecclesiastical legisla- 
 tion, such assemblies were called synods or councils, and 
 they were either diocesan, provincial, or national.t But a 
 Convocation could pass into a synod, and a purely ecclesias- 
 tical synod might, if it pleased, vote a subsidy for the king. 
 
 Each province (Canterbury and York) had its own Con- 
 vocation ; and each Convocation, like Parliament, consisted 
 of an upper and a lower house. When Edward I. first 
 sought to organise the clergy into a third estate, especially 
 for the purpose of granting subsidies, the clergy were 
 indisposed to admit any right in the civil power to summon 
 them together; and at last it was settled that while the 
 king issued his writ (called pramunientes) to the archbishops, 
 they should issue their writs, as of their own authority, to the 
 bishops, deans, archdeacons, abbots, priors, chapters, and 
 clergy (represented by their proctors), calling them to 
 Convocation. But the archbishop claimed and exercised 
 the right to summon synods without waiting for royal writ, 
 
 * English Works (E. E. Text Society), p. 180. 
 + A national synod could only be convoked by one having authority 
 as papal legate over both provinces, and was hence called legatine.
 
 84 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 and when royal business was over could dissolve the 
 Convocation or continue it as a synod. * Unfortunately 
 no detailed record exists of the meetings of Convocation. 
 Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, preached a well-written and very 
 earnest sermon to the clergy at the opening of Convocation 
 on 4th February, 1512, and this was shortly afterwards printed 
 both in Latin and in English, f It is an urgent cry for 
 reform, and traces the prevalent evils principally to the 
 want of care in the selection of the clergy. This sermon 
 has been greatly lauded as if it contained the seeds of 
 Protestantism. Nothing can be further from the truth. 
 It is not only orthodox, but imbued with true Catholic 
 feeling. It is just the kind of fearless address to the clergy 
 that saintly men have made in every age. Fisher would 
 have listened to it with joy. In some respects it resembles 
 the discourse made by himself a few years later. What 
 Colet recommended to the clergy in general, Fisher was 
 practising in his own diocese. 
 
 In 1515, Leo X. had exhorted Warham, the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, to induce the clergy to grant a subsidy to the 
 king, that he might take part in the defence of Christendom 
 against the Turks. Warham brought the matter before 
 Convocation. Dr. Taylor the orator of the bishops, advised 
 them utterly to refuse. He said that "more tenths had 
 been paid by the clergy in one sitting than to any other 
 kings in the whole of their lives. They should not open a 
 window to so perilous an. example as the pope required, lest, 
 
 * By the Act of Submission of 1532, to be mentioned later on, all 
 such independence was surrendered : " Since that period the Convoca- 
 tion cannot assemble, even for Church purposes, without the royal 
 permission, nor, when assembled, proceed to business without a 
 special licence from the Sovereign". Lathbury, History of Convoca- 
 tion, p. in (and ed.). 
 
 f The sermon is printed in full (in English) in Mr. Lupton's 
 recent Life of Colet. He thinks the translation probably Colet's 
 own.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 85 
 
 when they wished it, they might not be able to close the 
 door." (Here the orator got his metaphors mixed.) "They 
 had paid already six tenths to defend the patrimony of St. 
 Peter." The orator's eloquence prevailed. The Lower 
 House of Convocation also refused. They called to the 
 pope's mind the efforts they had made in the time of Julius 
 II. They said that the victories of Henry over the French 
 had removed all dangers from the Holy See. Such was the 
 selfish policy of the English Church. Yet Christendom 
 at that time was in the greatest danger, and the popes alone 
 were taking measures to avert it ; and Leo X. would have 
 succeeded at that moment in uniting the Christian kings 
 against the Turks but for England. The clergy refused 
 a tenth to the pope, and before many years they had to 
 pay an enormous sum to the king, who had cast off the 
 pope's yoke.* 
 
 We can judge from his own writings what were the Bishop 
 of Rochester's views and action in this matter. In his 
 answer to the Assertions of Luther, which he published some 
 years later, he defends the general system of the Crusades, 
 and shows that they were on the whole successful, and in 
 some instances brilliantly successful. He shows that when 
 they failed it was from one or other of three causes : first, the 
 general neglect and indifference of Christendom, as when 
 Constantinople fell ; secondly, the wicked lives of the Cru- 
 saders, which forfeited God's blessing ; thirdly, self-glorifica- 
 tion after victories, to which he attributes the failures of 
 John Hunniades after the glorious victory of Belgrade. To 
 Luther's almost inconceivable enmity against the popes, 
 
 * Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. ii. 1312, with Mr. 
 Brewer's remarks in the introduction to that volume. Dr. Stubbs 
 also remarks that after 1534 the tenths formerly granted to the pope 
 continued to be paid to the king (Lectures on Medieval and Modern 
 History, p. 250). Christendom lost, but the clergy gained nothing, 
 by the schism.
 
 86 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the bishop replies : " If you spoke thus of only one or the 
 other of the popes, whose life had been publicly detestable, 
 one could scarcely tolerate your conduct. But when you 
 thus without discrimination bark cynically agairrst all, and 
 even against the See itself, in which so many holy pontiffs 
 have succeeded one to the other, who can bear it patiently ? 
 Certainly no man who wishes to be considered a Christian 
 and loyal to Christ. You call on the emperors to bring the 
 popes to order, but if you compare the conduct of the 
 popes with that of the emperors in these wars, certainly you 
 will not consider that the resistance to the Turks and the 
 collecting of the necessary money should be entrusted to 
 the latter rather than the former. The emperors have put 
 more obstacles in the way of this great work than any, and 
 have committed greater frauds with regard to the funds col- 
 lected." He instances Frederick II. and others, and con- 
 cludes : " If, then, the necessity of undertaking this war 
 shall occur, certainly the collection of the funds should be 
 entrusted to no one rather than to the pope ". 
 
 He highly praises the popes who sought to move the 
 Christian nations to prayer and penance as well as to active 
 resistance to the infidel ; and in doing so almost prophesies 
 of St. Pius V. and the victory of Lepanto : " Give me popes 
 like these," he says, alluding to Innocent III. and Callixtus, 
 " who will take measures to obtain assiduous prayers. Give 
 me soldiers such as St. Augustine wished Count Boniface to 
 be, who while their hands grasp the sword, by their prayers 
 assail the ear of the Giver of victory ; give me a leader such 
 as Godfrey, who refused to wear a golden crown in the city 
 where Christ had been crowned with thorns. With such 
 leaders, such soldiers, such pontiffs, let no one doubt of full 
 success against the Turks." * 
 
 Another important affair came before this Convocation of 
 
 * Assert. Luth. Confutatio, in Art. 34.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 87 
 
 1515. The Abbot of Winchcombe, Richard Kidderminster, 
 had preached at St. Paul's and spoken strongly against the 
 judges who violated ecclesiastical exemption. The king 
 called an assembly of divines on the matter, and the guardian 
 of the Franciscans, Henry Standish, opposed the doctrine of 
 Winchcombe and the rest, maintaining the right of the civil 
 power to punish criminal clerics, and rejecting ecclesiastical 
 exemption. Standish was prosecuted for his opinions by 
 the bishops, and appealed to the king. He was supported 
 by the temporal lords, and a second assembly was held by 
 the king at Blackfiiars. The bishops denied that they had 
 prosecuted Standish for any advice given by him as king's 
 counsellor, but for speeches of his on other occasions. The 
 secular lords and the judges determined that the whole Con- 
 vocation which had taken part against Standish was subject 
 to a prcemunire. Wolsey, in the name of the clergy, dis- 
 avowed any intention of diminishing the king's prerogative, 
 but asked that the matter might be referred to Rome. The 
 king said : " We are, by the sufferance of God, King of Eng- 
 land, and the kings of England in times past never had any 
 superior but God. Know, therefore, that we will maintain 
 the rights of the Crown in this matter like our progenitors ; 
 and as to your decrees, we are satisfied that even you of the 
 spirituality act expressly against the words of several of them, 
 as has been well shown you by some of our spiritual council. 
 You interpret your decrees at your pleasure ; but as for me, 
 I will never consent to your desire any more than my pro- 
 genitors have done." * Thus at least the king is reported to 
 have spoken by a lawyer named Kellwey, writing in the time 
 of Queen Elizabeth ; but it is probable enough that, though 
 Kellwey had original documents before him regarding the 
 quarrel, he may have himself composed this speech, or given 
 a colouring to it. It seems to represent the Henry of 1530 
 
 * Letters and Papers, ii. 1314.
 
 88 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 better than the Henry of 1515. However, it is not unlikely 
 that even in his youth, without being inclined to quarrel 
 with the pope, the king would have been glad of an oppor- 
 tunity to give a humiliation to his bishops at home, and to 
 enhance his own prerogative. 
 
 Standish was made Bishop of St. Asaph's in 1518. The 
 unfixed spelling of those days acting on the pronunciation, 
 and the slovenly pronunciation reacting on the spelling, St. 
 Asaph's was commonly written and pronounced St. Ass's, 
 whence Standish, who was a great opponent of Erasmus, got 
 called by him St. Asinus or Episcopus de St. Asino.* In 
 spite of some singularity in his opinions, he was an advocate 
 of Queen Catharine and an opponent of the Reformation, 
 though not, like Fisher, " usque ad sanguinem ". 
 
 Though the Bishop of Rochester's name does not occur 
 in the Standish controversy, there can be no doubt as to 
 which side he favoured. Among the MS. seized by the 
 king at his attainder, and now preserved in the Record 
 Office, is an English treatise, partly in Fisher's handwriting, 
 on the rights and dignity of the clergy, and a paper on the 
 same subject in Latin.f These may have been drawn up 
 on this occasion. 
 
 Parliament was disolved on 22nd December, 1515, and 
 was not reassembled till after an interval of eight years. It 
 met at Blackfriars on i5th April, 1523, and Sir Thomas More 
 was Speaker. The southern Convocation had assembled 
 at St. Paul's on 20th April, and the Mass of the Holy Ghost 
 had been sung : but, on the first day of meeting, Cardinal 
 
 * Dr. Taylor, who was both Prolocutor of Convocation and Clerk 
 of Parliament, has made a note in the Lords' Journals: "In hoc parlia- 
 mento et convocatione periculosissimae seditiones exortse sunt inter 
 clerum et saecularem potestatem, super libertatibus ecclesiasticis, quo- 
 dam Fratre Minore nomine Standish, omnium malorum ministro ac 
 stimulatore". 
 
 t Letters and Papers, viii. 887.
 
 EXTRA-DIOCESAN LABOURS. 89 
 
 Wolsey, wishing to assert his superiority as legate over the 
 primate, summoned the members to adjourn to Westminster. 
 The poet Skelton thereupon made the epigram : 
 
 " Gentle Paul, lay down thy sweard, 
 For Peter of Westminster hath shaven thy beard ". 
 
 The legality of this meeting was objected to, and a fresh 
 summons had to be issued that the two Convocations should 
 appear before the Cardinal at Westminster on 7th May. " I 
 pray the Holy Ghost be among them and us both," writes a 
 member of Parliament, on hearing that the Mass of the Holy 
 Ghost, owing to these confusions and jealousies had been 
 three times sung.* The country was then engaged in war 
 with France, and the practical question before Parliament 
 and Convocation was a grant of a large subsidy. It was with 
 difficulty obtained from the Commons, though More, the 
 Speaker, did his best to enforce the wishes of the king and 
 his minister.f His friend Fisher had other views, or per- 
 haps we may say had no official responsibility to cause him 
 to maintain reserve as to his views. Polydore Vergil says 
 that when it was proposed to grant the king a rnoiety of one 
 year's revenue of all benefices in England, to be levied in 
 five years, the grant was energetically opposed by Fox, 
 Bishop of Winchester, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. It 
 was, however, carried. 
 
 This matter is in itself one of minor interest. Yet the 
 resistance of the bishop to the wishes of the king is a matter 
 of great importance in estimating his character. He was 
 one of the very few who dared to exercise their judgment 
 and maintain what they judged to be right in days of almost 
 unexampled subserviency and want of principle. Fisher did 
 
 * Letters and Papers, iii. 3024. After all, the legatine synod was 
 soon dismissed, and the Convocation in the two provinces assembled 
 as before. Lathbury's History of Convocation, p. 101 (and ed.). 
 
 t In Tudor Parliaments the Speaker represented the king rather 
 than the Commons, and promoted the king's plans.
 
 QO BLESSED JOHN FISHER, 
 
 not approve of the king's policy of meddling with continental 
 politics and quarrels. He was therefore conscientiously 
 opposed to levying loans and taxes to carry out this policy. 
 Though it was the ambition of the king and of Cardinal 
 Wolsey to make England important as an arbiter or at least 
 a weight in Europe, Fisher could not see how this promoted 
 the glory of God, or the protection of Christendom against 
 the infidels, or the prosperity of England ; and he had the 
 courage to express his conviction, at the risk of displeasing 
 the great cardinal and making an enemy of the imperious 
 king. In a very few years he was called upon to oppose the 
 king in a matter that lay nearer to his heart; that of his 
 divorce ; and later on, as the king's will grew more and more 
 perverse, to resist bis impious usurpations against the Church 
 and the Holy See. But before entering on the history of 
 these contests, we must consider him as a preacher and a 
 writer during the years of peace and prosperity, when he 
 walked, as it were, hand in hand with the Defender of the 
 Faith.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 
 
 A MAN may be a great patron and promoter of learning 
 without being a great scholar himself or an assi- 
 duous student. But Fisher was all these. His 
 whole life was spent among books, and his love of study 
 increased rather than relaxed with years. He strove against 
 great disadvantages in his youth, and profited by every 
 opportunity as he advanced in age. The interruption of the 
 old intercourse with continental universities, caused by the 
 French wars, retarded the revival of Latin literature in 
 England, and our universities were scarcely recovering from 
 the awful devastations of the great plague of the i4th cen- 
 tury, when they were again thinned and discouraged by the 
 civil wars of the i5th. Ten years before Fisher entered Cam- 
 bridge, the university library consisted of no more than three 
 hundred and thirty volumes, and among these were no Greek 
 authors, and but few of the heathen classics.* It was 
 not until 1511 that lectures in Greek were given in Cam- 
 bridge. This language was, therefore, either altogether or 
 almost unknown to Fisher, while resident at the university. 
 Of his zeal to acquire it and to promote its study, at a later 
 period, 1 will speak presently. The cultivation of a purer 
 latinity than that of the Middle Ages had begun much earlier, 
 and the style of Fisher is easy and elegant. His writings very 
 seldom lead him to mention the heathen authors, nor do I 
 
 * See Mullinger's University of Cambridge, i. 324, 327.
 
 92 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 know of anything that would suggest that he took any deep 
 interest in them. This, however, will not deprive him of a 
 place among the Humanists, unless it is also refused to his 
 friend Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, and founder of St. Paul's 
 school, who, while ordering that the best and purest Latin 
 should be taught, wishes that Christian authors should be 
 especially used, mentioning, in particular, Lactantius, Pru- 
 dentius, Proba, Sedulius, Juvencus, and Baptista Man- 
 tuanus.* 
 
 Fisher's reading must have been incessant, and have 
 occupied almost every moment he could spare from works 
 of duty, piety, and necessity. He is said to have got together 
 the best private library- in England, perhaps in Europe. 
 Very many of the works he quotes must have been in MS., 
 but he evidently procured every new work as it came from 
 the press. When replying to Le Fevre, who made light of 
 the scholastics, he can quote later authors, as Simon of 
 Cassia, Ubertin de Casali, Nicolas of Cusa, Mark Vigerius 
 (Senegallensis), Pico della Mirandula, Baptist of Mantua 
 (Spagnuoli), and Petrarch.t In his controversies with Luther 
 
 * Lupton's Life of Colet, p. 279. Colet writes very strongly 
 against " the barbary and corruption and Latin adulterate which 
 ignorant blind fools brought into the world, and with the same hath 
 distained and poisoned the old Latin speech and the very Roman 
 tongue, which in the time of Tully and Sallust, and Virgil and Terence, 
 was used, and which also St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose, and St. Austin, 
 and many holy doctors learned in their time. I say that filthiness 
 in all such abusion, which the late blind world brought in, which 
 more rather may be called blotterature than literature, I utterly 
 abanish and exclude out of this school." This intemperate language 
 is in great contrast with the moderation with which Fisher speaks of 
 the later scholastic Latin. Latin was to some extent a living 
 lauguage in the Middle Ages, and therefore words had to be coined 
 to express new ideas. It was the very same process which made 
 Colet coin the word "blotterature," which is quite as barbarous as 
 anything in Scotus. 
 
 t De Unica Magdelena, lib. iii.
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 93 
 
 and CEcolampadius, there is scarcely a Greek or Latin 
 Christian writer, now contained in the great collection of 
 Migne, from the ist to the i3th century, from whom he does 
 not make apt citations, which he could not have borrowed 
 from other writers, since they regarded new controversies, 
 and are introduced by remarks which show conclusively 
 that they were the fruit of his own reading.* 
 
 Whether he read any of the Greek fathers in their own 
 tongue does not appear. Sometimes he mentions the trans- 
 lator of the particular book of St. Chrysostom from which 
 he quotes, t But that he had acquired, by his own labour, 
 a fair knowledge of Greek is certain. It was not until after 
 the Greek text of the New Testament, by Erasmus, had 
 appeared, in 1516, with his translation, annotations, and 
 criticisms, that Fisher turned his attention seriously to the 
 study of this language. The book contained a letter of 
 approval of Leo X. to Erasmus, and was published with the 
 express approbation of the Bishop of Basel, in whose diocese 
 it was printed. It had been prepared by Erasmus in great 
 part at Cambridge, where he resided from 1511 to 1513. 
 No wonder, therefore, that the chancellor should be deeply 
 interested in such a work. Erasmus had sent him an early 
 copy.i When he was at Cambridge, he had promised to 
 
 * See especially, in his work against CEcolampadius, the preface 
 to the fourth book. A very curious investigation might be made from 
 Fisher's works as to the activity of the press up to the end of the first 
 quarter of the i6th century. After quoting from Angelomus, "quia 
 rarior est hujus commentarius," he excuses himself from making 
 citations from Remigius, Druthmarus, Strabus, Rabanus, Haymo, 
 Alcuin, Theodore, Bede (he is dealing with the 7th, 8th, and gth 
 centuries), " quandoquidem eorum libri communiter habentur". Ed. 
 Werceburg, 991. 
 
 '^ E.g. (col. 726), "Chrysost., Homil. Ixix., Bernardo Brixiano 
 interprete"; (col. 1440), "Hoc scripsit Chrys., Horn. Ixxxi. sup Mat., 
 ex traductione Trabezuntii ". 
 
 J Fisher thanks him. Inter Ep. Erasmi, in Append., 103 (Ed. 
 Leyden).
 
 94 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 dedicate his book to the Bishop of Rochester, and had only 
 omitted to do so because he had obtained the privilege of 
 dedicating it to Pope Leo X.* Archbishop Warham, on 
 receiving his copy, had greatly praised it to several bishops, 
 amongst whom was certainly Fisher, f With such stimu- 
 lants, Fisher would at once devour the Introduction (or 
 Paraclesis) and the Notes. In June, Erasmus himself came 
 to England, and, at the express invitation of the bishop, 
 spent a great part of the month of August with him at 
 Rochester. Soon after his departure, the bishop writes to 
 him : "In the New Testament translated by you for the 
 common good, no one of any judgment can take offence. 
 ... I am exercising myself in the reading of St. Paul (in 
 Greek) according to your directions. I owe it to you that 
 I can now discover where the Latin differs from the Greek. 
 Would ' that I could have you for my master for some 
 months." J In answer to another letter, Erasmus congratu- 
 lates him on his progress : " I am very glad that you do 
 not regret the labour you have spent on Greek ". This is 
 written on 8th September, i5i7- The bishop, however, 
 was not satisfied with the progress he could make without a 
 master, and begged Erasmus to introduce him to someone 
 well acquainted with the language, from whom he might 
 receive a thorough course of instruction. He was then 
 about forty-eight years old, according to the computation I 
 have adopted an age by no means unfit for acquiring 
 perfectly a new language for one of the bishop's studious 
 habits, yet which would deter most men from the attempt. 
 Both Erasmus and Sir Thomas More tried to persuade 
 William Latimer || to undertake the task. He had learned 
 Greek in Italy, and was considered an excellent scholar. 
 He excused himself, however, alleging the time it had taken 
 
 * Erasm. Ep., vii. 9. t Ibid., in App., 65. J Ep. 428, in App. 
 Ep. 178, in App. Not Hugh Latimer, the heretic.
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 95 
 
 him to acquire what he knew, his imperfect knowledge, and 
 his disuse of study. He was urged again, but it is not 
 known whether or not he yielded.* 
 
 Neither age nor occupation daunted the bishop in his pur- 
 suit of sacred science, and in addition to the study of Greek, 
 he took lessons in Hebrew from Robert Wakefield, a Cam- 
 bridge scholar who had gone abroad in quest of learning, 
 and was supposed to possess not only Greek and Hebrew, 
 but Arabic, Chaldee, and Syriac. It is not likely that his 
 knowledge of these latter languages was very deep, but he was 
 a good teacher of Hebrew, and had already been professor 
 at Tubingen, Paris, and Lou vain, and in 1524 lectured in 
 Cambridge. Four years earlier he had given private lessons 
 
 * Mr. Mullinger has thrown a doubt on Mr. Lewis's assertion that 
 Bishop Fisher did acquire some knowledge of Greek (University of 
 Cambridge, i. 519, 520). He must have overlooked the assertion of 
 Fisher and the congratulation of Erasmus quoted above ; to which I may 
 add the following references in his writings. P. 994, he refers to the 
 mass of St. Basil : " Quam Graeco sermone reverendus pater episcopus 
 Londoniensis nobis communicavit ". This was Tunstal, himself a 
 good Greek scholar, and who would have seemed to taunt the Bishop 
 of Rochester with his inferiority, had he given him a book he knew he 
 could not read. Fisher refers also critically to the force of the Greek 
 pronoun (col. 158), to the gender of Greek words (col. 1442), not as 
 to points learnt from another "omnes qui graece latineque quicquam 
 sciunt " (col. 167), to the meaning of a Greek word (col. 252) ; he cor- 
 rects the Latin by the Greek (col. 286, 671), and especially (col. 570) 
 whree he has a dissertation on the words Trotpfve and /36<7Ke (in John 
 xxi. 15-17), with a reference to the use of the former word in the Sep- 
 tuagint. Such examples which might be added to prove indeed 
 nothing like scholarship, and might, in one less humble and sincere 
 than the bishop, be mere affectation of knowledge not possessed, but 
 transferred from the pages of another. But certainly there is no ground 
 for such a suspicion in a man of so great ability and indomitable 
 energy. The apparatus for learning Greek was scanty enough in 
 those days, but there were several grammars, and with one of these, 
 and the help of the Latin versions of Erasmus and the Vulgate, it 
 was no very difficult thing to become familiar with the Greek Testa- 
 ment.
 
 96 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 to the Bishop of Rochester.* Fisher's zeal for Hebrew had 
 been excited by a book of the famous German scholar 
 Reuchlin (or Capnion, as he sometimes called himself), 
 which had been sent to him by Erasmus at the end of I5i6.f 
 His studies, without going very far in that difficult language, 
 caused him at least to pay great attention to the observations 
 of St. Jerome, of Lyra, and of Reuchlin on the Hebrew 
 text.J 
 
 It is more surprising to find the bishop writing with enthu- 
 siasm about a new treatise on logic and rhetoric. In his 
 university career the text-book had been the Parva Logicalia 
 of Petrus Hispanus. Erasmus had recommended to the 
 bishop a treatise, De Inventione Dialectica, by Rudolphus 
 Agricola. He writes to Erasmus in 1516, that "he never 
 
 * Wakefield says, in his Syntagma that it was eighteen years since 
 he taught Hebrew to Fisher and to Thomas Hurskey, the general of 
 the Gilbertines. The date of this book is not known ; but as Wake- 
 field died in 1537, even if it appeared only in his last year, the date of 
 teaching Fisher could not be later than 1519. Nor could it be earlier, 
 for it was at the end of that year Wakefield returned from the Con- 
 tinent. (See Mr. Pocock's notes to Harpsfield's Treatise on the 
 Divorce, pp. 307, 319.) He became a great opponent of Fisher on 
 the subject of the divorce, with regard to which he played no honour- 
 able part. .(See his letter to the king, ibid., p. 317.) Harpsfield 
 refutes his book, which seems to have been a conceited and empty 
 production. 
 
 \ The bishop's interest in Reuchlin was so great that he more than 
 once thought of paying him a special visit. Ep. Eras., 541, of 8th 
 November, 1520. 
 
 J He knew enough to consider it no'affectation to use such phrases 
 as " ut cuique vel mediocriter in Hebraicis erudito dilucidum est " (col. 
 675). He reproaches Luther with taking the Hebrew, the Greek, or 
 the Latin in interpreting the Old Testament as it best suited his pur- 
 pose (col. 676). He relates Hebrew etymologies, and contests the 
 accuracy of Luther's translation (col. 675). He adopts and quotes 
 at length Reuchlin's derivation of " Missa " from the Hebrew. " Non 
 abs re fuerit hue citare quid amicus noster Joannes Capnion, vir in 
 omni literatura celebratissimus, hac de re scripserit " (col. 204). 
 
 Mullinger, i. 350, and letter of Erasmus to Boville.
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 97 
 
 read anything more learned and delightful on the subject. 
 Would that he had known it when younger. He woutd 
 prefer that to being an archbishop." * 
 
 From what has been said the friendly relations subsisting 
 between Fisher and Erasmus are apparent, but the subject 
 demands a greater development. How can we explain an 
 intimate friendship and mutual esteem between men so very 
 different in character? The reality of their friendship 
 admits of no doubt. Erasmus is not always straight-for- 
 ward ; and now that his letters are gathered together, we can 
 see that he wrote many pleasant things concerning his 
 patrons, in letters likely to come to their knowledge, while 
 he has far different appreciations in other times and places. 
 But his letters will be searched in vain for anything un- 
 favourable to the Bishop of Rochester. Everywhere he 
 speaks of him in the very highest terms. The only approach 
 to criticism or depreciation is in a letter addressed to Henry 
 VIII. 's Italian secretary Ammonius. With him Erasmus 
 was very intimate, and on easy and (so to say) convivial 
 terms. Erasmus writes to him from the bishop's palace at 
 Rochester on xyth August, 1516 : " Rochester has prevailed 
 on me to spend ten days with him. I have regretted it 
 more than ten times." But his regret arose either from the 
 place, of the insalubrity of which he speaks strongly else- 
 where, or from his anxiety to get to the Continent. So at 
 least Ammonius interprets him, for in his reply he says that 
 he dares not ask Erasmus to stay with him ten days, since 
 he is in such a hurry to get away. He will venture, how- 
 ever, to invite him, though all are not like the Bishop of 
 Rochester. f In fact, Erasmus protracted his visit beyond 
 ten days. It was on this occasion he put the bishop on the 
 road of his Greek studies. 
 
 * Ep. 429, in App. This treatise had only recently been pub- 
 lished, long after its author's death, 
 t Ep., viii. 26, 27 (Lond. Ed.). 
 
 7
 
 9 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Erasmus was born in 1465, and was therefore a few years 
 older than the bishop. His first visit to England was made 
 in 1497, at the invitation of William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, 
 who had been his pupil in Paris. On this occasion he made 
 the acquaintance of Colet and More, and other of Fisher's 
 friends, and not improbably of the bishop also. In the 
 spring of 1506 he was again in England, and was admitted 
 Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity at Cambridge, as well as at 
 Oxford.* At that time Fisher was president of Queen's, 
 and must certainly have met him, but Erasmus left almost 
 immediately for Italy, and did not return to England until 
 the end of 1509. He was at first the guest of Sir Thomas 
 More, in whose house he wrote his Morice, Encomium. In 
 a letter written in 1510 he thus speaks of the Bishop of 
 Rochester : " Either I am greatly mistaken, or Fisher is a 
 man with whom no one in our time can be compared, either 
 for holiness of life or greatness of soul. I except only the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury." t It was, no doubt, by the 
 influence of Fisher that Erasmus, having resolved to make a 
 stay in England, settled at Cambridge rather than at Oxford. 
 The zeal for Greek, however, in the university did not 
 answer the expectations of the chancellor or of the lecturer. 
 Erasmus' lectures were scantily attended. His own health 
 was bad, and the plague drove away many of the students. 
 By Fisher's influence he was appointed Lady Margaret Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity. Of the subject or success of his lectures 
 nothing has been recorded ; but as there is no record of 
 collision or contradiction, we must conclude that his efforts 
 in behalf of Patristic studies aroused no alarm, even if they 
 excited little enthusiasm, j 
 
 * For Cambridge, Mullinger, i. 453 ; for Oxford, Seebohm's Oxford 
 Reformers. 
 
 t Ep. 109 (Ed. Leyden). 
 
 J The eagerness of some modern writers to see in every advance in 
 liberal studies a dawning of the " Reformation," and their perplexity 
 at finding so little opposition, is amusing. Speaking of Colet's
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 99 
 
 Erasmus had certainly no reason to complain of his 
 treatment in England. Archbishop Warham had presented 
 him to the rectory of Aldington in Kent ; and though non- 
 resident, he drew from it an income of 20. The Bishop 
 of Rochester gave him an annual pension of a hundred 
 
 lectures on S. Paul at Oxford in 1496, Mr. Seebohm writes : " The 
 announcement of Colet's lectures was likely to cause them (i.e., the 
 Oxford doctors) some uneasiness. They may well have asked, 
 whether, if the exposition of the Scriptures were to be really revived 
 at Oxford, so dangerous a duty should not be restricted to those duly 
 authorised to discharge it " (Oxford Reformers, p. 4). This is a fair 
 specimen of Mr. Seebohm's book. It is theory, not history what 
 was " likely," what " may have well been ". He has no vestige of 
 any "uneasiness" or opposition to record. Erasmus tells Colet: 
 " There is not a doctor who will not lend him (Colet) a hand or give 
 him attentive audience, though he is so much younger" (Ib., p. 131). 
 Erasmus, describing the success of Colet's lectures, says : " Nullus 
 erat ibi doctor vel theologiae vel juris, nullus abbas, aut alioqui 
 dignitate prasditus, quin ilium audiret etiam allatis codicibus " which 
 is all to their praise. Mr. Seebohm's Protestant imagination thus 
 interprets Erasmus : ' ' The very boldness of the lecturer and the novelty 
 of the subject were enough to draw an audience at once. Doctors 
 and abbots flocked with the students into the lecture hall, led by 
 curiosity doubtless at first, or it may be, like the Pharisees of old, bent 
 upon finding somewhat whereof they might accuse the man whom 
 they wished to silence (!). But since they came again and again, as 
 the term went by, bringing their note-books with them, it soon became 
 clear that they continued to come with some better purpose " (p. 32). 
 " Allatis codicibus " I should take to mean their copies of St. Paul, not 
 their note-books, but that is unimportant. Mr. Seebohm has written 
 much about Pseudo-Dionysius, but he has surpassed the author of the 
 Divine Hierarchies in the imagination with which he has drawn a 
 Pseudo-Colet. Mr. Mullinger has been too much under the influence 
 of Mr. Seebohm's style of writing when he regards it as " certainly a 
 remarkable circumstance " that Erasmus " succeeded in avoiding 
 anything approaching to a collision " (History, i. 495) ; but he does 
 not, like Mr. Seebohm, draw a fancy picture of men who came to 
 scoff and stopped to pray. Mr. Lupton's Life of Colet is not dis- 
 figured, like Mr. Seebohm's, with groundless theories and modern 
 speculations. A Catholic may read it with pleasure as well as in- 
 struction.
 
 100 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 florins. He held the Margaret Professorship, which was well 
 endowed, and other emoluments, so that it has been calcu- 
 lated that "his total income could scarcely be less than 
 ^700 in English money of the present day ".* If then he 
 complained to some of his friends, it must be set down to a 
 certain avarice from which he was not quite free, or to his 
 bad health. On looking back a few years later to the 
 results of his labours, he took a more cheerful view. " Eng- 
 land," he wrote, "has two universities, Cambridge and 
 Oxford. Greek literature is taught in both, but in Cambridge 
 peacefully, because the chancellor of that university is John 
 Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, whose life is no less theological 
 than his learning." f In 1521, he wrote to Louis Vives, 
 complaining that Louvain still opposed the revival of learning, 
 and contrasting it with Cambridge : " Three years ago," he 
 says, " the Bishop of Rochester, a true bishop and true 
 theologian, told me that in place of (the old) sophistical 
 argumentations, now sober and wholesome disputations are 
 carried on between theologians, at the end of which they 
 are not only more learned, but also better men ". J 
 
 If Erasmus eulogises Fisher, Fisher also has great esteem 
 for Erasmus. In writing his answer to QEcolampadius in 
 1527, he thus speaks of that heresiarch's contempt of Peter 
 Lombard, St. Thomas, and the scholastics. " Do you think 
 that all were asses and men without judgment who approved 
 the books of the Master of the Sentences ? You are greatly 
 mistaken if you think so. The scholastics may have been 
 deficient in eloquence that I will not contest but they 
 were not deficient in knowledge of the Scriptures. Does 
 St. Thomas appear to you to have been ignorant of the 
 Scriptures, whose commentaries have been admired by those 
 
 * Mullinger, i. 505. 
 
 t The contrast implied is to the faction of Greeks and Trojans at 
 Oxford in 1519. 
 Ep. 611.
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. IOI 
 
 who are the acknowledged leaders in eloquence ? Erasmus, 
 a man of admirable judgment, as is clear from his annotations 
 (to the New Testament), thus extols St. Thomas : ' In my 
 opinion there is no modern theologian who has equalled 
 him in diligence, or has a sounder judgment or more solid 
 erudition '. And John Pico Mirandula says that St. Thomas 
 is justly called the flower of theology." * It would be easy 
 to quote similar passages where Erasmus is named with 
 honour, but facts are stronger than words. In addition to 
 the bishop's recommendation of Erasmus for the Divinity 
 professorship at Cambridge, he selected him to be his com- 
 panion in travel and theologian in the Council of Lateran. t 
 We have seen that this project fell through. It was Fisher 
 who urged Erasmus to write his paraphrase of St. John's 
 Gospel, | and who first suggested, and then urged over and 
 over again, his work on preaching. 
 
 As no one will call in question the orthodoxy of Fisher or 
 his zeal for the Catholic faith, it is clear from all this that 
 the bishop was thoroughly convinced of the sincerity of the 
 attachment of Erasmus to the Church. He has nowhere 
 expressed a general approbation of all that Erasmus wrote, 
 but he refused to join in the outcry against him, on account 
 of certain opinions, which he had put forward rashly but not 
 obstinately maintained, or certain expressions which he 
 might himself regret. Erasmus was not a mere humanist ; 
 he regretted and protested against the paganism of many of 
 the Italian humanists. His indefatigable toil was given to 
 the translation of the Greek fathers, the editing of the Latin 
 fathers, and to the exegetical study of Scripture. These 
 labours gained him the support and approbation not only of 
 Fisher, but of Wolsey, Warham, Fox, and Tunstal in Eng- 
 land, of many of the holiest and most lean.ed bishops of the 
 
 * Contra (Ecol., i., cap. 2. t Ep. Erasm., 167. 
 
 % Ep., 2gth Nov., 1522. Ep. 661, 698, 746.
 
 102 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Continent, and still more of the Sovereign Pontiffs Leo X., 
 Adrian VI., Clement VII., and Paul III. 
 
 There are letters of Erasmus to Fisher in which he speaks 
 very strongly against the abuses in the Church, and he 
 clearly feels that in this he may speak openly, and has with 
 him the bishop's sympathy. But he never indulges with 
 him in the sarcasms and levities that show the less favour- 
 able side of his character. 
 
 It is very probably owing to Fisher's gentle forbearance 
 with what was imperfect and cordial sympathy with what 
 was good in Erasmus, that he exercised so powerful an 
 influence over him. Mr. Mullinger, in considering their 
 relations at Cambridge, says of Fisher : " It would have 
 been perhaps impossible to find in an equal degree, in any 
 one of his contemporaries, at once that moderation, integrity 
 of life, and disinterestedness of purpose which left the bigot 
 no fault to find, and that liberality of sentiment and earnest 
 desire of reform which conciliated far bolder and more 
 advanced thinkers ". And he adds : " Over Erasmus, whose 
 wandering career had not, by his own ingenuous confession, 
 been altogether free from reproach, a character so saintly 
 and yet so sympathising exercised a kind of spell ".* A 
 modern German biographer of Fisher, Dr. Kerker, has very 
 well shown how the opponents of Erasmus rendered good 
 service by refuting his exaggerations and preventing him 
 from having everything in his own way, which was assuredly 
 not always the way of the Holy Ghost, while the Bishop of 
 Rochester and the protectors of Erasmus also did good 
 service to the Church by keeping within it a man who under 
 their guidance was capable of much good, and who might 
 have done incalculable harm had he been rudely repulsed.t 
 
 The same author remarks very appositely that Edward 
 Lee, who was a passionate adversary of Erasmus, accusing 
 
 * History, i. 496. i 1 Life of Fisher, ch. xii.
 
 FISHER AND ERASMUS. 103 
 
 him of every heresy, ended himself, when Arcnbishop of 
 York, by yielding in the most cowardly manner to Henry, 
 and denying the supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff; while 
 Fisher, who was lenient in his judgment of the flaws in 
 Erasmus' Annotations, and defended his substantial ortho- 
 doxy and great service to religion, was himself an invincible 
 martyr of the Catholic faith. Yet Lee was mean and Phari- 
 saical enough, when the death of Fisher reproached him 
 with his own recreancy, to attribute it to mere obstinacy of 
 character, alleging that his partiality for Erasmus had made 
 him blind to his errors and unjust to his opponents.* 
 
 The truth is that Fisher lived not only in a time of transi- 
 tion but of sifting. It is quite possible that had Fisher and 
 Colet, Luther and Erasmus, met together at the house of 
 Sir Thomas More in 1512, they would have conversed on 
 the state of the Church and of the world with a seemingly 
 cordial unanimity. They have all written strongly on the 
 evils of the day, the corruptions of the Roman curia, the 
 low state of religious orders, the general ignorance, and all 
 were zealous for reform. But circumstances at last brought 
 out the real antagonism that then lay hid. Colet indeed 
 died before the outbreak of heresy, but we have every 
 assurance, both in his holy and ascetic life, and in his pro- 
 found piety, that had he lived he would have ranged himself 
 with More and Fisher. Luther, a man of uncontrolled 
 temper and sensual temperament, ever passing from one 
 excess to the other, without distrust of himself, gradually 
 drifts into rebellion and pride, and then, blinded by evil 
 passions, learns to hate the Church and to close his eyes to 
 everything but the things that could feed his hatred. Eras- 
 mus has no such strong feelings. He thinks the world fs 
 out of joint, but it is not his business to set it right. He 
 could laugh and mock at it among men of letters, if admired 
 
 * Strype, Eccl. Mem., i. 191 ; Letters, &-c., x. 99.
 
 104 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 and applauded in doing so, or lament over it with seeming 
 earnestness with holy men like Fisher. But he would be 
 no martyr : he loved peace. He would neither stir up riot 
 and contention among the populace like Luther, nor endure 
 himself the violence of kings like Fisher.* He was a 
 religious, but he had got himself secularised ; a priest, but 
 we have no record that he ever stood at the altar. 
 
 More and Fisher were men of prayer, men who not only 
 spoke or wrote about God, but lived in intimate communi- 
 cation with Him. They had a profound sense of the pre- 
 sence of the Holy Ghost in the Church, and therefore 
 deplored so deeply the evil that dishonoured it. But they 
 never confounded the Church, which is God's work, with 
 the evil that is of man's doing. Therefore there are two 
 periods in their lives. While heresy was unknown, their 
 voices were raised to bewail and to rebuke the corruptions 
 in the Church. When heresy began to rail at God's work, 
 their zeal was aroused in its defence. We have now to con- 
 sider Fisher in the first period of contest. 
 
 * Early in Luther's course (sth July, 1521) Erasmus thus wrote to 
 Pace : " By what spirit Luther has written I cannot conceive, but 
 certainly he has brought great disrepute on the cultivators of good 
 literature. Much of his teaching and admonitions was excellent. 
 Would to God he had not spoilt what was good by intolerable evil. 
 But even though he had written all piously I had no mind to risk my 
 life for the truth. All have not strength enough to be martyrs ; and 
 I fear that if tumults arise I should imitate Peter. If the pope and 
 the emperor make good decrees, I obey piously; if they make bad ones, 
 I yield safely. I think such a course is allowed to good men, if there 
 is no hope of success (by acting otherwise)." Ep. 583. Later on he 
 spoke more strongly against Luther, but even in his lament over 
 Fisher's death, not long before his own, he repeats the same vile and 
 cowardly sophisms about yielding to the civil power.
 
 CHAPTER VI, 
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 
 
 IT was not to satisfy greedy intellectual curiosity that the 
 Bishop of Rochester gave himself so ardently to study. 
 He knew that he was one of those to whom it is said : 
 You are the light of the world. His natural talents, his 
 special opportunities of study at Cambridge, and his position 
 as a bishop, placed him under the obligation of diffusing 
 that light as far as possible. This he did both by example, 
 by preaching, and by writing. 
 
 Neglect of preaching was perhaps the greatest evil of 
 the 1 5th century, and the source of every other. There 
 were innumerable pulpits from which the Word of God was 
 never heard ; others were silent except on the Sundays in 
 Lent.* Very few congregations had any experience of a 
 weekly or a monthly sermon. Such sermons as were 
 preached were often ambitious, far-fetched, ill-judged efforts 
 at oratory. Such compositions could neither come spon- 
 taneously to the preacher's lips nor be easily committed to 
 his memory. Hence a custom prevailed of reading the 
 sermon instead of preaching it.t All this greatly afflicted 
 the Bishop of Rochester, and he set himself to correct it by 
 every means in his power. 
 
 Dr. Hall has told us how indefatigably he preached in his 
 
 * I take pulpit in a wide sense, for of pulpits proper there were very 
 few. 
 
 t Erasmus says : " Quosdam de charta concionari, id quod multi 
 frigide faciunt in Anglia ". Ep. ad Judociim Jonam.
 
 IO6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 own diocese, " which custom he used, not only in his 
 younger days when health served, but also even to his 
 extreme age, when many times his weary and feeble legs 
 were not able to sustain his weak body standing, but forced 
 him to have a chair, and so to teach sitting". In the first 
 year of his episcopate he preached that series of sermons on 
 the Penitential Psalms which we still possess.* They were 
 preached by the Lady Margaret's desire, and in her presence, 
 but whether at Rochester, London, or Cambridge does not 
 appear. They seem to be composed on the model of St. 
 Augustine's tractates on the Psalms. There is little of strict 
 exegetical analysis, yet the interpretations are not trivial or 
 fanciful. Each text serves as a basis for earnest, solid reflec- 
 tions, admirable in themselves, though the reader is perplexed 
 sometimes as to what gave rise to them, or why other 
 moralities might not as legitimately have been drawn. No 
 one can read them without a conviction of the deep piety 
 and fervent zeal of the preacher. A tender and pathetic 
 sermon on Our Lord's Passion has also been preserved. It 
 was preached on Good Friday, and must have occupied two 
 or three hours in delivery, if preached in the form in which 
 it was afterwards published. Of his sermons against Luther 
 I have already spoken. 
 
 The best known of his English works are the funeral 
 sermons of Henry VII. and of Lady Margaret, his mother. 
 That of the king was preached in the cathedral church of 
 St. Paul on the loth May, 1509, his body having been 
 deposited there previous to its interment at Westminster ; 
 
 * They were first printed by Pynson in 1505. Other editions 
 appeared in 1508, 1510, 1519, 1528, 1529, some byWynkin de Worde. 
 The}' were translated into Latin by Dr. Fen, who also put into Latin 
 a sermon on the Justice of a Christian and a Pharisee. No copy of 
 this sermon in English is now known to exist. Fisher is said by Lord 
 Herbert to have preached before Henry and Catharine after the victory 
 of Flodden.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 107 
 
 that of Lady Margaret at Westminster, at her month's mind. 
 She died on 29111 June, 1509. They contain no empty 
 flattery ; indeed, at the beginning of that of the king the 
 eulogy is based on the three resolutions his majesty had 
 taken (and made known to several) not long before his last 
 sickness. These were : " i. A true reformation of all them 
 that were officers and ministers of his laws, to the intent 
 that justice henceforward truly and indifferently might be 
 executed in all causes. 2. Another, that the promotions of 
 the Church that were at his disposition should from hence- 
 forth be disposed to able men, such as were virtuous and 
 well-learned. 3. That as touching the dangers and jeo- 
 pardies for things done in times past, he would grant a 
 pardon generally unto all his people." The sermons are 
 filled with interesting personal details, are very pathetic, 
 and sometimes even eloquent. 
 
 There are few European languages that possess sermons 
 published in the vernacular at so early a date.* The zeal of 
 Fisher to promote preaching in others has been already 
 alluded to. When he was vice-chancellor he obtained a bull 
 from Pope Alexander VI. in 1503, empowering the Chan- 
 cellor and University of Cambridge yearly to appoint twelve 
 doctors or masters to preach the Word of God in all parts of 
 England, Scotland, and Ireland, both to the clergy and the 
 people, notwithstanding any ordinance or constitution to the 
 contrary.f By his influence with Lady Margaret, in addition 
 to the Divinity professorships founded in Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, in the statutes of which preaching was not forgotten, 
 
 * St. Thomas of Villanova, in Spain, wrote his sermons in Latin, 
 leaving now and then a few words in Spanish, though of course he 
 preached in Spanish. He died in 1555, and his sermons were not. 
 published till 1572. St. Charles Borromeo preached to the people in 
 Italian. Possevinus took down his words and translated them into 
 Latin. Luther published a sermon in German in 1523. 
 
 t Mullinger, i. 440 ; Lewis, ii. 261.
 
 Io8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 a chantry,* called the Lady Margaret Preachership, was 
 founded in Cambridge. He also urged Erasmus to write 
 a treatise on preaching. As Erasmus had never been in 
 the pulpit, it may be wished that the bishop had himself 
 undertaken a task for which he was certainly more com- 
 petent than his friend. The latter, indeed, seems to 
 have felt much reluctance, and yielded at last with so 
 many delays that his work did not appear till shortly after 
 Fisher's death, f 
 
 The bishop was modest, without affected humility, and 
 was led to publish by the prompting of others. It was at 
 the request or command of the Lady Margaret that he 
 printed his sermons on the Psalms and his panegyric of 
 Henry VII., and, either from popular request or from a 
 spirit of gratitude, that of Lady Margaret herself. It was 
 by royal command that he published his sermon against 
 Luther. His first work of controversy appeared in 1519, 
 and this also was written by request. A learned Dominican 
 named Jaques Le Fevre,j who was in high esteem among 
 the party of the new learning, or the humanists, had 
 written a dissertation to prove that Catholic popular tradi- 
 tion had attributed to one person what is said in the Gospel 
 of no less than three; or that three Marys the converted 
 
 * The holder had to offer mass for the countess and her intentions. 
 (See Memoir of Lady Margaret, p. 94.) 
 
 + There is an excellent dissertation on preaching in Bromyard's 
 Summa Prtzdicantium sub voce Pradicator. Bromyard was a learned 
 Dominican, who taught in Cambridge at the beginning of the I5th 
 century. I do not think his work was known to Fisher. It has been 
 several times printed, and is well worth reading. Bishop Allcock, the 
 founder of Jesus College, Cambridge, published a book called Galli- 
 cantus ad Pr&dicatores, which I have not seen. In 1528, the Bishop 
 of Ely decreed in synod, " toto clero consentiente," that every parson, 
 vicar, and curate should read every quarter, on a Sunday to be fixed 
 by himself, a part of a book called Exoncratorium Curatorum. so as to 
 finish it each year. Wilkins, iii. 
 
 J Faber and Fabricius in Latin, Smith in English.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 109 
 
 sinner, the sister of Martha, and the woman out of whom. 
 Our Lord cast seven devils have been erroneously con- 
 founded together into one Mary Magdalen. Le Fevre's 
 reputation caused the book to be immediately bought up,, 
 and it went into a second edition. The Bishop of Paris, 
 Etienne Poucher, was then on an embassy in England, and, 
 in a letter to the Bishop of Rochester, remarked how many 
 evils might result from rash criticisms, especially at the time 
 when a great contempt was affected for tradition and for the 
 ignorance of the Middle Ages, and when novelty was the 
 fashion. He asked Fisher's opinion on the matter in dis- 
 pute. Although Fisher had already looked through Faber's. 
 dissertation, and remarked in it many things he disliked, 
 his respect for Faber's orthodoxy and learning had caused 
 him to take for granted that he had at least erudition on 
 his side ; but on his attention being thus called to the 
 matter, he read the Gospels with minute care, examined the 
 sacred interpreters of all ages, and then re-read Faber's essay. 
 The result was not merely a conviction of the accuracy of 
 the common tradition, but a very unfavourable opinion of 
 Faber's reasoning powers, and still more of his captious 
 and contemptuous spirit. He at once composed a thorough 
 treatise on the subject, under the title De Unica Magdalena- 
 It was printed in Paris, though at first there was some diffi- 
 culty in finding a publisher, so great was the respect for 
 Faber. But Fisher's book was bought up, and went into a 
 second edition, in which he softened the asperity of some- 
 things he had said of Faber, and also replied to another 
 author named Judocus Clichtovreus.* Erasmus had got 
 
 * Referring to the second edition, Erasmus says : " In posteriore 
 ut stylus est cultior ita minus est stomachi " (aist April, 1519). He 
 had been rather sore that a humanist should be treated in the style 
 the humanists were fond of employing towards the "obscurantists". 
 He thought it might give a handle to the enemies of classical studies (2nd 
 April, 1519, Ep. 404). One of Erasmus' correspondents, Bilibaldus, 
 is enraged with Fisher : " Per Deum immortalem ! cui boni nebulones
 
 IIO BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the book printed, and acknowledged that the victory was 
 with Fisher, yet he did not relish an attack made by a 
 humanist on a humanist, and writes to the Bishop : " I 
 wish your labour had been spent on some other matter, 
 although your work is both pious and elegant. But that 
 commentary, of which you showed me some specimens 
 which greatly delighted me, in which you trace out the 
 order and connection of the Gospel history, would in my 
 opinion have done more honour to your name." * This Con- 
 cordance of the Gospels has unfortunately not come down 
 to us. The treatise on St. Mary Magdalen has not lost any 
 of its interest, t 
 
 Other and fiercer controversies were now at hand. A 
 man of the Bishop of Rochester's position and learning 
 could not be silent amidst the attacks made by Luther and 
 others against the faith of the Catholic Church. I do not 
 propose here to analyse his various works against Luther 
 and (Ecolampadius. Though they are monuments of pro- 
 digious learning and acumen, considering that they were 
 the first that appeared against the new errors, and the eru- 
 dition they display was all of Fisher's own gathering, the 
 arguments all the result of his own thought, yet, as manuals 
 of controversy, they have been superseded by later writings 
 which they helped to create. The standard writers, such as 
 Bellarmine and Stapleton, are not slow to acknowledge the 
 debt they owe to Fisher (Roffensis). 
 
 The book which gained for Henry the title of Defender 
 of the Faith I do not consider to be Fisher's, but Henry's 
 own. It is attributed to Henry by Fisher himself in such 
 
 isti unquam pepercerunt ? Quid intentatum reliquerunt ut divam 
 Mariam Magdalenam assertori suo Fabro eriperent, ac cum turpissi- 
 mis scortis in olidum lupanar detruderent ? " Inter Ep. Erasiui., 561. 
 
 * Ep. 404. 
 
 t The first edition, apparently, is reprinted in the Wirceburg 
 collection of Fisher's works.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. Ill 
 
 terms as to seem to make it impossible that Fisher could 
 have had any large share in it. * 
 
 The learning, however, of the bishop was called in to 
 defend his sovereign against the ribald answer of Luther. 
 Hence his book, sometimes called Against the Babylonian 
 Captivity, but more properly, A Defence of the Assertions of 
 the King of England against Luther s Babylonian Captivity. 
 It was Henry who " asserted " the seven sacraments of the 
 Church against Luther's attacks. Fisher does not directly 
 answer Luther's first work, but Luther's reply to Henry, 
 though in doing so he has often to quote all three. The 
 dispute thus becomes somewhat intricate, and this is the 
 least pleasant of his books to read. It appeared in 1525, 
 in Cologne, having been kept back for a considerable time 
 by some reports of Luther's probable amendment, t 
 
 Simultaneously with it appeared another work, called 
 Defence of the Sacred Priesthood against Luther. A third 
 
 * As I have published a special dissertation on this subject, called 
 The Defender of the Faith, I do not repeat the arguments here. The 
 matter regards Henry's life, not Fisher's. Since I wrote, the Bishop 
 of Chester has published his Lectures. I am glad to confirm my 
 view by his great authority: " Henry's book against Luther, which, 
 whatever assistance he may have received, was in conception and 
 execution entirely his own, was an extraordinary work for a young 
 king". Lect. xi., p. 247. 
 
 t It was dedicated to Nicolas West, Bishop of Ely. Luther's 
 reply to Henry was dated i5th July, 1522. Fisher at once began an 
 answer, which he left incomplete, or, at least, unpublished, for nearly 
 two years. In the meantime, he composed another work in defence 
 of the Christian Priesthood against Luther, and printed in Paris his 
 Lutherans Assertionis Confutatio (by Chevalier, 1523). Then he 
 sent the two other works to Cologne. When they left his hands 
 Luther was not yet married (25th June, 1525), since Fisher nowhere 
 refers to that event. Owing to the keeping back of the book in 
 defence of the king, he in one place alludes to the work on the priest- 
 hood to be written, in another as already written. Henry did not 
 reply to Luther's attack on him, but when Luther wrote an apology 
 for his attack, the king replied in very strong but dignified language.
 
 112 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 work against Luther was published two years earlier in 
 Paris, called Lutherans Assertionis Confutatio, in answer to 
 the articles put forth by Luther when he burnt the pope's 
 bull. He had just published this, when Tunstal showed 
 him a book by Ulrich Wellen, attempting to prove that St. 
 Peter never was at Rome. As this, if true, would have 
 upset many of the arguments by which Fisher had proved 
 the papal supremacy against Luther, he felt himself obliged 
 to reply to it, which he did, with much erudition. Thus, 
 then, including his elaborate sermon, we have five works of 
 Fisher's against the errors of Luther. 
 
 The style of these Latin works is diffuse ; no links are un- 
 supplied ; recapitulations are made and conclusions drawn. 
 The citations from the fathers are numerous and apposite, 
 and the explanations of Holy Scripture give proof of long 
 and deep study. Fisher often uses Erasmus' version of the 
 New Testament or his own, instead of that of the Vulgate.* 
 This he would certainly not have done had the decree of 
 the Council of Trent then been issued, that " among Latin 
 versions the Vulgate should be taken as authentic in public 
 disputations ". 
 
 It is not surprising that Fisher's books, though highly 
 approved by the learned, were not much read in Germany. 
 Erasmus, writing on 26th March, 1524, says: "Nothing is 
 done by means of books against these men " (the German 
 
 * At the end of the edition of his collected works are some Preca- 
 tiones, or Psalms, made up of selections from the Psalter put into more 
 classical Latin. After these are some translations from the New- 
 Testament. There is nothing to prove that these are by Fisher, or 
 (if they are) that they were ever intended to be seen by others. They 
 are probably merely exercises of his own. I give a few words of the 
 Magnificat : " Magnificat animus meus Dominum, exultatque mea 
 mens de Deo Servatore meo : qui spectaverit humilitatem ancillae 
 suffi, unde me in posterum beatam praedicatura sunt omnia saecula. 
 Quoniam mihi magna fecit praapotens ille, cujus et nomen sanctum 
 est et misericordiaperennis erga reverentes eum," &c.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 113 
 
 Lutherans) ; " no one dares even to print anything written 
 against Luther, nor read what has been printed elsewhere ". 
 And, on 2 5th March, 1529, he explains his own reasons for 
 not writing any more, after his book on Free-will : " I saw 
 the pamphlets of Latomus, of Sutor, of Jerome, of Bedda, 
 not only laughed at, but giving confidence to those who 
 were inclined to the new dogmas; and even the books of 
 John, Bishop of Rochester, a man who had every quality of 
 a theologian, utterly neglected ".* This is partly explained 
 by the natural love of novelty, partly by the special circum- 
 stances of those days. Fisher writes : " If heresies raised 
 their heads so quickly after the shedding of Our Saviour's 
 Blood, while the gifts of the Holy Ghost were still burning 
 in the breasts of many, and the world was made bright with 
 miracles, and if so many were then turned away from the 
 truth, what must we expect now, in the perilous time of 
 which the Apostles prophesied? I think the world was 
 never before so generally inclined to listen to heresy as it 
 is now." t 
 
 Besides this, Fisher was at a great disadvantage in con- 
 tending with a man like Luther. To attack and deny is 
 short and easy, to defend or explain is long and difficult. 
 A proverb says : " Error runs round the world, while Truth 
 is pulling on her boots ". Luther was bold, unscrupulous, 
 vehement, and he appealed to national prejudices and evil 
 passions. To take one specimen. Luther writes as follows : 
 " Be certain and never let yourself be persuaded to the 
 contrary, if you wish to hold pure Christian truth, that there 
 is no visible and external priesthood in the New Testament, 
 except what Satan has set up through human lies. Sacri- 
 ficing masses have been invented to insult the Lord's Testa- 
 ment, therefore nothing in the whole world is so much to 
 be avoided and detested. It is better to be a public bawd 
 
 * Ep. 1033 (" in quo viro nihil desideres "). 
 t Procem. of 4th Book against CEcol.
 
 114 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 or robber than a priest of this sort."* That such language 
 should have been listened to by the descendants of those 
 for whom St. Boniface and the brothers Hewald preached 
 and laid down their lives was marvellous, but it is clear that 
 those who could listen to it would never listen to anything 
 else. A strange delusion or a fierce rage had taken posses- 
 sion of brain and heart. Fisher might exclaim : " O God, 
 who can patiently hear such impious falsehoods cast upon 
 the mysteries of Christ ? Who can read such blasphemies 
 without bitter grief and tears if he has but the least spark of 
 Christian piety in his breast ? " t But a controversy like this 
 scarcely admitted of calm discussion. When it was stated 
 in such terms, men took their sides at once, and there was 
 war to the death. I do not mean, however, to assert that 
 the bishop's zealous labours were wasted. They bore fruit in 
 England and other countries. When Eck of Ingoldstadt, one of 
 Luther's most strenuous opponents, visited England in 1525, 
 he was surprised to find that Luther was of no account. In 
 the dedicatory epistle to his book, De Sacrificio Missce, he 
 writes : " When last summer I passed over to England to 
 visit the king and the Bishop of Rochester, though tumults 
 and seditions were raging in Germany, I never once heard 
 the name of Luther mentioned except in malediction ". 
 Fisher alludes to this visit in his book against CEcolampa- 
 dius,J and I have been fortunate enough to recover a letter 
 hitherto unknown, which brings together these two great 
 theologians. It is a letter addressed by Fisher to the Duke 
 of Bavaria, Prince Wendelin : 
 
 "To the illustrious Prince Wendelin, Count Palatine of 
 the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, my lord and friend in Christ. 
 
 * " Praestat publicum lenonem aut latronem esse quam hujus generis 
 sacerdotem." De Abrog. Missa. 
 
 \- Pref. to Defence of S. Priesthood. 
 
 J" Joannes Eckius, quern in Anglia vidisse pergratum fuit. " 
 Procem. of lib i.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 1 15 
 
 "You will wonder, excellent prince, at receiving a letter 
 from me, a man unknown to you. I write not so much for 
 myself as for the learned man who is the bearer of this 
 letter. It chanced that he passed over into England, and 
 when I heard who had come, not only was I delighted, but 
 by my persuasion he visited our most illustrious king, and 
 thus it happened that he stayed longer than he had intended. 
 So if he has too long interrupted his lectures in your 
 university, the loss is more than compensated, for your 
 name, which was hitherto not known to us, has now become 
 famous. We have learnt from him and greatly congratulate 
 him [you?] on the fact, that you are a prince entirely 
 Catholic, and that you oppose these Lutheran factions, as 
 a true Christian should do, with all your strength. May 
 God preserve you, and all the princes of Germany who are 
 still orthodox, in the same mind. Wishing your highness 
 health and long life, and eagerly desiring to see you. 
 
 "JOHN OF ROCHESTER. 
 
 "From Rochester, 12 Kal. Sept. 1525."* 
 
 * I have found this letter transcribed in a contemporary hand in a 
 volume in which Henry's and Fisher's books are bound together, 
 which formerly belonged to the Scotch monastery of Ratisbon, and is 
 now in the possession of the Catholic Bishop of Argyle and the Isles. 
 The copyist writes at the bottom : " The illustrious John Eck brought 
 this letter to our prince". As the letter is unpublished, I give it in 
 the original. 
 
 "Illustri Principi D. Vindelino Comiti Palatino Rheni ac Bavarie 
 duci et domino ac amico nostro Christiano S. D. 
 
 "Miraberis optime princeps quod homo tibi incognitus iam ad 
 tuam celsitudinem scripserim. Verum istud feci, non tarn mei ipsius 
 caussa quam huius eruditissimi viri qui litteras has ad te nunc attulit, 
 contigit enim ut is in Angliam traiiceret, quern ubi noverimus quis 
 nam esset non solum nobis advenit optatissimus, verum etiam suasu 
 nostro regem nostrum illustrissimum adiit eius visendi gratia, quo 
 factum est ut complures hie dies remoratus sit preter institutum suum. 
 Quare si prelectiones interea suas quas in gymnasio tuo profitetur, 
 diucius quam par esset intermiserit id sane dispendium alio maiori
 
 Il6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 To return now to the Bishop of Rochester's controversial 
 works. In order to judge his character fairly we must note 
 the great difference between controversy in his day and in 
 our own. Protestants are now born into an inheritance of 
 error, and however novel and ephemeral may be the special 
 form of doctrine of this or that sect, the revolt from the 
 Church as a whole has a prestige of more than three cen- 
 turies. Such men deserve compassion rather than anger. 
 Those with whom Fisher had to do were all apostate 
 Catholics, many of them apostate priests and religious. 
 Their opposition to Catholic doctrine was a crime, not an 
 error. Fisher knew well how to make this distinction. 
 Luther had said : " The Roman Pontiff never was over all 
 the Churches of the world ; he is not now, nor ever will be, 
 I hope. He never was over the Churches of Greece, India, 
 Persia, Egypt, Africa, nor is he now, as he himself loudly 
 and sadly laments." Fisher replies : " Why mention 
 Churches so far off? You might have instanced Churches 
 that we know better, as that of Bohemia and others. But 
 we answer as to all they withdrew themselves from obe- 
 dience to the Roman Pontiff, either from malice or from 
 pardonable ignorance. And I would rather believe it is the 
 latter, in the case of some at least, as many of the simpler 
 sort who are led into error by interpreters of Scripture, such 
 as you, or perhaps have never heard any discussion at all on 
 this matter. And such as those I would not easily condemn, 
 
 compendio resarcivit, nam Nomen Tuum quod hac tenus ignoravimus 
 hie apud nos iam celebre fecit, per ilium enim accepimus de quo 
 ei plurimum gratulamur te principem vere Catholicum esse atque 
 Lutherianorum factionibus, uti verum Christianum decet, totisobsistere 
 viribus, quam tibi ceterisque Germanise principibus, qui adhuc in 
 orthodoxa fide persistunt mentem perpetuo servet Deus Optimus 
 Maximus. Fcelix ac diu valeat tua Sublimitas. Ex Roffa 12 Kal. 
 Septembris 1525 . Tue Amplitudinis vidende cupidus Joannes Roffensis. 
 "Clarissimus DD. Joannes Eccius has litteras nostro principi 
 attulit."
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 117 
 
 if their separation is due to no depravity of their minds, and 
 if they implicitly believe this truth also, and would believe 
 it willingly provided they were taught it. But as to those 
 who have separated themselves maliciously, I assert openly 
 that they no more belong to the orthodox Church than the 
 Churches of the Arians, the Donatists, or the like."* Cer- 
 tainly he who thus wrote would be very pitiful and forbear- 
 ing in dealing with his countrymen, could he now return to 
 earth. 
 
 But he made no pretence of gentleness towards heresiarchs 
 such as Luther and (Ecolampadius.f Luther in challenging 
 the world had said he would choose his own weapons, and 
 would fight with the Scriptures only. Fisher replied that 
 "when a public enemy invades a village he has no choice how 
 he will fight, for all must rise up to repel him, with the first 
 weapons that come to hand : sticks, swords, spears, arrows, 
 or stones. Heretics are not to be admitted to disputation 
 with choice of weapons. The Apostle does not say : Reject 
 a heretic after the first and second disputation, but after the 
 first and second admonition. When that has been made to 
 no effect, he is an acknowledged enemy, and we must repel 
 his attack as we choose, not as he chooses." J 
 
 A specimen or two of Fisher's retorts will throw some 
 light on his own character. Luther writes : " Does not 
 Paul say : Prove all things, hold fast that which is good ? 
 and again : If anyone bring another gospel besides that 
 which has been preached, let him he anathema? and St. 
 
 * Assert. Lut. Confutatlo. Contra Art. 25, col. 544, and again 
 more fully col. 579. 
 
 t " Legal qui volet Hieronymum, legat Augustinum, legat Hilarium 
 et casteros qui cum hasreticis digladiantur, non reperiet illos blandis 
 et mollibus verbis rem agere, sed rigidis et asperis, quemadmodum a 
 severis Christi religionis propugnatoribus, inimicos veritatis et adver- 
 saries fidei tractari decet." Contra CEcol., Praef. 
 
 Ibid., in Procem.
 
 Il8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 John : Prove the spirits whether they be of God ? There- 
 fore, that man clearly despises all those Apostolic warnings 
 who admits all the sayings of the fathers without judgment 
 the judgment, I mean, of the Spirit, which is only to be 
 found in the Holy Scriptures." "Well spoken!" says 
 Fisher. " Therefore, if the writings of the fathers are to be 
 so carefully examined, who all sought after unity, how much 
 more diligently are yours to be scrutinised who divide unity. 
 If he who spoke contrary to St. Paul was to be anathe- 
 matised, you will incur a tenfold anathema, who in so many 
 articles differ from the universal Church. If spirits are to 
 be proved, what kind of spirit must yours be ! He would, 
 indeed, despise the warnings of the Apostle who should 
 give heed to your fantastical novelties, in opposition to the 
 unanimous interpretations of the fathers, whom the Holy 
 Ghost instructed through the Holy Scriptures." * 
 
 Again, Luther says that the Bereans searched the Scriptures 
 to see if Paul spoke truly. How much more must we 
 search them to see if the fathers spoke truly. Fisher replies 
 that there is no similarity between the two cases : " The 
 Bereans heard a multitude of strange things that the 
 Gentiles were now admitted to grace, that the Law had 
 ceased, the priesthood been transferred, and all this by 
 Christ's death, whom their own nation had slain. No 
 wonder they searched the Scriptures, especially when St. 
 Paul bade them do so, to see if these things were really 
 foretold. But what then? We know for certain that we 
 live in the last times when no change is expected ; we know 
 that the Holy Ghost resides ever in the Church. Are we 
 then, because you propose some novelties, to set aside the 
 consent of ages and fly to you, as if some new Spirit had 
 descended on you ? And even if the doctrine of the fathers 
 had to be proved from Scripture, does that entitle you to 
 
 * Luth. Assert. Conf., col. 309.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 119 
 
 pass sentence on them, you who twist Scripture as you like, 
 and bend it like a nose of wax ? * 
 
 Luther says : " I care not a bit that they object against 
 me the length of time that the Roman See has reigned, or 
 the multitude and magnitude of those who conspire to 
 support it. The world used such arguments as these against 
 the Apostles. Yet they could not thereby put down the 
 Gospel Truth, though but recently made known and 
 preached but by a few rude men." Fisher quietly answers : 
 "No, surely, it was not meet that custom should prevail 
 against the Apostles, however long established, when they 
 confirmed what they taught by most evident miracles. So 
 you too, Luther, if you will confirm your doctrine by evident 
 miracles, will perhaps gain over the whole world to believe 
 in you. But in the meantime our doctrines are so established, 
 not only by miracles, but by the words of Christ Himself, 
 and the concordant testimony of ancient fathers, themselves 
 taught by the Holy Ghost, that if we hold not fast to them, 
 we shall indeed be more fickle than the winds, ' ever learning 
 yet never attaining to the knowledge of the truth V'f 
 
 Luther, in his self-assumed character of inspired Apostle, 
 justified his own outrageous language towards the Sovereign 
 Pontiff and rejection of General Councils, by saying that St. 
 Paul resisted and blamed St. Peter. P'isher answers : 
 "Everyone may not do what St. Paul did. Show me 
 someone who is St. Paul's equal in his gifts, who has been 
 called like him by Christ, and sent like him to instruct men ; 
 who has so great light of faith and heat of charity and 
 superabundance of wisdom ; who has been enlightened with 
 so many revelations, and proves what he says by most evident 
 miracles. Show me such a man, and I doubt not at all that 
 a council will give heed to him gladly. But not so if an 
 Arius, a Nestorius, a Macedonius, or one like them, stands 
 
 * Luth. Assert. Conf., col. 309. -f- Ibid., col. 580.
 
 120 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 out, and, according to the fancies of his own brain, twists the 
 Scriptures contrary to the teaching of all the fathers. 
 Certainly no Christian would bear to hear either pope or 
 council called to task by such a blatant beast (behia)."* 
 
 These quotations are not intended as specimens of the 
 general style of Fisher's controversy. They are quite ex- 
 ceptional a page or two chosen out of thousands. His 
 general style is serious and majestic. I have given them to 
 show a side of his character that we might otherwise miss in 
 the lofty dignity of the chancellor and the bishop, and the 
 patient endurance of the martyr his keen sense of the 
 ridiculous, and his sarcastic contempt for noisy pretension. 
 The last passage I have quoted with regard to rebuking 
 superiors may remind the reader of the boldness with 
 which he himself, in proper time and place, and with proper 
 self-restraint, had rebuked the pomp and luxury of prelates 
 and of the papal legate, Wolsey. We shall see him, on 
 future occasions, raising his voice fearlessly in protest against 
 the king, when the cause demanded it. I do not, however, 
 think it right to pass over here the remonstrances addressed 
 by this holy man to the Sovereign Pontiffs and their court. 
 
 Luther had quoted against the authority assumed by the 
 Roman Pontiffs the words of our Lord : " He that is greater 
 among you let him become as the younger, and he that is 
 the leader as he that serveth ".t Fisher replies that this is 
 merely an exhortation to humility, not a prohibition of 
 superiority that on the contrary Our Lord's words pre- 
 suppose that some will be greater than others, some will 
 be leaders, others followers ; but adds Fisher : " If the 
 Roman Pontiffs, laying aside pomp and haughtiness, would 
 but practise humility, you would not have a word left to 
 utter against them. Yes, would that they would reform the 
 manners of their court, and drive from it ambition, avarice, 
 
 * L:ith, Assert. Cow/., col. 601. ) Luke xxii. 26.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 121 
 
 and luxury. Never otherwise will they impose silence on 
 revilers like you." * 
 
 And in another place : " This is what you aim at. This 
 is the real end of all your scribbling. It is out of mere 
 hatred of the Romans that you set about your wicked 
 schemes. You were grieved to hear of all the troubles 
 which the Romans inflict on your Germans; and as you 
 cannot relieve them by other means, you leave no stone 
 unturned either utterly to destroy, or at least to diminish, the 
 authority of the Roman Pontiff. Yet, however dear your 
 country may be to you, the religious life of which you have 
 made profession obliges you to hold dearer still God and 
 His Scriptures.t But you strive in vain against God. You 
 "know the saying of Gamaliel : ' If it is of God, it will stand '. 
 Yes, the Roman Church will stand, whether you will or no. 
 You may, indeed, be the founder of a schism ; for St. Paul 
 predicted that a 'revolt' would come. But woe to that 
 man by whom the revolt comes. After you have done all, 
 Luther, the successor of St. Peter will remain ; and if he will 
 but endeavour to reform the morals of his court, I doubt not 
 you will greatly repent of all you are doing." J 
 
 Luther concluded one of his invectives thus : " Who will 
 bring the pope to order ? Christ only, with the brightness 
 of His coming. ' Lord, who has believed our hearing ? ' " 
 Fisher replies : " There is no reason to believe your hearing, 
 since you have heard what you say from no other than the 
 devil. It is he who has whispered in your ears that the 
 pope is Antichrist. I do not, however, say this as if I were 
 unwilling that the pope or his court should be reformed, if 
 there is anything in their life divergent from the teaching of 
 Christ. The people (vulgus) speak much against them, I 
 
 * Litth. Assert. Co;;/., col. 573. 
 
 t This was written about 1522, before Luther had altogether thrown 
 off the monastic life. 
 
 I Ibid., col. 579. " Quis credit auditui nostro? " (Isa. liii. i).
 
 122 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 know not with what truth. Still, it is constantly repeated 
 that things are so. Would then that, if there is anything 
 amiss, they would reform themselves, and remove the 
 scandal from the souls of the weak. For it is greatly to be 
 feared, unless they do so quickly, that Divine vengeance will 
 not long be delayed. It is not, however, fitting that the 
 emperor or lay princes should attempt such a matter, and 
 reduce them to a more frugal mode of life. The holy 
 emperor Constantine taught this by his example, when he 
 cast into the fire the accusations which bishops were bringing 
 against one another, saying : ' It is not right for me to judge 
 the gods,' meaning the bishops (as in Exodus : Diis non 
 detrahes), for they are appointed in God's place judges 
 amongst men. Yet I would not that the popes should trust 
 that all other emperors will follow Constantine's example."* 
 
 " Divine vengeance will not long be delayed," was a 
 strange and terrible warning to the Sovereign Pontiff or to 
 his court, from one who would now be called the most 
 Ultramontane of bishops, even when guarded by the words : 
 It is greatly to be feared". But when we recall the awful 
 sack of Rome by the Constable of Bourbon, not without the 
 connivance of the emperor, only four years after these words 
 were written, they may certainly be looked upon as pro- 
 phetic.f 
 
 One other treatise completes the list of Fisher's contro- 
 versial works ; this is his work On the Truth of Chrisfs 
 Body and Blood in the Eucharist, a gainst John OEcolampadius.\ 
 
 * Liith. Assert. Cow/., col. 653. 
 
 t At the conclusion of Fisher's treatise, Quod Petrus fuerit 
 Roma', is a very striking passage, in which he proves God's special 
 providence over the Holy City, in that He chastises it, but never for- 
 sakes it. It is quoted at length by Rev. T. Livius, C.SS.R., in his 
 treatise On the Roman Episcopate of S. Peter, pp. 244-248. 
 
 j John H-ausschein was his real name ; but Greek and Latin substi- 
 tutes were the fashion among the Teutons. Some have written of 
 the Bishop of Rochester as Joannes Piscator. Erasmus thus addressed 
 another Fisher.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 123 
 
 It is the longest and most important of all his writings, and 
 there are many beautiful passages, showing his lively faith 
 and tender love for that great mystery. It has, however, 
 the same defect of method as his works against Luther. 
 He quotes the whole of his opponent's book, making a 
 running commentary. The book of CEcolampadius was short 
 and readable, that of Fisher so long and learned that few 
 would have the patience and very few the inclination to 
 peruse it. 
 
 There was a great dissimilarity between the characters of 
 Luther and CEcolampadius. They were probably equally 
 rash and self-sufficient, but CEcolampadius, though he went 
 farther from Catholic truth than Luther, affected moderation 
 and love of peace, and solid argument rather than declama- 
 tion. 
 
 Erasmus wrote to his friend Lupset in England : " Carl- 
 stadt here has spread about some book written in German, in 
 which he maintains that in the Eucharist is only bread and 
 wine. This error has taken hold of men's minds more 
 quickly than a flame applied to naphtha. Ulrich Zwingle 
 has supported this opinion in his book, and lately CEcolam- 
 padius also, in a book so carefully compiled, so full of 
 argument, that he has given a difficult task to those who would 
 answer him."* In another letter written at the end of 
 1524, he gives another part of the picture : " Carlstadt has 
 been here. He has put out six pamphlets. Two of the 
 printers were thrown into prison by the magistrates, princi- 
 pally, as I am told, because he denies that the true Body of 
 Christ is in the Holy Eucharist. This no one tolerates. The 
 laity are indignant that their God is taken from them, as if 
 God were nowhere but under those signs. The learned are 
 moved by the words of Holy Scripture and the decrees of the 
 Church. This matter will stir up a great tragedy, although 
 
 * Ep. 790.
 
 124 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 we have too many tragedies already. . . . This new Gospel 
 is here giving birth to a new kind of men, impudent, 
 hypocritical, calumnious, liars, sycophants, quarrelsome 
 with one another, seditious, furious, who are so hateful to 
 me that if I knew of a city free from this rabble I would 
 migrate to it. . . , There are many in this town favourable 
 to Luther. Had I foreseen that such rabble would spring 
 up, I would have declared myself an enemy of this faction 
 from the very beginning."* 
 
 The book of CEcolampadius, contrasting as it did in tone 
 with these fiercer polemics, pleased the liberal and some- 
 what sceptical scholar. But he was alarmed when he found 
 himself in danger of being drawn into the controversy. 
 CEcolampadius in his preface had spoken of " our great 
 Erasmus ". Erasmus at once protested. Such words, he 
 said, might bring him under the suspicion of the pope, the 
 emperor, the King of England, the Bishop of Rochester, the 
 Cardinal of York."t 
 
 Two more extracts from the letters of Erasmus will both 
 serve to make known the character of the book that Fisher 
 answered, and, while showing its effect on the mind of 
 Erasmus, will illustrate by contrast its effect on the mind of 
 Fisher. We have no right to doubt the strong asseveration, 
 and even oath, with which Erasmus declared to the Swiss 
 assembled at Baden, on isth May, 1526, that he had never 
 departed from the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist : 
 "I call God to witness, who alone knows the hearts of 
 men, and I invoke His anger on me, if ever an opinion has 
 held a place in my mind (with regard to the Eucharist) 
 different from that which the Catholic Church has hitherto 
 unanimously maintained. As to what is revealed to others, 
 let them see to it themselves. No reasonings have ever 
 persuaded me to depart from the prescription of the Church. 
 
 * Ep. 715 (loth December. 1524). 
 f Ep. 728 (5th February, 1525).
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 125 
 
 This is not human fear, it is religious duty and fear of the 
 Divine wrath".* Yet, in spite of his submission to God's 
 revelation, as declared to him by the Church, he seems to 
 have taken little pains to assimilate it, to penetrate its 
 meaning, its fitness, its harmony, its beauty and sublimity. 
 On the contrary, with a weakness often found in clever men, 
 he rather liked to imagine what could be said pn the other 
 side, to listen to difficulties, and dally with objections, until 
 they sapped his piety, if they did not demolish his faith. 
 He writes to his friend Bilibaldus : " In some things 
 regarding the Eucharist, not being very erudite, I should 
 feel hesitation (subdubitarem\ did not the authority of the 
 Church confirm me. By the Church I mean the consent of 
 the Christian people throughout the world." t And, again, 
 to the same: "The opinion of (Ecolampadius would not be 
 displeasing to me, if the consent of the Church were not 
 against it. For I do not see what is the action of a Body 
 that cannot be perceived as a Body, j or what would be its 
 utility even if it were perceived, provided that spiritual grace 
 be in the symbols. Yet I cannot depart from the consent 
 of the Church, nor have I ever done so." And later on, 
 ipth October, 1527: "I never said that the opinion of 
 CEcolampadius was the better one. But I said among my 
 friends that I could go over to his opinion, if the authority 
 of the Church had approved it ; but I added that I never 
 could differ from the Church. . . . How much the authority 
 of the Church may weigh with others I know not. With me 
 it weighs so much, that I could agree with Arians and Pela- 
 gians, if the Church approved their teaching. It is not that 
 the words of Christ are not enough for me ; but surely it is 
 not strange if I take as their interpreter that Church by 
 
 * Ep. 818. f Ep. 827. 
 
 " Quid agat corpus insensibile ? " perhaps, " What is the good of a 
 body that does not fall under the senses ? " 
 Ep. 823.
 
 126 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 whose authority I believe in the canonical Scriptures. 
 Others, perhaps, may be cleverer or stronger; as for me, 
 I rest safely in nothing so much as in the certain judgments 
 of the Church. Of reasons and arguments there is never 
 an end."* 
 
 Such was the state of mind of Erasmus. Of a naturally 
 sceptical disposition, he seems to admit that it would have 
 been a relief to him to have been assured by competent 
 authority that he need not believe in such stupendous and 
 supernatural mysteries as the Divinity of Christ, the Real 
 Presence, the action of Divine grace. He did accept them, 
 and was convinced they were true, and would not be 
 thought for a moment to call them in question. Yet, 
 among his friends, he could state plausibly the objections 
 against them, though merely by way of argument; or he 
 could listen to difficulties and admit that they were subtle, 
 and that he could not find the answer, though it doubtless 
 existed. No wonder he was suspected of being sceptical at 
 heart. His was not the case of a neophyte, believing 
 blindly in the hope of one day understanding, and, in the 
 meantime, deploring the ignorance or sensuality that pre- 
 vented him from sharing the vision and the rapture of the 
 enlightened and the spiritual. His miserable attitude of 
 mind is betrayed in that sneer of his at the people : " The 
 laity are indignant that their God is taken from them, as if 
 God were nowhere but under those signs ".t He knew the 
 people were right. He shared their faith, but, not sharing 
 their devotion, he casts a slur upon it, as if it sprung from 
 ignorance and superstition, rather than from faith. 
 
 It is as if a learned Rabbi had sneered at Eli's broken 
 heart when the Ark was taken by the Philistines, or at 
 
 * Ep. 905. 
 
 t " Indignantur laici sibi eripi Deum suum, quasi nusquam sit 
 Dens nisi sub illo signo" (Ep. 715).
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 1 27 
 
 David for panting and yearning after the house of God 
 as if God were to be found there only ! 
 
 My purpose is in no way to depreciate the man whom 
 Fisher honoured with his admiration and his friendship, or 
 to show that he was unworthy of either. Fisher was not a 
 man to quench the smoking flax, since the spark of faith 
 and obedience was there. But the contrast is forced on us 
 by the collected writings of these two men, between the just 
 smouldering flax of Erasmus and the clear bright flame of 
 Fisher. He had no conditional admiration for the impious 
 negations of heretics, " if only they were true ". God had 
 given him understanding and wisdom, as well as faith. The 
 plausibilities of CEcolampadius were to him impieties, his 
 reasoning the merest sophisms, his unction pitiful cant. 
 It might be a little thing to Erasmus, who seldom if ever 
 said mass, to have the Presence of the Divine Victim rejected, 
 but not so to Fisher, whose eyesight was more weakened by 
 the tears he shed at mass than by poring over books, and 
 who shortened his sleep to converse with his hidden Love 
 in the Tabernacle of his cathedral. I do not, however, 
 propose to make any extracts here from what he has written 
 in defence of that most awful but loving mystery. The 
 few passages for which I have space are chosen to illustrate 
 his hatred of hypocrisy. 
 
 CEcolampadius, having quoted Our Lord's words, writes : 
 " We trust that the sense of these words will not be hidden 
 from us if prayer be joined to the investigation and colla- 
 tion of the Scriptures. To pray without searching is to 
 laugh at God ; to search without prayer is to get involved 
 in error." To many Protestants of the present day, to 
 whom three hundred and fifty years of the method followed 
 by their first leaders has made everything doubtful, the 
 thought may well occur : Why should we guess for ever at 
 a riddle, when we can never know whether we have dis- 
 covered the right answer? But when CEcolampadius wrote,
 
 128 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Protestantism was not yet ten years old. It had been 
 assumed that the new method of Scripture-searching would 
 lead to unity. But it was then just beginning tc show its 
 first fruits, in the dissensions on the Sacrament of Unity 
 between Luther and Carlstadt. CEcolampadius stepped in 
 as a peacemaker. He addressed, not Catholics, but Pro- 
 testants, promising them the possession of truth in unity if 
 they would follow his method, or, more correctly, if they 
 would take him as leader and teacher. The outrageous 
 absurdity of the promise was at once apparent to Fisher. 
 " No," he replies, " neither prayer nor study of Scripture, 
 nor both united, will avail you aught ; for both must be 
 joined to humility. CEcolampadius thinks that the Door- 
 keeper, the Holy Ghost, has been so long idle in the 
 Church, that He has not opened to the prayers and search- 
 ings of the saints for so many centuries. If, then, he thinks 
 that the Holy Ghost is likely to open specially to him, he is 
 too proud, and the Holy Ghost will laugh at his prayers 
 and searchings." * 
 
 CEcolampadius quotes the words of Solomon : " If thou 
 shalt call for wisdom and incline thy heart to prudence ; if 
 thou shalt seek for her as money and shalt dig for her as for 
 a treasure, then thou shalt understand the fear of the Lord, 
 and shalt find the knowledge of God".f "See," says CEco- 
 lampadius, " how we are exhorted to study. God wishes to 
 be invoked, to be drawn down by prayer ; He wishes us to 
 seek and to dig." " Are you not ashamed of all this ? " 
 replies Fisher. " Do you think none of our forefathers has 
 done these things? Did not Basil and Chrysostom, Atha- 
 nasius, Cyril, Cyprian, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and the 
 rest exercise themselves frequently ? Are you the only one 
 who has called efficaciously, you the only one who has 
 humbled his heart, the only one who has sought with dili- 
 
 * Lib. i., cap. 28. t Proverbs ii. 3, 4.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 129 
 
 gence, and dug out with much toil the sense of God's words? 
 Their prayers, forsooth, were nothing to yours ! Their 
 humility compared with yours was pride ! Their diligence 
 and labour was of no account ! Is it not the very height of 
 pride and self-conceit to yield to such folly for a moment?''* 
 
 " We must not blame God but ourselves," wrote (Ecolam- 
 padius, " if hitherto we have missed the sense of His word ; 
 for do we blame God because the veins of silver have so 
 long lain hid in the mountains? Or do we blame a wise 
 man because fools do not understand his parables, especially 
 if they laugh at him just when he is accommodating his 
 speech to theirs?" 
 
 " Abeas in malam crucem," replied the venerable bishop, 
 which was the nearest approach to a curse he ever permitted 
 himself, t "Who finds fault with Christ except yourself? 
 As for us we adore both the word and the deed of Christ. 
 Christ came to reveal Himself to little ones, and already 
 more such have preceded us than there are sands on the 
 seashore. And are we to think that He has hidden from 
 all these the true meaning of His principal sacrament, in 
 order that you may have the glory of discovering it?" J 
 
 CEcolampadius, appealing to his late friends the Lutherans 
 for a fair hearing, said : " Judge me as you would be judged 
 yourselves ". Though he had ceased to care for the judg- 
 ment of the Church, Fisher replied as follows : "As for me, 
 if I saw myself to be such a deadly plague and pest of souls, 
 as I am certain you are, I would suffer myself to be separated 
 from the rest of Christians, lest I should infect them more ; 
 or if that did not serve I would give myself up to the judg- 
 ment of the Church, to suffer for the remission of my sins 
 whatever she might think right to inflict. Most assuredly 
 
 * Lib. i., cap. 31. 
 
 t A perfectly classical curse, of which the most literal interpreta- 
 tion would be the Hibernian " High hanging to you ". 
 % Lib. i., cap. 31. 
 
 Q
 
 130 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 for the souls you have perverted by your pestilent teaching 
 souls redeemed by the precious Blood of Christ you will 
 give one day to Him a most rigorous account." * 
 
 It is fair to add that though (Ecolampadius took.no notice 
 of Fisher's book, it does not seem to have been without its 
 effect on Erasmus. We have seen how favourably he was 
 impressed on first reading the pamphlet of GBeolampadius. 
 Later on his tone is very different. He wrote to Conrad 
 Pelican to say that among the learned he had been accus- 
 tomed to propose many doubts and difficulties, sometimes 
 to try them, sometimes for his own instruction, sometimes 
 for the pleasure of discussion (animi gratia), " But I will 
 plead guilty to parricide," he says, "if any mortal ever heard 
 me say, seriously or in joke, that there is nothing in the 
 Eucharist but bread and wine, or that the true Body and 
 Blood of our Lord are not there. Yes, I pray that Christ 
 be not propitious to me, if such an opinion ever found place 
 in my mind. If ever a passing thought of this kind has 
 touched my soul, I easily shook it off, considering the in- 
 estimable charity of God towards us, weighing the words of 
 Holy Scripture, &c. No human reasons will ever lead me 
 away from the unanimous judgment of the Christian world. 
 Those five words, ' In the beginning God made the heaven 
 and the earth,' weigh more with me than all the arguments 
 of Aristotle and other philosophers proving the eternity of 
 the world. And what have these men now to bring forward 
 why I should profess their impious and seditious opinion ? 
 Their reasons are as light as straws ; such as these : ' He 
 has removed His Body once for all from us lest it should be 
 an impediment ' ; or, ' The Apostles did not wonder, or did 
 not adore'; or, 'We are commanded to be spiritual,' just as 
 if Flesh thus set before us could be a hindrance to spiri- 
 tuality. It is flesh, but unperceived by any of our senses, 
 
 * Lib. i., cap. 31.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 131 
 
 and yet this itself is a pledge of Divine charity to us, and a 
 solace during our time of waiting." * 
 
 I^ter still he wrote even more strongly : "As regards the 
 Eucharist I see no end to argumentation ; yet no one could 
 ever convince me, nor ever will, that Christ, who is Truth 
 and Charity, would allow His beloved Spouse to cling s.o 
 long to such an abominable error as to adore a crust of 
 bread instead of Himself. As to the exact words of conse- 
 cration, I did desire, I allow it, more accurate instruction. 
 But in such little difficulties (scrupulis) I am wont easily to 
 acquiesce in the judgment of the Church. The doctrine 
 which gives to all alike the power of consecrating, absolving, 
 and ordaining, I have always looked upon as sheer mad- 
 ness, "t 
 
 Erasmus, for his health and for facility of printing, had 
 taken up his residence in Basel, before Protestantism had 
 infected it. In 1529, he wrote: "I have grown used to 
 this nest for many years, but for the future I commit myself 
 to the Providence of Christ. I shall do what befits an 
 orthodox man, and care more for piety than health. For 
 to remain here, where it is not allowed to offer sacrifice or 
 to receive the Lord's Body, would be nothing else than to 
 make profession with them. CEcolampadius has possession 
 of all the Churches. Monks and nuns are ordered to go 
 elsewhere, or else to lay aside their sacred habit. The same 
 things are being done in many other cities. In the temples 
 none of the old rites are now performed, except that in some 
 of them a preacher of this sect preaches once (on Sunday), 
 while boys and women sing a psalm in German rhymes. 
 These are the beginnings. I grievously fear that this 
 
 * Ep. 847. There is much more to the same purpose in this very 
 earnest and eloquent letter. 
 
 t Ep. 1035., Ist April, 1529. In this letter he says he never dared 
 to go to the holy table without confession, nor would he die without 
 confession to a priest were anything weighing on his conscience.
 
 132 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 
 
 Pharisaism will end in paganism." * A few weeks previous 
 to this letter the populace of Basel, instigated by the gentle 
 and moderate QEcolampadius, after driving away the clergy 
 who remained faithful, and making a revolution in the 
 government, stripped the churches of images, altars, and 
 confessionals, and made a bonfire in the market-place. 
 Erasmus kept his word. He went to Fribourg, where he 
 remained seven years ; but having returned to Basel on 
 business, with the intention of not remaining there, he fell 
 ill and could not leave, and ended his days without priest, 
 or any help from the Church, but pronouncing the Holy 
 Name and calling on the mercy of God. He died in July, 
 1536, a year after his friend Fisher. I cannot but think he 
 was assisted by the prayers of More, and Reynolds, and 
 Fisher, of whose blessed deaths he wrote so touchingly 
 when the news reached him at Basel, as we shall see later on. 
 
 Before concluding this sketch of Fisher's controversial 
 writings, I must give two more passages. The first will 
 make clear the ground on which his belief rested, or the 
 rule by which it was guided. This was the broad unity of 
 the Catholic Church. Revelation was to him historical and 
 objective, not a matter for conjecture, or discovery, or 
 private speculation. He states this in the following words : 
 
 "If, then, anyone will attentively consider the solicitude 
 of Christ for us if he believes without hesitation that the 
 Holy Ghost does not reside in the Church to no purpose 
 if he reflect on these numerous and most clear testimonies 
 of the early prelates of the Church, as illustrious by their 
 lives as by their learning and miracles if, lastly, he views 
 the unanimous consent of so'many Churches during so many 
 centuries, without even one dissentient voice, it will surely 
 be impossible for him to believe that now only at last has 
 risen upon Luther alone the light of truth, never so much as 
 
 * Ep. 1033.
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 133 
 
 suspected by any of the ancient fathers, and the exact con- 
 trary of what they all maintained. For if truth has so long 
 lain hid in darkness, waiting through so many centuries for 
 its deliverance by Luther, it was to no purpose that Christ 
 bestowed such care upon our forefathers. It was to no 
 purpose that the Spirit of Christ was sent to teach them all 
 truth ; it was to no purpose that they asked for and sought 
 after truth, seeing that all continued to preach with one 
 accord to all the Churches a most pernicious falsehood. If 
 they erred in these first elements of the faith, then in vain 
 (to use Ter-tullian's words) have so many thousands of 
 thousands been baptised ; in vain have been performed so 
 many works of faith, so many virtues been practised, so 
 many graces displayed, so many ministries exercised, so 
 many martyrdoms endured, since all have lived and died 
 not in faith but in error, for without a right faith could none 
 of them be pleasing to God." * 
 
 The second passage is one in which he expresses, by way 
 of contrast, what he thought of the strife and contradiction 
 produced by denying the general faith of Christendom, and 
 looking for the true sense of God's revelation in the dis- 
 coveries and combinations of private judgment. 
 
 In the preface to his book against CEcolampadius he 
 exclaims : " May the great and good God be ever blessed, 
 and His name be ever praised, in that He has so cared for 
 His Church and so succoured it, in this cruel persecution 
 which it is now enduring at the hands of heretics ! We 
 could not have desired, for the confusion and overthrow of 
 our enemies, anything more fitting than what has happened, 
 and that no doubt by the great providence of the most 
 merciful God. Let no one suppose that I say this on 
 account of the immense slaughter of those who were followers 
 of Luther s pestilent teaching, though in that too the Almighty 
 
 * De Sacerdotio, "Congressus primus in fine".
 
 134 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 has given a foretaste of His wiath against that execrable sect, 
 in which the blood of so many thousands has been shed, 
 not by the sword of any external enemy, but by their own 
 intestine divisions, God taking vengeance on them for their 
 great rebellion against the Church.* Who is so blind as not 
 to see in this great calamity the punishing hand of an angry 
 God? And to whom are the Germans indebted for this 
 but to Luther and his followers? Would that now at 
 length, late as it is, they would attend to that exhortation 
 in which John Cochlseus, a man most learned and a most 
 zealous defender of the Catholic faith, out of his great zeal 
 and great love for his country, prudently warned them of 
 these dangers that would come on them. 
 
 But it is not by any means on account of that miserable 
 slaughter that I have exulted so much. For a greater ven- 
 geance has fallen on the authors of these factions, since they 
 have been given up to a reprobate sense to use the words 
 of St. Paul, "to do those things which are unseemly". 
 What more absurd, or rather more execrable, than that 
 those who have once for all consecrated their chastity to 
 God, and have kept their vow strenuously in the heat of 
 youth, should now when old indulge their obscene lusts? 
 Not only they do this themselves, but exhort others to the 
 same filthiness ; so that you may see everywhere not only 
 priests, who seemed to be graver than Cato himself, but 
 monks also marrying nuns, and that publicly without any 
 shame, so that we may rightly say to everyone of them : 
 " You have made for yourself a harlot's forehead, and know 
 not how to blush ".f And besides this they abuse the Holy 
 
 * The war of the peasants in Munster took place in 1525. Erasmus 
 wrote on 24th December, 1525 : " Hie longe supra centum millia 
 rusticorum interfecta sunt"; and in the same epistle he speaks of 
 Luther's marriage and of the tragedy ending like a comedy (Ep. 781). 
 
 + Has not God exercised the same vengeance and given us the 
 same humiliating yet instructive spectacle once more in our own 
 days?
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 135 
 
 Scriptures to such an extent as to seek to prove from them 
 the necessity of what they have done; as if neither 
 Ambrose, nor Jerome, nor Augustine, nor any of the ancient 
 fathers had been able to observe continence after receiving 
 the holy priesthood. But if they lived chastely, as no doubt 
 they did, then why cannot others also ? " There are some,'* 
 says Our Lord, " who have made themselves eunuchs for the 
 kingdom of God." And with what intention, I ask, did the 
 Lutherans formerly receive the sacred priesthood ? Certainly 
 if they did not intend to observe celibacy for the kingdom 
 of heaven, they received the priesthood hypocritically. But 
 if in such a matter they did not fear to dissimulate in the 
 presence of God, how can anyone hope from such hypocrites 
 the fruit of wholesome doctrine, since it is written : " The 
 Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful" 
 ( Wisdom i. 5). But, on the other hand, if they did propose 
 to keep themselves chaste, but were afterwards conquered 
 by the flesh, may we not suppose they have long remained in 
 their filthy state ? Surely these were not fitting vessels to 
 receive that Divine Wisdom " who will not enter a malicious 
 soul nor dwell in a body subject to sins " ( Wisdom i. 4). 
 We may believe then that, not less on account of the impurity 
 of their lives than for the arrogance of their minds, they 
 have fallen into these heresies, and thence into such a 
 reprobate sense as to commit such abominations and teach 
 them publicly.* 
 
 Yet it was not even on account of this vengeance of God 
 in abandoning them to a reprobate sense that I exulted. 
 There is a still more evident proof of God's avenging hand. 
 It is related in the Book of Genesis of certain men that they 
 resolved to build a tower, whose top should reach to heaven, 
 
 * When Fisher wrote this his opponent was not yet married, 
 though Luther had set him the example. But a year afterwards 
 Erasmus writes: "Joannes CEcolampadius hie publice duxit uxorem, 
 puellam sane lepidam ". Ep. 987.
 
 1^6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 so as to leave their names famous to posterity. The world was 
 then of one tongue, but God so punished their pride as to 
 confound their speech, so that one understood not the other. 
 The same punishment has befaHen these factious followers 
 of Luther. They also had conceived in their minds that 
 they would build a new Church, and get fame throughout 
 the world. And in this endeavour it is wonderful how 
 united they were and banded together, so that they seemed 
 to be like one man, with one heart and mind. Nor would 
 they have ceased from their work, had not God, pitying His 
 Church, looked down from on high, and bridled their 
 madness by the strife of tongues. He has brought it about 
 that those who seemed leaders and columns among them 
 understand not each other's voice. They strive with one 
 another, and no one deigns to listen to his neighbour. The 
 followers of Carlstadt have separated from the Lutherans, 
 and they are pouring out insults one against the other. It 
 may be seen, from letters just printed in the name of Luther, 
 how great a controversy rages. Even Melancthon, as I have 
 heard from trustworthy men, is not well agreed with Luther. 
 And now at length another of these leaders comes to the 
 front, named John CEcolampadius, who formerly followed 
 Luther in everything, and now he most vehemently differs 
 from him in many points. . . . Who then does not see that 
 God is fighting for His Church, since He has put confusion 
 in their tongues and turned their arms one against the other, 
 so that thus they defend the Church while attacking their 
 own former allies ? . . . Thus it is seen that Christ is faithful 
 to His promise : " Behold I am with you all days, even to 
 the consummation of the world". 
 
 Had Fisher lived but a few years longer he would have 
 seen far fiercer and more numerous strifes than those he 
 mentioned in 1526. But how would he have exulted had he 
 foreseen the spectacle which God has reserved for us ? 
 
 I do not think I shall be wandering from my subject if I
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 137 
 
 supplement this chapter by a passage from Sir Thomas 
 More. It bears directly on the writings of Fisher, because 
 in it he refers to and endorses what Fisher had written on 
 the supremacy of the Holy See. It was written by Sir 
 Thomas just after he had read what I have above quoted on 
 certain abuses or defects in the Roman Court, which were 
 the object of popular censure. It will show how perfectly 
 the two friends were agreed in their views on this matter. 
 But I make the quotation for a further reason. Though I 
 am not engaged on the life and martyrdom of Blessed 
 Thomas More, yet those of Fisher are so linked with his, that 
 the one story cannot be told without constant reference to 
 the other. They died almost together, and for the same 
 cause. Now, no one has ever thought that Fisher varied in 
 his views of the pope's supremacy, while it is known by his 
 own words that there had been a certain change or growth 
 in the mind of Sir Thomas. I wish, therefore, to show that 
 this change was effected at an earlier date than is sometimes 
 supposed that it was, at least .in part, the work of Fisher, 
 and that it was complete. 
 
 In a letter to Cromwell, Sir Thomas admits that he had 
 at one time thought the pope's supremacy of merely ecclesi- 
 astical and not of Divine institution,* though even so no 
 nation was at liberty to withdraw from it, but that he had 
 become convinced of its Divine institution by the king's 
 book against Luther, and by subsequent study. Now, the 
 passage I shall quote was written soon after the appearance 
 of Fisher's first book against Luther in 1523, and shows 
 how thoroughly his vigorous mind grasped the truth when 
 once his attention was properly directed to it. 
 
 Even some of More's admirers are wont to deplore the 
 
 * This was not heresy, for there was no obstinacy. Sir Thomas 
 was not then aware of the explicit teaching of the Church. His 
 studies had been in literature and in law, and he had probably imbibed 
 the error from Erasmus.
 
 138 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 answer he wrote under the name of Ross to Luther's scur- 
 rility against the king; while his enemies say that "it is 
 throughout nothing but downright ribaldry, without a grain 
 of reasoning to support it, so that it gave the author no 
 other reputation but that of having the best knack of any 
 man in Europe at calling bad names in good Latin ". * I 
 should doubt whether friends or enemies who speak thus 
 have read the book. That there are some strong passages 
 in it against Luther I do not deny. He deserved worse ; 
 but perhaps Sir Thomas might have left him to sink in his 
 own filth without heaping more on him. In spite of that 
 the book is a most weighty one, full of excellent reasoning. 
 The following passage on the supremacy of the pope is 
 taken from this book, and it will be seen that in 1523 Sir 
 Thomas More not only held the Divine institution of that 
 supremacy, but that under the eye of the King of England, 
 and for his defence, he held also tfie deposing power of 
 the pope to be of Divine institution.! The passage is as 
 follows : 
 
 " The Rev. Father John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a 
 man illustrious not only by the vastness of his erudition, but 
 much more so by the purity of his life, has so opened and 
 overthrown the assertions of Luther, that if he has any 
 shame he would give a great deal to have burnt his asser- 
 tions. ... As regards the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, 
 the same Bishop of Rochester has made the matter so clear 
 from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and from the 
 whole of the Old Testament, and from the consent of all 
 
 * Atterbury (I believe), quoted by Lewis, i. 293. 
 
 + In his Responsio to Luther's Apology, the king says: " I see that 
 both in England and other places some have replied to what you 
 wrote against me. Some have treated you according to your deserts, 
 and handled you after your own fashion, except that they have given 
 reasons as well as insults, while you give only the latter." " Aliqui 
 te ex mentis tuis ornarint, et tuis te tractarint artibus, nisi quod 
 rationem admiscuere conviciis, quibus tu solis disputas."
 
 PREACHER AND WRITER. 139 
 
 the holy fathers, not of the Latins only, but of the Gieeks 
 also (of whose opposition Luther is wont to boast), and from 
 the definition of a General Council, in which the Armenians 
 and Greeks, who at that time had been most obstinately 
 resisting, were overcome, and acknowledged themselves 
 overcome, that it would be utterly superfluous for me to write 
 again on the subject. 
 
 " I am moved to obedience to that See, not only by what 
 learned and holy men have written, but by this fact especi- 
 ally, that we see so often that, on the one hand, every enemy 
 of the Christian faith makes war on that See, and that, on 
 the other hand, no one has ever declared himself an enemy 
 of that See who has not also shortly after shown most evi- 
 dently that he was the enemy of Christ and of the Christian 
 religion. 
 
 " Another thing that moves me is this, that if after Luther's 
 manner the vices of men are to be imputed to the offices 
 they hold, not only the Papacy will fall, but royalty, and 
 dictatorship, and consulate, and every other kind of magis- 
 tracy, and the people will be without rulers, without law, and 
 without order. Should such a thing ever come to pass, as 
 it seems indeed imminent in some parts 'of Germany, they 
 will then feel to their own great loss how much better it is 
 for men to have bad rulers than no rulers at all. Most 
 assuredly as regards the pope, God, who set him over His 
 Church, knows how great an evil it would be to be with- 
 out one, and I do not think it desirable that Christen- 
 dom should learn it by experience. It is far more to be 
 wished that God may raise up such popes as befit the 
 Christian cause and the dignity of the Apostolic office : men 
 who, despising riches and honour, will care only for heaven, 
 will promote piety in the people, will bring about peace, and 
 exercise the authority they have received from God against 
 the 'satraps and mighty hunters of the world,' excommuni- 
 cating and giving over to Satan both those who invade the -
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 territories of others, and those who oppress their own.* 
 With one or two such popes the Christian world would soon 
 perceive how much preferable it is that the Papacy should 
 be reformed than abrogated. And I doubt not that long ago 
 Christ would have looked down on the Pastor of His flock, 
 if the Christian people had chosen rather to pray for" the 
 welfare of their Father than to persecute him, and to hide 
 the sh*ame of their Father than to laugh at it. 
 
 " But be sure, Luther, of this : God will not forsake His 
 own Vicar. He will one day cast His eyes of mercy on 
 him ; nay, He is perhaps now doing it, in allowing a most 
 wicked son to scourge so painfully his father. You are 
 nothing else, Luther, but the scourge of God, to the great 
 gain of that See, and to your own great loss. God will act 
 as a kind mother does, who, when she has chastised her 
 child, wipes away his tears, and, to appease him, throws the 
 rod into the fire." f 
 
 The great and holy popes whom God raised up for His 
 Church so soon after these words were written, and the state 
 of Lutheranism at the present day, both show that the 
 Blessed Martyr was gifted with a prophetic spirit. With no 
 less discernment did he foretell, at the time that he was in 
 the highest favour of the king, that his own head would fall, 
 should that monarch think to gain his ends by such an 
 
 * " Qui auctoritatem, quam acceperunt a Deo, adversus mundi 
 satrapas et robustos venatores exerceant, diris omnibus persequentes 
 et tradentes Sathanae, si quis aut alienam ditionem invadat, aut 
 male tractet suam." 
 
 ale tractet suam." 
 t Cap. x. (Opera Th. Mori; Francofurti, p. 52). 
 J Roper's Life of More.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE DIVORCE. 
 
 IN the year 1521, Henry had written as follows in his 
 defence of the Sacraments against Luther : 
 
 " ' Whom God has joined together let no man put 
 asunder.' Oh ! the admirable word, which none could have 
 spoken but the Word that was made flesh ! O word, full of 
 joy and fear as it is of admiration ! Who would not rejoice 
 that God has so much care of his marriage as to vouchsafe, 
 not only to be present at it, but also to preside in it ? Who 
 should not tremble, when he is bound not only to love his 
 wife, but to live with her in such a manner as that he may 
 be able to render her pure and immaculate to God from 
 whom he received her ? " 
 
 Even in 1521, Henry's infidelities had been such that his 
 ecstatic raptures regarding the marriage tie must have 
 sounded ludicrous to his English readers. But with the 
 whole of his career before us, how marvellous is it to read 
 the following words from the same treatise : 
 
 " The heathen were wont by human laws to take wives 
 and cast them off. But in the people of God it was formerly 
 not lawful to separate those who were joined in matrimony. 
 And if God, by Moses, allowed the Hebrews to give a bill 
 of divorce, Christ teaches that the permission was given on 
 account of the hardness of the people, for otherwise they 
 would hai-e killed the -wives that did not please them. But 
 from the beginning it was not so. And Christ recalled 
 Christians to the original sanctity of marriage.'*
 
 142 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Doubtless, had Henry been taxed with these words that 
 he had written, he would have replied that God had never 
 joined together what he (the king) had separated, and that 
 his reason for his divorces was that God had never been the 
 Author of those unions which had been broken. It is no 
 business of mine to discuss Henry's matrimonial affairs in 
 general ; but as I cannot relate the life and death of Bishop 
 Fisher without investigating to some extent the first of the 
 series of royal divorces, I wish to take note of the Catholic 
 principle laid down by Henry himself. He sought divorce 
 from the pope, not as if the pope could dissolve a valid 
 marriage, but on the ground that his marriage had been 
 null and void from the beginning. I fail to conceive the 
 object of Mr. Froude in importing modern notions regarding 
 marriage and divorce into a history of the i6th century. 
 " The marriages of princes," he says, " have ever been 
 affected by other considerations than those which influence 
 such relations between private persons."* 
 
 That is most true, and therefore Pope Julius II. considered 
 himself justified in granting, at the request of Ferdinand and 
 Isabella in Spain, and of Henry VII. in England, a dispen- 
 sation to Prince Henry to marry the young widow of his 
 brother Arthur, though such a marriage in general is repro- 
 bated as unseemly. 
 
 But if the marriages of princes are different from those of 
 private persons, their divorces stand on the same footing. 
 Reasons of State cannot make lawful for a king what is un- 
 lawful for his subjects. Mr. Froude affects to appeal to 
 canon law, and to the principle laid down by canonists, that 
 the pope, as the head of Christendom, can grant extreme 
 dispensations, dummodo causa cogat urgentissima e.g., ne 
 regnum aliquod penitus pereat. But this is said of marriage, 
 not of divorce. Mr. Froude assumes that the pope had the 
 
 * History, i. 134.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 143 
 
 power to dissolve Henry's marriage, irrespective of its 
 validity, if he had had the will ; and he complains that the 
 question of the validity was ever introduced, and accuses 
 the pope of injustice to Henry, or rather to England, and of 
 partiality to the emperor, and of forgetfulness of his position 
 as umpire in matters regarding the welfare of nations. He 
 blames Henry for allowing the question of the lawfulness of 
 the marriage ab initio to have ever got entangled in that of 
 its dissolution, thus transferring it from a simple question of 
 statesmanship to a theme for the subtleties of theologians 
 .and the chicanery of lawyers. But all this is theory not 
 histoiy. 
 
 Henry's contention was not that the pope was omnipotent, 
 and that he could break what God had bound. It was the 
 contrary that the pope was not omnipotent, and that he 
 had gone beyond his power in trying to remove impediments 
 which God had placed, and to bind in marriage where God 
 forbade to bind. Wishing to get rid of his bonds with 
 Catharine, it never occurred to him to claim a dissolution 
 on grounds of pure statesmanship ; to acknowledge the vali- 
 dity of his marriage, and ask that it should be set aside for the 
 good of the country. He knew this was impossible. He could 
 only plead the invalidity from the beginning of his marriage, 
 and this he could do in but two ways, either by denying the 
 power of the pope to dispense for such a marriage as his, 
 and so asking Clement to correct the error of Julius ; or he 
 could plead, not lack of power in the dispenser, but lack of 
 force in the dispensation. He could allege informalities, 
 omission of necessary clauses, non-verification of clauses 
 inserted, deceit and misrepresentation in the petitioners, 
 error as to facts in the grantor. As a matter of fact he 
 began by impugning the bull of dispensation, and, failing in 
 this, he ended by impugning the power of the dispenser. 
 
 Happily there is no need for me to relate the history of 
 these proceedings, and the tedious and unsavoury history of
 
 144 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the divorce. My readers will probably know that history 
 sufficiently or may seek it elsewhere.* I am only concerned 
 with the part taken by the Bishop of Rochester, and the 
 narrative will neither involve us in the history of the king's 
 amours with Anne Boleyn, nor in the complications of foreign 
 diplomacy. 
 
 It is unnecessary to enter on the much debated questions 
 as to the time when the thought of a divorce first entered 
 Henry's mind, or the causes which led to it, and whether or 
 not they had any connection in their origin with the person 
 of Anne Boleyn. What seems certain, and now generally 
 admitted, is that, early in the year 1527, everyone knew that 
 a divorce was in agitation, and everyone about the Court 
 knew of the king's passion for Anne. But it does not follow- 
 that these two things were connected together in the minds. 
 of observers, even of those most intimate with Henry. To- 
 them Anne may have appeared but as one of a series, and 
 that she would aspire to marriage and be successful entered 
 into the thoughts of few. Wolsey gave himself earnestly if 
 not cordially to the divorce, but there is no likelihood that 
 he had any intention that Anne should profit by it.f The 
 earlier Catholic writers, such as Hall and Harpsfield and 
 Sander, attribute to Wolsey the very worst motives of per- 
 sonal spite against Catharine, and still more against the 
 emperor, who was nephew to Catharine, and who had 
 
 * Mr. Pocock's Records of the Reformation ; Mr. Pocock's Edition 
 of Harpsfield's History of the Divorce (Camden Soc., 1878) ; Mr. 
 Brewer's Reign of Henry VIII. (vol. ii.) ; Mr. Friedmann's Anne 
 Boleyn (2 vols., 1884) ; and of course the State Papers of Henry VIII. 
 and the Kalendars of Letters and Papers. 
 
 r " Wolsey thought that Anne had become Henry's mistress ; and 
 as he knew from long experience that in such cases the king was tired 
 of his conquest in a few months, he confidently expected that long 
 before the divorce could be obtained Anne would be cast off. In that 
 case he hoped to make a good bargain by selling the hand of his 
 master to the highest bidder." Friedmann, i. 50.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 145 
 
 thwarted his avaricious and ambitious designs on the arch 
 bishopric of Toledo and the Papacy. The grossness of his 
 ambition is flagrant in the State Papers, and his servant and 
 admirer Cavendish bears witness to his revengeful temper 
 towards others. Nor do I see how his character gains if we 
 prefer the view of modern historians, that Wolsey was actu- 
 ated by views of State policy or of Church policy. Mr. 
 Froude's view is that " a peremptory conviction " against his 
 first marriage had been maturing in Henry's mind for years, 
 together with " a. determined purpose " to marry again, for 
 the succession to the throne and the welfare of the country, 
 when " accident precipitated his resolution ". The accident 
 was that the emperor's troops were besieging Rome in the 
 beginning of May, 1527, and it was thought he was favouring 
 the Protestant party. " Wolsey caught the opportunity to break 
 the Spanish alliance, and the prospect of a divorce was 
 grasped at by him as a lever by which to throw the weight 
 of English power and influence into the papal scale, to com- 
 mit Henry definitely to the Catholic cause." * Mr. Brewer's 
 view seems to be that Wolsey saw Henry so bent on a 
 divorce, that if he could not get it from the pope he would 
 cast off the pope's authority, and Wolsey thought it right to 
 choose the lesser of two evils. If so, he acted both impiously 
 and foolishly : impiously in choosing an injustice and a scandal 
 rather than a calamity; and foolishly in thinking that the 
 pope's authority could be saved by degrading it and making 
 it a bye-word.' In either case he made himself the willing 
 tool of Henry, and lent himself to " the artifices, the dis- 
 simulation, the fraud, and the intimidation that were em- 
 ployed by the king to hunt down a forlorn and defenceless 
 woman " ; and if, as Mr. Brewer says, it is revolting to see 
 Catharine's " natural protector (Henry) at the head of her 
 persecutors, armed with the whole power and wealth of his 
 kingdom, and employing them to gain his end,"t it is still 
 
 * History, i. 124. f Reign of Henry, ii. 185. 
 
 to
 
 146 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 more revolting to see an archbishop and legate of the Holy 
 See, the "natural protector" of justice and sanctity, co- 
 operating in the iniquity. Perhaps the most revolting thing 
 of all is the frightful hypocrisy practised by king and cardinal. 
 As the special characteristic of Bishop Fisher in this transac- 
 tion, as in all others, is simplicity and straightforwardness, and 
 he opposed this weapon only to the wiles and intrigues of 
 which he was well aware, it may be well to give here two 
 specimens of the kind of hypocrisy with which he had to 
 deal. 
 
 Before the opening of the Legatine Court by Campeggio 
 and Wolsey in England, in May, 1529, to try the question of 
 the divorce, there came news of the pope's illness and of his 
 probably approaching death. Henry thought that if Wolsey 
 or Campeggio could be elected pope his cause would be 
 safe. He wrote therefore on 6th February to his agents in 
 Rome (Gardiner, Brian, &c.), giving them full commission to 
 use all his influence in the election. " If the cardinals pre- 
 sent, having God and the Holy Ghost before them, consider 
 what is best for the Church, they cannot fail to agree upon 
 Wolsey ; but as human fragility suffers not all things to be 
 weighed in just balance, the ambassadors are to make pro- 
 mises of spiritual promotions, offices, dignities, rewards of 
 money and other things ; they are also to show them what 
 Wolsey will give up if he enters into this dangerous storm 
 and troublous tempest for the relief of the Church, all of 
 which benefices shall be given to the king's friends, besides 
 other large rewards." Thus the most abominable and 
 impious simony is proposed, with professions about the 
 Holy Ghost, that are only not hypocritical, because those to 
 whom they were addressed must have taken them for 
 cynical mockery. Yet all this was written, if not at Wolsey's 
 dictation, yet with his sanction.* 
 
 * The king's letter in Letters and Papers, vol. iv., part iii., n. 5270 ; 
 Wolsey's consent, n. 5272.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 147 
 
 The second specimen of hypocrisy is the king's mani- 
 festo to England as to his reasons for bringing the ques- 
 tion of his marriage before the Legatine Tribunal. On 
 8th November, 1528, he held a great assembly of nobles, 
 privy councillors, with the lord mayor and great merchants 
 of London. He rehearsed the peace and success the 
 country had enjoyed hitherto under his reign, but the fear 
 that, if he should die without legitimate issue, civil discord 
 might arise like that of the isth century, which might even 
 lead to foreign conquest. True, he had a lovely daughter 
 by the Lady Catharine; but he had lately heard, from 
 pious and learned theologians, that his marriage with 
 his deceased brother's widow was forbidden by Divine 
 law in fact, this objection had been urged when he was 
 lately negotiating an alliance for her. The speech had 
 filled his mind with horror, since it involved a question 
 of his eternal salvation. He called God to witness, and 
 declared on the word of a king, that this alone had caused 
 him to ask the opinion of learned theologians throughout 
 Europe, and the true and equitable judgment of the 
 legate of the Holy See, in order that henceforth he 
 might live in lawful marriage with peaceful conscience. 
 Should it clearly appear that he could continue in his 
 present marriage, nothing would please him better. He 
 had been so happy in it, that, were the marriage proved 
 lawful, he would choose Catharine above all women in 
 the world. Should it, on the contrary, be found that his 
 marriage was unlawful and null from the beginning, his fate 
 would be deplorable. He must, then, separate from the 
 woman he loved, and his conscience would be torn with 
 the thought that for twenty years he had been living 
 in worse than fornication, without any lawful issue to 
 survive him. These things tortured him day and night; 
 and, to end his torture, he had sent for the pope's legate. 
 His hearers would explain this to the people, and he in-
 
 148 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 vited all to join their prayers that the truth might be made 
 manifest.* 
 
 The whole speech is one tissue of unmitigated lies. The 
 hearers had not, as we have, the evidence of the letters 
 Henry had already written to Anne and his instruction to 
 his agents in Italy, nor did they know of the clauses he had 
 got inserted in the conditional bull of dispensation for a 
 second marriage, in case of the dissolution of the first, 
 which proved that affinity was the last thing that troubled 
 his conscience ;f but the relations of Henry with Anne, 
 
 * The original speech, as written in Latin, is given in Wilkins, iii. 
 714. It was, of course, spoken in English. 
 
 + On the affinity of Anne Boleyn with Henry, by his relations 
 with her sister Mary, and on the dispensing clause he purposely got 
 inserted in the bull, to marry anyone related to him in the first degree 
 of affinity, except his brother's widow, see Friedmann, App. B., vol, 
 ii., 323, and Mr. Pocock's Preface to the Records of the Reformation; 
 also, Harpsfield, p. 236, and Brewer, ii. 239, &c. As Cardinal Pole's 
 testimony in this matter is less known, and found in a very rare book, 
 I here translate it. As a relative and a courtier, Pole must have been 
 well informed, and he wrote during Anne's life : " At your age of life, 
 and with all your experience of the world, you were enslaved by your 
 passion for a girl. But she would not give you your will unless you 
 rejected your wife, whose place she longed to take. The modest 
 woman would not be your mistress ; no, but she would be your wife. 
 She had learned, I think, if from nothing else, at least from the 
 example of her own sister, how soon you got tired of your mis- 
 tresses, and she resolved to surpass her sister in retaining you as her 
 lover. . . . 
 
 " Now, what sort of person is it whom you have put in the place 
 of your divorced wife ? Is she not the sister of her whom first you 
 violated, and for a long time after kept as your concubine ? 
 (Quant tit et molasti primutn et diu postea concubines loco apud 
 te habuisti ?) She certainly is. How is it, then, that you now tell 
 us of the horror you have of illicit marriage ? Are you ignorant ot 
 the law which certainly no less prohibits marriage with a sister of 
 one with whom you have become one flesh, than with one with whom 
 your brother was one flesh ? If the one kind of marriage is detest- 
 able, so is the other. Were you ignorant of this law ? Nay, you 
 knew it better than others. How do I prove that ? Because, at the
 
 THE DIVORCE. 149 
 
 and his determination to marry her, were no longer a secret 
 to the majority of those whom he addressed. They knew 
 he was pledging his royal honour to a falsehood, and calling 
 God to witness to a perjury, when he appealed to the 
 alarm of conscience as his sole motive for agitating the 
 question.* 
 
 Archdeacon Harpsfield, who in the time of Queen l^ary 
 had access to State papers, and knew well all the circum- 
 stances of the divorce, thus sums up his dissertation : 
 "When I consider this and other premisses, I cannot 
 be induced to believe that the king, upon conscience only, 
 and for avoiding God's displeasure (as it was pretended), 
 but rather to satisfy and serve his bodily pleasures and 
 appetite, pursued this divorce. And his mind, being thus 
 depraved and corrupted, and seeking the furthering and 
 advancement only of his corrupt will, he found like doctors 
 and like prophets, who, preferring his sensual appetite and 
 their own worldly advancement before God's blessed will, 
 accommodated their answer to his carnal corrupted desire. 
 For, as the Prophet Ezechiel writeth to such as have filthy, 
 corrupt cogitations in their hearts, and yet pretend to seek 
 and search and understand God's pleasure, and to be 
 directed by the same, God sendeth false prophets to make 
 them a suitable answer, to feed and maintain their corrupt 
 
 very time you were rejecting the dispensation of the pope to marry 
 your brother's widow, you were doing your very utmost (magna vi 
 contendebas) to get leave from the pope to marry the sister of your 
 former concubine." De Unit. Eccl., lib. iii. 
 
 * The king pretends, in this speech and elsewhere, that the first 
 suggestion to his mind of doubt as to the lawfulness of his marriage 
 was a question proposed by the Bishop of Tarbes as to the legitimacy 
 of Mary, when discussing a treaty of marriage. Mr. Froude, though 
 admitting that the subject had been maturing in Henry's mind for 
 years, says : "The gangrene was torn open by the Bishop of Tarbes" 
 (History, i. 124). Mr. Brewer says: "This was a political figment 
 arranged between the king and Wolsey " (Reign of Henry, ii. 163).
 
 150 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 humours, as it chanced (the more the pity^ to this king 
 also."* 
 
 Henry, however, was not left without some true prophets, 
 and amongst them the principal was he whom the Lady 
 Margaret had at her death begged to watch over him. 
 Leaving all other phases of this history aside, I will now 
 relate the part taken by, or rather forced on, the Bishop of 
 Rochester. The plan of divorce first concerted between 
 Wolsey and the king was this. A collusive suit was 
 instituted against the king by Wolsey, as legate, and War- 
 ham, as Archbishop of Canterbury, on jyth May, 1527. 
 As guardians of public morality, they cited the king to 
 appear before them, to answer for having lived for eighteen 
 years in incestuous intercourse with his brother's widow. 
 Henry personally appeared on his defence, and then 
 appointed a proctor to continue the farce, while one of his 
 devoted servants, Dr. Wolman, pleaded against him. This 
 was all done secretly, but the archbishops dared not take 
 the decision on themselves, and questions were addressed 
 by them to a number of the most learned bishops in Eng- 
 land regarding the lawfulness of marriage with a brother's 
 widow, which rt was hoped they would answer as the king 
 desired. But the king was disappointed. Most of them 
 answered that such a marriage, with a papal dispensation, 
 would be valid. The answer of the Bishop of Rochester 
 has been preserved, and, as it contains the pith of all the 
 books he subsequently wrote on the subject, I will give it in 
 a literal translation. It is addressed to Cardinal Wolsey, 
 and, after the salutation, continues : " Having now con- 
 sulted all the mute teachers (as they say) whom I could get 
 in my hands, and diligently sorted their opinions, and 
 
 * Harpsneld's Pretended Divorce, p. 258. The passage referred 
 to is Ezech. xiv. 3-10, which is most apposite to this whole history. 
 It is quoted and shown to be apposite by Cardinal Pole, in the third 
 book of his answer to Henry, called De Unitate Ecclesice.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 151 
 
 weighed their reasons, I find, just as I lately wrote to your 
 Eminence, that there is great divergence between them. 
 Some assert that the matter in hand is prohibited by Divine 
 law ; others, again, strongly maintain that it is in no way 
 repugnant to Divine law. After weighing impartially over 
 and over again the reasons on both sides, I think I per- 
 ceive an easy reply to all the arguments of those who assert 
 that it is prohibited by Divine law, but no easy reply to 
 those of the other side. So that I am now thoroughly con- 
 vinced that it can by no means be proved to be prohibited 
 by any Divine law that is now in force, that a brother marry 
 the wife of his brother deceased without children. 
 
 " If this is true, and I have no doubt that it is most cer- 
 tainly true, who can deny, considering the plenitude of power 
 which Christ has conferred on the Sovereign Pontiff, that the 
 pope may dispense, for some very grave reason, for such a 
 marriage ? 
 
 " Even if I granted that the reasons on either side were 
 evenly balanced, and that the difficulties on each side could 
 be solved with equal ease, I should nevertheless be more 
 inclined to give the power of dispensation to the Pontiff, for 
 this reason that the theologians of both sides grant that it 
 belongs to the plenitude of the pontifical office to interpret 
 ambiguous places of Holy Scripture, having heard the judg- 
 ment of theologians and jurists. Otherwise to no purpose 
 Christ would have said : ' Whatsoever thou shall loose on 
 earth shall be loosed in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt 
 bind on earth shall be bound in heaven '. Now, as it is 
 most evident that by their very acts the Sovereign Pontiffs 
 have more than once declared that it is lawful in the case 
 mentioned to dispense in favour of the second brother, this 
 alone would powerfully move me to give my assent, even if 
 they alleged no reasons or proofs. From these premisses no 
 scruple or hesitation remains in my mind about the matter. 
 I wish your eminence long life and happiness."
 
 152 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 The above letter was written from Rochester, in May and 
 enclosed by Wolsey in a letter sent by him to the king on 
 2nd June, 1527.* 
 
 However secretly these proceedings were carried on, they 
 soon got generally rumoured and came to the ears of the 
 queen. She asked an explanation of the king, who pleaded 
 the torment of his conscience at his probable stale of mortal 
 sin, and declared that he only sought light and peace. He 
 even asked her to choose a separate residence till the matter 
 should be decided. This she declined, and demanded to 
 have counsel given her both in England and elsewhere ; but 
 the king pressed the importance of secrecy upon her.f Both 
 he and Wolsey seem to have suspected that she gained her 
 information from Fisher, which was not the case. 
 
 It had been determined that Wolsey should go on an 
 embassy into France, and he visited Rochester on his way. 
 Nine hundred horsemen rode with the cardinal, besides a 
 multitude of attendants. They started on 3rd July, 1527, 
 and the first night rested at Sir John Wiltshire's, near Dart- 
 ford. There Wolsey was met by the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury. Wolsey told him that the queen had discovered the 
 collusive suit, and that the king had assured her they were 
 only " searching out the truth, on occasion of doubts moved 
 by the Bishop of Tarbes. Which fashion and manner liked 
 my Lord of Canterbury very well." From the whole con- 
 text of this communication of Wolsey to the king it would 
 seem that Warham was overreached, and persuaded of the 
 good faith of the whole proceedings. And as he had been 
 originally averse to the marriage in the time of Henry VII., 
 it was not difficult to convince him that the case might be 
 reopened. 
 
 The next day the cardinal slept at Rochester, in the 
 
 Pocock, Records, i. 9; State Papers, i. 189. Also, but abridged, 
 in Letters and Papers, iv., part ii., n. 3148. 
 t Friedmann, i. 53; Brewer, ii. 193, 204.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 153 
 
 bishop's palace; "the rest of his train," says Cavendish, "in 
 the city, and in Stroud on this side of the bridge".* 'The 
 day after the cardinal reached Faversham, and thence wrote 
 to the king a long account of his interview with Warham 
 and Fisher.t He had begun by talking with Fisher on the 
 calamities of the Church, and what plans were devised for 
 the pope's release, " as well in prayer and fasting as other 
 good deeds," he added, to please the bishop. " After 
 which communication I asked him whether he had heard 
 lately any tidings from the Court, and whether any man had 
 been sent unto him from the queen's grace. At which 
 question he somewhat stayed and paused ; nevertheless in 
 conclusion he answered how truth it is that of late one was 
 sent unto him from the queen's grace, who brought him a 
 message only by mouth, without disclosure of any parti- 
 cularity, that certain matters there were between your grace 
 and her lately chanced, wherein she would be glad to 
 have his counsel, alleging that your highness was content 
 she should so have. Whereunto, as he saith, he made 
 answer likewise by mouth, that he was ready and prone to 
 give her his counsel in anything that concerned and touched 
 only herself; but in matters concerning your highness and 
 her, he would nothing do, without knowledge of your plea- 
 sure and express commandment, and herewith dismissed the 
 messenger. 
 
 <! After declaration whereof, I replied and said, ' My lord, 
 ye and I have been of an old acquaintance, and the one 
 hath loved and trusted the other ; wherefore, postponing all 
 doubt and fear, ye may be frank and plain with me, like as 
 I, for my part, will be with you '. And so I demanded of 
 him whether he had any special conjecture or knowledge 
 what the matter should be wherein the queen desired to 
 have his advice. Whereunto he answered, that by certain 
 
 * Life of Wolsey, p. 69 (Morley's edition, 1885). 
 
 f State Papers, i. 196; Brewer's Reign of Henry, ii. 193-198.
 
 154 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 report and relation he knew nothing; howbeit, upon con- 
 jecture arising upon such things as he had heard, he 
 thinketh it was for a divorce to be had between your 
 highness and the queen. Which to conject he was specially 
 moved, upon a tale brought unto him by his brother from 
 London, who showed, that being there in a certain company, 
 he heard say that things were set forth, sounding to such a 
 purpose ; whereupon calling to remembrance the question I 
 moved unto him by your grace's commandment,* with the 
 message sent unto him from the queen, he verily supposed 
 such a matter to be in hand. And this was all he knoweth 
 therein, as he constantly affirmeth ; without that ever he 
 sent any word or knowledge thereof, by his faith, to the 
 queen's grace, or any other living person." 
 
 Wolsey then began to pretend to be very confidential. 
 The king, he said, had bid him reveal his secret to Fisher, 
 upon oath of secrecy, and obtain his opinion through Wolsey. 
 He then told the story about the Bishop of Tarbes, and how 
 the bishop's objections were to be discussed by Wolsey in 
 France in this very embassy.f "And thus declaring the 
 whole matter unto him at length, as was devised with your 
 highness in York Place, I added that, by what means it was 
 not yet apprehended, an inkling of this matter is come to the 
 queen's knowledge ; who being suspicious, and casting 
 further doubts than was meant or intended, hath broken 
 with your grace thereof, after a very displeasant manner, 
 saying that by my procurement and setting forth, a divorce 
 was purposed between her and your highness." He then 
 went on, according to his own account, to calumniate the 
 
 * The theological doubt to which he had given a written answer. 
 
 t Mr. Brewer remarks that the matter was never mooted in France, 
 and considers the whole thing a pure fiction. However, the Venetian 
 ambassador, Venier, writes that the Bishop of Tarbes made his 
 objection by Wolsey's advice, who wanted to marry the king to the 
 French king's sister.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 155 
 
 queen as making the matter public. "And I assure your 
 grace, my Lord of Rochester, hearing the process of the 
 matter after this sort, did greatly blame the queen, as well 
 for giving so light credence in so grave a matter," as for her 
 imprudent want of secrecy, which might endanger peace and 
 imperil the succession to the Crown. The good bishop even 
 wished to show her fault to the queen, " considering that 
 the thing done by your grace was so necessary and expedient 
 and the queen's act so perilous. Howbeit I have so persuaded 
 him that he will nothing speak or do therein, or anything 
 counsel her, but as shall stand with your pleasure ; for, he 
 saith, although she be queen of this realm, yet he acknow- 
 ledgeth you for his high sovereign lord and king." 
 
 Thus the king and Wolsey, by tricks and lies, sought to 
 blind the man they most feared, depriving the queen of her 
 counsellor, and persuading him that the king was only intent 
 on assuring the legitimacy of his daughter against objections, 
 while the queen by her indiscretion was imperilling it. The 
 cardinal went on to discuss the difficulties in the bull of 
 dispensation granted by Julius. But on this head he could 
 not get much from the bishop ; who, after all, probably saw 
 through the whole deceit. 
 
 It is almost a pleasure to know that the king was trying 
 in secret to outwit Wolsey himself, and by means of his 
 envoy, Dr. Knight, to carry his point with the pope, then in 
 captivity.* But with the negotiations with the pope which 
 filled the next year Fisher is not connected, and they must 
 be passed over here. One thing only it is important 
 to remark. Though the original grounds of seeking a 
 divorce were that Pope Julius had gone beyond his powers 
 in dispensing for Henry's marriage, and this was the final 
 issue on which Henry's creature, Cranmer, pronounced the 
 divorce, yet there was no possible or impossible exercise of 
 
 * Brewer, ii. 220.
 
 I5 6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 papal authoiity which was not conceived and proposed 
 during the course of the negotiations by the king and his 
 advisers, and which would not have been admitted without 
 question if in favour of his own passions. He would have 
 accepted a dispensation to commit bigamy, or he would 
 have sent Catharine into a nunnery, and taken a vow of 
 chastity himself, on condition of being presently dispensed, 
 if by such a pretext the marriage could have been dissolved.* 
 He would have played fast and loose with the pope's 
 jurisdiction, asking him, in the same breath, to declare it 
 limited as regards the impediment arising from affinity with 
 Catharine, and unlimited as regards affinity with Anne. 
 Mr. Friedmann is severe but is accurate when he says : 
 " Machiavelli would have turned with disgust from so 
 miserable a liar. Henry was a liar to his own conscience. 
 He was a thoroughly immoral man, and he dared not own 
 it to himself. He tried by all kinds of casuistic subterfuges 
 to make his most dishonest acts appear pure virtue, to 
 make himself believe in his own goodness." f And though 
 Bishop Stubbs has a higher estimate of Henry's character 
 and ability than Mr. Friedmann, yet in this respect their 
 judgments do not much differ : " I seem to see in him," 
 writes the bishop, "a grand, gross figure, very far removed 
 from ordinary human sympathies, self-engrossed, self-con- 
 fident, self-willed ; unscrupulous in act, violent, and crafty, 
 but justifying to himself, by his belief in himself, both unscru- 
 pulousness, violence, and craft ". J Bishop Stubbs would 
 
 * Brewer, ii. 312. Henry even assured the queen that if she 
 should enter religion the pope could not dispense the king to marry 
 again, since he had no power to do it ; and at the very time he was 
 urging the pope to such a stretch of power (Ibid., p. 317). 
 
 f Anne Boleyn, i. 17. 
 
 J Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 290. M. Du 
 Boys, in his Catharine d'Aragon, has probably summed up Henry's 
 character best of all, when he calls him a compound of Nero and 
 Tartuffe.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 157 
 
 explain this portent as the result of uncontrolled, uncontra- 
 dicted, irresponsible power long exercised. There is per- 
 haps a more secret but more profound cause that should be 
 added hypocritical and sacrilegious communions. Towards 
 the beginning of July, 1528, when the terrible " sweating 
 sickness " was carrying off its victims by thousands, Henry 
 sent Anne away, and went to confession. " This day, his 
 highness, like a gracious prince, hath received his Maker at 
 the friars (at Greenwich), which was ministered to his high- 
 ness by my Lord of Lincoln." Thus wrote one of his atten- 
 dants to Wolsey. " I hear he has made his will and taken 
 the Sacraments, for fear of sudden death," wrote the French 
 ambassador.* Yet he did not put a stop to his vile corre- 
 spondence with Anne, nor interrupt his unjust and sacri- 
 legious projects in case he should escape. During the 
 following years, when he was living in open adultery, he 
 interrupted none of his usual communions at Christmas, 
 Easter, and Whitsuntide.f I mention these things, because 
 they are passed over by historians as trivial, though in all 
 probability they are the turning-points in men's lives and in 
 the history of nations. 
 
 It is more than insinuated by some that the pope was as 
 double-dealing and reckless of justice as either king or 
 cardinal, and that if he did not grant the divorce, it was 
 from calculations of self-interest and fear of the emperor. 
 Were this the case, the issue would show the overruling 
 Providence of God in not allowing an unworthy pope to do 
 an unworthy thing. But I can see no proof of the fact 
 alleged. He was explicitly threatened over and over again 
 by the king, by Wolsey,^ by Parliament, by the king's 
 
 * Brewer, ii. 273. 
 
 t The Privy Purse expenses mention the offerings made on these 
 occasions. 
 
 t One specimen may suffice. Wolsey wrote : " I cannot conceal 
 my fears lest his majesty, relying on the Divine and human rights
 
 158 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 agents, that to refuse the king's demand was to lose 
 England for ever. He did at last refuse, saying that if 
 England was to be lost, it was better that it should be lost 
 by justice than by injustice. But for nearly six years he 
 dallied with the king, and protracted the suit by every 
 possible device that was not criminal. It may be that, had 
 he followed a different policy, and taken decided and 
 strong measures from the beginning, he would have served 
 justice better, and even saved England to the Church. 
 There were many who thought so then, and the Bishop of 
 Rochester (as will be seen later on) was among the number. 
 But the matter was uncertain, and it was a question of 
 policy. The pope was in hopes that by mild answers and 
 by delay he might weary out the king. He even en- 
 couraged hopes that he knew were fallacious. He appeared 
 to entertain propositions that he knew were absurd, and 
 allowed them to be discussed by theologians. But that he 
 either did anything or promised anything that was simply 
 illicit has not been proved. Sir Gregory Casale, Henry's 
 agent in Italy, wrote to his brother Vincent, then in England : 
 " I hear you have told Wolsey that, if the pope's fears were 
 removed, he would do everything for the king, licita et 
 illicit a. But, if you remember rightly, I told you the pope 
 would do all that could be done ; but there are many things 
 the pope says he cannot do." The English ambassadors also 
 reported a saying of the pope's that " though the king's 
 cause might be in his Pater Noster, it had no place in his 
 Creed," meaning (I suppose) that, however much he might 
 
 belonging to him as a Christian, should he find that he is frustrated 
 of the grace of the Apostolic See and the clemency of the Vicar of 
 Christ, by the favour of Csesar, to whom it in no way belongs to 
 oppose such holy purposes, will take measures and seek remedies, 
 which may give occasion not only to this kingdom, but to other 
 Christian princes also, to diminish and slight the authority and 
 jurisdiction of the Apostolic See " (Burnet's Collect., p. 16). This is 
 one of the earliest and mildest of the threats.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 159 
 
 wish and pray for the king's prosperity, he could not 
 promote it by sacrificing any point of Catholic faith or 
 discipline.* 
 
 To return to Fisher. After Wolsey's insidious interview 
 with him in July, 1527, more than fifteen months passed 
 before his name appears again in connection with this 
 matter. He was watching its progress with great anxiety, 
 praying and studying, but the king's spies were watching 
 him lest he should lend assistance to the queen. At last 
 the pope's legate Campeggio arrived in England in October, 
 1528. His first endeavour was to reconcile the king to his 
 present marriage ; and as the king had called in question the 
 validity of the dispensation of Pope Julius, by which he had 
 contracted marriage, Campeggio in the pope's name offered 
 to grant a new dispensation, so that by renewal of consent 
 the marriage might be revalidated in case it were invalid. 
 But in spite of Henry's professions of love for Catharine 
 this would not have served his purpose. He therefore 
 threw his conscientious scruples on the uncertainty of the 
 pope's power to grant any such dispensation, as being con- 
 trary to the law of God. Campeggio writes : " He told me 
 plainly he wanted nothing more than a declaration whether 
 this marriage was valid or not, he himself always assuming 
 its invalidity ; and I believe if an angel descended from 
 heaven, he would not be able to convince his majesty to the 
 contrary ".f Wolsey also, though he was one of the judges 
 who was to hear evidence and pronounce impartially, was 
 equally determined, and sought to determine his colleague, 
 not by arguing the merits of the case, but by reasons of 
 State. " In my last conversation with his lordship," writes 
 Campeggio, "he said and repeated it many times in Latin : 
 'Most reverend lord, beware lest, in like manner as the 
 greater part of Germany, owing to the harshness and severity 
 
 * Letters and Papers, iv. 2333, 2370. f Brewer, ii. 298.
 
 l6o BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 of a certain cardinal, has become estranged from the Apos- 
 tolic See and the Faith, it should be said that another 
 cardinal has given the same occasion to England with the 
 same result '." * The legate had also an interview with the 
 queen. She was very prudent. " She concluded the con- 
 ference," he writes, " by saying she was a lone woman and 
 a stranger, without friend or adviser, and intended to ask 
 the king for counsellors." t 
 
 It was considered certain that, if allowed to choose, the 
 queen would select the Bishop of Rochester in the first 
 place, nor could the king in decency refuse her request. As 
 he had therefore tried to gain over the bishop by means of 
 Wolsey, he now attempts the same thing by means of Cam- 
 peggio. It has been always held that, even after a marriage 
 has been validly contracted, if before its consummation one 
 of the parties should make solemn profession in a religious 
 order, the contract is dissolved. Some canonists were seek- 
 ing in this fact a solution for Henry's difficulties. They 
 seem to have argued that if an unconsummated marriage of 
 certain validity could be thus broken, a marriage of doubtful 
 validity (as they assumed this to be), even though it had lasted 
 for twenty years, might be set aside by papal dispensation, 
 if Catharine would take a vow of chastity in some religious 
 order. Though this scheme was rejected by all theologians 
 when it came to be seriously discussed, it must have been 
 entertained for a time by Campeggio. " I do not despair," 
 he writes, " of success in persuading the queen to enter some 
 religion, though I see it is difficult, and more than doubtful. 
 ... As the Bishop of Rochester is in her favour, and I 
 believe she will choose him as one of her counsellors, with 
 the king's consent, I had a long interview with him on the 
 25th, J and exhorted him to adopt this course for many 
 reasons. When he left me he seemed to be satisfied with 
 
 * Brewer, ii. 299. t Ibid., p. 302. 
 
 J Sunday, 25th October, 1528.
 
 THE DIVORCE. l6l 
 
 what I had urged. God grant that the best counsels may 
 prevail."* Campeggio, however, was mistaken, or else the 
 bishop, on reflection, saw the matter in another light. 
 
 The queen asked for counsellors. The king appointed 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Rochester,t 
 Bath, and London, the queen's confessor, Thomes Abel, 
 and others. Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was 
 a man of high character, of great learning, and a distinguished 
 canonist, but he was not a fit counsellor for the queen, 
 having opposed the marriage originally, and having taken 
 action against it in instituting the collusive suit. He stood 
 also in great dread of the king's anger The Bishop of 
 London, Cuthbert Tunstal, was also a man of great emi- 
 nence, and he seems to have been faithful though somewhat 
 timid. The conduct of Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 
 was vacillating. Thomas Abel, the queen's confessor, proved 
 his character and courage when he laid down his life for the 
 faith in 1540. To these were soon added Standish, the 
 Bishop of St. Asaph's, a Franciscan, whose attack on clerical 
 immunity had gained him the king's favour in 1515, and 
 West, Bishop of Ely, a man of great piety and charity as 
 well as learning. The queen had never shown the least 
 disposition to accept the plan proposed to her by Campeggio, 
 and she was encouraged in this resolution by her counsellors, 
 especially by Fisher. J 
 
 Eight months more passed before the cause was brought 
 into the Legatine Court. The reasons of this delay I may 
 pass over. The interval was spent by the Bishop of 
 Rochester in a profound study of the whole question of im- 
 
 * Brewer, ii. 302. 
 
 t I do not understand why Mr. Brewer says (p. 339, note) that 
 Fisher was not one of the counsellors. He himself quotes, at p. 303, 
 Campeggio's words that he was appointed. See also the words of 
 the Duke of Norfolk, quoted infra, p. 165. The bishop also distinctly 
 asserts it (Lewis, ii. 403). 
 
 J Brewer, ii. 306. 
 
 I*
 
 1 62 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 pediments of marriage in Scripture, in history, and in canon 
 law. On this we have his own testimony. Some years 
 later, when Fisher was imprisoned, the officials who were 
 sent to Rochester to seize his goods for the king came 
 upon some letters of a mysterious nature, which suggested 
 to the ingenuity of some of the privy councillors no less 
 than forty interrogations.* I extract all that is of import- 
 ance. The bishop says he never addressed the Lady 
 Catharine in private, except in the time the king commanded 
 him to give her counsel, f To the question how many 
 books he had written concerning the king's matrimony and 
 divorce, he says: "I am not certain of the number, but I 
 think seven or eight. The matter was so serious, both on 
 account of the importance of the persons concerned, and on 
 account of the injunction given me by the king, that I 
 devoted more attention to examining the truth of it, lest I 
 should deceive myself and others, than to anything else in 
 my life." It should be noted that by the word " book " in 
 those days was not meant a printed book, or even a written 
 book of any great size. Any treatise of a few sheets was 
 called a book. The bishop enlarged or rewrote his disser- 
 tations according as new books appeared on the other side. 
 To the question : How many copies have been made of 
 them, and in whose hands are they? he replies : " I do not 
 know, nor was I very careful about the others, but only of 
 the two last written by me, and which contained the pith of 
 the former ones. One of these the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury now hath." (This was Cranmer, as the bishop is writing 
 in 1534.) "I never sent nor consented to the sending of 
 
 * The questions are given in Letters and Papers, viii. 859, and the 
 answers (abridged) in English. The answers however, in Latin, are 
 given in full by Lewis (ii. 403), but without the questions. 
 
 t " Ego nunquam clanculo sum allocutus dictam D. Katherinam 
 citra id temporis, quo Regia Majestas in mandatis mini dederat, ut 
 essem illi in consiliis in ipsius negotio."
 
 THE DIVORCE. 163 
 
 any of these books over the sea. I never counselled Abel, 
 or consented to the publishing of his book, neither had he 
 any book of mine, to my knowledge." 
 
 It would seem that some spiritual letters addressed by the 
 bishop to the queen had come into the hands of Henry; 
 being probably stolen from the queen by some of his spies 
 in her service. Not only had he the abominable meanness 
 and impiety to read these, he even put infamous construc- 
 tions on them, showed them to his council, and allowed 
 Cromwell to found on them a series of interrogations 
 addressed to the bishop : " Whether he wrote any letter to 
 the Lady Catharine, as if she despaired of the mercy of 
 God ? Whether the cause of the despair was that she com- 
 mitted perjury, and, as some say, received the Host that she 
 was never carnally known by Prince Arthur ? " The bishop 
 replies : " The king knows right well that by his own consent 
 the Lady Catharine sent for me more than once, on account 
 of certain scruples of conscience, and that long before this 
 business was begun. To allay her scruples I used many 
 words viva voce, and afterwards wrote some letters. I never 
 heard from her that she despaired of mercy or had com- 
 mitted perjury ; but whatever I may have written, it was 
 with the purpose that she should lay aside scruples and 
 strengthen her mind in hope and confidence in the promises 
 of Christ." 
 
 This document, to which too little attention has been 
 paid, sinks Henry to the level of King Wenceslas and other 
 violators of sacramental secrecy ; and, on the other hand, 
 since it is certain that Henry's hatred towards Fisher was 
 founded on the confidence given to him by the queen, it 
 places the Bishop of Rochester with St. John Nepomucen 
 and other martyrs of the sacrament of penance.* 
 
 * With regard to the books mentioned in the text, Fisher says he 
 wrote seven or eight. Some were printed in Spain ; one by Michael 
 de Eguia in 1530 (Brunei), one at Alcala (Compluti) in August, 1530;
 
 164 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 To complete what can be said of Fisher's relations with 
 the queen, I will here give Chapuys' account of the queen's 
 reference to it in June, 1531. At that date the king was 
 striving to induce the queen to retract her appeal to the 
 
 De Causa Matrimonii Ser.-Regis Anglic Liber, Joanne Roffensi 
 episcopo auctore (84 pages in Latin). Vaughan, an envoy of Crom- 
 well, writes to him from Antwerp, 3rd August, 1533, that he has been 
 inquiring as to the author and publisher there of a Latin book against 
 the king's cause. He has been told that the book was written by the 
 Bishop of Rochester, and delivered by him to the Spaniards in Eng- 
 land, who finished the draft, and that friars Peto and Elstow of Canter- 
 bury are conveyers of -the same into England. He suggests that the 
 bishop's house should be searched, as the first copy will be probably 
 found there. He adds that the bishop delivered his copy to the Spa- 
 niards, who transcribed it in haste, unknown to the bishop, and that it 
 is intermingled with Greek and Spanish (State Papers, vii. 372, and 
 Letters and Papers, vi. 934). There is frequent reference to Fisher's 
 writings on this subject in the correspondence of the imperial ambas- 
 sador. On 6th February, 1530, he writes : " Since my last the Bishop 
 of Rochester has finished revising the book which he lately wrote, and 
 which he sent to your majesty. Since then he has written another, 
 which the queen has forwarded at the request of the bishop, to be 
 examined at leisure, though he fears to be known as the author " (Let- 
 ters, iv. 6199). On 27th November, 1530, he writes again that the king's 
 party were going to circulate in England the votes of the universities 
 in favour of the king. " If they do, it will be better to get attestation 
 of the votes in favour of the queen, and circulate some books, as 
 Fisher's were circulated in Spain. Some thought he would be annoyed, 
 and feared the king's displeasure ; but the king has shown himself 
 quite indifferent. I have commissioned May to get the bishop's two 
 later books printed, and will distribute them at the opening of Parlia- 
 ment." On 4th December, 1530, he writes : "The Bishop of Rochester 
 has written another book in favour of the queen, now sent". MS. 
 copies of some of these treatises are in the Record Office, the British 
 Museum, and Cambridge University Library. The library of St. 
 John's College, Cambridge, possesses one of his printed books. But 
 his most important and latest treatise, written in answer to the official 
 book which came out in 1530 in favour of the king, with the suffrages 
 of certain universities, was translated into English (with some abridg- 
 ment) by Archdeacon Harpsfield, and makes the first part of his 
 Treatise on the Divorce. This treatise was first printed in 1878 for 
 the Camden Society, with the excellent notes of Mr. Pocock.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 165 
 
 pope, and to allow her cause to be tiled elsewhere. He 
 sent to her the principal members of his council. They 
 were quite unsuccessful in their mission. Among other 
 things, the Duke of Norfolk told her that she had no reason 
 to complain of partiality in England, for she had had the 
 most complete counsel, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the 
 Bishops of Durham,* Rochester, and others. The queen 
 replied that they were fine counsellors, for when she asked 
 advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, he replied that he 
 would not meddle in these affairs, saying frequently : " Ira 
 principis mors est " ; the Bishop of Durham said he dared 
 not, for he was the king's subject and vassal ; Rochester 
 told her to keep up her courage, and that was all the counsel 
 she got from them. Such is the account given by Eustace 
 Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, and he probably heard it 
 from the queen herself, t Words spoken in warmth by a 
 woman ill-treated and insulted, and then taunted with the 
 generosity of her persecutor, must not be pressed beyond 
 their meaning. There is every reason indeed to think that 
 Warham and Tunstal were but faint-hearted defenders or 
 counsellors ; but this cannot be said of Fisher. From the 
 day the question was mooted in the spring of 1527 till the 
 eve of Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn he did not cease 
 to defend the queen's cause by his pen and in the pulpit.:}: 
 Nor can the queen have forgotten his bold defence of her 
 rights before the Legatine Court in 1529. This must be 
 now related. 
 
 After long delays Cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey 
 opened their court in the great hall at Blackfriars, on the 
 last day of May, 1529, citing the king and queen to appear 
 
 * Tunstal had been translated to Durham in 1530. 
 
 \- Letters and Papers, v. 287. 
 
 j When, however, he saw the case hopeless, and that he could not 
 advance the queen's cause, he ceased to give advice, except in matters 
 of conscience, as he admits in his answer to Question 21. (Lewis, U. 
 405-)
 
 1 66 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 on the 1 8th June. On that day the king appeared by 
 proxy, the queen in person, and protested against the juris- 
 diction of the court. The cardinals promised to decide on 
 the validity of the appeal on the 2ist. Both king and 
 queen appeared. The event has been made famous by 
 Shakespeare, who gathered his account from '.he chroniclers. 
 But I will transcribe the more authentic account, written 
 only a few days after the event by eye-witnesses. Ludovico 
 Falier, the Venetian ambassador, wrote, on the 2glh : " The 
 cardinal judges assembled in a hall, on a raised platform, 
 the queen having preceded them, followed by the king, who 
 was the first to seat himself under a canopy of gold brocade 
 on the right, the queen being on the left, under another 
 canopy on a lower level. The king then said a few words 
 to the judges in English, to the effect that he would no 
 longer remain in mortal sin, as he had done during the last 
 twenty years, and that he should never be at ease until the 
 rights of this marriage were decided, requesting the judges 
 to despatch the case. Cardinal Wolsey replied that, although 
 he had received infinite benefits from his majesty, and was 
 declared suspected, yet, as this case had been committed to 
 him and Cardinal Campeggio by the pope, he would judge 
 it according to such reason as his poor ability supplied, 
 saying that he was unworthy to judge such a case, but 
 would, nevertheless, not omit to do what appeared to him 
 just. The queen then rose, and, throwing herself on her 
 knees before the king, said aloud that she had lived for 
 twenty years with his majesty as his lawful wife, keeping her 
 faith to him, and that she did not deserve to be repudiated 
 and thus put to shame without a cause, and she besought 
 the said judges to show her favour. The queen said 
 nothing more ; and the king sent for his privy councillors, 
 with whom he remained for half-an-hour, after which the 
 judges prorogued the term until the 22nd. On that day, 
 two bishops appeared as advocates and proctors for the
 
 THE DIVORCE. 167 
 
 queen, namely, the Bishop of Rochester and the Bishop of 
 Bath, saying that, to prevent the king falling into mortal sin, 
 they would defend the rights of the queen, and show that 
 she was his legitimate and true wife; and they presented 
 the writ of appeal, rejecting the judges as suspected, so that 
 nothing farther was done."* 
 
 On the very day of this famous scene, Cardinal Campeggio 
 wrote to Salviati in Rome, not, indeed, a full description of 
 what had happened, for that was not his scope, but an 
 account of the queen's appeal. He says that she knelt, 
 although the king twice raised her up, and asked permission, 
 as it was a question which concerned the honour and con- 
 science of herself and of the house of Spain, to write and 
 send messengers to the emperor and to his holiness.f All 
 communication hitherto had been refused her. Cavendish, 
 in his Life of Wolsey, writing many years later, and from 
 recollection, not only amplifies the queen's speech, but puts 
 into the mouth of the king, after the queen's departure from 
 the court, a long declaration of the queen's virtue and his 
 own esteem and love for her. But this seems to be a 
 reminiscence of the speech I have given above, which he 
 made to the citizens of London in the same place (Black- 
 friars) at the first arrival of the legate. Cavendish also 
 refers to this occasion a somewhat sharp contention between 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Rochester 
 in the king's presence, which cannot be an invention of his 
 own, though it is not recorded by any other writer, and pro- 
 bably took place on some other occasion. The king, 
 according to Cavendish, declared that, in moving- this 
 question, he was following the advice given to him by all 
 his prelates. "'That is truth, if it please your highness,' 
 quoth the Bishop of Canterbury ; ' I doubt not but all my 
 
 * Cat. of Venetian State Papers, iv. 482. 
 
 t The letter is in the Appendix to Mr. Gairdner's edition of 
 Mr. Brewer's Introductions, in Reign of Henry, ii. 491.
 
 1 68 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 brethren will affirm the same.' ' No, sir, not I,' quoth the 
 Bishop of Rochester; 'ye have not my consent thereto.' 
 ' No ! ha' thee ! ' quoth the king ; ' look here upon this, is 
 not this your hand and seal ? ' and showed him the instru- 
 ment with seals. ' No, forsooth, sire,' quoth the Bishop of 
 Rochester, ' it is not my hand nor seal.' To that quoth the 
 king to my Lord of Canterbury, ' Sir, how say ye, is it not 
 his hand and seal ? ' ' Yes, sir,' quoth my Lord of Canter- 
 bury. ' That is not so,' quoth the Bishop of Rochester, 
 ' for, indeed, you were in hand with me to have both my 
 hand and seal, as other of my lords had already done ; but 
 then I said to you that I would never consent to no such 
 act, for it were much against my conscience ; nor my hand 
 and seal should never be seen to any such instrument, God 
 willing, with much more matter touching the same com- 
 munication between us.' 'You say truth,' quoth the Bishop 
 of Canterbury ; ' such words ye said to me ; but at the last 
 ye were fully persuaded that I should for you subscribe your 
 name, and put to a seal myself, and ye would allow the 
 same.' ' All which words and matter,' quoth the Bishop of 
 Rochester, ' under your correction, my lord, and supporta- 
 tion of this noble audience, there is nothing more untrue.' 
 ' Well, well,' quoth the king, ' it shall make no matter ; we 
 will not stand with you in argument herein, for you are 
 but one man.' And with that the court was adjourned."* 
 Such is Cavendish's account. The dialogue is his own 
 composition, a quarter of a century after the occurrence, 
 but that there was an altercation of this sort cannot be 
 doubted. There exists at the present day an instrument 
 with Fisher's signature and seal, but dated at a later period 
 (ist July), in which he, with the other bishops, states that 
 the king had consulted them on the divorce, and that they 
 considered that he had great reasons for his scruples. t This 
 
 * Life of Wolsey, p. 121 (ed. Morley). f Rymer, xiv. 301.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 169 
 
 is probably the document which Fisher repudiated as regards 
 himself. 
 
 Cavendish tells another tale of an altercation between the 
 Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal Wolsey. When many 
 witnesses had been heard on both sides regarding the facts 
 of Catharine's first marriage, someone observed that in such 
 condradictions no man coul.d know the truth. " ' Yes,' 
 quoth the Bishop of Rochester, ' I know the truth.' ' How 
 know you the truth? 'quoth my lord cardinal. 'Forsooth, 
 my lord,' quoth he, ' I am professor of the Truth. I know 
 that God is Truth itself, nor He never spake but truth, who 
 saith : What God hath joined together, let not man put 
 asunder. And forasmuch as this marriage was made and 
 joined by God to a good intent, I say that I know the truth, 
 the which cannot be broken or loosed by the power of man 
 upon no feigned occasion.' 'So much doth all faithful men 
 know,' quoth my lord cardinal, ' as well as you. Yet this 
 reason is not sufficient in this case, for the king's counsel 
 doth allege divers presumptions, to prove the marriage not 
 good at the beginning ; ergo, say they, it was not joined at 
 the beginning, and therefore it is not lawful.' " 
 
 The cardinal, however, knew well the bishop's meaning 
 that the whole trial was a piece of elaborate hypocrisy. 
 Henry's pains of conscience and scruples about his state of 
 mortal sin and his desire to arrive at truth, and Wolsey's 
 affectation of justice and impartiality, were known, not only 
 to Fisher, but to all men, to be lies, and Fisher's heart 
 sickened at the cruel and impious farce. 
 
 Cardinal Campeggio, however, though he had a part to 
 play, was an upright judge and an admirer of honesty. In 
 one of his letters he bears the following testimony to the 
 boldness of the Bishop of Rochester's advocacy. He writes 
 to Salviati in Italy on the 2Qth June, 1529 : "Yesterday the 
 fifth audience was given. While the proceedings were going 
 on as usual, owing to the queen's contumacy, the Bishop of
 
 1 70 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Rochester made his appearance, and said, in an appropriate 
 speech, that in a former audience he had heard the king's 
 majesty discuss the cause, and testify before all that his only 
 intention was to get justice done, and to relieve himself of 
 the scruple that he had on his conscience, inviting both the 
 judges and everyone else to throw some light en the investi- 
 gation of the cause, because on this account he found his 
 mind much distressed and perplexed. If, on this offer and 
 command of the king, he (the bishop) did not come forward 
 in public and manifest what he had discovered in this matter 
 after two years' most diligent study [he would be guilty]. 
 Therefore, both in order not to procure the damnation of 
 his soul, and in order not to be unfaithful to the king, or to 
 fail in doing the duty which he owed to the truth, in a 
 matter of such great importance, he presented himself before 
 :heir reverend lordships to declare, to affirm, and with 
 forcible reasons to demonstrate to them that this marriage 
 of the king and queen can be dissolved by no power, 
 human or Divine, and for this opinion he declared he 
 would even lay down his life. He added that the Baptist 
 in olden times regarded it as impossible for him to die 
 more gloriously than in the cause of marriage ; and that 
 as it was not so holy at that time as it has now become 
 by the shedding of Christ's Blood, he (the bishop) could 
 encourage himself more ardently, more effectually, and 
 with greater confidence to dare any great or extreme peril 
 whatever. He used many other suitable words, and at 
 the end presented the book which had been written by 
 him on the subject. 
 
 " After him the Bishop of St. Asaph's (Standish), of the 
 Minorite order, spoke, and expressed nearly the same opi- 
 nion, but with less polished eloquence and in briefer terms, 
 and he offered several comments. Then followed a doctor, 
 called the dean of the arches, president of the court of Can- 
 terbury (Peter Ligham), who alleged various arguments from
 
 THE DIVORCE. I? I 
 
 the sacred canons in favour of the marriage, which were not 
 very cogent. 
 
 " The Cardinal of York replied to all of them, that in the 
 first place he was surprised they had attacked them (the 
 legates?) without warning; next, that they stood and sat 
 there to hear all things connected with the cause, and to do 
 for the sake of justice whatever the Divine Wisdom should 
 inspire them to do. The proceedings then continued. On 
 account of her non-appearance, the queen was pronounced 
 contumacious, but she was cited to appear once for all. 
 They determined to examine witnesses respecting her. . . . 
 
 " This affair of Rochester was unexpected and unforeseen, 
 and consequently has kept everybody in wonder. What he 
 will do we shall see when the day comes. You already know 
 what sort of a man he is, and may imagine what is likely to 
 happen." * 
 
 In a letter written by the cardinal's secretary the scene is 
 also related, but he adds, not prophetically: "As this man 
 (the bishop) is a man of good fame, the king can no longer 
 persist in dissolving the marriage; for this man being adverse 
 to it, the kingdom will not permit the queen to suffer 
 wrong ".t 
 
 The French ambassador also, the Bishop of Bayonne, 
 wrote to Francis I. on the same day : " The cause was called 
 on again yesterday, when the king's proctor appeared, and 
 the queen was a second time put in default for non-appear- 
 ance. The Bishop of Rochester, however, who is accounted 
 one of the best and most holy divines in England, especially 
 in his opposition to these last heresies of Luther, was there 
 with other counsellors, but not as her proctor, only to re- 
 monstrate with the judges, offering to prove that she had a 
 good cause by a little book which he had made thereon 
 
 * Theiner, p. 585, and Letters, &c., of Henry VIII., vol. iv., part 
 iii., n. 5732. 
 
 t Lcemmer, Man. Vat., p. 33, and Letters, &c,, n. 5734.
 
 172 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 jointly with his companions, which he then presented, 
 enlarging upon the queen's cause with many wise words. 
 A rather modest answer was made by the judges, that it 
 was not his business to pronounce so decidedly in the 
 matter, as the cause was not committed to him."* 
 
 The statement of the bishop that he was ready to suffer 
 death like St. John Baptist, which so startled the Legatine 
 Court and the world, gave great offence when it was reported 
 to the king, as it naturally suggested a comparison between 
 him and Herod Antipas. There is still in the Record Office 
 a Latin MS. of considerable length, composed by the king 
 himself as an address to the legates in answer to the Bishop 
 of Rochester's speech. " The arrogance of its tone," writes 
 Mr. Brewer ; " the bitter sarcasms levelled at the motives 
 and attainments of the bishop ; the resentment, ill-concealed, 
 at his untimely protest, show how profound was the king's 
 displeasure. The Latin vocabulary is ransacked for its 
 choicest epithets of vituperation, and the whole style of the 
 reply rather resembles the invective of an irritated and angry 
 controversialist than the calm rebuke and dignified bearing 
 of majesty." ' This MS. has been in the bishop's hands, a 
 copy of it having been probably submitted to him by the 
 king, and his annotations are written on the margin. They 
 show how little he was intimidated by the roar of the lion. 
 
 " Men sometimes fail," writes the king, " even the wisest, 
 in their projects; but I never thought, judges, to see the 
 Bishop of Rochester taking upon himself the task of accus- 
 ing me befoie your tribunal an accusation more befitting 
 the malice of a disaffected subject than the character and 
 station of a bishop. I had certainly explained this to 
 Rochester some months ago " (Fisher in the margin, 
 ' ' nearly a year ago ") ; "and not once only, that those scruples 
 of mine respecting my marriage had not been studiously 
 
 * Letters, &c., iv. 5741.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 173 
 
 raked up or causelessly invented. Until the present time 
 Rochester approved of them, and thought them so grave 
 and so momentous that, without consulting the pope re- 
 specting them, he did not think I could recover my tran- 
 quillity of mind." (Fisher in the margin, " / did not say so, 
 but the cardinal would have been glad if I had said so''.)* 
 "When the pope, moved by the judgment of his cardinals 
 and others, considered that the reasons urged were sufficient, 
 and the doubts were such as were worthy the consideration 
 of the ablest judges when he left the whole decision of the 
 cause to your religious determination, and sent you, Cam- 
 peggio, here at great expense, for no other purpose than to 
 decide this cause, what, are we to suppose, could have 
 instigated Rochester to press forward thus imprudently, and 
 thus unseasonably declare his opinion after keeping silence 
 for many months?" (Fisher, "/ was obliged to this by the 
 protestation of the king and the cardinal".} " If, after a study 
 of many years he had clearly discovered what was just, true, 
 and lawful in this most weighty cause, he should have ad- 
 monished me privately again and again, t and not have 
 publicly denounced with such boldness and self-assertion 
 the burthensome reproaches of my conscience. It was his 
 duty, as a religious and obedient prelate, to acquiesce in the 
 sentence of his holiness, who had sent judges here, ad- 
 mitting the necessity of the case, rather than thus accuse the 
 pope of levity, as if the cause which he had remitted here 
 for decision was so clear, easy, and obvious, that it was folly 
 to call it in question." (Fisher, "It is not obvious to alt, but 
 only to those who are compelled to study it".) 
 
 " But, judges, in this bishop we look for those require- 
 ments in vain. Two most pernicious counsellors have taken 
 
 * Has not Cavendish, perhaps, put Warham's name instead cf 
 Wolsey's in the dialogue concerning Fisher's hand and seal at p. 168. 
 
 \ Had Henry's marriage been unlawful, Fisher would not have 
 failed to admonish him.
 
 174 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 possession of him, and agitate all his thoughts unbridled 
 arrogance and overweening temerity." (Fisher, "Arrogance, 
 temerity".} "How else can we account for his assertion 
 that by solid and invincible arguments he will immediately 
 place the naked truth of this cause, without disguise, before 
 the eyes of all men, and defend it even to the flames?" 
 (Fisher, "/ said nothing of that"} "adding that he had 
 better reasons for resisting the dissolution of this marriage 
 than John the Baptist had formerly in the case of Herod. 
 Monstrous assertion, devoid of all modesty and sobriety ! " 
 (Fisher, " What more do I assert than the cardinal, who 
 [affirmed ihai\ he would be burnt or torn limb from limb 
 sooner than act contrary to justice /") " Why talk of fire and 
 flames, and his readiness to submit to them, when he must 
 be fully convinced of my clemency and anxiety to defend 
 and not oppress the truth ? What is the meaning of that 
 comparison of his, in which he endeavours to assimilate 
 his own cause to that of John the Baptist, unless he held 
 the opinion that I was acting like Herod, or attempting 
 some outrage like that of Herod ? * I, judges, never 
 approved of the impiety of Herod, certainly not that which 
 the Gospel condemns in him, wherein we learn by the 
 words of the Baptist that he had taken his brother's sister 
 to wife."t 
 
 "Whatever Fisher may think of me, I have never been 
 guilty of such cruelty. Let him say if ever I have passed a 
 severe sentence upon those who did not seem favourable to 
 
 * The event was to show whether Fisher was mistaken. 
 
 + Fisher writes non intelligo, as well he might ; but we must sup- 
 pose Henry meant " his brother's widow," not " his brother's sister ". 
 Yet she was not a widow. Herod's brother was still alive, and 
 Henry did imitate Herod in adultery, taking another woman while his 
 own wife was living, and that woman being in the same degree of 
 relationship to himself that he affected to hold in horror in his lawful 
 wife.
 
 THE DIVORCE. 175 
 
 this divorce, and did not rather show them the highest 
 favour in proportion to their deserts."* 
 
 The king was fond of repeating this boast, yet there were 
 few who took a prominent part in favour of the injured 
 queen who did not fall victims at last to the king's revenge. 
 But the circumstances of Fisher's death bear so close a re- 
 semblance to those of the Baptist's, that it is strange even 
 Henry did not observe and seek to avoid it. Both were 
 cast into prison, and left there to linger at the will of a 
 tyrant ; both at last were beheaded, and both by the revenge 
 of impure women. But what Herod did reluctantly, Henry 
 did with cruel deliberation. 
 
 There is a passage in Fisher's defence of the king's book 
 against Luther which shows that the martyrdom of St. John 
 Baptist had long been to him a familiar subject of con- 
 templation. " One consideration," he writes, " that greatly 
 affects me to believe in the sacrament of marriage is the 
 martyrdom of St. John Baptist, who suffered death for his 
 reproof of the violation of marriage. There were many 
 crimes in appearance more grievous for rebuking which he 
 might have suffered, but there was none more fitting than the 
 crime of adultery to be the cause of the blood-shedding of the 
 Friend of the Bridegroom, since the violation of marriage is 
 is no little insult to Him who is called the Bridegroom." t 
 
 These words were written at the end of 1524 or beginning 
 of 1525. At that time no thought of divorce had as yet, 
 in all probability, entered the mind of Henry ; and Anne 
 Boleyn, Fisher's Herodias, was then unknown. Whether, 
 in June, 1529, it was merely a reminiscence of this passage 
 that made him speak as he did, or a prophetic anticipation 
 of his own end, we cannot know. 
 
 * Mr. Brewer's Translation (Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 348). 
 The king proceeds to argue for his own view at great length. His 
 MS. contains 95 pages. Letters, &>c., iv. 5729. 
 
 t Assertionum Regis Anglice Defensio, xii. 9.
 
 176 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 But if the reader will turn back to the inventory given in 
 Chapter iii., of the furniture of the bishop's house at the 
 time of his imprisonment in 1534, he will find that on the 
 altar of his private oratory there was standing a somewhat 
 strange piece of furniture the head of John the Baptist ! 
 This would probably be represented as it was carried in the 
 dish by the daughter of Herodias, and, according to the 
 custom of those days, would be coloured. This emblem of 
 royal tyranny and saintly constancy Fisher kept ever before 
 him when offering the Holy Sacrifice. Had God given him 
 any presentiment of the kind of death by which he should 
 glorify Him ? Or was the use of this head merely suggested 
 to him by the train of thought he had followed in his book 
 and in his speech? This is uncertain. But he was well 
 aware of the danger of the course he had entered on in 
 opposing the king's passions. The Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, a worthy yet somewhat weak charactered man, used 
 to repeat, " The anger of a king is death to man ".* When 
 this same word was quoted by the Duke of Norfolk to Sir 
 Thomas More, he replied : " Is that all, my lord ? Then in 
 good faith the difference between your grace and me is but 
 this, that I shall die to-day and you to-morrow." f The 
 same thoughts must have been also in Fisher's mind. Dr. 
 Hall tells us he had been accustomed to keep on his altar a 
 skull, to remind him of natural death, but in the latter 
 years it seems he had replaced this by the sacred head of 
 the Baptist. He thus kept in mind not only, like Warham, 
 that the anger of a king may threaten death to his subjects, 
 but that they who lose their lives for the King of kings shall 
 find them again to life everlasting. 
 
 I shall not pursue the history of the divorce as it dragged 
 on through another three years and a half. After the 
 advocation of the cause to Rome, Fisher watched the 
 
 * Prov. xvi. 14. t Roper's Life of More,
 
 THE DIVORCE. 177 
 
 negotiations and the progress of the king's infatuation with 
 the deepest and most painful interest, continuing to write, to 
 preach, and to protest. Never had king a more faithful 
 subject, a more holy bishop, a more loving and watchful 
 father. Never was fidelity repaid with more cruel injustice, 
 love with more bitter hate. 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 
 
 " T\7THAT Rochester will do we shall see when the day 
 \V comes. You already know what sort of man he 
 is, and may imagine what is likely to happen." 
 Thus wrote Cardinal Campeggio on the feast of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, June 29th, 1529, the day after the unexpected 
 speech mentioned in the last chapter. The bishop was now 
 to be forced into public strife, both as a peer of Parliament 
 and a member of the Church's synods, 'and to show himself 
 as bold and fearless in debate as he was later on in suffering 
 and martyrdom. The day foreseen by Campeggio soon 
 came. On the 23rd July, the day on which judgment in the 
 king's divorce suit was expected, the legates had suspended 
 their Court until October. But already, on July igth, the 
 legatine powers were revoked, and the cause drawn to him- 
 self in Rome by the Sovereign Pontiff. The king's orator 
 at Rome had threatened the pope that to do so would in- 
 volve the " ruin of the Church and the loss of England and 
 France"; but the pope had nevertheless accepted the 
 queen's appeal. Wolsey, forgetting his duty as a bishop and 
 a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, had written insolently 
 on the 2yth July: " It shall never be seen that the king's 
 cause shall be ventilated and decided in any place out of his 
 own realm, but that if his grace should come at any time to 
 the Court of Rome, he would do the same with such a main 
 and army royal as should be formidable to the pope and to 
 all Italy".* The words, though mere bluster, were a 
 
 * State Papers, vii. 193.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 179 
 
 cowardly and shameful reminder of the infamous sack of 
 Rome by the emperor's troops two years before. In a few 
 months the king's rage and disappointment spent them- 
 selves, not on the sack of Rome, but on the disgrace and 
 spoliation of Wolsey himself and the clergy in England. 
 
 On the 1 9th October, Wolsey ceased to be chancellor ; a 
 writ of Praemunire* was issued against him, and he was in 
 danger not only of loss of goods and liberty, but even of a 
 charge of treason and loss of life. Du Bellay, the French 
 ambassador, wrote : " The Duke of Norfolk is made head of 
 the Council ; in his absence, the Duke of Suffolk ; above 
 all is Mademoiselle Anne. It is not as yet known who is 
 to have the seal. I verily believe that the priests will not 
 touch it any more, and that in this Parliament they will 
 have terrible alarms."-^ 
 
 A Parliament had been summoned, the first with the 
 exception of a short session in 1523 that had met for four- 
 teen years. From the words just quoted it is evident that 
 the mmour had gone out that its work was to be one of 
 menace and revenge. It was to be the king's instrument to 
 punish or subdue the English clergy, who were generally 
 opposed to the divorce, and to menace the pope into com- 
 pliance with the king's will. It cannot be denied that, in 
 its various sessions,! it was an eventful Parliament, perhaps 
 
 * As we shall have much more of this word, it may be said here, 
 for readers not familiar with English history, that there were several 
 statutes called Praemunire, aimed at those who referred any matter 
 belonging to the king's courts to any foreign jurisdiction, meaning 
 that of the pope. The penalties were terrible. Other offences were 
 gradually included, and made a breach of the statute. The word is a 
 corruption of pnzmoneri, and derived from the first words of the writ 
 Pr&moneri facias. Obtaining legatine authority, and conferring 
 benefices by virtue of it, were among Wolsey's lesser offences ; but 
 the most important to notice here, since both clergy and laity were 
 involved in them. 
 
 f Letters and Papers, iv. 2678. 
 
 J This Parliament lasted until the spring of 1536, after Fisher's death.
 
 l8o BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the most eventful in English history. But as to its character 
 and composition very different estimates have been made. 
 Mr. Froude lauds it to the skies as imbued with the new 
 spirit of reform ; bold and independent, representing all that 
 was noblest in English society ; free in its discussions and 
 its acts. Dr. Hall (the biographer of Fisher) is much nearer 
 the truth when he thus describes it: "In this Parliament the 
 Commons House was so partially chosen, that the king had 
 his will almost in all things that himself listed. For whereas 
 in old time the king used to direct his brief or writ of Parlia- 
 ment to every city, borough, and corporate town within the 
 realm, that they (from) among them should make election of 
 two honest, fit, and skilful men of their own number, the 
 same order and form of the writ was now observed, but then 
 with every writ there came also a private letter from some one 
 or other of the king's council, requiring them to choose the 
 persons named in their letters, who, fearing their great autho- 
 rity, durst commonly choose none other. So that whereas 
 in times past the Commons House was usually furnished with 
 grave and discreet townsmen, apparelled in comely and sage 
 furred gowns, now might you have seen in this Parliament 
 few others than roystering courtiers, serving-men, parasites, 
 and flatterers of all sorts, lightly apparelled in short cloaks 
 and swords, and as lightly furnished either with learning or 
 honesty. So that when anything was moved against the 
 spirituality or the liberty of the Church, to that they 
 hearkened diligently, giving straight their assents in any- 
 thing the king would require."* 
 
 This description is in accordance with the contemporary 
 and unsuspected evidence of Dr. Hall's namesake, the 
 chronicler, who asserts that "most part of the Commons 
 were the king's servants ". 
 
 Mr. Brewer, from a careful examination of all historical 
 
 * This passage is not given by Baily. It is from Hall's MS. Life.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. l8l 
 
 evidence, concludes : " There is no ground for imagining 
 that this Parliament differed much from other Parliaments 
 assembled by the Tudors, in the mode of its election, in the 
 measures it passed, or in its exemption from the dictation 
 and interference of the Crown. The choice of the electors 
 was still determined by the king or his powerful ministers, 
 with as much certainty and assurance as that of the sheriffs. 
 Independence of discussion prevailed so far and in such 
 questions as the Crown thought good, no further and no 
 more. As Henry required no grants of money from his 
 Parliament, as he was now engaged in no war, was exacting 
 from the clergy, by the Act of Prgemunire, a larger sum than 
 . he could ever have expected from Parliament, he was inde- 
 pendent of its decisions. To him, as to others of his race, 
 Parliament was nothing better than a court to register the 
 king's decrees, and assume a responsibility for acts the 
 unpopularity of which he did not care to take upon him- 
 self."* 
 
 Mr. Froude admits that the " petition against the clergy," 
 in which he founds especially the supposed greatness of this 
 assembly, was drawn up before it met by the Crown lawyers, 
 and presented in the first week of the session. To accept a 
 Government scheme is no proof of servility on the part of a 
 legislative assembly, but it is certainly not one of originality 
 or independence. 
 
 This memoir has of course no farther concern with the 
 Parliament and its measures than to explain the action of 
 the Bishop of Rochester. Parliament met on 3rd November, 
 1529, and almost immediately the Commons adopted a "bill 
 of complaints" against abuses on the part of the clergy, 
 
 * Mr. Brewer has much more to show that this vaunted Parlia- 
 ment was altogether servile and commonplace, but his brilliant In- 
 troductions end at this period. He discussed its constitution, but 
 "left to another occasion," which never came, the examination of 
 its acts.
 
 1 82 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 which was presented to the king, and by him sent to the 
 bishops for their answer. Both petition and answer are 
 printed at great length by Mr. Froude, who considers them 
 of surpassing importance and epoch making.* Mr. Brewer's 
 estimate is very different. "The Parliament of 1529," 
 he writes, "instead of any burning questions, any heroic 
 assertion of spiritual freedom or the rights of conscience, 
 directed its first attention to mortuary fees, to fines for pro' 
 bates taken by the ecclesiastical courts, to regulations for 
 executors, to pluralities and the like." Perhaps the truth 
 may be found somewhere between these two views. Cer- 
 tainly the grievances enumerated, even if they were all true 
 and unexaggerated, were no worse or rather far less serious, 
 than would be the case if a similar bill of complaints were 
 drawn up against our modern land- system, or our modern 
 administration of law and justice. But as a proposed reform 
 at the present day might betoken either a fair or a hostile 
 spirit, be conservative or revolutionary, so was it then. The 
 bishops in their answer complain especially of the animus of 
 the petitioners, of the vagueness of the accusations in them- 
 selves, and of the general or universal character that was 
 given to them. 
 
 The Commons petitioned against the great exactions of 
 the parochial clergy in taking corpse-presents or mortuaries : 
 " They would let dead men's children die of hunger or go 
 a-begging, sooner than give them in charity the cow which 
 the dead man owed, though he had but one ". t Very 
 similar things have been said of modern landlords. Whether 
 or not the complaint is true in either case must be proved 
 
 * This historian, however, has given the answer of the bishops to 
 another complaint made in 1532, as if it were to the minor complaints 
 of 1529. The sequence of events in this Parliament and in Convoca- 
 tion will be found in a paper drawn up by Bishop Stubbs, and printed 
 in the Report of Commissioners on the Eccles. Courts in 1883, p. 74. 
 
 J- This is Fox's abridgment, given also in Wilkins, iii. 740.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 183 
 
 from other evidence than the fact that the accusation is 
 made. It was complained that " priests were stewards of 
 bishops and abbots, so that poor husbandmen could have 
 nothing but of them, and had to pay dearly for it ". So in 
 our own day, men rail against the landlords' middle-men, 
 and agents : " Holders of great benefices," it was said, 
 " having their living of their flocks, lay in the court, in lords' 
 houses, and spent nothing on their parishioners". This griev- 
 ance sounds like a complaint against our modern absentee 
 landlords. And again it was alleged that while "one priest, 
 being but little learned, had ten or twelve benefices, and was 
 resident on none, many well-learned scholars had neither 
 benefice nor exhibition". These are specimens of the com- 
 plaints made ; and so far as they were well founded they 
 proved, not the need of new laws, but the neglect to execute 
 laws already made and well-known. The Commons were 
 not satisfied with mere complaints ; in a few days, they 
 passed and sent to the Upper House a series of bills, which 
 were certainly encroachments on the legislative powers of the 
 Church. 
 
 There exists no official and authoritative record of the 
 debates of this Parliament. When, therefore, chroniclers 
 and historians give us a speech, we know that it is the 
 composition of the historian, not of the orator. The sub- 
 stance may be accurate, but the words cannot be so. Hall, 
 the chronicler, reports that the Bishop of Rochester thus 
 addressed the Peers : " My lords, you see clearly what bills 
 come hither from the Common House, and all is to the 
 destruction of the Church. For God's sake, see what a 
 realm the kingdom of Bohemia was, and when the Church 
 went down, then fell the glory of the kingdom. Now, with 
 the Commons is nothing but down with the Church ! and 
 all this meseemeth is for lack of faith only." 
 
 Dr. Hall, the biographer, gives a far longer speech, but 
 with the wise introduction : " The bishop said, in effect, as
 
 184 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 followeth ". It is therefore needless to quote the discourse 
 he puts in the bishop's mouth. The substance is not 
 different from that already given, though the charge against 
 the Commons is, of course, less bluntly put.* Dr. Hall 
 continues : " This speech being ended, although there were 
 divers of the clergy that liked well thereof, and some of the 
 laity also, yet were there some again that seemed to mislike 
 the same, only for flattery and fear of the king. In so much 
 as the Duke of Norfolk reproved him, half-merrily and half- 
 angrily, saying that many of those words might have been 
 missed ; adding further these words : ' I wis, my lord, it is 
 many times seen that the greatest clerks be not always the 
 wisest men '. But to that he answered as merrily again, 
 and said that he could not remember any fools in his time 
 that had proved great clerks. But when the Commons 
 heard these words spoken against them, they straightway 
 conceived such displeasure against my Lord of Rochester, 
 that by the mouth of Mr. Audley, their Speaker, they made 
 a grievous complaint to the king of his words, saying that it 
 was a great discredit to them all to be thus charged that 
 they lacked faith, which, in effect, was all one to say they 
 we're heretics and infidels; and, therefore, desired the king 
 that they might have some remedy against him. The king, 
 therefore, to satisfy them, calling my Lord of Rochester 
 
 * Baily simply says, " He spake as followeth," and then gives a 
 speech in many respects different from Hall's version. Historians in 
 those, and even in later days, imitating the Ancients, thought them- 
 selves at liberty to compose speeches for their heroes. One of the 
 most singular examples of this style of composition occurs in Lord 
 Herbert's account of this very debate. He has concocted a long 
 speech, and put it in the mouth of an unnamed member of Parliament 
 as an answer to the bishop's complaints. The speech is mentioned 
 by no other historian it has not the slightest vraisemblance. It is 
 merely the deism of the next century. The style also is altogether 
 unlike that of the year 1529. It is, in fact, a synopsis of Lord Her- 
 bert's own views on religion, and was never spoken in Parliament. 
 Lord Herbert has many other such speeches.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 185 
 
 before him, demanded why he spake in that sort. And he 
 answered again that, being in council, he spake his mind in 
 defence and right of the Church, whom he saw daily injured 
 and oppressed among the common people, whose office was 
 not to deal with her, and therefore said that he thought him- 
 self in conscience bound to defend her all that he might. 
 The king, nevertheless, willed him to use his word tem- 
 perately, and so the matter ended, much to the discontenta- 
 tion of Mr. Audley and divers others of the Common 
 House." 
 
 As on this incident a double charge, of moral cowardice 
 and want of veracity, has been recently made against the 
 holy bishop, it will be necessary to dwell somewhat longer 
 on the facts than their intrinsic importance merits. Mr. 
 Froude never disguises his contempt and hatred of the 
 Catholic clergy, but the great and universal estimation in 
 which the name of Fisher is held stood awkwardly in his 
 way. He has therefore seized every opportunity of a sneer 
 either at his intellect or his moral character. The following 
 words are a specimen : 
 
 Having related the bishop's speech and the complaint of 
 the Commons, he says that the Bishop of Rochester and 
 other prelates were summoned by the king. "It would 
 have been well for the weak, trembling old men if they could 
 have repeated what they believed, and had maintained their 
 right to believe it. . , . But they were forsaken in their hour 
 of calamity, not by courage only, but by prudence, by judg- 
 ment, by conscience itself. The Bishop of Rochester 
 stooped to an equivocation too transparent to deceive any- 
 one he said that ' he meant only the doings of the Bohe- 
 mians were for lack of faith, and not the doings of the 
 Commons House ' ' which saying was confirmed by the 
 bishops present'. The king allowed the excuse, and the 
 bishops were dismissed ; but they were dismissed into 
 ignominy, and thenceforward, in all Henry's dealings with
 
 1 86 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 them, they were treated with contemptuous disrespect. For 
 Fisher himself we must feel only sorrow. After seventy-six 
 years of a useful and honourable life, which he might have 
 hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly 
 upon stormy waters, to which he was too brave to yield, 
 which he was too timid to contend against; and the frail 
 vessel, drifting where the waves drove it, was soon piteously 
 to perish."* 
 
 The popularity of Mr. Froude's history requires careful 
 study of this appreciation. Mr. Froude is fertile and some- 
 times very happy in his metaphors, but that with which he 
 concludes the above passage is singularly ill-chosen. The 
 body and earthly fortunes of the venerable bishop became, 
 no doubt, the sport of the storm of Henry's tyranny ; but 
 since his soul remained immovable as a rock, whatever 
 compassion we feel is mingled with admiration. But Mr. 
 Froude, by first picturing him in the presence of the king as 
 "a weak, trembling old man," for which he has no historical 
 authority ; by then representing him as " stooping to equi- 
 vocation " to escape the king's anger ; and, lastly, by 
 describing him as one " too brave to yield and yet too- 
 timid to contend against the stormy waters," turns his 
 reader's compassion from the feeble body of a martyr to 
 the inconstant, cringing soul of a victim of folly and 
 misfortune. And what is the ground for all this ? The 
 mere fact has been handed down by the chroniclers that 
 the Commons complained to the king that they had been 
 called infidels, and that Fisher explained that he had not 
 called them infidels, but warned them by the analogy of the 
 Bohemians against such attacks against the Church as lead 
 to heresy and ruin. Mr. Froude is willing enough to grant 
 that it was the spirit of heresy (as understood by Fisher) 
 that was moving the Commons. " The words," he says, 
 
 * History, i., ch. Hi.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 187 
 
 "of which Fisher had made use were truer than the 
 Commons knew ; perhaps the latent truth of them was the 
 secret cause of the pain which they inflicted." But he 
 thinks it cowardice and mean dissimulation that Fisher did 
 not urge the charge home when it was complained of. 
 Surely we are all familiar in the present day with parlia- 
 mentary apologies, when the form of offensive words is 
 withdrawn while the substance is maintained. Is this 
 called stooping to equivocation ? or does the skill or the 
 clumsiness of the apology enhance its guilt? Does the 
 man who withdraws or explains what he has said " in a 
 manner too transparent to deceive anyone" (to use Mr. 
 Froude's account of Fisher's explanation) does such a 
 man deserve at once " to be dismissed into ignominy and 
 thenceforth to be treated with contemptuous disrespect " ? 
 If his accusation has been vile and false, and he is convicted 
 of slander, and refuses to retract except in form, no doubt 
 he deserves to be scouted by honest men. But if he has 
 said the truth, and maintains it, while putting it in a less 
 galling form, he is worthy of all esteem. The Bishop of 
 Rochester was evidently not seeking to excuse himself but 
 his accusers. They had warmly repudiated the notion that 
 they were " infidels and no Christians as ill as Turks 
 and Saracens " ; this was the interpretation their Speaker 
 put on the Bishop's words about " lack of faith ". They 
 claimed to be most orthodox Catholics. Was he then to 
 urge on them that they were no Catholics, and no better 
 than Turks or Saracens ? Surely that would have been the 
 method most likely to irritate them into real infidelity or 
 heresy. Of course, therefore, he gladly admitted their 
 protestation, and explained his own words, not by pitiful 
 equivocation, but in all truth and charity, to have meant no 
 more than a warning not to walk in the steps of heretical 
 nations. 
 
 Nor is there any historical authority whatever for Mr.
 
 1 88 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Froude's assertion for he does not give it as a conjecture 
 that the supposed cowardice or shuffling of the Bishop of 
 Rochester and the other prelates gave rise in the mind of 
 the king to contempt, or in any way changed his attitude 
 towards them. Whatever it may have been before, favour- 
 able or unfavourable, this incident, so far as we know, had 
 no influence upon it. As to Fisher, Henry well knew his 
 boldness and constancy, and he was destined to have many 
 a future proof that he was no " reed shaken by the wind ". 
 
 There is, indeed, something comical in this picture of 
 perhaps the greatest liar of a lying age turning with disdain 
 from a bishop who " stoops to equivocation " ; unless, in- 
 deed, his scorn was aroused by the transparency of the 
 apology, and the ignorance of the bishop in the arts of 
 deception. But the whole passage is worthy of a historian 
 who defends the conduct of Cranmer in taking, before his 
 consecration, the usual oath to the pope, while making a 
 protest beforehand which invalidated all its principal articles. 
 There are historians who strain at gnats in the conduct of 
 those they dislike, and swallow camels in the defence of 
 their heroes. 
 
 The fate of the measures which had given occasion 
 to the warm expostulation of the Bishop of Rochester 
 gives a good illustration of one of the methods by which 
 the king secured his ends. He followed the old maxim : 
 Divide et impera. He set the lower clergy against 
 the higher, and the higher against the lower, and the laity 
 against both. "The bishops," writes a modern historian, 
 " were willing to enforce discipline on the lower clergy ; the 
 lower clergy were willing to reduce the profits of probate 
 which went to the officials of the bishops ; but the lower 
 clergy would defend their trade and their benefices, and the 
 bishops could not allow the profits of their courts to be 
 touched. . . . Both agreed in regarding the discussion of 
 these things in Parliament as an attack, as indeed they were,
 
 PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLES, 1529. 189 
 
 on the Church itself. . . . Fanning the flames of dissension, 
 the king suggested that the Commons should pass the two 
 most obnoxious bills, strike a blow at the bishops by the 
 bill on probate, and at the parochial clergy by the bill 
 against mortuaries. The other points non-residence, plu- 
 ralities, and trading were decided likewise. The lords 
 spiritual, by their majority in the Upper House, rejected the 
 bills ; the Commons insisted on pressing them. The king 
 suggested a conference in Star Chamber of eight members 
 from each House. The lay lords on the committee voted 
 with the Commons, and by this contrivance the bill was 
 passed. This little trick shows that it was not by force 
 alone that the Parliament was manipulated to pass the 
 king's bills. More, as chancellor, must, in this business, as 
 in 1523, when he was Speaker, have acted as the king's 
 agent, but the burden was already too heavy for his back." * 
 That the Bishop of Rochester not only opposed the 
 measures in Parliament, but appealed against them after- 
 wards, and thereby was brought into serious trouble with 
 the king, we learn, not from his biographers or from 
 English historians, but from foreign sources. On 29th 
 October, 1530, Ludovico Falieri, the Venetian ambassador, 
 writes from London to the Senate : " The king has caused 
 the arrest of three bishops, accusing them of having 
 bestowed benefices contrary to the orders, and a process 
 is being formed ; but these bishops were of the queen's 
 faction, so the king chooses to be revenged on them. 
 They are as follows: The Bishop . . ."t The rest of 
 the MS. is mutilated, but fortunately the missing names are 
 supplied by another document. On 22nd November, 1530, 
 the Mantuan ambassador, Segismund, wrote to the Marquis 
 of Mantua from Augsburg that he " had seen a letter from 
 
 * Lectures on Meditsval and Modern History, by Dr. Stubbs> 
 Bishop of Chester (1886), p. 276. 
 t Venetian State Papers, iv.
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 England stating a prohibition in that kingdom for anyone 
 to hold more than one church-benefice. Three bishops 
 namely, Rochester, Bath, and Ely disputed this order, and 
 appealed to the Apostolic See. The king, enraged at this, 
 issued an edict imposing heavy penalties on such as appeal 
 to Rome on this account ; and, as authors and chief cause 
 of this disobedience, he had the three bishops arrested." * 
 
 This was more than two years before the Act of Parlia- 
 ment against appeals to Rome, and the edict as well as the 
 arrest were exercises of the merest arbitrary power. We 
 have no record of the result of the " process " of which the 
 Venetian ambassador speaks, nor of the length of time 
 during which the arrest continued. Apparently it was not 
 long, since we find the bishop active in Convocation, as 
 well as perfectly undaunted, not many months after. The 
 incident, however, serves to show the futility of the boast 
 made by the king's ambassadors to the pope (as they wrote 
 nth March, 1533), that the queen was quite wrong in 
 refusing to have the trial of her cause in England, as a 
 place suspect, because so impartial was the king that he 
 showed no displeasure towards her counsellors. t As regards 
 the matter itself on which the bishops had appealed to 
 Rome, Fisher was the last man in England to encourage 
 the abuses of pluralism ; but the matter was one of ecclesi- 
 astical competence. 
 
 * Venetian State Papers, iv. 634. f Letters and Papers, vi. 226.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 
 
 PARLIAMENT was prorogued in December, 1529, and 
 did not meet in 1530, nor did Convocation continue 
 its sittings. The king, however, was anxious that no 
 suspicion of heterodoxy should be connected with his proceed- 
 ings against the clergy. The bill of complaints, which the 
 Commons had first accepted from the Government, was very 
 explicit in profession of the Catholic faith, and even affected to 
 lament that the uncharitable conduct of the bishops gave a 
 handle to heretics and assisted the spread of pernicious books. 
 The king had, therefore, desired the clergy to investigate this 
 matter, and a committee of Convocation was appointed, and 
 in May was ready with its report. It is probable, from 
 former proceedings in a similar matter, that the Bishop of 
 Rochester had a share in this work, but we have no record 
 of the proceedings. A long list of errors contained in the 
 new books was drawn up. The archbishop and the com- 
 missioners presented it to the king at Westminster, on 24th 
 May, 1530, and it was published by a royal proclamation. 
 "The king, our sovereign lord, of his most virtuous and 
 gracious disposition,- considering that this noble realm of 
 England hath, of long time, continued in the true Catholic faith 
 of Christ's religion, and that his noble progenitors, kings of 
 this his said realm, have before this time made and enacted 
 many devout laws, statutes, and ordinances for the main- 
 tenance and defence of the said faith against malicious and 
 wicked sects of heretics and Lollards, who, by perversion of
 
 192 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Scripture, do induce erroneous opinions, sow sedition among- 
 Christian people, and finally disturb the peace and tran- 
 quillity of Christian realms, as lately happened in some parts 
 of Germany ... his highness, like a most gracious prince, 
 of his blessed and virtuous disposition, willeth now to put 
 in execution all good laws, statutes, and ordinances ordained 
 by his most noble progenitors, kings of England, for the 
 protection of religion." * 
 
 Some have seen in this proclamation an act of royal 
 supremacy, a prelude to the claim of Supreme Head of 
 the Church in England that the king would put forth the next 
 year.t There is, however, nothing unusual in the language. 
 The claim implied is that of being Defender of the Faith, 
 not its Interpreter ; Protector of the Church, not her Master; 
 Vindicator and Executor of her laws, not Legislator over 
 her. The pompous and exaggerated style, however, that is 
 used, which is the character of all documents of that age, 
 explains how :< Head of the Church '' might be an ambiguous 
 phrase, capable of an orthodox meaning, though suggestive 
 of something dangerous and heretical. The document will 
 serve as an introduction to that question of the royal 
 supremacy that is henceforth to occupy us, both in this and 
 future chapters. 
 
 It will be enough to state in the most summary manner 
 the events which led to the debate in Convocation of this 
 matter in the spring of 1531. Cardinal Wolsey's failure to 
 carry through the divorce in England so excited the king's 
 anger against him, that his enemies, who were many, brought 
 about his dismissal from office, which in those days was 
 almost certainly followed by impeachment for some real or 
 supposed breach of law, and total ruin. When prosecuted 
 in 1529, under the statute of Praemunire, for seeking and 
 
 * Wilkins' Concilia, in. 737. The archbishop's decree at p. 727. 
 j- Dr. Hook in his Archbishops of Cant a- bury, vi., ch. ii., p. 340.
 
 SUPREME HEAD. IQ3 
 
 exercising the office of legate, and in that capacity super- 
 seding the ordinary jurisdiction and tribunals in England, 
 he had thought it safest to plead guilty ard throw himself 
 on the king's mercy ; and after yielding into the king's 
 hands the greater part of the vast wealth he had acquired, 
 he received a qualified pardon. His enemies, and especially 
 Anne Boleyn, were dissatisfied, and, in 1530, brought about 
 his arrest on a charge of high treason. His death, on Novem- 
 ber 26, 1530, on his journey towards London, placed him 
 beyond the king's anger. But the proceedings against the 
 late legate had suggested to plotting brains a plan of humi- 
 liation of the clergy and enrichment of the king. This was 
 to convict them as a body under the same statute of Prse- 
 munire, for having acknowledged the legatine authority. It 
 is one of the strangest facts in English history that such a 
 project should have been conceived and carried out. It is 
 evident that if the clergy were technically guilty of breach of 
 the statute, so was the whole nation ; moreover, everything 
 had been done, not only with the consent of the king, but 
 by his desire and influence. It appears, however, that the 
 weak and servile judges, in spite of some resistance and 
 much repugnance, were literally bullied by the king into a 
 declaration of the law, according to his desire.* The laity 
 were pardoned, but a writ was issued against the clergy. 
 The penalty of conviction was confiscation of all their goods 
 and imprisonment at the king's pleasure. Had they made a 
 united stand against this absurd and tyrannous charge, it 
 would have been impossible to have gone on with it. They 
 weakly and foolishly offered the king an enormous sum by 
 way of compromise, or to purchase a pardon. A modern 
 historian, after acknowledging that " Wolsey's legatine - 
 
 * As to the king's power of overbearing men by brutal language, 
 we have frequent testimony in Chapuys' letters ; and he specially 
 alludes to the king's having constrained the judges on this occasion. 
 (See Letters, &-c., vi. 1445, 1460.) 
 
 '3
 
 194 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 faculties had been the object of the general dread of the 
 clergy," is cynical enough to add : " But their punishment, 
 if tyrannical in form, was equitable in substance, and we 
 can reconcile ourselves without difficulty to an act of judicial 
 confiscation ".* It is only when we read language like this 
 in the igth century that we can understand the state 
 of mind of the king and his advisers in the i6th. We 
 may add to what is found in our English histories on this 
 subject the appreciation made at the time by a clever and 
 very observant witness. Chapuys writes to the Emperor 
 Charles V., 23rd January, 1531: "Nothing has yet been 
 said in the estates concerning the affair of the queen They 
 have been occupied with police arrangements against 
 plague, and also what is considered to be the principal cause 
 of this assembly, to exact a composition from the clergy, 
 who heretofore acknowledged the legation of the cardinal, 
 and whom the king, as I wrote to your majesty, pretends to 
 be liable to a confiscation in bodies and goods. Though the 
 clergy knew themselves innocent, seeing that it was deter- 
 mined to find fault with them, they offered of their own 
 accord 160,000 ducats, which the king refused to accept, 
 swearing that he will have 400,000, or that he will punish 
 them every one with extreme rigour, so that they will be 
 obliged to pass it, though it will compel them to sell their 
 chalices and reliquaries. 
 
 " About five days ago it was agreed between the nuncio t 
 and me that he should go to the said ecclesiastics in their 
 congregation, and recommend them to support the immunity 
 of the Church, and to inform themselves about the queen's 
 affair, showing them the letters which the pope has written 
 to them thereupon, and offering to intercede for them with 
 the king about the gift with which he wishes to charge them. 
 
 * Froude, History, i. 296. 
 
 t Baron John De Burgo was papal nuncio, a Sicilian. He arrived 
 in London in September, 1530.
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 195 
 
 On his coming into the congregation, they were all utterly 
 astonished and scandalised, and, without allowing him to 
 open his mouth, they begged him to leave them in peace, 
 for they had not the king's leave to speak with him, and if 
 he came to execute any Apostolic mandate, he ought to 
 address himself to the Archbishop of Canterbury, their 
 chief, who was not then present. The nuncio accordingly 
 returned without having public audience of them, and only 
 explained his intention to the Bishop of London, their 
 proctor, who said he would report it. But he will beware 
 of doing so without having the king's command, for he is 
 the principal promoter of these affairs.* 
 
 "The Bishop of Rochester lately sent to me, to say that 
 the king had made new attempts to suborn him and others 
 who hold for the queen, telling him many follies and false- 
 hoods; among other things, that the pope had promised 
 Cardinal Grammont that, whatever show he made of pro- 
 ceeding against the king, he would favour him to the 
 utmost of his power, and that his holiness was in secret a 
 great enemy of your majesty, because you wished to compel 
 him to convoke the council. . . . The nuncio had also heard 
 something of these canards, and at my request he explained 
 to the bishop the truths about them. Next day, the king 
 sent for the bishop early, to know what had passed 
 between them, and the bishop replied it was nothing, 
 but that the nuncio had expressed to him the desire the 
 pope had to convoke the council, and had requested him 
 to do his best to promote it, both with the king and the 
 clergy. Of this answer he apprised the nuncio, in order 
 that if he were examined their answers might correspond." f 
 
 It is probable that these rumours that the Sovereign 
 Pontiff was really on the king's side, and would favour him 
 
 * Stokesley was then Bishop of London. He was altogether a 
 king's man. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, v., n. 62.
 
 196 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 in the end, rumours industriously and plausibly circulated 
 by the king and his agents, were to no small extent the 
 cause of that weakness on the part of the clergy which 
 surprises us so much on this occasion. We need not per- 
 haps give much attention to the complaints so frequently 
 and strongly made by Chapuys of the pope's dilatoriness 
 and weakness. The envoy's office was to watch the queen's 
 interests, and he could see only from her point of view. 
 Chapuys' opinion is, however, shared by Mr. Gairdner, 
 who writes: "Apart from all questions of morality, the 
 disobedience shown by the king to the Holy See was such 
 as might well have justified a sentence of excommunication, 
 if the papal authority intended still to make itself respected. 
 But Clement was not the sort of pope who could be ex- 
 pected to bring kings to a sense of duty. He was not 
 made of the same stuff as a Hildebrand or a Boniface, and 
 during the whole progress of this unhappy question he 
 contrived more and more to weaken his own authority, till 
 it was finally repudiated altogether." * 
 
 Whether the conduct of the pope was or was not weak 
 and temporising beyond the limits of right or prudence, the 
 rumours and fears that it was so explain the yielding spirit 
 of the English clergy, while they increase our respect for the 
 undaunted attitude of Fisher. Whether, however, even he 
 was not, on the present occasion, borne down by the general 
 feeling of his brother prelates to undue compliance, admits 
 of question. There exists no official and detailed record 
 of the debates in Convocation, and they are not reported in 
 
 * Letters and Papers, Introd. to vol. v., p. 10. It may, however, be 
 said in answer to this, that the times did not admit of a Hildebrand 
 or a Boniface. St. Pius V. has been equally blamed for being too 
 firm towards Henry's daughter Elizabeth, and for forgetting that the 
 days of Hildebrand were gone by. It is easy to make these reason- 
 ings when a policy has been unsuccessful. Perhaps it was God's will 
 to show that both mild measures and strong measures were tried in 
 vain on " a wicked and adulterous generation ".
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 197 
 
 the same manner by different authors. That which will 
 now be given is from Hall's MS., and he had better chances 
 of correct information than those from whom the accounts 
 hitherto known have been derived.* 
 
 He first relates how a proposal was made early in the 
 Convocation to suppress small monasteries, in order to 
 compensate the king for his great expenses in prosecuting 
 his divorce, and how the zeal of the Bishop of Rochester 
 frustrated this plan for a time. This affair has been 
 reported and discussed in a former chapter, and may now 
 be passed over.f Next he gives the story of the Prsemunire 
 and the grant of ^"100,000 by the southern Convocation to 
 the king. He then continues : " But yet the pardon was 
 not accomplished very hastily, for before the full performance 
 thereof a new and strange demand was made to the clergy 
 in their Convocation, such a one as hath not in any Christian 
 prince's days been heard of before ; and that was, that they 
 should acknowledge the king to be their supreme head. 
 This request, although it was very monstrous and rare, yet 
 notwithstanding the matter was sore urged, and the king's 
 orators omitted no time nor occasion that might help 
 forward their purpose, sometime by fair words, and sometime 
 by hard and cruel threatenings, among which Mr. Thomas 
 Audley was a great doer (who, after such time as blessed 
 Sir Thomas More gave over the office of lord chancellor, 
 succeeded him in that place). J 
 
 " When this matter was come to scanning in the Convoca- 
 tion house, great hold and stir was made about it, for among 
 them there wanted not some that stood ready to set forward 
 the king's purpose, and for fear of them many others durst not 
 
 * Daily's account, which has hitherto passed as Hall's, differs in 
 many particulars. 
 
 f See Chap. ii. 
 
 J Hall does not mean that he was then chancellor. Sir Thomas 
 did not resign until May, 1532. Audley was Speaker in 1531.
 
 198 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 speak their minds freely; hut when this holy father saw what 
 was towards, and how ready some of their own company were 
 to help forward the king's purpose, he opened before the 
 bishops such and so many inconveniences by granting to 
 this demand, that in conclusion all was rejected, and the 
 king's intent clean overthrown for that time. 
 
 " Then the king hearing what was done, and perceiving 
 that the whole Convocation rested upon this worthy bishop, 
 he wrought by sundry means to bring the matter about. 
 And yet doubting that with overmuch haste and rigour at the 
 beginning he might easily at the first overthrow all his intent, 
 he sent his orators at another time to the Convocation house, 
 who in their own names moved the clergy to have good con- 
 sideration of this gentle and reasonable demand, putting 
 them in mind what danger and peril they stood in, at this 
 present, against his majesty, for their late contempt in 
 accepting the legatine power of the cardinal, whereby they 
 had also deeply incurred the danger of the law ; that their 
 lands and goods were wholly at his highness's will and 
 pleasure, which notwithstanding he hath hitherto forborne 
 to execute, upon hope of their good wills and conformities 
 to be showed to htm again in this matter. 
 
 " Then the king sent for divers of the bishops and certain 
 others of the chief Convocation to come to him at his palace 
 of Westminster ; to whom he proposed with gentle words his 
 request and demand, promising them in the word of a king that 
 if they would among them acknowledge and confess him for 
 supreme head of the Church of England, he would never by 
 virtue of that grant assume unto himself any more power, 
 jurisdiction, or authorky over them than all other the kings 
 of the realm, his predecessors, had done before; neither 
 would take upon him to make or promulgate any spiritual 
 law, or exercise any spiritual jurisdiction, nor yet by any 
 kind of mean intermeddle himself among them, in altering, 
 changing, ordering, or judging of any spiritual business.
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 199 
 
 ' Therefore having made you,' he said, this frank promise, 
 I do expect that you shall deal with me as frankly again, 
 whereby agreement may the better continue between us.' 
 And so the bishops departed with heavy hearts to talk 
 further of this matter in the Convocation among themselves, 
 but still it stuck sore among them upon certain incon- 
 veniences before showed by my Lord of Rochester, who 
 never spared to open and declare his mind freely in defence 
 of the Church, which many others durst not so frankly do, 
 for fear of the king's displeasure, although they were for 
 tho most part men of deep wisdom and profound learning. 
 
 " Then came the king's counsellors again from the king 
 to know how the matter sped, seeming as though they had 
 not known what was said or done in the Convocation house 
 before their coming. So hotly they followed this matter 
 once begun, for many causes. The king having indeed 
 a further secret meaning than was commonly known to 
 many, which in few years broke out, to the confusion of the 
 whole clergy and temporality both. These counsellors then 
 repeated unto the Convocation the king's words which he 
 himself had spoken to some of them; saying, further, that if 
 any man would stick now against his majesty in this point, 
 it must needs declare a great mistrustfulness they had in his 
 highness' words, seeing he had made so solemn and high 
 an oath. With this subtle and false persuasion the clergy 
 began somewhat to shrink, and for the most part to yield to 
 the king's request, saving this holy bishop, who utterly 
 refused to condescend thereunto, and, therefore, earnestly 
 required the lords and others of the Convocation to con- 
 sider and take good heed what mischiefs and inconveniences 
 would ensue to the whole Church of Christ by this un- 
 reasonable and unseemly grant made to a temporal prince, 
 which never yet to this day was once so much as demanded 
 before, neither can it by any means or reason be in the 
 power or rule of any temporal potentate. ' And, therefore,'
 
 200 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 said he, ' if ye grant to the king's request in this matter, it 
 seemeth to me to portend an imminent and present danger 
 at hand ; for what if he should shortly after change his 
 mind, and exercise in deed the supremacy over the Church 
 of this realm ? Or what if he should die, and then his 
 successor challenge continuance of the same ? Or what if 
 the crown of this realm should in time fall to an infant or 
 a woman that shall still continue and take the same name 
 upon them ? What shall we then do ? whom shall we sue ? 
 or where shall we have remedy ? ' The king's counsellors 
 to that replied and said, that the king had no such meaning 
 as he doubted, and then alleged again his royal protestation 
 and oath made in the word of a king. And further (said 
 they), though the supremacy were granted to his majesty 
 simply and absolutely, according to his demand, yet it must 
 needs be understood and taken, that he can have no further 
 power or authority by it than quantum per legem Dei licet, 
 and then if a temporal prince can have no such authority 
 and power by God's law (as his lordship had there declared) 
 what needeth the forecasting of all these doubts ? Then at 
 last the counsellors fell into disputation among the bishops 
 of a temporal prince's authority over the clergy, but there- 
 unto my Lord of Rochester answered them so fully, that they 
 had no list to deal that way any further, for they were in 
 deed but simple smatterers in divinity, to speak before such 
 a divine as he was, and so they departed in great anger, 
 showing themselves openly in their own likeness, and saying, 
 that whosoever would refuse to condescend to the king's 
 demand herein was not worthy to be accounted a true and 
 loving subject. 
 
 " The lords and other of the Convocation seeing this kind 
 of threatening persuasion, besides many other false practices, 
 and fearing the report of the counsellors to be made to the 
 king (whom they knew and perceived to be all cruelly bent 
 against the clergy), grew at last to a conclusion, and so. after
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 2OI 
 
 sundry days' argument in great striving and contention, 
 agreed in manner fully and wholly among them to con- 
 descend to the king's demand, that he should be supreme 
 head of the Church of England, and to credit his princely 
 word so faithfully and solemnly promised unto them. 
 
 " My Lord of Rochester, perceiving this sudden and hasty 
 grant, only made for fear, and not upon any just ground, 
 stood up again, all angry, and rebuked them for their 
 pusillanimity in being so lightly changed and easily per- 
 suaded ; and being very loth that any such grant should 
 pass from the clergy thus absolutely, and yet by no means 
 able to stay it, for the fear that was among them, he then 
 advised the Convocation that, seeing the king, both by his 
 own mouth and also by sundry speeches of his orators, had 
 faithfully promised and solemnly sworn, in the high word 
 Of a king, that his meaning was to require no further than 
 quantum per legem Dei licet, and that by virtue thereof his 
 purpose was not to intermeddle with any spiritual laws, 
 spiritual jurisdiction, or government more than all other 
 his predecessors had always done before. If so be that you 
 are fully determined to grant him his demand (which I 
 rather wish you to deny than grant), yet, for a more true 
 and plain exposition of your meaning towards the king and 
 all his posterity; let these conditional words be expressed in 
 your grant : Quantum per legem Dei licet. Which is no 
 otherwise (as the king and his learned council say) than 
 themselves mean.* But then the counsellors (who by that 
 time were returned to the Convocation house for speed of 
 their business), hearing of my Lord of Rochester's words, 
 cried upon them with open and continual clamour to have 
 the grant pass absolutely, and to credit the king's honour in 
 
 * Augustine Scarpinelli, representative of the Duke of Milan, writes 
 from London, igth February, 1531, that the clergy first proposed 
 another clause : " Quantum per leges canonicas liceat," and that this 
 was refused by the king. Venetian State Papers, iv. 656.
 
 202 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 giving them so solemn a protestation and oath. But after 
 this time nothing could prevail ; for then the clergy 
 answered, with full resolution, that they neither could nor 
 would grant this title and dignity of supremacy without 
 these conditional words : Quantum per legem Dei licet. 
 And so the orators departed, making to the king relation of 
 all that was done, who, seeing no other remedy, was of 
 necessity driven to accept it in this conditional sort, and 
 then granted to the clergy pardon for their bodies and 
 goods, oo that they should pay him a hundred thousand 
 pounds, which was paid to the last penny." 
 
 Such is Hall's account of the part taken by Fisher. It 
 has all appearance of authenticity. Put however the de- 
 bates may have been conducted, the result arrived at was 
 that which he states. The date of this important docu- 
 ment is the nth February, 1531. 
 
 It must not be understood that any doctrinal decree was 
 drawn up, affirming the headship of the king. The title 
 merely came in a parenthesis of a long address of gratitude 
 on the part of the clergy. In this they take no notice of 
 their having done wrong in owning the legatine authority, 
 but merely ask for a discharge from any forfeitures incurred 
 by the statutes of Provisors or by breach of other penal laws ; 
 and they make their gift a benevolence and a mark of gra- 
 titude to his majesty for his zeal in writing against Luther, 
 in suppressing heresy, and checking insults against the 
 clergy. In this address, then, after the words, "of the 
 English Church and clergy," comes the following paren- 
 thesis : " Of which we recognise his majesty as the singular 
 protector, the only and supreme lord, and, so far as the law 
 of Christ permits, even the supreme head ".* 
 
 To understand the sense in which this title was thus 
 
 * " Ecclesiae et cleri Anglican!, cujus singularem protectorem 
 unicum et supremum Dominum, et quantum per Christi legem licet, 
 etiam supremum caput, ipsius majestatem recognoscimus."
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 203 
 
 claimed and granted, the reader -must put from his mind 
 the controversies which arose regarding the king's supremacy 
 a few years later. Baily, unfortunately, bearing all these in 
 mind, and wishing to represent the Bishop of Rochester as 
 anticipating and rejecting the royal supremacy, gives a long 
 speech addressed by him to the Convocation. The heads 
 of this speech are the following : (i) A warning, lest in trying 
 to save their goods the clergy should cut themselves off 
 from the Church ; (2) that supremacy could only mean the 
 power of the keys (which were given to Peter, not to kings) 
 and the feeding of Christ's flock (also committed to Peter, 
 not to kings) ; (3) that the grant of the supremacy would 
 be the same as to renounce the See of Rome and the unity 
 of the Church, with other consequences, which he enume- 
 rates under five heads ; (4) he goes on to contrast this new 
 claim with the conduct of Christian emperors; (5) lastly, 
 he states a dilemma either the Church of Rome is the 
 true Church, and then we must be in communion with her, 
 or she is " a malignant Church " (Ecclesia malignantiuni), 
 and then it will follow that England never was Christian, 
 &c., &c. 
 
 Mr. Lewis, another of Fisher's biographers, has laboured 
 much in examining and refuting this speech. We may 
 spare ourselves the pains of following this discussion, since 
 not one ivord of all this speech was ever spoken by Fisher. 
 It is a pure invention of Baily's. It has no resemblance to 
 anything in Hall. It is a piece of controversy belonging to 
 the i yth century, and in no way whatever regards the 
 title of Supreme Head as it came before Convocation in 
 1531. In Baily the whole matter turns on the renunciation 
 of the See of Rome. In the debates of the Convocation not 
 one explicit mention was made of the See of Rome. The 
 question before the minds of the clergy was that of the 
 legislative powers, privileges, and immunities of the English 
 Church. They feared an encroachment on these in the
 
 204 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 name of the royal prerogative, " lest perhaps," as the Lower 
 House stated, "after a long lapse of time terms used in 
 this article in a general sense be drawn to an improper and 
 unlawful one ".* 
 
 A clear proof that the question before the minds of the 
 clergy had as yet no explicit bearing on the authority of the 
 Holy See is in the protestation of Bishop Tunstai, and the 
 letter addressed to him by the king. When the matter 
 came before the northern Convocation, the Bishop of 
 Durham not only could not consent to the new title, but 
 required that his protest should be recorded in the acts. 
 He does not allege that there is encroachment on the papal 
 supremacy, but that there is ambiguity, which will be taken 
 advantage of by heretics to reject episcopal jurisdiction and 
 censures, and to appeal to the king's courts. He concludes 
 his protestation thus : " Supreme Head of the Church 
 carries a complicated and mysterious meaning ; for this title 
 may either relate to spirituals or temporals, or both. Now 
 when a proposition is thus comprehensive and big with 
 several meanings, there is no returning a single and 
 categorical answer. And therefore, that we may not give 
 scandal to weak brethren, I conceive this acknowledgment 
 of the king's supreme headship should be so carefully ex- 
 pressed as to point wholly upon civil and secular jurisdic- 
 tion." f 
 
 There is also an answer drawn up by the king, or by 
 some theologian writing for him and in his name. In this 
 he meets objections that Tunstai must have stated in a 
 private letter of explanation of his conduct. The letter has 
 not reached us, but its contents are known from the answer. 
 The bishop had said that Christ, the Supreme Head of the 
 
 * " Ne forte post longasvi temporis tractum termini in eodem articulo 
 generaliter positi in sensum improbum traherentur." (See Atterbury, 
 Rights of Con-vocation, 82.) 
 
 t Collier's Translation ; original in Wilkins, iii. 745.
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 205 
 
 whole Church, had lodged the spiritual and temporal juris- 
 diction in different subjects. The king replies that the texts 
 cited to prove obedience due to princes comprehend all 
 persons, both clergy and laity, and the Scripture makes no 
 exemption as to matter of obedience. If princes may punish 
 those who violate their own temporal laws, a fortiori they 
 should punish those who violate Divine laws. Again, all 
 spiritual things in which liberty and property are concerned 
 are necessarily included in the prince's power. Of course 
 no one denies that preaching and administering sacraments 
 belong to priests only, but kings must see that priests do 
 their duty. Our Lord, though a priest, submitted to Pilate's 
 jurisdiction (!), and St. Paul appealed to Caesar. As to 
 clerical exemption, " some criminal causes," he says, " are 
 reserved to our courts, and some by our permission remitted 
 to the ordinaries. Murder, felony, and treason we reserve 
 to our correction ; as for other instances of misbehaviour, 
 we leave the clergy to be punished by their respective 
 bishops." Convocations are called by royal writ; bishops 
 make homage and oaths of allegiance ; the royal licence and 
 assent is required in election of abbots. Since, then, the 
 prince's authority is previous to the execution of their 
 office, why should spiritual persons scruple to call him 
 Head, with respect to that power which is derived from 
 him ?* There is no need to examine here the force of the 
 royal arguments. The point to be carefully borne in mind 
 is that, as yet, the papal supremacy had not explicitly 
 entered into the question. Even though Henry were 
 supreme head over the clergy in England, it did not follow 
 that there should be no appeal over him to the supreme 
 visible head of Christendom, even in temporal matters. 
 And if his headship consisted in repressing vice in the 
 
 * I have not cared to give the document in full. My argument is 
 negative : that there was no question as to papal supremacy at that 
 time. The king's letter is given by Wilkins, iii. 762.
 
 206 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 clergy, and obliging them to preach the Catholic faith and 
 administer the Catholic sacraments, it did not follow that 
 the pope had no authority to decide in questions of faith, 
 or jurisdiction in matters spiritual. It is mere anachronism 
 to import these anti-papal consequences into the present 
 discussion. It has been done by Baily in his ill-timed 
 zeal to enlist Fisher as a champion against Elizabethan 
 and Jacobian theories ; it was done by the Protestant 
 Bishop Andrews, who, in his answer to Bellarmine, asserted 
 that, five years before this title was made law, Bishop 
 Fisher had subscribed it in synod,* as if Convocation had in 
 1531 given the title in the same sense in which it was after- 
 wards given in Parliament, when Fisher died rather than 
 assent to it. The same misstatement was made by Cranmer 
 when he was accused, in Queen Mary's reign, that he had 
 been the first to set up the king's supremacy against that of 
 the pope. He replied " that it was Warham gave the 
 supremacy to Henry VIIL, and that he had said he ought 
 to have it before the Bishop of Rome, and that God's word 
 would bear it ". But other testimony is needed than that 
 of Cranmer, or his reporter Foxe, before such a charge can 
 be received against Archbishop Warham as that of having 
 cast aside the supremacy of the Holy See. He died on 
 22nd of August, 1532 ; and one of the acts of his last sick- 
 ness was to dictate a protest that " he neither intended to 
 consent, nor with a clear conscience could consent, to any 
 statute passed, or hereafter to be passed, in the Parliament 
 (that met first in 1529) derogatory to the rights of the 
 Apostolic See, or to the subversion of the laws, privileges, 
 prerogatives, pre-eminence, or liberties of the Metropolitan 
 See of Canterbury ''.f Had he considered that the title to 
 which he had consented in Convocation was contrary to* the 
 
 * Responsio ad C. Bellarm., Apol., p. 23 (apud Lewis, ii. 72). 
 f Wilkins, iii. 746.
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 207 
 
 rights of the Holy See, he would no doubt have retracted 
 when on the point of passing before the tribunal of Christ. 
 
 It is not meant by these remarks to justify this title or the 
 conduct of those who granted it at the claim of Henry 
 VIII., even with a saving clause, as they imagined. My 
 object is to ascertain its precise import, and to explain how 
 it could have been granted by men like Warham and 
 Fisher. I am glad here to be in entire agreement with 
 Mr. Froude, who writes : " It is creditable to the clergy 
 that the demand which they showed most desire to resist 
 was not that which most touched their personal interests. 
 In the preamble of the Subsidy Bill, under which they were 
 to levy their ransom, they were required by the council to 
 designate the king by the famous title, which gave occasion 
 for such momentous consequences, of ' Protector and only 
 Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England '. It 
 is not very easy to see what Henry proposed to himself by 
 requiring this designation at so early a stage in the move- 
 ment. The breach with the pope was still distant, and he 
 was prepared to make many sacrifices before he would even 
 seriously contemplate a step which he so little desired. . . . 
 It is certain only that this title was not intended to imply 
 what it implied when, four years later, it was conferred by 
 Act of Parliament, and when virtually England was severed 
 by it from the Roman communion."* 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, although the title of Supreme 
 Head, when first claimed by the king and first conceded by 
 the clergy, was not meant or understood to be a denial of 
 the higher rights of the Holy See, it would seem that the 
 king meant to assert his supremacy with regard to the 
 
 * History, i. 4. Dr. Hook, who is altogether an asserter of the 
 antiquity of the royal supremacy, admits nevertheless that " the royal 
 supremacy was not at the time of the Convocation regarded as incon- 
 sistent with the legitimate claims of the papacy ". Archbp. of Cant. 
 (Cranmer), vol. vi. 424.
 
 208 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 English Church, in case " the great affair " of his divorce 
 should come before any ecclesiastical tribunal in England. 
 The ultimate appeal should be to himself. He meant also 
 to prepare the way for resistance to the Holy See, should a 
 decision be given against him in Rome. The word, Supreme 
 Head, was sufficiently vague and capable of an orthodox 
 interpretation, otherwise he could not have hoped to get it 
 acknowledged by the clergy. But in its vagueness lay its 
 danger. It might in time be made to mean anything and 
 to cover every assumption of authority, disciplinary or 
 doctrinal. The bishops knew this, and therefore held back. 
 The dause they introduced was little more than a bolt 
 without a ward, when they did not define what " the law of 
 Christ allowed " and what it forbade Dr. Lingard says 
 that " it is plain that the introduction of the clause served 
 to invalidate the whole recognition, since those who might 
 reject the king's supremacy could maintain that it was not 
 allowed by the law of Christ ". This is true ; but, on the 
 other hand, what was there to prevent the advocates of that 
 supremacy from pushing it to any extreme on the same 
 grounds that it was not forbidden to do so by the law of 
 Christ ? And this is what really happened, and was foreseen 
 as likely to happen ; and some better safeguard should have 
 been provided than an elastic or disputable clause. 
 
 The question, however, as it regards the Bishop of Ro- 
 chester, is this : " Was it better that, by himself consenting to 
 adopt the obnoxious title, with a clause that made it tolerable, 
 he should lead the clergy (as he did) to refuse the title un- 
 qualified, or that he should have stood aloof and taken 
 the utmost consequences for himself, thereby leaving the 
 clergy to give a title without the clause to indicate its 
 dangerous character ? We dare not accuse him of weakness 
 in yielding. We believe that he chose what seemed best to 
 him in the dilemma. His conduct, however, was eagerly 
 seized on by the king. Cuthbert Tunstal, Bishop of
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 209 
 
 Durham, was on the queen s side in the matter of the 
 divorce, and he had urged the king to conform his 
 conscience to that of the greater number. When, there- 
 fore, in 1531, Tunstal wrote to the king his objections to 
 the title of Supreme Head, the king retorted on him his 
 own argumeni by asking him why he did not conform his 
 conscience to that of so many learned divines as sat in the 
 Convocation of Canterbury, and amongst others mentioned 
 the Bishop of Rochester as learned both in divinity and 
 canon law.* 
 
 Probably the foresight of the use that would be made of 
 his name was one cause of the anxiety, or perhaps alarm of 
 conscience, that took possession of him as soon as the 
 document was signed, and of which we have evidence in 
 the following letter. The obnoxious clause had been 
 carried in Convocation on nth February, 1531. On the 
 2ist Chapuys tells the emperor: " If the pope had ordered 
 the lady to be separated from the king, the king would 
 never have pretended to claim sovereignty over the Church ; 
 for, as far as I can understand, she and her father have 
 been the principal cause of it. The latter, speaking of 
 the affair a few days ago to the Bishop of Rochester, 
 ventured to say he could prove by the authority of Scrip- 
 ture that when God left this world He left no successor 
 nor vicar. 
 
 "There is none that does not blame this usurpation, except 
 those who have promoted it. The chancellor (More) is so 
 mortified at it that he is anxious above all things to resign 
 his office. The Bishop of Rochester is very ill with disap- 
 pointment at it. He opposes it as much as he can ; but 
 being threatened that he and his adherents should be thrown 
 in the river, he was forced to consent to the king's will."f 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vol. v., App., n. 9 ; or Wilkins, iii. 762. 
 T Letters and Papers, vol. v., n. 112. 
 14
 
 2IO BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 This illness of the holy bishop was not caused by fears 
 for himself, but by " disappointment ". He had not checked 
 but only retarded the yielding of his brethren. He foresaw 
 the consequences. Yet his labours had not been altogether 
 lost. He had succeeded in fixing the proverbial wisp of hay 
 on the horns of the dangerous title. The bull had broken 
 into the Church's paddock in spite of him. But to those 
 inclined to draw too near he could say : Habetfanum in 
 cornu. 
 
 And, indeed, scarcely had the concession or compromise 
 been made by the clergy than a reaction set in. A protest 
 was signed by numerous priests of both provinces against 
 any encroachments on the liberty of the Church, or any act 
 derogatory to the authority of the Holy See. Chapuys wrote 
 on 22nd May : 
 
 " SIRE, Four days ago the ecclesiastics of the archdiocese 
 of York and the diocese of Durham have sent to the king a 
 great protest against the sovereignty which he would claim 
 and usurp over them. Those of the archdiocese of Canter- 
 bury [he means the province] have also published a protest, 
 of which I send a copy to M. de Granvelle. The king is 
 greatly displeased." 
 
 This protestation, which is preserved in the archives ot 
 Vienna, is signed by Peter Ligham in his own name and 
 that of the clergy of Canterbury, by Robert Shorten, Adam 
 Travis, Richard Featherstone, Richard Henrison, Thomas 
 Petty, John Quarr, Rowland Philips, William Clyffe, 
 archdeacon of London ; J. Fitzjames, for the clergy 
 of Bath and chapter of Wells; Thomas Parker, for the 
 clergy of Worcester ; Robert Ridley, for the clergy of Lon- 
 don ; Ralph Swede, for the clergy and chapter of Coventry 
 and Lichfield; John Rayne, for the clergy of Lincoln; and, 
 what is to be noted as regards the influence of Fisher, by 
 Nicolas Metcalf, archdeacon of Rochester and master of 
 St John's, Cambridge ; Robert Johanson, for the clergy
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 211 
 
 and chapter of Rochester; John Willo, for the clergy of 
 Rochester. * 
 
 The name at the head of this list is that of a great 
 friend of Fisher. Peter Ligham, the dean of the arches, 
 wrote to the Bishop of Rochester on i2th October, 1532, 
 from Canterbury : 
 
 " I thank you for your venison. The king left Canterbury 
 on Thursday last at 12 noon, and reached Calais on Friday 
 about 10 in the morning. I was named by the prior of Christ- 
 church to be his vicar-general and master of the preroga- 
 tive , but the king will none of me, saying that he heard 
 I was a good priest, but he would have more experience of 
 me whether I were plene conversus or (i.e., ere) I should 
 have any such room. I am well content. I am very 
 desirous to hear how our good, gracious queen doth, and 
 where she is, for I have not heard of her grace this many 
 days, nor how her cause doth at Rome."f 
 
 This shows how the king kept in his memory the names 
 of those who opposed his will. To dissent from his judg- 
 ment and be true to conscience was to renounce all hope of 
 preferment, even when it exposed to no severer penalties. 
 
 * We owe this information to Mr. Friedmann, Anne Boleyn, i. 142. 
 The document is neither in the State Papers nor in the Kalendars of 
 Letters and Papers. 
 
 + Letters and Papers, vol. v., n. 1411.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 
 
 DR. HALL has given us very few biographical details 
 of the holy martyr during the years 1531, 1532, 
 and 1533. His name, however, appears at intervals 
 in public documents and in the letters of ambassadors. 
 These detached notices will be given here in chronological 
 order. 
 
 In the letter of Chapuys quoted at the conclusion of the 
 last chapter, mention is made of a threat of throwing the 
 bishop and his adherents into the river, if they continued 
 their opposition. Though this may have been no more 
 than a burst of insolence on the part of one of the great 
 nobles of the council, the threat, which in itself sounds more 
 of the Bosphorus than the Thames, was probably made in 
 those very words. About a year later* the Earl of Essex 
 told Peto and Elstow, the undaunted Franciscan friars of 
 Greenwich, that they deserved to be put into a sack and 
 thrown into the Thames, which elicited the famous answer 
 from Elstow that the road to heaven was as near by water 
 as by land. 
 
 Threats like these may account for the suspicions, which 
 fell on members of the king's council and Court, when, 
 shortly after the debates of Convocation just related, the 
 
 * This event is sometimes erroneously given in 1533. It took 
 place at Easter, 1532. (See letter of Chapuys, vol. v. 941.) The best 
 account is in Harpsfield's History of the Divorce (Camd. Soc.), p. 
 204. He heard the details from Elstou- himself.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 213 
 
 bishop narrcnvly escaped being poisoned. The affair oc- 
 curred on the 1 8th February. 
 
 Chapuys, writing to the emperor on ist March, 1531, says 
 that the King of England, addressing the House of Lords on 
 the previous day, had " called their attention to the matter 
 of the Bishop of Rochester's cook, a very extraordinary case. 
 There was in the bishop's house about ten days ago some 
 pottage, of which all who tasted, that is, nearly all the 
 servants, were brought to the point of death, though only 
 two of them died, and some poor people to whom they had 
 given it. The good bishop, happily, did not taste it. The 
 cook was immediately seized, at the instance of the bishop's 
 brother, and, it is said, confessed he had thrown in a 
 powder which, he had been given to understand, would only 
 hocus the servants, without doing them any harm.* I do 
 not yet know whom he has accused of giving him this 
 powder, nor the issue of the affair. The king has done well 
 to show dissatisfaction at this ; nevertheless, he cannot 
 wholly avoid some suspicion, if not against himself, whom I 
 think too good to do such a thing, at least against the lady 
 and her father. 
 
 " The said Bishop of Rochester is very ill, and has been 
 so ever since the acknowledgment made by the clergy, of 
 which I wrote. But, notwithstanding his indisposition, he 
 has arranged to leave this to-morrow by the king's leave. I 
 know not why, being ill, he is anxious to go on a journey, 
 especially as he will get better attendance of physicians here 
 than elsewhere, unless it be that he will be no longer a 
 witness of things done against the Church, or that he fears 
 there is some more powder in reserve for him. 
 
 "If the king desired to treat of the affair of the queen, 
 
 * An anonymous letter from Ghent in the Venetian Archives also 
 mentions that the cook, when racked, declared that he had only 
 thrown in a purgative powder, out of jest. Venetian State Papers, 
 iv. 668.
 
 214 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the absence of the said bishop, and of the Bishop of Dur- 
 ham (late of London), would be unfortunate."* 
 
 Dr. Hall, who relates this affair, mentions that the bishop 
 had, "by overlong sitting and reading in his study that fore- 
 noon, more than his accustomed hour, no great stomach to 
 his dinner," and put it off till evening, bidding his house- 
 hold dine without him. He says that the poison had been 
 thrown into the gruel by " a certain person of a most dam- 
 nable and wicked disposition," who was an acquaintance of 
 the bishop's own cook, and had called upon him, and, while 
 the cook was gone to the buttery to fetch him some drink, 
 took advantage of his absence to mix the poison in some 
 yeast. Chapuys seems to have thought that Richard Roose, 
 the poisoner, was the bishop's own cook. The Act of Parlia- 
 ment leaves the matter uncertain, merely mentioning his 
 name, and that he was by occupation a cook, and from 
 Rochester. The case was deemed too atrocious to be 
 treated in the ordinary course of justice ; and instead of being 
 brought to trial and condemned to death for a felony, the 
 murderer was by special Act of Parliament adjudged guilty 
 of high treason ! 
 
 The Act of Parliament passed for this case is so curious 
 that it deserves to be known : t " The king's royal majesty, 
 calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of 
 good and wholesome laws, and due execution of the same 
 against the offenders thereof, is the only cause that good 
 obedience and order hath been preserved in this realm ; and 
 his highness having most tender zeal to the same, among 
 other things considering that man's life above all things is 
 chiefly to be favoured, and voluntary murders most highly 
 to be detested and abhorred, and specially, of all kinds of 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vol. v., n. 120. 
 
 t It is not in the statutes at large, but is given in full in the great 
 edition of the Statutes of the Realm, printed 1810-28. The Act is 
 22 Henry VIII., ch. 9.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 215 
 
 murder, poisoning, which in this realm hitherto (Our Lord 
 be thanked) hath been most rare, and seldom committed or 
 practised : And now in the time of this present Parliament, 
 that is to say, in the i8th day of February, in the twenty- 
 second year of his most victorious reign (1531), one 
 Richard Roose, late of Rochester, in the county of Kent,' 
 cook, otherwise called Richard Cook, of his most damnable 
 and wicked disposition, did cast a certain venom or poison 
 into a vessel replenished with yeast or barm, standing in the 
 kitchen of the reverend father in God, John, Bishop of 
 Rochester, at his place in Lamehyth Marsh [Lambeth], with 
 which yeast or barm and other things convenient, porridge 
 or gruel was forthwith made for his family there being, 
 whereby not only the number of seventeen persons of his 
 said family, which did eat of this porridge, were mortally 
 infected and poisoned, and one of them, that is to say, 
 Burnet Curwen, gentleman, thereof is deceased, but also 
 certain poor people which resorted to the said bishop's place 
 and were there charitably fed with the remains of the said 
 porridge and other victuals, were in likewise infected, and 
 one poor woman of them, that is to say, Alice Trippit, 
 widow, is also thereof now deceased : Our said sovereign lord 
 the king, of his blessed disposition inwardly abhorring all 
 such damnable offences, because that in manner no 
 person can live in surety out of danger of death by that 
 mean, if practice thereof should not be eschewed, hath 
 ordained and enacted by authority of this present Parlia- 
 ment, that the said poisoning be adjudged and deemed as 
 high treason ; and that the said Richard Roose, for the said 
 murder and poisoning of the said two persons (as is afore- 
 said), by the authority of this present Parliament, shall stand 
 and be attainted of high treason. 
 
 " And because that detestable offence now newly practised 
 and committed requireth condign punishment for the same, 
 it is ordained and enacted by authority of this present
 
 2l6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Parliament that the said Richard Roose shall be therefore 
 boiled to death, without having any advantage of his clergy ; * 
 and that all future poisonings shall be deemed high treason, f 
 and similarly punished by boiling." 
 
 If anything can add to the brutality of this act, it is the 
 horrible manner in which it was carried out. The chronicler 
 of the Grey Friars thus writes : " This year was a cook 
 boiled in a cauldron in Smithfield, for he would have 
 poisoned the Bishop of Rochester, Fisher, with divers of his 
 servants, and he was locked in a chain, and pulled up and 
 down with a gibbet at divers times till he was dead ". J 
 
 Dr. Hall relates another attempt on the bishop's life, or 
 at least an attempt to frighten him : " Shortly after this 
 dangerous escape there happened also another great danger 
 at the same house in Lambeth ; for suddenly a gun was shot 
 through the top of his house, not far from his study, where 
 he accustomably used to sit, which made such a homble 
 noise over his head, and bruised the tiles and rafters of the 
 house so sore, that both he and divers other of his 
 servants were suddenly amazed thereat. Whereupon 
 speedily search was made whence this shot should come, 
 and what it meant, which at last was found to come from 
 the other side of the Thames, out of the Earl of Wiltshire's 
 house, who was father of the Lady Anne. Then he per- 
 ceived that great malice was meant towards him, and, calling 
 speedily certain of his servants, said : ' Let us truss up our 
 gear, and be gone from hence ; for here is no place for us 
 
 * Sine privilegio cleri, or " without benefit of clergy," in our old 
 laws, means that they could not plead the clerical state, or education, 
 in being able to read, in favour of exemption from capital punishment. 
 
 t We can form some conception how coining was deemed high 
 treason, but ho%v poisoning a subject was high treason to the monarch 
 is bewildering. The Act was repealed in the next reign, and poison- 
 ing became felony. 
 
 \ Grey Friars' Chronicle, p. 194, in second vol. of Monumenta 
 Franciscana (Rolls Series).
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 2 17 
 
 to tarry any longer'; and so immediately departed to 
 Rochester." 
 
 Chapuys says that the bishop was to leave London on 
 2nd March. Dr. Hall is very sparing in dates, and cannot 
 always be trusted for the sequence of events, though he 
 doubtless reports accurately the facts themselves, as he had 
 learnt them from the bishop's friends. He inserts here 
 the sum the bishop expended on the reparation of the 
 Bridge of Rochester, and praises the zeal with which he 
 gave himself to preaching and works of mercy. " But above 
 all this," he says, " he bestowed no small labour and pain 
 in repressing of heresies, which by this time were very much 
 increased and far spread in this realm. And although by 
 .his continual travail he brought many heretics into the way 
 again, yet among other heretics his most labour was with 
 one John Frith, a very obstinate and stubborn wretch, whom 
 he could not reclaim and bring to any conformity, and 
 therefore was justly, by order of law, condemned, and after 
 burned in Smithfield." 
 
 The Anglican Church historian, Collier, writes as follows : 
 " Fox charges Fisher with the death of Frith, Tewkesbury, 
 and Bay field. But this is more than appears ; for these 
 men were tried before Stokesly, Bishop of London, neither 
 was Fisher one of the assessors." * In theory, certainly, the 
 Bishop of Rochester held that formal and dogmatising 
 heretics, admonished and relapsed, might be put to death 
 by the civil power, after the judgment of the Church.f 
 But there is no record that he had any part in such con- 
 demnations, or that his zeal was exercised otherwise than in 
 reclaiming by argument.^ 
 
 Indeed, the time of his own troubles had begun. Chapuys 
 
 * Vol. iv., p. 277. t Luth. Assertions Confut., Art. 33. 
 
 $ Hitton, a Lutheranising priest who was burnt at Maidstone, was, 
 according to Sir Thomas More, examined by the Bishop of Rochester, 
 as well as the Archbishop, but he was in the jurisdiction of the latter.
 
 2l8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 writes, on Qth October, 1531, that Parliament has been pro- 
 rogued until after All Saints ( i st November). "The lady [i.e., 
 the king's mistress] fears no one here more than the Bishop of 
 Rochester, for it is he who has always defended the queen's 
 cause ; and she [i.e., Anne] has therefore sent to persuade 
 the bishop to forbear coming to this Parliament, that he 
 may not catch any sickness, as he did last year ; but it is of 
 no use, for he is resolved to come and to speak more boldly 
 than he has ever done, should he die a hundred thousand 
 times."* 
 
 The same ambassador writes again on the nth January, 
 1532 : "Respecting the Bishop of Rochester, I will inform 
 him as soon as possible of the paragraphs in your majesty's 
 letter that concern him. This will be done in writing and 
 through a third person, as there is no other means at 
 present of communicating with that prelate, for he has 
 lately sent me word that, should we meet anywhere in 
 public, I must not appear to know him, or make any 
 attempt whatever to speak. He himself would do the 
 same, and begged to be excused if he took no notice of me 
 until the present storm had blown away. As I have sure 
 means, without the least danger, of maintaining the bishop 
 in his good intentions, I will omit no trouble to keep him to 
 his purpose." t 
 
 On 22nd January he writes again: "On the 13th, the 
 session of Parliament began. . . . The assembly is nume- 
 rous, being attended by almost all the lords, temporal as 
 well as spiritual. Only the Bishop of Durham (Tunstal), 
 one of the queen's good champions, has not been called in ; 
 no more has Rochester, as I have been informed, though 
 this last has not failed to come, and is actually in town." 
 He then continues,, in cipher : " Intending to tell the king 
 the plain truth about the divorce, and speak without dis- 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vol. v. , n. 472. 
 
 t Spanish Calendar, vol. iv., part ii., ii. 883.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 219 
 
 guise (rudement). No sooner did the king hear of this 
 bishop's arrival, than he sent him word he was very glad at 
 his coming, and had many important things to say to him. 
 The bishop, fearing lest the communication which the king 
 said he had to make should be for the purpose of begging 
 him not to speak on the subject, seized the moment when 
 the king was going to mass, attended by the gentlemen of 
 his household, to make his reverence and present his re- 
 spects thus avoiding, if possible, the said communication. 
 The king received him more graciously, and put on a better 
 mien than ever he had done before, deferring the conver- 
 sation till after the mass ; but the good bishop, owing to the 
 above fears, prudently retired before mass was over. 
 
 "I have faithfully transmitted to the said bishop your 
 majesty's last message; he has begged me not only to thank 
 you most sincerely, but to offer his unconditional services in 
 this affair of the queen, requesting me at the same time 
 not to write about him, or mention him in my despatches, 
 unless it be in cypher." * 
 
 As the Lords' Journals were not kept between 1515 and 
 1534, we have unfortunately no help from them as to the 
 action of the bishop in Parliament. There is an important 
 reference to him in the proceedings of the Convocation in 
 May of this year, 1532, which, while it proves his absence 
 (probably from illness), shows also the esteem in which he 
 was held. Complaints had been made by the Commons 
 that some of the legislation enacted by the clergy was con- 
 trary to the king's prerogative and the statutes of the realm, 
 and the clergy were asked for an explanation. The answer 
 was drawn up by Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and dis- 
 pleased the king. The negotiations were long ; but as the 
 subject of this memoir had little part in them, it need only 
 be said here that the king ultimately made three demands: 
 (i) That no future constitution should be made without 
 
 * Spanish Calendar, vol. iv. , part ii., n. 888.
 
 220 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the king's approval ; (2) that all former canons should be 
 submitted to the judgment of a commission of thirty-two 
 persons, sixteen of the clergy and sixteen of the laity, all to 
 be appointed by the king; (3) that such constitutions as 
 should be found unobjectionable should have the royal 
 assent given to them. It thus began to appear what was 
 meant by the Supreme Headship. The Church was to 
 surrender that legislative power given to her by her Divine 
 Founder " Teach them to observe all things whatsoever I 
 have commanded you " or to exercise it at the will or 
 caprice of a king. 
 
 Collier says : " The Convocation were much perplexed at 
 their receiving this message from the king, and, after some 
 time spent in consultation, it was resolved to send four of 
 the Upper and six of the Lower House to the Bishop of 
 Rochester, by whose advice they seemed disposed to govern 
 themselves, and to wait for this prelate's resolution they 
 adjourned for three days" (i.e., until Monday, i3th May). 
 Dr. Wake, however, remarks that from the wording of the 
 Acts the prorogation was made before the thought occurred 
 of seeking the Bishop of Rochester's help ; and a committee 
 was then formed to go to his " lodging," not for his private 
 advice, but to debate with him.* In any case, the incident 
 proves the bishop's illness, which kept him at his house in 
 Lambeth, and the opinion entertained of his wisdom. No 
 record of the interview exists, nor do we know what was 
 his advice. Collier continues : " Fisher's principles were 
 not likely to put the clergymen upon any measures accept- 
 able to the Court. The king, therefore, being informed 
 to whom the matter was referred, sends for the Speaker 
 of the House of Commons, and complains the clergy 
 were but half his subjects." t The result of the con- 
 
 * Wake'fi State of the Church, p. 487. 
 
 t He refers to the oath of obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff taken 
 before consecration by bishops.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 221 
 
 tention was that the clergy promised not to legislate 
 for the future without the royal assent. As to the canons 
 already existing, though they refused the king's de- 
 mand, " not to attempt, claim, or put in ure (i.e., use) any 
 of the old canons without leave from the Crown," they 
 agreed that they should be revised by the king and the pro- 
 posed commission, " so that whichsoever of the said con- 
 stitutions . . . provincial or synodal, shall be thought and 
 determined by your grace and by the most part of the said 
 thirty-two persons not to stand with God's laws and the laws 
 of the realm, the same to be abrogated and taken away by 
 your grace and the clergy. And such of them as shall be 
 seen by your grace and by the most part of the said thirty- 
 two persons to stand with God's laws and the laws of the 
 realm, to stand in full strength, your grace's most royal 
 assent and authority once impetrate fully given to the 
 same." In their preamble they sought to limit this conces- 
 sion to the king's life-time, by putting it on personal 
 grounds. " We, your most humble subjects . . . having our 
 special trust and confidence in your most excellent wisdom, 
 your princely goodness, and fervent zeal to the promotion 
 of God's honour and the Christian religion, and also in your 
 learning far exceeding in our judgment the learning of all 
 other kings and princes that we have read of, and doubting 
 nothing but that the same shall still continue and daily in- 
 crease in your majesty." Alas for the vain hopes of man ! 
 We know what was the future wisdom of the Defender of the 
 Faith, and we know how far the limitation to his life-time 
 held good. This Act was rightly called the Submission of 
 the clergy. It was passed by Convocation on i5th May, 
 1532, and was incorporated without these idle and delusive 
 limitations in an Act of Parliament in the spring of 1534." 
 The Bishop of Rochester cannot be shown to have had any 
 
 * 25 Henry VIII., c. 19.
 
 222 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 share in this disgraceful surrender of the Church's Divine 
 rights to an earthly tyrant.* 
 
 There were three stages in the fall of the ancient Church 
 of England. Her clergy were first subservient, then 
 schismatical, and lastly heretical. As yet there was no 
 question of formal schism. The pope's name was no more 
 mentioned in this discussion in 1532 on the submission of 
 the clergy than it had been in 1531 on the king's headship. 
 Things were, indeed, moving more speedily in Parliament. 
 While the clergy were debating on their dependence or 
 independence in making laws, an Act had been passed by 
 the two Houses suppressing the Annates or first-fruits paid 
 to the Holy See by bishops on the occasion of obtaining 
 bulls of consecration, palls, &c. There was in these 
 nothing of a simoniacal character. They were paid by all 
 bishops-elect equally, and were not bribes to the Sovereign 
 Pontiff to promote one rather than another. In fact, the ap- 
 pointment to bishoprics had for a considerable time been 
 entirely vested in the Crown ; the election of chapters and 
 confirmation by the pope following as a matter of course. 
 And when the Annates were no longer paid to the Holy See 
 they continued to be paid to the Crown ; but the Parliament 
 of 1532, wishing to influence the conduct of the pope in the 
 matter of the divorce, suppressed the Annates, without, 
 however, making the law absolute. It was left to the king 
 to make negotiations with the Sovereign Pontiff. The 
 first-fruits of the bishoprics were claimed by the Holy See as 
 a tax, and went principally to the support of the cardinals. 
 It was not denied that confirmation of election to bishoprics 
 should be sought from the pope, or that some subsidy 
 
 * See Collier, vol. iv., pp. 188-198 ; Hook's Warham, vi. 403-415. 
 Clerk, Bishop of Bath and Wells, dissented ; the Bishops of London, 
 Lincoln, and St. Asaph agreed only conditionally. The Bishops of 
 Bath and Lincoln were two of the deputation sent to consult with 
 Fisher. There were many dissentients in the Lower House.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 223 
 
 should be paid. This was fixed at five per cent, of the 
 first year's income, or the rateable value of the bishopric. 
 The schismatical character of the Act appears in this, that 
 should the pope refuse to grant bulls on these new terms, or 
 pursue his claim by spiritual censures, these were to be 
 despised, the consecrations were to be made by the arch- 
 bishop, and spiritual functions exercised, without any regard 
 to the authority of the Holy See. Still there was no re- 
 pudiation of the supremacy of the Church of Rome. 
 Parliament as yet only claimed the right to resist exorbi- 
 tant demands and to despise unjust censures. As usual, 
 subserviency to the king, the power near at hand, armed 
 with material scourges, was allied to insolence towards the 
 pope, the power far off, armed only with spiritual weapons. 
 Those who can see in this a mark of national greatness, or 
 an exercise of manly and Christian vigour, must have their 
 judgment strangely distorted. 
 
 While holding out threats of loss of income to the pope, 
 in order to purchase a venal judgment in his favour,* Henry 
 tried to perplex prelates and people at home by a great 
 show of politeness to the pope's nuncio. The king's object 
 was to persuade the opponents of the divorce that the pope 
 really favoured his cause, and the Bishop of Rochester told 
 the imperial ambassador, on i5th February, 1533, that the 
 king's policy was so far successful that the partisans of the 
 queen were becoming intimidated and perplexed.f 
 
 It was not easy to intimidate the holy bishop. By a 
 letter of the same ambassador, written on the 2oth June, 
 1532, we find that he had no sooner somewhat recovered 
 from the illness which had kept him from Convocation than 
 
 * This is euphuistically called by Rev. Joseph Hunter in his Intro- 
 duction to Valor Ecclesiasticus (prepared for the Government) 
 " strengthening the king's hands in his negotiations concerning the 
 divorce " (p. ii.). 
 
 t Letters and Papers, vi. 160.
 
 224 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 he publicly denounced in a sermon the great iniquity which 
 was now imminent. " About twelve days ago the Bishop 
 of Rochester preached in favour of the queen, and has been 
 in danger of prison and other trouble. He has shut the 
 mouths of those who spoke in the king's favour, but the 
 treatment of the queen is not improved."* The sermon 
 must have been preached in London to be spoken of in 
 such terms ; but whether in the presence of the king or not, 
 or in what church, or on what occasion, Chapuys does not say. 
 
 Owing to the plague, Parliament had been prorogued in 
 the spring of 1532. It met again in February, 1533. The 
 Lower House, as we have seen, had been well packed, and 
 could be trusted. It was important to eliminate the inde- 
 pendent element from the Upper House. On February 15, 
 1533, Chapuys tells the emperor that the three prelates who 
 sided with the queen will be excused from this Parliament, 
 and that the king has himself appointed their proctors. 
 These prelates were no doubt Fisher of Rochester, Clerk 
 of Bath and Wells, and either Tunstal of Durham or 
 West of Ely. Fisher, however, came. Warham, the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, had died in the preceding August. 
 Cranmer had been nominated as his successor, but was not 
 yet consecrated. 
 
 In spite of a bold opposition by the Bishop of Ro- 
 chester, an Act was at once passed against appeals to 
 Rome in cases of wills, marriages, tithes, and the like. 
 This was another step on the road to schism, but still it was 
 not yet a formal rupture. It was not a denial of the pope's 
 supremacy in the Church. It had nothing to do with 
 questions of doctrine ; its real object was to obstruct the 
 queen's appeal to the Holy See, and to pave the way for 
 Cranmer's sentence of divorce. The king had long been 
 cohabiting with Anne Boleyn, in spite of the formal injunc- 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. nog.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 225 
 
 tion and threatened excommunication by the pope. He 
 was now secretly married to her, or rather had gone 
 through the ceremony. The cause was still being pursued 
 by him in Rome; but to render Anne's expected issue 
 legitimate,* it was necessary to hasten proceedings to get a 
 legal declaration that, his former marriage having been null, 
 he had been free to marry. For this purpose the willing 
 judge had been chosen in the person of Cranmer, and the 
 statute against appeals in matrimonial cases put the case 
 into his hands. The bulls arrived from Rome for his 
 consecration on 2 6th of March, and he was consecrated on 
 the 3oth. He assembled Convocation, and the question of 
 the king's affinity was laid before the clergy with a foregone 
 conclusion. Chapuys writes to the emperor, 315! March, 
 
 1533: 
 
 " The king was only waiting for the bulls of the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury in order to proceed to the decision of his 
 marriage ; which having arrived within these five days, to 
 the great regret of everybody, the king was extremely urgent 
 with the synod here [the Convocation], for the determination 
 of his said affair, so that those present could scarcely eat or 
 drink, and using such terms to them that no one dared open 
 his mouth to contradict, except the good Bishop of Roches- 
 ter^ But his single voice cannot avail against the majority, 
 so that the queen and he now consider her cause desperate. 
 It is expected that the new marriage will be solemnised 
 before Easter, or immediately after." 
 
 He then goes on strongly to blame the pope's dilatoriness 
 or timidity in not having excommunicated Henry ; and 
 adds : " His holiness will be among the first to repent this, 
 for he will lose his authority here, which will be not a little 
 
 * The Princess Elizabeth was born on yth September, 1533. 
 
 J* The opposition of Fisher, and warm disputes between him and 
 Stokesley, Bishop of London, are mentioned by Jocelyn, Antiq. Britan.> 
 P- 327. (See also Lewis, ii. 98.) 
 
 15
 
 226 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 scandal to Christendom and prejudice to the queen. For 
 among other things contained in the libel exhibited in Parlia- 
 ment against the pope's authority, it is expressed that no 
 one shall appeal from here to Rome on any matter, temporal 
 or spiritual, on pain of confiscation of body and goods as a 
 rebel . . . which clause directly applies to the queen." * 
 
 The king had determined to have the Bishop of Rochester 
 out of the way during the public farce of Queen Catharine's 
 citation and divorce by Cranmer, and the coronation of 
 Anne Boleyn, lest one voice at least should be heard in 
 indignant protest. 
 
 Cranmer was consecrated 3-oth March, and Fisher was 
 arrested on 6th April. 
 
 The imperial ambassador thus communicates these pro- 
 ceedings to Charles V. on loth April : " Last Sunday, being 
 Palm Sunday,t the king made the Bishop of Rochester 
 prisoner, and put him under charge of the Bishop of Win- 
 chester ; which is a very strange thing, as he is the most holy 
 and learned prelate in Christendom. The king gave out in 
 Parliament that this was done because the bishop had 
 insinuated that Rochford had gone to France with a com- 
 mission to present an innumerable sum of money to the 
 Chancellor of France and the Cardinal of Lorraine, to 
 persuade the pope by a bribe to ratify this new marriage, or 
 at all events to overlook it and proceed no further. . . . 
 The real cause of the bishop's detention is his manly 
 defence of the queen's cause." J 
 
 Carlo Capello, the Venetian ambassador, who had taken 
 the place of Ludovico Falieri, wrote from London to the 
 Senate on i2th April, 1533: "On the Monday in Passion 
 week Parliament assembled. They decreed that the marriage 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi., n. 296, and Spanish Calendars, iv. 1057. 
 t Paques Florics : wrongly translated Easter Sunday by Mr. 
 Gayangos, but rightly by Mr. Gairdner. 
 
 J Letters and Papers, vi. 324 ; Spanish Calendars, 1058.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 227 
 
 of Queen Catharine with the king is null, and that he may 
 marry; and they have abolished the appeal to the pope. 
 . . . They have also abrogated the dispensations for holding 
 a plurality of benefices with cure of souls, and for marriage 
 and other things. They have prohibited obedience to papal 
 monitions and interdicts. The Bishop of Rochester, having 
 publicly opposed these measures, was arrested on Palm Sun- 
 day (6th April) and given in custody to the Bishop of 
 Winchester ; and three days ago he was sent to reside at 
 a place of his, and not to go more than a mile beyond it." * 
 
 It is from another letter of Chapuys that we learn the 
 length of this imprisonment. He writes on the i6th June 
 that Tunstal of Durham has incurred the king's anger for 
 his opposition to the title of Supreme Head, and to the 
 divorce, in the northern Convocation ; " and were it not 
 that the king cannot find a man more competent to govern 
 the country adjoining Scotland, he would have been put in 
 prison, like the Bishop of Rochester, who has not been at 
 liberty till within these three days, and this only at the inter- 
 cession of Cromwell ".t 
 
 Caiphas, then, being now high priest, and the Easter 
 festival approaching, Fisher, like his Divine Master, wit- 
 nessed a good confession before the powers of the earth. 
 At the risk of liberty and life he cleared his conscience both 
 in Parliament and Convocation. In reading his biographers 
 I have often wondered where he was and how he acted at 
 Catharine's divorce and Anne's coronation. The letters 
 just quoted make all clear. He was neither in his own 
 diocese nor in London when Cranmer, on i2th April, 
 craved permission of Henry to inquire into the validity of 
 his marriage with Catharine, on the 23rd May gave sentence 
 
 * Venetian State Papers, iv. 870. No mention of this second 
 arrest, any more than of the first in 1530, has been made by English 
 historians or biographers of Fisher. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, vi. 653 ; Spanish Calendars, iv. 1081.
 
 228 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 against it, and on the 28th declared valid the marriage 
 between Henry and Anne. It must have been a pain to 
 the saintly prisoner to be unable to celebrate the Easter and 
 Whitsuntide festivals, yet he would doubtless have preferred 
 imprisonment to the ignominy of his time-serving host or 
 jailor ; for on the feast of Pentecost, which that year fell on 
 ist June, was celebrated with immense pomp the coronation 
 of Anne Boleyn, at which "the Bishops of London and 
 Winchester (Stokesley and Gardiner) bore up the laps of 
 her robe," while she was crowned and communicated by 
 Cranmer. * 
 
 The bishop returned to his diocese with a sad heart on 
 his release on i3th June, and prepared himself for the worst. 
 On nth July the pope annulled the proceedings of Cranmer, 
 and on 8th August a brief of censure was issued against him, 
 as well as against Henry and Anne. The king at once 
 appealed to the next General Council, the meeting of which 
 he was resolved by all means to prevent. What was now to 
 be Fisher's course ? What did he consider his duty under 
 these circumstances ? The recent publication of the letters 
 of the imperial ambassador answers these questions, and 
 puts before us a very serious problem with regard to the 
 holy martyr, not hitherto discussed by biographers or 
 historians. Chapuys thus writes to the emperor on z'jth 
 September, 1533 : 
 
 " Since my last letters there has been nothing new about 
 the treatment of the queen and princess, nor about the 
 affairs of Scotland ; nor do I see any appearance of their 
 [i.e., the king and his council] obeying the censures of the 
 pope, unless they be accompanied with the remedies of 
 which I have before written". These remedies were an 
 armed invasion of England by the emperor's troops, which 
 would be met, as Chapuys thought, by an immediate and 
 almost general rising in England against the king. He 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. 601.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 229 
 
 adds : ' And as the good bishop of Rochester says, who has 
 sent to me to notify it, the arms of the pope [i.e., spiritual 
 censures] against these men, who are so obstinate, are more 
 frail than lead, and that your majesty must set your hand to 
 it, in which you will do a work as agreeable to God as 
 going against the Turk ".* 
 
 And on loth October he writes : " The queen has 
 charged me to beg you to press the pope to proceed at 
 ouce to the execution of the sentence, through all the most 
 rigorous terms of justice possible, without forgetting to 
 solicit the definition of the principal case; and she fully 
 believes that if you and the pope hold the reins firm without 
 any relaxation, these men will be brought to reason; for 
 with all their show of boldness, they are in great fear, and 
 will be all the more so if the pope, in whom they have some 
 hope, stand firm. For the love she bears her husband she 
 dare not speak of any other remedy but law and justice ; but 
 the good and holy bishop [of Rochester] would like you to 
 take active measures immediately, as I wrote in my last ; 
 which advice he has sent to me again lately to repeat. The 
 most part of the English, as far as I can learn, are of his 
 opinion, and only fear that your majesty will not listen to it. 
 . . . Were it not for the fear which the king has that his 
 people are so prone to rebellion, and that his subjects would 
 treat him as the German peasantry did their lords, he would 
 long since have declared himself Lutheran." t 
 
 That the bishop really sent these messages to Chapuys 
 there can be no doubt, for the ambassador's despatches are 
 always accurate and truthful. And there is as little doubt 
 that in sending such messages, provocative of foreign in- 
 vasion, he was doing a thing for which, had it been dis- 
 covered, he would have been adjudged guilty of high treason. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi., n. 1164 ; Spanish Calendars, iv. 1130. 
 t Ibid., n. 1249. The king of England just at this time was seek- 
 Jng an alliance with the Lutheran princes.
 
 230 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 But is high treason always criminal before God or man? 
 Surely those who glory in the Revolution of 1688, and who 
 reckon among patriots the nobles and prelates who invited 
 the Prince of Orange to invade England and dethrone his 
 father-in-law, can lay down no such absolute rule as would 
 prove a priori that the conduct of Fisher was a crime. 
 Constitutional lawyers, like Blackstone, may reason that, by 
 actions subversive of the constitution, King James II. had 
 virtually renounced his authority and abdicated his throne, 
 and that its vacancy was declared by the united senate of 
 the whole nation ; but even supposing this true, yet to make 
 that declaration possible, individual statesmen had first to 
 judge the cause themselves, and to invite and bring about, 
 by treasonable means, an armed invasion of the country. 
 The address of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Devonshire, 
 the Bishop of London, and the other conspirators of 1688, 
 to William is almost verbally what the Bishop of Rochester 
 might have said to Charles V. They stated that, " of the 
 common people, nineteen parts out of twenty longed most 
 anxiously for a change ; and that the nobility and gentry,, 
 though they did not express themselves with equal freedom, 
 were animated with the same sentiments ; that if the prince 
 were to land with a force sufficient to promise protection to 
 his friends, he would in a few days find himself at the head 
 of an army double in number to that of the king," &c. * 
 
 I must refer to the State Papers of Henry VIII., and to 
 the comments of their able and candid editor, Mr. Gairdner, 
 for the proofs that such was exactly the state of England at 
 the period when Fisher made his appeal to the emperor. 
 He was not alone. Many noblemen, and some of the very 
 councillors least suspected by Henry, were sending to 
 Chapuys similar messages.t Henry had violated his oath, 
 had violated the constitution, was destroying the Church he 
 
 * Lingard, fames II., chap. iv. 
 
 f See Mr. Gairdner's Introductions to vols. viii., ix.
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF SORROWS. 231 
 
 had sworn to protect, was bringing heresy and schism into a 
 country in which they were hitherto unknown, was cutting 
 off that country from the rest of Christendom, had incurred 
 the solemn censures of the Sovereign Pontiff, then recog- 
 nised even by the general law of Europe.* 
 
 But I have no thought of drawing a parallel between the 
 conduct of the saintly Bishop of Rochester and that of the 
 nobles who committed treason against James by inviting 
 the Prince of Orange. They wished to dethrone the king ; 
 Fisher's only wish was to deprive him of his evil counsellors 
 and oblige him to observe his coronation oath. They 
 wished to change the succession. The efforts of the Bishop 
 of Rochester, on the contrary, were directed to preserve the 
 rights of Henry's lawful successor, the Princess Mary, 
 cruelly sacrificed to the passions of her unnatural father. 
 He appealed, also, not to France or Scotland, but to the 
 head of the Holy Roman Empire, who was the acknow- 
 ledged arbitrator of Europe, and vindicator of the unity of 
 Christendom, even in countries which were outside the 
 Empire's bounds.f Henry had admitted this when, on the 
 visit of the emperor to London in 1522, he had allowed the 
 following words to be put up over the Council Chamber of 
 the Guildhall, where they were both entertained : 
 
 " CAROLUS, HENRICUS, VIVANT, DEFENSOR UTERQUE 
 HENRICUS FIDEI, CAROLUS ECCLESI/E ". J 
 
 If ever it can be lawful for subjects to appeal to foreign 
 aid against a monarch, it was assuredly a righteous and godly 
 
 * On i2th July, the pope, in a brief, declared the king to have 
 already incurred excommunication, but suspended the censure till the 
 close of September. The brief was published in Dunkirk (Froude, ii. 
 129). So also Sanders and Pocock ; but Mr. Gairdner shows that the 
 term fixed was the end of October, and the brief was issued on nth 
 July (Letters and Papers, vi., Append. 3). 
 
 r See Dr. Bryce's The Holy Roman Empire, chap. xv. 
 
 + Selden's Titles of Honour, part i., chap v.
 
 232 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 appeal that the holy bishop made at that moment, against 
 him who had been guilty of treason to his Church, tyranny 
 towards his people, adultery to his wife, and was bringing 
 on the land danger of civil war or foreign conquest by dis- 
 turbing the succession to the Crown. It was the deliberate 
 judgment of one who had been privy councillor to Henry 
 VII. and to Henry VIII. , and who by universal assent was 
 the most learned and holy prelate at that day in the Catholic 
 Church, that by invading England, not to conquer it, but to 
 enable its people to combine and assert their rights, the 
 emperor would have done as holy an action as by a crusade 
 against the Turks. 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X. 
 
 It is curious how the considerations which, according to Lord 
 Macaulay, converted even the Tories to the doctrine of lawful resist- 
 ance to tyranny, may be applied to this period of Henry's life. How 
 few words in the following extract require to be changed if they are 
 applied to 1533 instead of 1688 : " The prosecution of the bishops, 
 and the birth of the Prince of Wales" [write Princess Elizabeth], 
 " had produced a great revolution in the feelings of many Tories. At 
 the very moment at which their Church was suffering the last excess 
 of injury and insult, they were compelled to renounce the hope of 
 peaceful deliverance. Hitherto they had flattered themselves that 
 the trial to which their loyalty was subjected would, though severe, 
 be temporary, and that their wrongs would shortly be redressed with- 
 out any violation of the ordinary rule of succession. A very different 
 prospect was now before them. As far as they could look forward they 
 saw only misgovernment, such as tLat of the last three years, extending 
 through ages. The cradle of the heir-apparent of the Crown was sur- 
 rounded by Jesuits" [write Protestants]. "Deadly hatred of that 
 Church of which he [she] would be one day the head would be 
 studiously instilled into his [her] infant mind, would be the guiding 
 principle of his [her] life, and would be bequeathed by him [her] to 
 his [her] posterity. This vista of calamity had no end." * 
 
 If it be objected that Henry's measures were sanctioned by Parlia- 
 ment, while James's were opposed, it may be answered that Henry's 
 Parliament did not represent the nation. It was notoriously com- 
 
 * Macaulay's James 1 1., chap. :x.
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X. 233 
 
 posed of men who were virtually the king's nominees, and those who 
 were not considered sufficiently pliant had been excused attendance. 
 Now, that the opposition of such a Parliament would be of no weight 
 was admitted by the revolutionists of 1688, since in their invitation 
 to the Prince of Orange they urged that "the enterprise would be 
 far more arduous if it were deferred till the king, by remodelling 
 boroughs, had procured a Parliament on which he could rely ".* 
 Hence, according to them, it was the real feeling of the country, not 
 the votes of an obsequious Parliament, wkich should have weight. 
 
 Lord Campbell is not writing on ecclesiastical questions, but on 
 arbitrary taxation, when he says : " Against such an arbitrary sove- 
 reign as Henry, with such tools as Audley, the only remedy for 
 public wrongs was resistance ". f The same eminent writer and 
 politician has admitted the gravity of the circumstances in which 
 Fisher would have promoted resistance, in the following words : 
 " Instead of considering Sir Thomas More disloyal or morose " (in 
 refusing to be present at Anne's coronation) " we ought rather to 
 condemn the base servility of the clergy and nobility, who yielded to 
 every caprice of the tyrant under whom they trembled, and now heed- 
 lessly acquiesced in a measure which might have been the cause of 
 a civil war as bloody as that between the houses of York and Lan- 
 caster ". 
 
 In tracing these analogies I am merely stating an argumentum ad 
 hominem, and by no means pledging the Blessed John Fisher to any 
 theory of resistance to tyranny. We have his conduct and his words 
 before us on this occasion. We know little of his political views. 
 He probably agreed with Blessed Thomas More, whose words, quoted 
 at p. 140, Henry had once read without displeasure. 
 
 * Macaulay'syaww //., chap. ix. + In his Life of Audley. 
 J In his Life of More,
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KEXT. 
 
 THE next great trouble of the bishop arose from an 
 attempt by Cromwell to connect him with a con- 
 spiracy, or supposed conspiracy, to stir up popular 
 feeling against the king and his proceedings, by means of 
 the visions and revelations of a nun named Elizabeth 
 Barton.* It seems impossible at this distance of time, with 
 the documents which have come down to us, and which are 
 all on one side, to decide whether there was anything true 
 and supernatural in these revelations ; and if not, how much 
 was delusion and how much conscious imposture. Even in 
 the time of Dr. Hall there were different versions of the 
 nun's character, so that he says : " For my own part, I will 
 not for certain affirm anything, either with her or against 
 her, because I have heard her diversely reported of, and that 
 
 * The principal sources for the history of this affair are the follow- 
 ing: (i) The Act of Attainder for treason of Dr. Bocking and others, 
 and for misprision of treason of the Bishop of Rochester and others, 
 25 Henry VIII., cap. 12 (March, 1534). This Act is incredibly ver- 
 bose. It is to be found in the great edition of the Statutes printed in 
 1817 and in Hall's Chronicle. (2) The statements contained in it are 
 derived from the confessions and answers to interrogations made by 
 Cranmer, Cromwell, and their agents, and by other members of the 
 Council. Some of these were printed by Mr. Wright in his volume 
 on the Suppression of the Monasteries. (3) Many new documents are 
 contained in vols. vi. and vii. of the Letters and Papers of Henry 
 VIII. I have read all the documents carefully, and extracted what- 
 ever regards Fisher. Of course I have read Mr. Froude's picturesque 
 pages, but I have preferred authentic documents to his mixture of 
 theory, real evidence, and hostile narratives, indistinguishable except 
 to those who have carefully examined the sources.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 235 
 
 of persons of right good fame and estimation ". Fortu- 
 nately, in order to relate the history of the Bishop of 
 Rochester, and to form a judgment on his conduct, there is 
 no need to enter into the various details that have come 
 down to us regarding this nun, nor to form any opinion as 
 to the nature of her revelations. It will be enough to give 
 the outline of her story, without reference to the bishop, and 
 then the points by which he was entangled in it. 
 
 Elizabeth Barton was born in 1506, in the parish of 
 Aldington, near Romney-Marsh, in Kent.* At the age of 
 fifteen she was servant-maid to Thomas Cobbe in that parish, 
 and subject to some fits of sickness, seemingly hysterical. 
 Richard Master, the rector or parson of Aldington, is accused,, 
 in the Act of Attainder, of being her instigator in these 
 trances, in which she was supposed to receive Divine com- 
 munications. He is said to have been moved by cupidity 
 to get up pilgrimages to Our Lady of Court-up-Street,t the 
 name of a hamlet in the neighbouring parish of Lymne, 
 where there was a small and neglected chapel of the Blessed 
 Virgin, within which Elizabeth was, or pretended to have 
 been, cured. The only basis, apparently, for these charges 
 against the good priest was the desire of Cromwell to malign 
 the clergy. Master may have been a dupe, but there is 
 nothing to show that he was a knave. The Act of Attainder 
 says that the chipel of Court-up-Street was "within the said 
 parish " of Aldington, which is not true. So he had no 
 special, or at least personal, motive for magnifying and en- 
 riching it.| In any case he did his duty in laying the 
 
 * See the Map, p. 59. 
 
 t In the Act of Attainder always written Courte at Strete, in other 
 documents it is Courte-up-Strete, Courte-of-Streate, Cortopstrete, 
 Cortoppe Strete, with other variations according to each scribe's fancy. 
 
 Canon Jenkins, in his recent Diocesan History of Canterbury, 
 says, very gratuitously, that Master encouraged the girl " to begin a 
 course of prophecies," with a view to the restoration of the chapel 
 (p. 250).
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 matter before his diocesan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 Warham. The girl's revelations were in perfect harmony 
 with the faith, her exhortations all tended to virtue, and her 
 life was without reproach; the archbishop, therefore, with- 
 out passing any judgment, merely bade her pastor watch the 
 case, and report again. By an (alleged) command of the 
 Blessed Virgin, she became a nun at the age of sixteen, in 
 the Benedictine house of St. Sepulchre, in Canterbury ; and 
 as the fame of her sanctity, visions, and miracles spread, she 
 came to be known as the Holy Maid of Kent. Though a- 
 professed nun, she was allowed to leave her monastery from 
 time to time, as was not unfrequently the case before the 
 Council of Trent restored the discipline of strict enclosure ; 
 and we hear of her as visiting the chapel at Court-up-Street, 
 the nuns at Syon, near Isleworth, and the Charterhouse 
 monks at Shene, the archbishop, and even the king. 
 
 In the meantime the archbishop had commissioned the 
 prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, and two of his monks, 
 Richard Bocking, D.D., and William Hadley, B.D., to go 
 to Court-up-Street and witness the trances, and report to him 
 on them. Dr. Bocking was then appointed by the arch- 
 bishop to be her confessor, an appointment which cost him 
 his life. 
 
 When the question of the king's marriage with Catharine 
 of Aragon and the divorce became the talk of the country, 
 the revelations of the nun began to assume a personal and 
 political character. She circulated evil things of Cardinal 
 Wolsey, both before his fall and after his death, and still 
 more about the conduct of the king, and prophesied his 
 dreadful fate if he persisted in his evil ways. One witness 
 says that she stated that " an angel bade her go to the king, 
 that infidel prince, and command him to amend his life, not 
 to usurp the pope's rights, to put down the new learning ; 
 and to say that, if he married Anne, the vengeance of God 
 should plague him"; and that she asserted that she had
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 237 
 
 shonvn all this to the king : that two or three months later 
 the angel bade her go again to the king, and say that "since 
 her last being with him, he had more highly studied to bring 
 his purpose to pass ; and that if he did not take back his 
 wife " [here the witness dare not relate the threat, but says : 
 " It is so naughty a matter that my hand shaketh to write it, 
 and something better unwritten than written"].* Other 
 witnesses are not so nervous, and tell us that she spread 
 about, and even gave out that she had told it to the king 
 himself, that if he married Anne he should not live six 
 months after (or one month according to another version), 
 and that from the time of his marriage he would cease to be 
 king in the sight of God, &c.f 
 
 It was asserted that in these and similar matters she was 
 the political tool of Dr. Bocking and others of the queen's 
 party, and that there was a conspiracy, by means of writings 
 and printed books containing her prophecies, and by means 
 of sermons that should be preached when the Holy Maid 
 should give the word, to stir up the people to disaffection 
 towards the king, and so imperil his life. 
 
 Arrests having been made and the materials of accusation 
 got together in the autumn of 1533, the accused were not 
 brought to trial, but, by a more easy and summary process, 
 were indicted and attainted in Parliament in January, 1534, 
 some of treason and others of misprision J of treason. Those 
 attainted of treason were : Dr. Bocking and John Dering, 
 Benedictine monks of Canterbury ; Hugh Rich and Richard 
 Risby, Observant Franciscans; Richard Master, parson of 
 Aldington ; and Henry Gold, parson of Aldermary, Lon- 
 don ; and the nun, Elizabeth Barton. These were all 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. 1466. 
 
 ( Nos. 1470, 1468. 
 
 J Misprision, from the French mlpris, " contempt," means the 
 bare knowledge and concealment of treason without any degree of 
 assent thereto.
 
 238 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 executed at Tyburn on 2ist April, 1534, after long im- 
 prisonment 
 
 Those attainted of misprision of treason were : The 
 Bishop of Rochester ; his chaplain, John Adeson ; Thomas 
 Abell,* chaplain to Queen Catharine, and one of her de- 
 fenders, by writing ; Thomas Lawrence, registrar to the 
 archdeacon of Canterbury ; Thomas Gold and Edward 
 Thwaytes, laymen. 
 
 Before relating Fisher's share in this matter, it may be 
 well to repeat that it is not necessary to form any judgment 
 for or against Elizabeth Barton, so far as the bishop is 
 concerned. Certainly, if we could rely on the depositions 
 that have come down to us, her visions were intrinsically 
 improbable and her prophecies unfulfilled. But we must 
 remember that we have only the case as got up by Crom- 
 well. If, without irreverence, we may imagine a Jewish 
 Cromwell plying St. Peter and the other Apostles with 
 interrogations, in their moment of fear and weakness, he 
 would doubtless have been able to procure a strange carica- 
 ture of Our Lord's sayings and doings. And though the Holy 
 Maid of Kent may have been a weak visionary or a cunning 
 impostor, and, in truth, when we compare the evidence of the 
 various witnesses, it is hard to refrain from the opinion that 
 she was a little 'of both, yet it is not right, to decide the 
 matter, as most historians do, by declaring the imposture 
 proved, and appealing to the confession of the chief im- 
 postor. The Act of Attainder throughout speaks, indeed, 
 of the " false-cloaked hypocrisy and feigned revelations 
 and miracles" of the nun, and of her having "confessed all 
 her falsehood before divers of the king's counsellors, and 
 that these were manifestly proved, found, and tried most 
 false and untrue". But this may, for all we know, be 
 merely equivalent to the attainder of the Jewish tribunal : 
 
 * Thomas Abell, afterwards a martyr, is one of those who were 
 beatified with Fisher.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 239 
 
 "'What need we any further testimony? For we have 
 ourselves heard it from His own mouth." That Elizabeth 
 Barton ever confessed herself an impostor, we have no con- 
 vincing proof. Cranmer, indeed, writes to a friend of his on 
 the Continent : " Now she hath confessed that she never had 
 a vision in her life, but feigned them all " ; * but this can 
 be only decisive to those who have some trust in Cranmer's 
 truthfulness. One of Cromwell's correspondents, Dr. Gwent, 
 writes : " She confessed to Cranmer many mad follies " ; 
 he explains, however, his meaning, by adding that Cranmer 
 got her to acknowledge these " follies " by pretending to 
 believe in them, so that the nun's confession was not one of 
 imposture.! Though Blessed Thomas More, in his letter 
 to Cromwell, calls her a lewd nun and a " huswife," and 
 speaks of her " detestable hypocrisy " and her " confession," 
 it is not clear that he is not merely assuming the truth of 
 Cromwell's got-up case. It must, however, be admitted 
 that a great weight of evidence is apparently against her.J 
 
 To turn now to the Bishop of Rochester. He has been 
 accused of great credulity. But credulity and super- 
 stition are vague terms. It will be well to see what were 
 his general principles and what his conduct in this instance. 
 There is a remarkable passage on the subject of private 
 revelations in one of Fisher's treatises against Luther, that 
 can hardly fail to interest the reader, because it contains his 
 judgment about the famous Savonarola : " How can Luther 
 (he asks) be so certain, as he says he is, that all his doc- 
 trines come from heaven, unless it has been evidently 
 revealed to him ? Nay, even so, such revelations are in 
 general deceitful. They are thought to have emanated 
 
 * Cranmer's Letters, 273. 
 t Letters and Papers, n. 967. 
 
 Hall, the chronicler, gives her speech on the scaffold. If it is 
 authentic, it is decisive against her. 
 Lewis, ii. 112.
 
 240 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 from Ciod 3 while in reality they proceed from xhe evil spirit* 
 Does not St. Paul say that Satan transforms himself into an 
 angel of light ? And we read that a certain spirit said to the 
 Lord : I will go and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all the 
 prophets of Achab. And in our own times there was a man, 
 not without learning, Jerome of Florence, who boldly and 
 repeatedly (constanter) predicted to the Florentines many 
 things as about to take place, and thereby was held in 
 the greatest esteem of people and princes. However, as 
 after his death none of those things took place which he had 
 foretold, by that token it is now certain that his prophecies 
 did not come from God. For Jeremias writes : ' The pro- 
 phet that prophesied peace, when his word shall come to 
 pass, the prophet shall be known whom the Lord hath sent 
 in truth'.* So that, as it seems, Jerome (Savonarola) was 
 himself under a delusion, t although he was an eminent man, 
 and venerable in word and life, so far as human judgment 
 can decide, nor did he ever swerve a hair's-breadth in doc- 
 trine from the orthodox fathers, except that he despised 
 the excommunication pronounced against him, and taught 
 others to despise it. Now, if a man so great and so Catholic 
 could be misled by revelations, what surety can we have as 
 to the revelations made to Luther ? Although he (Jerome 
 Savonarola) might have seemed to have received great 
 offence at the hands of the Supreme Pontiff, Alexander, he 
 yet never spoke against his authority, but only against its 
 abuse. He possessed the greatest moderation (modestia), 
 humility, patience, and charity. He never inveighed 
 against the pontifical dignity, but only against the Pontiff's 
 life and conduct. He never presumed that anything should 
 be taught contrary to the common faith of the Catholic 
 Church. Whereas Luther is not ashamed to root up the 
 
 * ycrcm. xxvni. 9. 
 
 f Fisher adds, in a marginal note, that Pico della Mirandola ex- 
 cuses him, and that the Florentines still hold him in great veneration.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 241 
 
 Church's doctrines, to despise the maxims of the fathers, to 
 call the best and holiest popes impostors, to make nought 
 of the authority which Christ gave to St. Peter, to insult 
 and outrage excellent kings, to infect the people with the 
 most pernicious heresies, to fill heaven and earth with lies, 
 and is yet brazen-faced enough to boast that he is certain 
 that all his doctrines have come to him from heaven." * 
 
 Such were Fisher's principles as to revelations. Was, 
 then, he himself the victim of feigned revelations ? Or did 
 he forget in practice the caution he had taught? The 
 reader shall judge for himself by contemporary evidence. 
 
 When Cromwell was himself attainted all his papers were 
 seized, and thus even his private memoranda have been 
 carefully preserved. From them it is clear that the thought 
 of connecting Fisher with Dame Elizabeth Barton's seditious 
 or treasonable revelations emanated from him. On one 
 occasion, in October, he notes down that he is to speak to 
 the king of " the Bishop of Rochester's saying to Rysby," 
 one of the friars accused of treason ; a little later, that he is 
 to ask " whether the bishop is to be sent for". And in his 
 notes of matters to be brought before the next Parliament 
 we find the following : " To declare the names of all 
 offenders accused with the nun. To cause indictments to 
 be drawn for them in treason and misprision." f 
 
 The letters of Chapuys will tell us the course of events, 
 so far as they were public, and the rumours that were afloat. 
 On November 12, 1533, he writes to the emperor: "The 
 king has lately imprisoned a nun who had always lived till 
 this time as a good, simple, and saintly woman, and had 
 many revelations. The cause of her imprisonment is that 
 
 * Assertioniim Regis Anglice Defensio, cap. i., n. 6. In another 
 work. Fisher writes in a similar manner of Savonarola, showing that 
 he had nothing in common with Luther, who called him a saint 
 (Assert. Luth. Confutatio, Art. 33). 
 
 T Letters and Papers, vi. 1370, 1381, 1382. 
 16
 
 242 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 she had had a revelation that in a short time this king would 
 not only lose his kingdom, but that he should be damned, 
 and she had seen the place and seat prepared for him in 
 hell. Many have been taken up on suspicion of having 
 encouraged her to such prophecies to stir up the people to 
 rebellion. It seems as if God inspires the queen (i.e., the 
 deposed Queen Catharine) on all occasions to conduct her- 
 self well, and avoid all inconveniences and suspicions ; for 
 the nun had been very urgent at divers times to speak with 
 her and console her in her great affliction, but the queen 
 would never see her. Yet the council do not desist from 
 making continual inquiry whether the queen has had any 
 communication with her. She has no fear for herself, as 
 she never had any, but she fears for the Marquis and 
 Marchioness of Exeter and the good Bishop of Rochester, 
 who have been very familiar with the nun."* 
 
 On the 2oth November Chapuys writes again : " The 
 king has assembled the principal judges and many prelates 
 and nobles, who have been employed three days, from 
 morning till night, to consult on the crimes and superstitions 
 of the nun and her adherents ; t and at the end of this long 
 consultation, which the world imagines is for a more impor- 
 tant matter, the chancellor [Audley], at a public audience, 
 where were people from almost all the counties of the 
 kingdom, made an oration how that all the people of this 
 kingdom were greatly obliged to God, who by His Divine 
 goodness had brought to light the damnable abuses and 
 great wickedness of the said nun and of her accomplices, 
 whom for the most part he would not name, who had 
 wickedly conspired against God and religion, and indirectly 
 against the king, whom he lauded to the skies as a prince 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. 1419 ; Spanish Calendars, iv. 1149. 
 
 t Cromwell, in a letter to Fisher, speaks of " the great assembly of 
 the lords of this realm as has ever been seen many years to meet out 
 of Parliament " before whom the question had been brought.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 243 
 
 without a peer '*. The reader will remark that all this was 
 done long before the attainder, and before any legal trial of 
 the accused. Chapuys continues : " He praised also the 
 general devotion to the king of the whole realm, who knew 
 him to be rightly divorced from the queen, whom he called 
 princess-dowager, and that the most lawful marriage he had 
 made with this lady (Anne Boleyn) was not for his own 
 gratification, but to procure a lawful successor in the king- 
 dom ; and that they must not treat as of any account what- 
 ever a certain invalid sentence said to have been given by 
 the pope against the king, because his holiness had been 
 induced to pass it by improper means, and especially by the 
 diabolic plot of the said nun, who had written to him a 
 thousand false persuasions, which she authorised in a spirit 
 of prophecy and Divine revelation in case he did not give 
 sentence. 
 
 " Up to this point no one dared to say a word, or make 
 the slightest sign of pleasure or displeasure. But on the 
 chancellor proceeding to say that the nun and her accom- 
 plices, in her detestable malice, desiring to incite the people 
 to rebellion, had spread abroad and written that she had 
 a Divine revelation that the king would soon be shamefully 
 driven from his kingdom by his own subjects, some of 
 them began to murmur and cry that she merited the fire. 
 The said nun, who was present, had so much resolution that 
 she showed not the least fear or astonishment, clearly and 
 openly alleging that what the chancellor said was true."* 
 
 "At the end he declared that the late Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and many other great personages were mixed up in 
 these affairs ; and many were still alive who were infected, 
 whom the world would know hereafter. Many believe that 
 
 * From the mention of the nun's fearlessness it would appear that 
 she admitted the fact of her having promulgated these revelations and 
 adhered to their Divine origin, not that she admitted an imposture.
 
 244 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 those who have the said nun in hand will make her accuse 
 many unjustly in order to take vengeance on the queen's 
 party, and get money from them, which is the thing he (i.e., 
 the king) thinks most of in this world. The said nun has 
 been almost entirely under the keepership of Cromwell or 
 his people, and is continually treated as 'a great lady/* 
 which strongly confirms the above-named suspicion. 
 
 " The chief business still remains, for the king insists 
 that the said accomplices of the nun be declared heretics for 
 having given faith to her, and also be guilty of high treason 
 for not having revealed what concerned the king; conse- 
 quently their goods should be confiscated. To which the 
 judges during the last three days will not agree, as being 
 without any appearance of reason, even as to the last, since 
 the nun a year ago had told the king of it in person. It is 
 to be feared, however, that they will do that which the king 
 desires, as they did when they condemned the cardinal for 
 having received his legateship." t 
 
 Four days later, 24th November, Chapuys returns to the 
 subject : " Yesterday the nun was placed upon a high 
 scaffold before the cathedral of this city [at St. Paul's Cross], 
 where she, two good and religious Observants, two Augus- 
 tinian monks, two secular priests, a hermit, and a respectable 
 layman, waited all the time of the sermon ; and for their 
 vituperation the preacher, who was a monk lately made 
 bishop, in order to support the ' lady's ' party, repeated all 
 that the chancellor had said against them, further affirming 
 
 * " Grosse dame." According to M. Littre the word may bear in 
 old French the sense I have given to it. Mr. Gairdner translates 
 grosse " stupid," but with a note of interrogation. Would not the 
 context indicate that she was well treated, in order to encourage her 
 to stand to her revelations, and so involve more accomplices ? It was 
 certainly thus that Cranmer " dallied with her, as if he did believe 
 her every word," according to his own official, the dean of the arches. 
 (See n. 967.) 
 
 j- Letters and Papers, vi. 1445 ; Spanish Calendars, iv. 1153.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 245 
 
 that the nun, by her feigned superstition, had prevented the 
 Cardinal of York from proceeding to give sentence for the 
 divorce, as he had resolved ; and this had been one of the 
 greatest calamities of this kingdom, as much for the present 
 as for the future. To her other accomplices who were there 
 the preacher imputed levity and superstition for sticking to 
 such things, and disloyalty for not revealing them. He 
 attributed to the two Observants especially, that under the 
 shadow of the said superstition they had suborned and 
 seduced their companions to maintain the false opinion and 
 wicked quarrel of the queen against the king. And as the 
 principal matter of his harangue he confined the rest of his 
 discourse to a justification of the king's quarrel, impugning 
 the first marriage, exhorting the people with great vehemence 
 never to listen to the contrary."* 
 
 "It is said on the two next Sundays the nun and the 
 above-mentioned persons will play the same part in the 
 comedy, for it hardly deserves any other name, and that 
 afterwards they will be taken through all the towns in the 
 kingdom, to make a similar representation, in order to efface 
 the general impression of the nun's sanctity ; because this 
 people is peculiarly credulous, and is easily moved to 
 insurrection by prophecies, and, in its present disposition, 
 is glad to hear any to the king's disadvantage. The king 
 has not yet prevailed on the judges to make the declaration 
 against those who have practised against him with the said 
 nun, in the form that I last wrote.t He is going to have 
 the affair discussed with them on Friday ; and although 
 some of the principal judges would sooner die than make 
 
 * This courtly preacher was John Capon or Salcote, Abbot of 
 Hyde (Winchester), and nominated Bishop of Bangor. The Pro- 
 testant writers of the day say that the accused all confessed their 
 guilt and fraud on this occasion. Chapuys says nothing of this; 
 yet he had no reason to omit it, were it really so. 
 
 t That is, the declaration that they were guilty of heresy and treason.
 
 246 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the said declaration, yet, when the king comes to dispute, 
 there is no one who will dare contradict him, unless he 
 wishes to have ' beast ' or ' traitor ' thrown at his head. So 
 that it seems as if he had made a total divorce, not only 
 from his wife, but from good conscience, humanity, and 
 gentleness, which he used to have."* 
 
 It must be noticed, since it bears on the administration 
 of justice in those times, that not one of the persons thus 
 placed in public ignominy had been convicted or tried for 
 any crime, while the king is bullying his judges to con- 
 sent beforehand to a capital sentence against them, and 
 Cromwell is arranging for their attainder by Parliament. 
 Cromwell's agents sought out more evidence. Lee and 
 Bedyll write to him, on loth December, from Canterbury : 
 " We intend to return home shortly, for we find not so great 
 matters here as we expected. The crafty mint keeps her- 
 self very secret here, and showed her merchandise more 
 openly when she was far from home. If she had been as 
 wary elsewhere as here, she might have continued longer in 
 her falsehood." J Cranmer writes, at the same time (i3th 
 December), from Canterbury, to the king: "The feigned 
 revelations of the false nun of St. Sepulchre's, now that they 
 are declared to the people, are had in great abomination, 
 and everyone seems glad that they are exposed. I have 
 examined the prior and convent of my church (Christ- 
 church), and find them as conformable as any. They 
 greatly regret that any of their congregation should have 
 caused slander, and brought them under your displeasure, 
 when only a few consented to these revelations, almost all 
 being Dr. Bocking's novices. The prior and brethren are 
 much dismayed, and have desired me to mediate with you. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. 1460 ; Spanish Calendars, iv. 1154. 
 t Here is a further proof that she had made no confession, in the 
 sense of acknowledgment, of imposture. 
 J Letters, &c., 1512.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 247 
 
 Think they will offer ^200 or ^300 for their pardon."* 
 This last clause certainly justifies Chapuys' view, that greed 
 for money was urging on the king to these prosecutions. 
 ^300 was a large sum, equivalent to at least ^3000 in our 
 own day. His new archbishop is getting him this bribe 
 from his frightened subjects, whom he had sworn to protect. 
 They are guilty of no offence, yet they have to buy off his 
 displeasure. Cromwell also was making something by these 
 transactions, as was his custom. Richard Master, the rector 
 of Aldington, and Elizabeth Barton's first confessor, being 
 in prison, and thinking that Cromwell had got him a pardon, 
 sends his benefactor two gold royals, pleading his poverty 
 that he can do no more.f Yet the poor man remained in 
 prison, and was hung, drawn, and quartered notwithstanding. 
 But the king was to get neither offer of money nor apology 
 from the Bishop of Rochester. In the month of December, 
 1533, the bishop fell very ill, and during his illness had to 
 undertake the correspondence with Cromwell, the king, and 
 the House of Lords that will now be given, and which 
 certainly shows no sign of a sick or weakened mind. Crom- 
 well sent a message to him, by his brother Robert, that if he 
 would write an humble letter to the king, asking pardon and 
 submitting himself, he would not be further troubled.^ We 
 may judge what this meant by an example. A letter of the 
 kind, from the prior and monks of Christchurch, Canter- 
 bury, is in existence. They declare that they would have had 
 intolerable sorrow and despair but for the common fame of 
 the king's benignity. The temerity and furious zeal of one 
 of their number, Dr. Bocking, had led him to slander the 
 king's present marriage ; of which crime the writers desire 
 to be purged, as no other among them has impugned it, 
 
 * Letters and Papers, n. 1519. t Ibid., 1666. 
 
 J It is Cromwell himself who reminds the bishop of this in his 
 letter printed by Burnet.
 
 248 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 though it is true that some of them, especially of the 
 younger sort, were informed by the said doctor of the 
 counterfeit revelations of the nun. They would not be so 
 presumptuous as to impugn the Archbishop of Canterbury's 
 sentence, and the opinion of the most famous clerks of 
 Christendom.* This letter, probably drawn up for them 
 by Cranmer, together with the douceur of two or three 
 hundred pounds mentioned by him in his letter already 
 given, had its effect, not merely in obtaining their "pardon," 
 but also in compromising them in the matter of the divorce, 
 already condemned by the Sovereign Pontiff. Mr. Bruce 
 has remarked that Cromwell's desire in sending the message 
 to the bishop by his brother was to entrap him. " Had he 
 adopted this course, he would have destroyed his freedom 
 of action, and have rendered himself incapable of offering 
 any future opposition to the measures of the Court." Mr. 
 Southey, in his Book of the Church, asserts that "the bishop's 
 persistence in refusing to do this was plair'y a matter of 
 obstinacy, not of conscience". To which Mr. Bruce replies : 
 " It is indeed extraordinary that a man is to be denounced 
 as obstinate because, at the summons of a Secretary of 
 State, upon a promise of pardon, he did not acknowledge 
 himself guilty of an undefined offence, of the commission of 
 which his own conscience did not accuse him ". f 
 
 Instead of writing a hypocritical letter to the king, Fisher 
 replied to Cromwell's message, in a letter that has not come 
 down to us, but of which we know the substance by Crom- 
 well's answer. He declared that his motive in communi- 
 cating at all with Elizabeth Barton had been to make trial 
 whether her revelations were from God. He had heard 
 much of her holiness, and her director was in repute for 
 virtue and learning; Archbishop Warham had spoken to 
 him about the nun's visions and revelations; such revela- 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi. 1469. ^ Archczologia, vol. xxv.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 249 
 
 tions were not to be rejected beforehand, since the Holy 
 Scriptures say : " The Lord God doeth nothing without 
 revealing His secrets to His servants the prophets".* 
 
 In his reply, the secretary read the bishop a severe 
 lecture on his conduct, his imprudence, his prejudices, and 
 partisanship in everything regarding the deposed queen ; 
 that he had not taken the proper means to ascertain the 
 truth; and, in conclusion, that since, instead of asking 
 pardon, he defended himself, he must now not look for 
 mercy, and that if the matter came to a trial, his own con- 
 fession in this letter, besides the witnesses that were against 
 him, would be sufficient *o condemn him. He therefore re- 
 peats his advice to write a letter of submission to the king. 
 As the bishop had spoken of his conscience, the secretary 
 concludes by saying that it was thought he had written and 
 said as much as he could, and many things, as some very 
 probably believed, against his conscience ; that it was 
 reported that at the last Convocation he spake many things 
 he could not well defend, and therefore it was not greatly 
 feared what he could say or write in that matter more.f 
 
 To this the bishop replied from his sick-bed as follows : 
 "After my right humble commendations, I most entirely 
 beseech you that I no farther be moved to make answer 
 unto your letters, for 1 see that mine answer must rather 
 grow into a great book, or else be insufficient, so that ye 
 shall still thereby take occasion to be offended, and I 
 nothing profit. For I perceive that everything I writ is 
 
 * Amos in. 7. Although the bishop's letter is not in existence, 
 Mr. Froude calls it "ridiculous," and blames him for being "unable 
 to see that the exposure of the imposture had imparted a fresh 
 character to his conduct, which he was bound to regret" (History, ii., 
 ch. vii). 
 
 f Cromwell's letter is very long. It is printed in substance in 
 Lewis, ii. 114-117, and in full in Wright's Suppression of Monasteries 
 (Camden Society), p. 27.
 
 250 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 ascribed either to craft, or to wilfulness, or to affection, or 
 to unkindness against my sovereign ; so that ray writing 
 rather provoketh you to displeasure than it furthereth me in 
 any point concerning your favour, which I most effectually 
 covet. Nothing I read in all your long letters that I take 
 any comfort of, but the only subscription wherein it pleased 
 you to call you my friend ; which undoubtedly was a word 
 of much consolation unto me, and therefore I beseech you 
 so to continue, and so to show yourself unto me at this time. 
 
 " In two points of my writing methought ye were most 
 offended, and both concerned the king's grace. That one 
 was where I excused myself by the displeasure that his 
 highness took with me when I spake once or twice until 
 him of like matters. That other was where I touched his 
 great matter. And as to the first, methink it very hard that 
 I might not signify unto you such things secretly as might 
 be most effectual for mine excuse. And as to the second, 
 my study and purpose was specially to decline that I should 
 not be straited to offend his grace in that behalf, for then I 
 must needs declare my conscience, the which (as then I 
 wrote) I would be loth to do any more largely than I have 
 done. Not that I condemn any other men's conscience. 
 Their conscience may save them, and mine must save me. 
 Wherefore, good master Cromwell, I beseech you for the 
 love of God be contented with this mine answer, and to 
 give credence unto my brother in such things as he hath to 
 say unto you. Thus fare you well. 
 
 " At Rochester, the 31 day of January [1534], 
 " By your faithful beadman, 
 
 "JO. ROFFS."* 
 
 Thiee days before writing this letter the bishop had 
 received a summons to attend Parliament, and had written 
 the following excuse : 
 
 * B. M., Cleop., E. vi. 161. Printed by Lewis and Bruce.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 251 
 
 "MASTER CROMWELL, 
 
 "After my right humble commendations, I be- 
 seech you to have some pity of me, considering the case and 
 condition I am in ; and I doubt not if ye might see in what 
 plight that I am, ye would have some pity upon me. For in 
 good faith, now almost this six weeks I have had a grievous 
 cough, with a fever in the beginning thereof, as divers other 
 here in this country hath had, and divers have died thereof. 
 And now the matter is fallen down into my legs and feet, with 
 such swelling and ache that I may neither ride nor go [i.e., 
 walk], for the which I beseech you eftsoons to have some 
 pity upon me, and to spare me for a season, to the end the 
 swelling and aches of my legs and feet may assuage and 
 abate ; and then, by the grace of Our Lord, I shall with all 
 speed obey your commandment. Then fare ye well. 
 
 "At Rochester, the 28 day of January, 
 
 " By your faithful beadman, 
 
 "JO. ROFFS."* 
 
 Crormvell in reply promised to obtain for him leave of 
 absence, but in all probability informed him that a bill of 
 attainder was about to be introduced against him as a par- 
 ticipator, or as involved by misprision, in Elizabeth Barton's 
 treasonous frauds. Parliament met on i5th January, 1534, 
 and on 2ist February the bill was read for the first time in 
 the House of Lords, and a second time on the 26th. The 
 bishop was still very ill and unable to appear before Parlia- 
 ment for his own defence. From his sick-bed he wrote the 
 two following letters, to the king and to the lords, contrast- 
 ing in the most marked manner, by their frank and noble, 
 though respectful, tone, with the verbose, cringing, and 
 slavish effusions with which petitioners generally approached 
 their sovereign in those days of hypocrisy and arbitrary 
 power: 
 
 * B. M., Vespas., F. xiii., 1546. Printed by Lewis and Bruce.
 
 252 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 " To THE KING'S MOST GRACIOUS HIGHNESS, 
 
 "Please it, your gracious highness, benignly 
 to hear this my most humble suit, which I have to make 
 unto your grace at this time, and to pardon me that I come 
 not myself unto your grace for the same. For, in good 
 faith, I have had so many perilous diseases, one after 
 another, which began with me before Advent, and so by 
 long continuance hath now brought my body into that 
 weakness, that without peril of destruction of the same 
 (which I dare say your grace for your sovereign goodness 
 would not), I may not as yet take any travelling upon me. 
 And so 1 I wrote to Master Cromwell, your most trusty 
 counsellor, beseeching him to obtain your gracious licence 
 for me to be absent from this Parliament, for that same 
 cause, and he put me in comfort so to do. 
 
 " Now, thus it is (most gracious sovereign lord), that in 
 your most high court of Parliament is put in a bill against 
 me, concerning the nun of Canterbury, and intending my 
 condemnation for not revealing of such words as she said 
 unto me touching your highness. Wherein I most humbly 
 beseech your grace, that without displeasure I may show 
 unto you the consideration that moved me so to do, which, 
 when your most excellent wisdom hath deeply considered, 
 I trust assuredly that your charitable goodness will not 
 impute any blame to me therefore. 
 
 " A truth it is, this nun was with me thrice in coming 
 from London by Rochester, as I wrote to Master Cromwell, 
 and showed unto him the occasions of her coming, and of 
 my sendings until her again. 
 
 " The first time she came unto my house, unsent for of 
 my part, and then she told me that she had been with your 
 grace, and that she had shown unto you a revelation which 
 she had from Almighty God (your grace, I hope, will not 
 be displeased with this my rehearsal thereof) ; she said
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 253 
 
 that if your grace went forth with the purpose that ye 
 intended, ye should not be King of England seven months. 
 after. 
 
 " I conceived not by these words, I take it upon my soul, 
 that any malice or evil was intended or meant unto your 
 highness, by any mortal man, but only that they were the 
 threats of God, as she then did affirm. 
 
 "And though they were feigned, that (as I would be 
 saved) was to me unknown. I never counselled her unto 
 that feigning, nor was privy thereunto, nor to any such 
 purposes, as it is now said they went about.* 
 
 " Nevertheless, if she had told me this revelation, and had 
 not also told me that she had reported the same unto your 
 grace, I had been verily far to blame, and worthy extreme 
 punishment, for not disclosing the same unto your high- 
 ness, or else to some of your council. But since she did 
 assure me therewith, that she had plainly told unto your 
 grace the same thing, I thought doubtless that your grace 
 would have suspected me that I had come in to renew her 
 tale again unto you, rather for the confirming of my opinion 
 than for any other cause. 
 
 " I beseech your highness to take no displeasure with 
 me for this that I will say. It sticketh yet (most gracious 
 sovereign) in my heart, to my no little heaviness, your 
 grievous letters, and after that your most fearful words, that 
 your grace said unto me, for showing unto you my mind 
 and opinion in the same matter, notwithstanding that your 
 highness had so often and so straitly commanded me to 
 search for the same before. And for this cause I right 
 
 * Everywhere the bishop expresses himself on the subject of the 
 " Holy Maid " with the greatest caution. He speaks hypothetically 
 of her being an impostor. To have defended her then would have 
 been worse than useless ; to treat her as certainly guilty would have 
 been unjust, unless he were convinced, as Sir Thomas More seems 
 to have been, that she had confessed to fraud.
 
 254 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 loathe to have come unto your grace again, with such a tale 
 pertaining to that matter. 
 
 " Many other considerations I had, but this was the very 
 cause why that I came not unto your grace. For, in good 
 faith, I dreaded lest I should thereby have provoked your 
 grace to farther displeasure against me. 
 
 " My Lord of Canterbury also, which was your great 
 counsellor, told me that she had been with your grace, and 
 had shown you this same matter, and of him (as I will 
 answer before God) I learned greater things of her pre- 
 tended visions than she told me herself. And, at the same 
 time, I showed unto him that she had been with me, and 
 told me as I have written before. 
 
 "I trust now that your excellent wisdom and learning 
 seeth there is in me no default for not revealing of her words 
 unto your grace, when she herself did affirm unto me that 
 she had so done, and my Lord of Canterbury, that then was, 
 confirmed also the same. 
 
 "Wherefore, most gracious sovereign lord, in my most 
 humble wise, I beseech your highness to dismiss me of this 
 trouble, whereby I shall the more quietly serve God, and 
 the more effectually pray for your grace. This, if there 
 were a right great offence in me, should be to your merit to 
 pardon, but much rather, taking the case as it is, I trust 
 verily you will so do. 
 
 " Now, my body is much weakened with many diseases 
 and infirmities, and my soul is much inquieted by this 
 trouble, so that my heart is more withdrawn from God, and 
 from the devotion of prayer, than I would. And verily, 
 I think that my life may not long continue. Wherefore, 
 eftsoons, I beseech your most gracious highness, that by 
 your charitable goodness I may be delivered of this business, 
 and only to prepare my soul to God, and to make it ready 
 against the coming of death, and no more to come abroad 
 in the world. This, most gracious sovereign lord, I
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 255 
 
 beseech your highness, by all the singular and excellent 
 endowments of your most noble body and soul, and for the 
 love of Christ Jesus, that so dearly with His most precious 
 Blood redeemed your soul and mine. And during my life 
 I shall not cease (as I am bound), and yet now the more 
 entirely, to make my prayer to God for the preservation of 
 your most royal majesty. 
 
 " At Rochester, the 27th day of February. 
 
 " Your most humble beadman and subject, 
 
 "JO. ROFFS."* 
 
 The second letter is to the House of Lords : 
 
 " MY LORDS, 
 
 " After my most humble commendations unto all 
 your good lordships, that sit in this most high court of 
 Parliament, I beseech in like manner to hear and to tender 
 this my suit, which by necessity I am now driven to make 
 unto all your lordships in writing, because I may not, by 
 reason of disease and weakness, at this time be present 
 myself before you without peril of destruction of my body, 
 as heretofore I have written to Mr. Cromwell, which gave 
 me comfort to obtain of the king's grace respite for my 
 absence till I be recovered. If I might have been present 
 myself, I doubt not the great weakness of my body, with 
 other manifold infirmities, would have moved you much 
 rather to have pity of my cause and matter, whereby I am 
 put under this grievous trouble. 
 
 " So it is, my good lords, that I am informed of a certain 
 bill that is put into this high court against me and others 
 concerning the matter of the nun of Canterbury, which 
 thing is to me no little heaviness, and most especially in 
 this piteous condition that I am in. 
 
 * Lewis, ii. 336.
 
 256 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 "Nevertheless, I trust in your honours' wisdom and 
 consciences, that you will not in this high court suffer any 
 act of condemnation to pass against me till my cause may 
 be well and duly heard. And, therefore, in my most 
 humble wise, I beseech all you, my lords, in the way of 
 charity, and for the love of Christ, and for the mean season, 
 it may please you to consider, that I sought not for this 
 woman's coming unto me, nor thought in her any manner 
 of deceit. She was the person, that by many probable and 
 likely conjectures, I then reputed to be right honest, reli- 
 gious, and very good and virtuous. I verily supposed that 
 such feigning and craft, compassing of any guile or fraud, 
 had been far from her. And what default was this in me so 
 to think, when I had so many probable testimonies of her 
 virtue ? 
 
 " First, The bruit of the country, which generally called 
 her the Holy Maid. 
 
 ''Secondly, Her entrance into religion upon certain 
 visions which was commonly said that she had. 
 
 " Thirdly, For the good religion and learning that was 
 thought to be in her ghostly father, and in other virtuous 
 and well-learned priests that then testified of her holiness, 
 as it was commonly reported. 
 
 " Finally, My Lord of Canterbury that then was, both her 
 ordinary and a man reputed of high wisdom and learning, 
 told me that she had many great visions. And of him I 
 learned greater things than ever I heard of the nun herself. 
 Your wisdoms, I doubt not, here see plainly that in me 
 there was no default to believe this woman to be honest, 
 religious, and of good credence. 
 
 " For sithen [i.e., since] I am bound by the law of God ta 
 believe the best of every perpon until the contrary be 
 proved, much rather I ought so to believe of this woman, that 
 had then so many probable testimonies of her goodness and 
 virtue.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 257 
 
 " But here it will be said, that she told me such word as 
 was to the peril of the prince and of the realm. Surely 1 
 am right sorry to make any rehearsal of her words, but only 
 that necessity so compels me now to do. The words that 
 she told me concerning the peril of the king's highness 
 were these : she said that she had her revelation from God, 
 that if the king went forth with the purpose that he intended, 
 he should not be King of England seven months after ; and 
 she told me, also, that she had been with the king and 
 shown unto his grace the same revelation. 
 
 " Though this was forged by her or any other, what de- 
 fault is mine, that knew nothing of that forgery ? If I had 
 given her any counsel to the forging this revelation, or had 
 any knowledge that it was feigned, I had been worthy great 
 blame and punishment. But whereas I never gave her any 
 counsel to this matter, nor knew of any forging or feigning 
 thereof, I trust in your great wisdoms that you will not 
 think any default in me touching this point. 
 
 "And as I will answer before the throne of Christ, I 
 knew not of any malice or evil that was intended by her, or 
 by any other earthly creature unto the king's highness : 
 neither her words did so sound that by any temporal or 
 worldly power such thing was intended, but only by the 
 power of God, of whom, as she then said, she had this 
 revelation to show unto the king. 
 
 " But here it will be said, that I should have shown the 
 words unto the king's highness. Verily, if I had not un- 
 doubtedly thought she had shown the same words unto his 
 grace, my duty had been so to have done. But when she 
 herself, which pretended to have had this revelation from 
 God, had shown the same, I saw no necessity why that I 
 should renew it again to his grace. For her esteemed 
 honesty, qualified, as I said before, with so many probable 
 testimonies, affirming unto me that she had told the same 
 unto the king, made me right assuredly to think that she
 
 258 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 had shown the same words to his grace. And not only her 
 own saying thus persuaded me, but her prioress's words 
 confirmed the same, and their servants also reported to my 
 servants that she had been with the king. And yet be- 
 sides all this, I knew it not long after, that so it was indeed. 
 I thought, therefore, that it was not for me to rehearse the 
 nun's words to the king again, when his grace knew them 
 already, and she herself had told him before. And surely 
 divers other causes dissuaded me so to do, which are not 
 here openly to be rehearsed. Nevertheless, when they shall 
 be heard, I doubt not but they will altogether clearly excuse 
 me as concerning this matter. 
 
 " My suit, therefore, unto all you, my honourable lords, 
 at this time is, that no act of condemnation concerning this 
 matter be suffered to pass against me in this high court 
 before that I be heard, or else some other for me, how that 
 I can declare myself to be guiltless herein. 
 
 "And this I most humbly beseech you all, on your 
 charitable goodnesses, and also if that peradventure in the 
 meantime there shall be thought any negligence in me for 
 not revealing this matter unto the king's highness, you, for 
 the punishment thereof which is now past, ordain no new 
 law, but let me stand unto the laws which have been here- 
 tofore made, unto the which I must and will obey.* 
 
 "Beseeching always the king's most noble grace that the 
 same his laws may be ministered unto me with favour and 
 equity, and not with the strictest rigour. I need not here 
 to advise your most high wisdoms to look up to God, and 
 upon your own souls in ordaining such laws for the punish- 
 ment of negligences, or of other deeds which are already 
 past, nor yet to look upon your own perils which may 
 
 * Lord Chancellor Campbell calls a bill of attainder " that com- 
 modious instrument of tyranny which obviated the inconvenient re- 
 quirements of proofs and judicial forms" (Life of Audley). Fisher was 
 therefore protesting in favour of freedom and constitutional right.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 259 
 
 happen to you in like cases. For there sits not one lord 
 here but the same or other like may chance unto himself that 
 now is imputed unto me.* 
 
 ' And therefore eftsoons I beseech all your benign charities 
 to tender this my most humble suit as you would be ten- 
 dered if you were in the same danger yourselves : And this 
 to do for the reverence of Christ, for the discharge of your 
 own souls, and for the honour of this most High Court : 
 And finally for your own sureties, and others that hereafter 
 shall succeed you, for I verily trust in Almighty God that, 
 by the succour of His grace, and your charitable supporta- 
 tions, I shall so declare myself, that every nobleman that 
 sits here shall have good reason to be therewith satisfied. 
 Thus Our Lord have you all, this most honourable court, 
 in his protection. Amen."f 
 
 The only result of these solemn appeals, not for mercy, 
 but for justice, was that the bill was read a third time on 
 6th March. The entry in the Lords' Journal si that date is 
 as follows : " A bill, written on paper, concerning the due 
 punishment of Elizabeth Barton, nun and hypocrite (mona- 
 cellce et hypocritce\ formerly called the Holy Maid of Kent, 
 with her adherents, was thrice read. Their lordships there- 
 upon thought it fit to find whether it was according to the 
 king's will, that Sir Thomas More, and the others named 
 with him in the said bill, with the exception of the Bishop 
 of Rochester, who is laid up with illness, and whose answer 
 is already known by his letters, should be required to appear 
 before their lordships in the Star Chamber, that it may be 
 heard what they can say for themselves." 
 
 Hence it appears that the name of Sir Thomas More had 
 been up to this time on the bill, and was afterwards struck 
 
 * Prophetic words. It was Cromwell who contrived these bills of 
 attainder, and who was himself doomed to death by the same instru- 
 ment of tyranny. 
 
 t Lewis, ii. 332,
 
 260 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 off.* The bishop's letter, asking to be heard, was considered 
 as equivalent to his having been heard.t 
 
 On the 1 2th of March, the bill was engrossed on parch- 
 ment, and passed the Lords. It was expedited through the 
 Commons, and returned to the Lords on the lyth. On the 
 2oth, it was delivered to the chancellor, for what cause does 
 not appear. He brought it back on the 2ist, and it seems 
 that the royal assent was given to it on 3oth March, accord- 
 ing to the practice then usual, when the king attended to 
 put an end to the session. 
 
 The exact terms of the Act were these : " In considera- 
 tion of which premises ... be it enacted . . . that John, 
 Bishop of Rochester" (and others), "shall be convict and 
 attainted of misprision and concealment of treason, as 
 persons that have given such credit, counsel, and constant 
 belief to the said principal offenders" (viz., those attainted 
 of treason), " whereby they have taken courage and bold- 
 ness to commit their said detestable treasons and offences. 
 And that the said Bishop of Rochester " (and others) "... 
 shall suffer imprisonment of their bodies at the king's will, 
 and forfeit to the king's highness all their goods, chattels, 
 and debts" (due to them) "which they had on the i6th 
 January, or at any time since the said day, And that such 
 benefices and spiritual promotions as the said John Adeson 
 and Thomas Abell had on the i6th January shall from the 
 2oth March, 1533" (i.e., 1534) "be void in the law ... as 
 
 * More had written earnest exculpatory, but not apolegetic, letters 
 to Cromwell, and to the king. The latter is dated 5th March. 
 (See Letters, &c., vii. 287-289.) 
 
 t Only three bishops are recorded in the Lords' Journals as 
 present in this Parliament. The Bishop of Rochester's name is on 
 the lists, though without the P signifying "present" until the 2ist 
 February, when the bill of attainder against him was introduced. 
 From that date his name is omitted. Chapuys twice mentions how 
 the king " packed " this Parliament, and countermanded those likely 
 to oppose him (Letters, &-c., vii. 83, 296, 373).
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 261 
 
 if the said John Adeson and Thomas Abell were dead of 
 their natural deaths." 
 
 Nothing is said of making void the bishopric of Ro- 
 chester. 
 
 Chapuys wrote to the emperor on 25th March: "The 
 good Bishop of Rochester, who is the paragon of Christian 
 prelates, both for learning and holiness, has been con- 
 demned to confiscation of body and goods. All this 
 injustice is in consequence of his support of the queen."* 
 
 It is remarkable that the pope's final decree in favour of 
 the validity of the marriage between Henry and Catharine 
 was given on 23rd March, and was, thererefore, simul- 
 taneous with the attainder of the great champion of that 
 marriage. 
 
 It is painful to an Englishman, even after three centuries 
 and a half, to think that the Peers of this nation, together 
 with the Commons and the sovereign, should, on the most 
 frivolous pretexts, and without a trial or hearing the accused 
 in his own defence, have passed such a sentence on a bishop 
 who was the glory of their episcopate. " It is needless,' 
 writes Mr. Bruce, " to dwell upon the manifest injustice and 
 breach of constitutional form which distinguished the whole 
 of this proceeding. It was the opening of a fearful tragedy, 
 the turning of a page in our history, which reflects equal 
 disgrace upon the malignity of the king and the cold-hearted 
 suppleness of his advisers. That the king could obliterate 
 the memory of former kindnesses, and close his heart 
 against the entreaties of an infirm man, who had long 
 served his father and himself, whose pretended fault had 
 been committed without fraud, and was followed by no evil 
 consequences, and who, in his extreme age, declares that he 
 merely sighs ' to prepare his soul to God and make it ready 
 against the coming of death, and no more to come abroad 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vi'i. 373.
 
 262 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 into the world,' is a proof how rapidly he was descending 
 into the state of ferocious tyranny which distinguished the 
 after portion of his life."* 
 
 It does not appear, however, that on account of this 
 attainder the bishop was imprisoned or forfeited his goods, 
 "although, as I have heard," says Dr. Hall, "he was after 
 fain to redeem himself with payment of three hundred 
 pounds for a fine, which was one whole year's revenue of 
 his bishopric ; for the king meant not to spoil his goods, 
 which he knew to be of small value, but rather thirsted after 
 his life, knowing him to be a great stop and hindrance of 
 all his licentious proceedings''. The bishop's Protestant 
 biographer, or rather slanderer, Mr. Lewis, takes another 
 view of the matter. " The king, it seems, willing to try 
 what he could do with the bishop by fair and gentle means, 
 was pleased, it is said to mitigate the rigour of the law, and 
 to pardon his lordship on his paying a fine of ^300, which 
 favour was obtained for him by the mediation and interces- 
 sion of the new queen." Mr. Froude, with his usual taste, 
 says: "Fisher found mercy thrust upon him, till by fresh 
 provocation the miserable old man forced himself upon his 
 fate ". 
 
 There is no need to have recourse to the apocryphal 
 mediation of Anne Boleyn, nor to the still more apocry- 
 phal benignity of the king, to explain this mystery. Another 
 Act had been passed in the same session of Parliament, and 
 it afforded an easier and more effectual means to accomplish 
 the ruin of the bishop than the Act of Attainder. This was 
 the Act of Succession, by means of which the bishop was 
 placed in the dilemma of taking an oath such as the king 
 desired, or of being guilty of misprision of treason by re- 
 fusing it. The king therefore had the choice of two 
 weapons against the bishop, and he naturally chose the 
 
 * Mr. Bruce in Archceologia, vol. xxv., p. 70.
 
 THE HOLY MAID OF KENT. 263 
 
 latter. If he could get him to take the oath, it would be a 
 complete humiliation of the bishop, and a thorough triumph 
 for the king and for Anne Boleyn. If he should refuse the 
 oath, he would be even more in the king's power than he 
 now was. This must be explained in the next chapter.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 
 
 ' I "*HE king's divorce from Catharine and marriage with 
 _L Anne involved a change in the succession to the 
 Crown. It had become necessary to set aside the 
 Princess Mary as illegitimate, and to fix the inheritance on 
 the king's offspring by Anne Boleyn. This was done by an 
 Act of 25th Henry, chap. 22 (March, 1534).* The preamble 
 of the Act recites the importance of providing for the suc- 
 cession to the Crown, the illegality and invalidity of the 
 marriage between Henry and Catharine, the validity of the 
 divorce pronounced by Cranmer, the validity and lawfulness 
 of the marriage contracted by the king with Anne. The 
 Act then goes on to limit the succession to his and her issue, 
 making it high treason to oppose this succession, and mis- 
 prision of treason to speak against it. It then continues as 
 follows : 
 
 " Be it further enacted that all the nobles of the realm, 
 spiritual and temporal, and all other subjects arrived at full 
 age, at the will of the king, may be obliged to take corporal 
 oath, in the presence of the king or his commissioners, that 
 they shall truly, firmly, and constantly, without fraud or guile, 
 
 * The Act, going beyond the immediate purpose, declares that 
 there is no power residing with anyone to dispense with the Levitical 
 impediments, and that any marriages hitherto contracted with such 
 dispensations, on pretence of the pope's dispensation, must be dis- 
 solved by the ecclesiastical courts. This is the first in a long series 
 of blundering legislation on marriage by the civil power, founded on 
 no principle and issuing in utter confusion.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 265 
 
 observe, fulfil, maintain, defend, and keep, to their cunning, 
 wit, and uttermost of their powers, the whole effect and con- 
 tents of the present Act ". 
 
 Then after mentioning persons from whom, and circum- 
 stances in which, the taking of the oath must be exacted, 
 the Act concludes : 
 
 " And if any persons, being commanded by authority of 
 this Act to take the said oath afore limited, obstinately refuse 
 that to do, in contempt of this Act, they become guilty of 
 misprision of treason ". 
 
 The Act, however, had not indicated the precise form of 
 the oath to be taken. A form was drawn up by the com- 
 missioners, who were the Lord Chancellor (Audley), the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury (Cranmer), and the Dukes of 
 Norfolk and Suffolk, to whom were afterwards added the 
 secretary (Cromwell) and the Abbot of Westminster. The 
 oath given in the Lord? Journals is as follows : 
 
 "Ye shall swear to bear your faith, truth, and obedience, 
 alonely to the king's majesty, and to the heirs of his body 
 . . . according to the limitation and rehearsal within this 
 statute of succession . . . and not to any other within this 
 realm, nor foreign authority ', prince or potentate ; and in case 
 any oath be made, or hath been made by you, to any other 
 person or persons, that you thus do repute the same as vain 
 and annihilate ; and that to your cunning, wit, and utter- 
 most of your power, without guile, fraud, or other undue 
 means, ye shall observe, keep, maintain, and defend this Act, 
 and all the whole contents and effects thereof, and all other 
 Acts and Statutes made since the beginning of this present 
 Parliament, in confirmation or for the due execution of the 
 same, or of anything therein contained. And thus ye shall 
 do against all manner of persons, of 'what estate, dignity, 
 degree, or condition soever they be, and in nowise do or 
 attempt, nor to your power suffer to be done or attempted. > 
 directly or indirectly, any thing or things, privily or apertly
 
 266 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 to the let, hindrance, damage, or derogation thereof, or of 
 any part of the same, by any manner of means, or for any 
 manner of pretence or cause. So help you God and all 
 saints." * 
 
 But though this formula is placed in the Lords' Journals 
 as if it had been authorised and used in March, 1534, it is 
 in reality taken from an Act passed in December of the 
 same year, and called " An Act ratifying the oath that every 
 of the king's subjects hath taken, or hereafter shall be bound 
 to take"; and this Act recites the above formula with the 
 introduction : " The tenour of which oath hereafter en- 
 sueth ",f What form of oath was taken by the two houses 
 we do not know. But we know that, as it were in virtue of 
 the Act of Succession, the king immediately began to exact 
 from the clergy an explicit renunciation of the pope's autho- 
 rity. Rowland Lee, who was consecrated by Cranmer on 
 igth April, 1534, nine months before the Act of Supremacy 
 was passed, swore as follows: " I acknowledge and recognise 
 your majesty immediately under Almighty God to be the 
 chief and supreme head of the Church of England, and 
 claim to have the bishopric of Chester | wholly and only of 
 your gift, &c. So help me God, all saints, and the holy 
 evangelists." Of course no bulls were asked from the pope 
 for this man's appointment. A little later the bishops all 
 took a new oath to the king, and repudiated that which all 
 (Rowland Lee, Goodrich, and Salcot excepted) had taken 
 to the pope. " From this day forward I shall swear, pro- 
 mise, give or cause to be given to no foreign potentate . . . 
 nor yet to the Bishop of Rome whom they call the pope, 
 
 The Lords' Journals, vol. i., p. 82. 
 
 t 26 Henry VIII., c. 2. Given only in the Statutes of the Realm, 
 not in Statutes at Large. 
 
 J The diocese of Lichfield and Coventry was often called Chester. 
 In 1537, a distinct diocese of Chester was erected by royal authority. 
 
 Burnet, vi. 291 (ed. Pocock).
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 267 
 
 any oath or fealty, directly or indirectly . . . but at all 
 times, and in every case and condition, I shall . . . main- 
 tain . . . the quarrel and cause of your royal majesty and 
 your successors. I profess the Papacy of Rome not to be 
 ordained of Cod by Holy Scripture," &c.* Other examples 
 of oaths exacted from the clergy and religious orders will be 
 given later on. It was necessary to say thus much by anti- 
 cipation, in order to make clear the use of the words succes- 
 sion and supremacy, as they will occur henceforth. Burnet, 
 and after him Lewis, the biographer of Fisher, call it " a 
 calumny, that runs in a thread through all the historians of 
 the Popish side," to have confounded these words, and to 
 have asserted that men were put to death for refusing the 
 " oath of supremacy ". Lewis maintains that there was no 
 oath of supremacy, but simply an Act declaring the supre- 
 macy, the violation of which Act was treason, and punished 
 by death ; that there was an oath of succession, but that the 
 refusal of this oath was merely misprision of treason, punish- 
 able by imprisonment. This is correct enough if we merely 
 look to Acts of Parliament. But if we interpret those Acts 
 by the royal proclamations that accompanied them, and the 
 public Acts of the nation, we shall see that "the Popish his- 
 torians " speak correctly. The oath of succession was made 
 into an oath of supremacy; and the Act of Supremacy, though 
 it did not name the pope, nor gave any right to exact an 
 oath, was really enforced by an oath of supremacy, the 
 refusal of which was fatal. All this will appear more clearly 
 as we proceed. In the meantime it may be mentioned that 
 Lord Campbell (but on what authority I know not) gives 
 the following as the form proposed to More (and Fisher) : 
 " To bear faith and true obedience to the king and to the 
 issue of his present marriage with Queen Anne; to acknow- 
 ledge him the head of the Church of England, and to 
 
 * Gardiner's oath. Foxe, v. 70; Wilkins, iii. 780.
 
 268 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 renounce all obedience to the Bishop of Rome, as having 
 no more power than any other bishop ". The Lords and 
 Commons present at the conclusion of the session on 3oth 
 March took the oath, whatever it was, publicly in presence 
 of the king. Fisher, as has been said, was ill in Rochester. 
 
 The sentence of the Sovereign Pontiff declaring the validity 
 of the king's marriage with Catharine had been given on the 
 23rd March (1534), but was not published for a few days. 
 The news, therefore, had not reached England when Chapuys 
 wrote on 4th April : " The king has prorogued Parliament 
 to November, at which time they are again summoned to 
 complete the ruin of the Churches and Churchmen, as I am 
 informed on good authority. And for a conclusion of this 
 last session, the king has declared that those present at the 
 said Parliament should individually sign the statutes and 
 ordinances made against the queen and princess, and the 
 others passed in favour of his mistress and her posterity. 
 The process of signing has been a thing unused hitherto, 
 and has been resorted to to confirm the iniquity of the ordi- 
 nances, the future observance of which the king has reason 
 to doubt. What the king has got passed against the pope 
 and the authority of the Holy See he has not exactly required 
 them to confirm, but only conditionally, in case between 
 this and the feast of St. John (24th June) it be in his power 
 to annul it in whole or in part, which is a lure to his holi- 
 ness to consent to his desire, and the king has no little hope 
 of doing so, both by means of the French king and of the 
 bravadoes he employs." * 
 
 But on Holy Saturday, the very day on which Chapuys 
 had written the letter just quoted, the news of the sentence 
 reached England, and the king celebrated his Easter festival 
 by ordering the preachers to say the very worst they possibly 
 could against the pope; "in which," says Chapuys, "they 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vii. 434.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 269 
 
 have acquitted themselves desperately, saying the most out- 
 rageous and abominable things in the world". The king 
 also commanded that the statutes made in Parliament, which 
 he had suspended and reserved in pedore till St. John's Day, 
 should be immediately published.* 
 
 Though the Act of Succession was not one of those held 
 in suspense, the exasperation of the king made him more 
 eager to enforce it, and more pitiless towards all who should 
 dare to refuse the oath. Speaking of this crisis, Mr. Froude 
 says : " The Tudor spirit was at length awake in Henry. . . . 
 In quiet times occasionally wayward and capricious, Henry 
 reserved his noblest nature for the moments of danger, and 
 was ever greatest when peril was most immediate. Woe to 
 those who crossed him now, for the time was grown stern, 
 and to trifle further was to be lost. . . . Convocation, which 
 was still sitting, hurried through a declaration that the pope 
 had no more power in England than any other bishop. Five 
 years before, if a heretic had ventured so desperate an 
 opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon 
 him : now they only contested with each other in precipi- 
 tate obsequiousness. . . . The commission appointed under 
 the Statute of Succession opened its sittings to receive the 
 oaths of allegiance. Now more than ever was it necessary 
 to try men's dispositions, when the pope had challenged 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vii. 469 The Act of Parliament held in 
 suspense was the Act against Peter's Pence and other tributes to the 
 Holy See. It was declared that the pope had hitherto " beguiled " 
 the English nation, and they would no longer be beguiled. However, 
 they would still submit to the impositions, if the pope would pro- 
 nounce in favour of the king. Mr. Froude puts it according to his 
 peculiar fashion : " The pope had received these revenues as the 
 supreme judge in the highest court in Europe, and he might retain 
 his revenues, or receive compensation for them, if he dared to be 
 just ". In 1532, the Statute against Annates had similarly been left 
 to the discretion of the king to make absolute or permanent. (See 
 Mr. Gairdner, Preface to vol. vi., p. vii., and to vol. vii., p. xx.)
 
 270 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 their obedience. In words all went well : the peers swore ; 
 bishops, abbots, priors, heads of colleges, swore with scarcely 
 an exception the nation seemed to unite in an unanimous 
 declaration of freedom (!). In one quatter only, and that a 
 very painful one, was there refusal." * 
 
 In some such language as the above did the Babylonian 
 historians record how the nobles, magistrates, judges, captains, 
 and chief men came to adore the golden statue that king 
 Nabuchodonosor had set up, and how from a certain quarter 
 whence it was most " painful," from the favoured three, 
 Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago, alone there came refusal. 
 
 Of this refusal Sir Thomas More has given an account in 
 a letter to his daughter Margaret, written a few days after 
 the occurrence. We have no such authentic detail of the 
 refusal of the Bishop of Rochester. Yet from More's letter 
 and other sources we may gather the following facts. 
 
 He had celebrated the Easter festival for the last time in 
 his diocese on April 5th. It would seem that his health 
 was sufficiently improved to allow him to travel to London : t 
 and he was summoned to appear before the commissioners 
 at Lambeth. Dr. Hall gives a minute and affecting account 
 of his farewell to his episcopal city, derived in all probability 
 from the testimony of eye-witnesses, such as Dr. Phillips 
 or Mr. Buddell, with whom Hall was intimate. J "The 
 Archbishop of Canterbury's letter," he says, " being once 
 known and heard of in his house, cast such a terror and fear 
 among his servants, and after among his friends abroad in the 
 
 * History, ii., ch. vii. 
 
 t Dr. Hall (and after him Baily) says that he was present at the 
 close of the session and openly refused the oath, that this was at first 
 passed over and he was allowed to return to Rochester, and was 
 summoned to London "after four days". This seems to be a 
 conjecture, as Dr. Hall was evidently unacquainted with the bishop's 
 illness and absence from Parliament. It is clear from the Lords' 
 Journals that he was not in London at the close of the session. 
 
 t See the Preface.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 271 
 
 country, that nothing was there to be heard but lamentation 
 and mourning on all sides. Howbeit the holy man, nothing 
 at all dismayed therewith (as a thing that he daily and 
 hourly looked for before), called all his family before him, 
 and willed them to be of good cheer and to take no care 
 for him, saying that he nothing doubted but all this should 
 be to the glory of God and his own quietness." 
 
 Hall then tells of the instructions the bishop gave his 
 steward as to rewards to his household, and of his bequest 
 of a hundred pounds to Michael House at Cambridge, 
 which was afterwards paid, and of his gifts to the poor of 
 Rochester. He reserved a small sum for his own wants. 
 " The next day he set forward on his journey towards Lambeth, 
 and passing through Rochester, there were by that time 
 assembled a great number of people of that city and country, 
 about to see him depart, to whom he gave his blessing 
 on all sides as he rode through the city bareheaded. There 
 might you have heard great wailing and lamenting, some 
 crying that they should never see him again. Some others 
 said, ' Woe worth they that are the cause of his trouble ' ; 
 others cried out upon the wickedness of the time to see 
 such a sight; everyone utter-ing their grief to others as 
 their minds served them. 
 
 " Thus passed he till he came to a place in the way called 
 Shooter's Hill, nigh twenty miles from Rochester, at the top 
 whereof he rested himself, and descended from his horse ; 
 and because the hour of his refection was then come (which 
 he observed at due times), he caused to be set before him 
 such victuals as were thither brought for him of purpose, 
 his servants standing round about him. And so he came 
 to London that night. And this precise order of diet he 
 used long before, because the physicians thought, and he 
 feared himself, to be entered into a consumption." * 
 
 * Cardinal Pole, in a passage to be quoted presently, says that the 
 bishop swooned from weakness during this journey.
 
 272 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 It was on Monday, the i3th April, 1534, that the bishop 
 appeared before the commissioners. Baily says that at 
 Lambeth he met Sir Thomas More, who welcomed him 
 with the words : " Well met, my lord, I hope we shall meet 
 in heaven " ; to which the bishop replied : " This should be 
 the way, Sir Thomas, for it is a very strait gate we are in". 
 Sir Thomas, however, does not mention this meeting with the 
 bishop, nor is there a word about this salutation in Dr. Hall, 
 who was Baily's sole authority. We may therefore class it 
 among Baily's many inventions. Dr. Hall says that the 
 bishop found at Lambeth Sir Thomas More and Dr. 
 Wilson, sometime the king's confessor, who both had re- 
 fused the oath a little before his coming. From Sir 
 Thomas' letter to his daughter we know that Dr. Wilson, 
 after refusing the oath, was led off directly to the Tower, so 
 that the bishop could not have spoken with him if Wilson 
 refused the oath before his coming. And it is probable that 
 he held no conversation with Sir Thomas. Sir Thomas 
 had been the very first called, and, having refused the oath 
 as offered and been remanded for a time, waited "in an 
 old burned chamber that looketh into the garden," until the 
 others, who had been summoned, and who were all 
 ecclesiastics of London and Westminster, " had played their 
 pageant (as Sir Thomas expresses it), and were gone out of 
 the place," when he was recalled, and on his second refusal, 
 he was committed for four days to the custody of the abbot 
 of Westminster, while the king consulted with his council 
 what order should be taken with him. * On Friday Sir 
 Thomas was committed to the Tower, and on the same day 
 wrote to his daughter : " What time my Lord of Rochester was 
 called in before (the commissioners) that cannot I tell. But 
 at night I heard that he had been before them, but where 
 he remained that night, and so forth till he was sent hither,. 
 I never heard." 
 
 * Roper's Life of More,
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 273 
 
 Dr. Hall writes that when the Bishop of Rochester was 
 required by the commissioners to take the oath, he asked to 
 see and consider it, and that for this purpose he was re- 
 manded for a few days to his own house in Lambeth Marsh. 
 He there received visits from many friends, and amongst 
 others from Mr. Seton and Mr. Brandsby, fellows of St. 
 John's, Cambridge, who came as a deputation from the 
 college to beg him to confirm their statutes under his seal.* 
 He replied that he would first read and consider them once 
 more. " Alas ! " said they, "we fear the time is now too short 
 for you to read them, before you go to prison." " Then," 
 said he, " I will read them in prison." "Nay," said they, 
 "that will hardly be brought to pass." "Then," said he, 
 "let God's will be done, for I will never allow under my 
 seal that thing that I have not well and substantially viewed 
 and considered." Wherefore these two fellows departed with- 
 out their purpose.! 
 
 "The day being at last come," continues Dr. Hall, "when 
 this blessed man should give answer before the commis- 
 sioners, whether he would accept the oath or no, he pre- 
 sented himself again unto them, saying that he had perused 
 the same oath with as good deliberation as he could, but 
 that, being framed in such sort as it is, by no means he could 
 accept it with safety of his conscience. Nevertheless (said 
 he), to satisfy the king's majesty's will and pleasure, I am 
 content to swear to some part thereof, so that myself may 
 frame it with other conditions and other sort than it now 
 
 * He was still chancellor of the university. 
 
 + Baker in his History of St. John's mentions that Cranmer had 
 been amending the bishop's statutes, and that the bishop's seal was 
 desired, as that of the last surviving executor of Lady Margaret. 
 This will explain his caution. The college afterwards sought leave 
 to interview him when in the Tower for the same purpose, but pro- 
 bably were either refused leave to see him, or he refused to give his 
 sanction ; for the revised statutes did not receive his seal. (See Baker 
 p. 101.) 
 
 18
 
 2/4 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 standeth, and so both my own conscience shall be thereby 
 satisfied and his majesty's doings the better justified and 
 warranted by law. But to that they answered that the king 
 would by no means like of any kind of exceptions or condi- 
 tions, 'and therefore' (said my Lord of Canturbury) 'you must 
 answer directly to our question whether you will swear the 
 oath or no'. 'Then,' said my Lord of Rochester, 'if you 
 will needs have me answer directly, my answer is, that 
 forasmuch as mine own conscience cannot be satisfied, I 
 do absolutely refuse the oath.' Upon which answer he was 
 sent straight away to the Tower of London." 
 
 Hall does not give the form of oath, nor does he explain 
 what points the bishop could accept, and what he felt 
 constrained to refuse. We have, however, the bishop's own 
 explanation in a letter, written about nine months later, to 
 Cromwell, which will be quoted in full in its place. In this 
 he says : "I was content to be sworn to that parcel con- 
 cerning the succession ; and I did rehearse this reason, 
 which I said moved me. I doubted not but the prince of 
 any realm, with the consent of the Nobles and Commons, 
 might appoint for his succession royal such an order as was 
 seen unto his wisdom most according . . . albeit. I refused 
 to swear to some other parcels."* His objections, there- 
 fore, were religious, not political, nor even of personal 
 loyalty to the queen and princess. He admitted the power, 
 however he might regret its exercise, of the nation, repre- 
 sented by king and Parliament, to deprive the legitimate 
 
 * Sir Thomas was also willing to swear to the succession, but in 
 what way we do not know. He says : " The bishop was content to 
 have sworn in a different manner to what I was minded to do'' (Eng. 
 Works, 1453). Yet Stapleton says that Sir Thomas admitted the 
 power of Parliament to make or depose a king. That is, of course, 
 a very different question, and we know nothing of the bishop's views 
 regarding it. He merely says that the king and Parliament may 
 change the succession.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 275 
 
 Princess Mary of her inheritance, and to give it to the 
 bastard daughter of Anne Boleyn. I say bastard, because 
 Fisher would not admit the invalidity of Henry's marriage 
 with Catharine, and held that Elizabeth was the fruit of 
 open adultery. But he could not take the oath for more 
 than one reason. Whether it contained the explicit rejec- 
 tion of the pope (as Lord Campbell supposes), or the 
 implicit rejection (as in the form found in the Lords* 
 journals), it was schismatical and heretical. But, indepen- 
 dently of the pope's supremacy in general, the oath proposed 
 to him required the admission, not only of the new succes- 
 sion, but of the reasons for it given in the preamble of 
 the Act of Parliament. To accept this preamble regarding 
 the illegitimacy of Mary and legitimacy of Elizabeth, after 
 the decision just given by the pope, was an act of rebellion, 
 and a repudiation of all living authority in the Church to 
 declare the Divine law of marriage. 
 
 Sir Thomas More had said : " Though I would not deny 
 [i.e., refuse] to swear to the succession, yet unto that oath 
 that was there offered me I could not swear, without 
 the jeoparding of my soul to perpetual damnation". 
 Though some authors have asserted that both Fisher and 
 More were aware of circumstances that would have made 
 a marriage between Henry and Anne impossible, even 
 though the marriage of the former with Catharine had been 
 null, yet it is certain that the difficulties of Sir Thomas did 
 not lie in these supposed circumstances alone (if at all), 
 since he declared to the commissioners that his conscience 
 was grounded on the general consent of Christendom, which 
 could not be outweighed by the council of one realm. His 
 objections, therefore, arose from public principles, not 
 personal facts. 
 
 On the same day on which the two illustrious recusants 
 were sent to the Tower, the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote 
 the following letter to the Secretary of State, Cromwell :
 
 276 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 " RIGHT WORSHIPFUL MASTER CROMWELL, 
 
 " After most hearty commendations, &c. I doubt not 
 but you do right well remember that my Lord of Rochester 
 and Master More were contented to be sworn to the Act 
 of the king's succession, but not to the preamble of the 
 same. What was the cause of their refusal I am un- 
 certain, and they would by no means express the same. 
 Nevertheless, it must needs be either the diminution of 
 the authority of the Bishop of Rome, or else the repro- 
 bation of the king's first pretensed matrimony. But if 
 they do obstinately persist in their opinions of the pre- 
 amble, yet meseemeth it should not be refused, if they 
 will be sworn to the very Act of Succession, so that they 
 wi'l be sworn to maintain the same against all powers 
 and potentates. 
 
 " For hereby shall be a great occasion to satisfy the 
 princess dowager and the Lady Mary, which do think that 
 they should damn their souls if they should abandon and 
 relinquish their estates. And not only it should stop the 
 mouths of them, but also of the emperor and other their 
 friends, if they give as much credence to my Lord of 
 Rochester and Master More speaking or doing against them, 
 as they hitherto have done, and thought that all should have 
 done, when they spake and did with them. 
 
 "And, peradventure, it should be a good quietation to 
 many other within this realm, if such men should say that 
 the succession comprised within the said Act is good and 
 according to God's laws. For then, I think, there is not one 
 within this realm that would once reclaim against it. And 
 whereas divers persons, either of a wilfulness will not, or of 
 an indurate and invertible conscience cannot, alter from 
 their opinions of the king's first pretensed marriage (wherein 
 they have once said their minds, and percase have a persuasion 
 in their heads that if they should now vary therefrom their
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 277 
 
 fame and estimation were distained for ever), or else of the 
 authority of the Bishop of Rome; yet, if all the realm with 
 one accord would apprehend the said succession, in my 
 judgment it is a thing to be amplected and embraced. 
 Which thing, though I trust surely in God that it shall be 
 brought to pass, yet hereunto might not a little avail the 
 consent and oaths of these two persons, the Bishop of 
 Rochester and Master More, with their adherents, or, rather, 
 confederates. 
 
 "And if the king's pleasure so were, their said oaths 
 might be suppressed, but [/>., except] when and where his 
 highness might take some commodity by the publishing of 
 the same. Thus Our Lord have you ever in His conserva- 
 tion. 
 
 " From my manor at Croydon, the 1 7th day of April. 
 " Your own assured ever, 
 
 "THOMAS CANTUAR."* 
 
 The last clause about suppressing the exact nature of the 
 oath to be taken by More and Fisher is worthy of Cranmer, 
 to whom oaths were what cards are to the juggler. It 
 was to be given out (such was the scheme) that they had 
 yielded, so as to induce others to yield ; but occasionally it 
 might "suit the king's commodity," as when dealing with 
 persons of similar scruples, to reveal and use the modified 
 form. Roper did not know of this letter, but it entirely 
 justifies what he asserts in the life of his father-in-law, Sir 
 Thomas More, that "albeit in the beginning they (the 
 Government) were resolved that with an oath not to be 
 acknown [i.e., acknowledged] whether he had to the supre- 
 macy been sworn, or what he thought thereof, he should be 
 discharged. Yet did Queen Anne by her importunate 
 clamour so sore exasperate the king against him, that, con- 
 
 * Lewis, ii. 354 ; Burnet, i. 255. Also (in abridgment) in 
 Gairdner, Letters and Papers vii. 499.
 
 278 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 trary to his former resolution, he caused the said oath of 
 the supremacy * to be ministered to him." 
 
 The plan of Cranmer recalls the "wicked pity," as the 
 Holy Scriptures name it, of those who proposed that the 
 venerable Eleazar should eat lawful flesh while pretending 
 to eat pork in obedience to the king.f The reply of 
 Eleazar " It doth not become our age to dissemble " 
 would have been the reply of More and Fisher had the 
 suppression of their mitigated oath been proposed to them. 
 Indeed, More had told the commissioners, as he himself 
 relates, that even if an oath strictly confined to the suc- 
 cession were allowed him, he must carefully examine the 
 wording of it. " I thought and think it reason, that to mine 
 own oath I look well myself, and be of counsel also in the 
 fashion [of it] , and never intended to swear for a piece, and 
 set my hand to the whole oath." 
 
 The account which Mr. Froude gives of the transaction 
 is as follows : " It was thought that possibly an exception 
 might be made, yet kept a secret from the world ; and the 
 fact that they had sworn under any form might go far to 
 silence objectors and reconcile the better class of the dis- 
 affected. This view was particularly urged by Cranmer, 
 always gentle, hoping, and illogical. For, in fact, secrecy 
 was impossible. If More's discretion could have been 
 relied upon, Fisher's babbling tongue would have trumpeted 
 his victory to all the winds. Nor would the Government 
 consent to pass censure on its own conduct by evading the 
 question whether the Act was or was not just. If it was not 
 just, it ought not to be maintained at all ; if it was just, 
 there must be no respect of persons." Mr. Froude is un 
 
 * The editors of Roper, as well as Lewis, correct this word supre- 
 macy, as if it were erroneously used instead of succession. But Roper 
 uses it purposely. It was the royal supremacy involved in the oath 
 of succession as proposed which made More and Fisher refuse it, 
 
 t 2 Machabees vi. 21-24.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 279 
 
 doubtedly right in saying that Fisher would not have 
 allowed it to go out, to the scandal of the world, that he 
 had taken an oath which he considered it a deadly sin to 
 take. And the same may be affirmed with equal certainty 
 of the Blessed Thomas More. He had discretion enough, 
 but none of that sort. 
 
 But Mr. Froude is certainly wrong in saying that the 
 rejection of Cranmer's proposal was due to a sense of justice 
 and respect for the law. The Act of Succession had not 
 prescribed any formula of oath, and it was on that very 
 ground that More and Fisher claimed to- reject the oath 
 drawn up by the commissioners, and to take an oath such 
 as would satisfy the Act and not offend their own con- 
 sciences. Cromwell's answer to Cranmer's letter does not 
 deny the power of the king to be satisfied with another oath, 
 but asserts the inexpediency of yielding to the demand. 
 
 " My lord, after mine humble commendation, it may 
 please your grace to be advertised that I have received your 
 letter and showed the same to the king's highness, who, 
 perceiving that your mind and opinion is that it were good 
 that the Bishop of Rochester and Master More should be 
 sworn to the king's succession, and not to the preamble of 
 the same, thinketh that if their oaths should be taken it 
 were an occasion to all men to refuse the whole, or at least 
 the like. For, in case they be sworn to the succession, and 
 not to the preamble, it is to be thought that it might be 
 taken not only as a confirmation of the Bishop of Rome's 
 authority, but also as a reprobation of the king's second 
 marriage. Wherefore, to the intent that no such things 
 should be brought into the heads of the people by the 
 example of the said Bishop of Rochester and Master More, 
 the king's highness in no wise willeth but that they shall be 
 sworn as well to the preamble as to the Act, Wherefore, 
 his grace specially trusteth that ye will in no wise attempt or 
 move him to the contrary ; for, as his grace supposeth, that
 
 280 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 manner of swearing, if it shall be suffered, may be an utter 
 destruction of his whole cause, and also to the effect of the 
 law made for the same." 
 
 From the king's answer it appears that he differed from 
 his archbishop as to what was "for his commodity," but 
 that neither of them took any account of what was just. * 
 
 Some time in the month of April the venerable prisoner 
 received a visit from Rowland Lee, the royal chaplain who, 
 according to Harpsfield, had secretly married Henry and 
 Anne, and who was now, in reward for his obsequious- 
 ness, made by Henry (according to a late Act of Parlia- 
 ment, without the confirmation of the pope), Bishop 
 of Lichfield and Coventry. He wrote a hasty letter to 
 Cromwell, saying " that the bishop continued as he left 
 him; that he was very ready to take his oath for the 
 succession and to swear never to meddle more in disputa- 
 tion of the validity or invalidity of the marriage of the king 
 with the lady dowager, but could go no further. But as for 
 the case of the prohibition Levitical his conscience is so knit 
 that he cannot send it off from him whatsoever betide him. 
 Yet he will and doth profess allegiance to our sovereign lord 
 the king during his life." Lee added that "truly the bishop 
 was nigh going [i.e., dying] and doubtless could not continue 
 unless the king and his council were merciful to him, he 
 being already so wasted that his body could not bear the 
 clothes on his back ".t 
 
 From the Act of Attainder it appears that the oath was 
 again tendered on the ist May and again refused. According 
 to justice the bishop ought to have been brought to trial 
 
 * Mr. Lewis applauds the appeal of " the wise and charitable 
 archbishop" (ii. 140), and the "good archbishop" (p. 141). Mr. 
 Froude speaks of the "mild and tender-hearted man" (ii. 319, note). 
 In this instance, however, there is not a word implying kindness to 
 More or Fisher, but merely craft and expediency. 
 
 t Cotton MSS. Cleopatra, E. vi., p. 165.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 281 
 
 and convicted of refusing the oath, before the penalties of 
 refusal were inflicted on him. But this course would have 
 been inconvenient, since he might have pleaded that he had 
 not refused any oath imposed by law. Roper says that 
 "whereas the oath . . . was by the first statute in few 
 words comprised, the lord chancellor and Mr. Secretary 
 did of their own heads add more words to it, to make it 
 appear to the king's ears more pleasant and plausible, and 
 that oath, so amplified, caused they to be ministered . . . 
 which Sir Thomas More perceiving said unto my wife : ' I 
 may tell thee, Meg, they that have committed me hither for 
 refusing of this oath, not agreeable with their statute, are 
 not by their own law able to justify mine imprisonment. 
 And surely, daughter, it is great pity that any Christian 
 prince should, by a flexible council, ready to follow his 
 affections, and by a weak clergy, lacking grace constantly to 
 stand to their learning, with flattery be so shamefully 
 abused.' " It may perhaps be thought that this was merely 
 a petulant complaint of the late chancellor, and that it could 
 not have been maintained before the judges. It is, however, 
 a strong confimation of More's contention, that his imprison- 
 ment was illegal as well as unjust, that in the next session 
 of Parliament a retrospective Act was passed declaring the 
 proffered oath valid, and that instead of the usual process of 
 law an Act of Attainder was adjudged an easier and surer 
 process. 
 
 Mr. Bruce writes as follows : " The penalty inflicted by 
 the statute attached on the refusal to take an oath of a 
 particular description ; the amplified oath was not such an 
 oath, and therefore that penalty did not attach upon the 
 refusal to take it. An objection so entirely technical one 
 would have thought beneath the notice of the king's un- 
 scrupulous advisers ; but they seem to have been influenced 
 by the common weakness of endeavouring to give their 
 injustice the sanction of legal form ; and as soon as Parlia-
 
 282 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 ment assembled (i.e., in November, 1534), a bill was passed 
 to remedy the defect (26 Henry VIII., c. 2). After reciting 
 the former statute, and that the Lords and Commons upon 
 the last prorogation had taken, not the oath directed by the 
 statute, but ' such oath as was then devised," it was declared 
 that they meant and intended that all the king's subjects 
 should be bound to accept the same oath, ' the tenour ' of 
 which, but not a copy of it, was then given in the form of an 
 oath ; and it was enacted that this new oath should be 
 adjudged to be the very oath that the Parliament meant and 
 intended should be taken, and upon the refusal to take 
 which the penalties denounced by the former oath accrued. 
 
 " A more atrocious and blundering instance of ex post 
 facto legislation than this can scarcely be pointed out. 
 Here are three oaths : one described by the former statute, 
 a second which was taken by the Parliament at its proroga- 
 tion, and a third contained in this last Act of Parliament. 
 All these oaths are different, and yet it is declared that the 
 Parliament meant the second when they legislated concerning 
 the first; that they meant the third when they took the 
 second; and it is enacted that penalties imposed for not 
 taking the first have been incurred by refusing to take the 
 third. 
 
 " In this manner it was imagined that an appearance of 
 legality was given to the confinement of P'isher and his 
 fellow-prisoner. It seems probable, however, that the second 
 was the one tendered to them, and if so the statute after all 
 left them untouched."* 
 
 Lord Campbell also, in his Life of Sir Thomas More, 
 says that the imprisonment was illegal, and the attainder 
 was " for an alleged offence, created by no law ". 
 
 It was likewise enacted in this statute, passed in the next 
 session, to explain this oath of succession,t that the com- 
 
 * Arch., vol. xxv., p. 23. -f 26 Henry VIII., c. 2.
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 283 
 
 missioners appointed to receive this oath, or any two of 
 them, should have power to certify into the King's Bench, 
 by writing under their seals, every refusal that should here- 
 after be made before them of the oath, and that every such 
 certificate should be as available in the law as an indictment 
 of twelve men lawfully found of the said refusal. Why this 
 process was not followed as regards the bishop does not 
 appear. He had been attainted once, by Act of Parliament, 
 of misprision of treason in the affair of the nun of Kent ; he 
 had been already imprisoned during seven months, as if 
 undergoing the legal penalty of refusal of an oath, which 
 refusal was, by the statute, misprision of treason, punishable 
 by forfeiture of all goods to the king, and imprisonment at 
 the king's pleasure. Yet a special Act was now passed, 
 attainting him by name on the very same plea. " Foras- 
 much as John, Bishop of Rochester, Christopher Plummer, 
 late of Windsor, Nicolas Wilson, Miles Willyn, Edward 
 Powell, and Richard Featherstone (otherwise called Richard 
 Featherstone Hawgh),* contrary to the duties of allegiance, 
 intending to sow sedition, murmur, and grudge within the 
 realm, among the king's loving and obedient subjects, by 
 refusing the oath of succession since the ist May . . be it 
 enacted that the above be attainted of misprision of treason, 
 and shall suffer the penalties. The sentence to take effect, 
 as regards loss of goods, from ist March last." They are to 
 forfeit all their lands, manors, &c. " And that also the see 
 and bishopric of the Bishop of Rochester, and all other 
 benefices and promotions spiritual, which the same Bishop 
 of Rochester (and the others) hath, shall be, at the 2nd day 
 of January next coming, and not before, void and destitute of 
 bishop and other incumbency, as though they and every one 
 of them were naturally dead. This attainder shall not ex- 
 
 * Edward Powell and Richard Featherstone were hanged at 
 Smithfield, together with Thomas Abel, on 3Oth July, 1540, and are 
 counted amongst the Blessed.
 
 284 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 tend to the forfeiture of, or to any manors, &c., whereof 
 they or any of them be possessed in the right of the said 
 bishopric, or other spiritual benefice."* 
 
 Why the penalty for refusing an oath on ist May should 
 take effect from ist March I cannot conjecture. But the 
 king had not waited for this attainder. On the ayth April, 
 1534, ten days after the bishop's committal to the Tower, 
 commissioners were sent to Rochester and Hailing to take 
 an inventory and make a seizure of the bishop's goods. I 
 have already given the principal items in describing the 
 bishop's episcopal life and poverty.f There exists also in 
 the Record Office an inventory of the bishop's plate. It 
 consists of "chalices, salts with the portcullis on them, two 
 nutts with a gilt cover, and a little standing masser, a little 
 flat book with a gilt cover, and the French king's arms on 
 the inside, cruets, altar basins, &c., with portcullis, a mitre 
 set with counterfeit stone and pearl, with the appurtenances, 
 cups, flagons, basins ; in all 2020 oz. troy weight, of which 
 1 1 12 oz. is in gilt plate, 114 oz. parcel gilt, and 794 white 
 silver ".J It must be admitted that this was a slender outfit 
 for a bishop in those days, especially since by far the greater 
 part consisted of church plate. The portcullis, the well- 
 known Lancastrian badge, shows that most of these things 
 were presents of the Countess of Richmond, the saintly 
 grandmother of the robber king. || 
 
 * 26 Henry VIII., c. 22, in large edition of Statutes of the Realm. 
 
 T See p. 62. Letters and Papers, viii., n. 888. 
 
 Dr. Hall, however, relates that when the bishop's troubles were 
 drawing near, his house at Hailing was robbed one night, and all his 
 plate stolen. A part only was recovered that had been hidden in a 
 wood. He mentions the equanimity with which the bishop took his 
 loss. 
 
 || In Lady Margaret's will mention is made of legacies to the 
 bishop of "gilt pots," weighing 126 oz., and a gold "salt," with 
 pearls and sapphire, weighing 8 oz. (Memoir of Lady Margaret, 
 P- I 33)-
 
 THE OATH OF SUCCESSION. 285 
 
 Dr. Hall writes as follows: "The king sent down Sir 
 Richard Moryson, of his Privy Chamber, and one Eastwick, 
 with certain other commissioners, to make a seasin of all 
 his moveable goods they could there find. Being come to 
 Rochester, they entered his house, and first turned out all 
 his servants ; then they fell to rifling of his goods, whereof 
 some part was taken to the king's use, but more was em- 
 bezzled to the uses of themselves and their servants. Then 
 they came into his library of books, which they spoiled in 
 most pityful wise, scattering them in such sort as it was 
 lamentable to behold, for it was replenished with such and 
 so many kind of books as the like was scant to be found 
 again in the possession of any one private man in Christen- 
 dom. And of them they trussed up thirty-two great pipes, 
 besides a number that were stolen away. And whereas 
 before he had made a deed of gift of all these books and 
 other his household stuff to the College of St. John's, in 
 Cambridge, the poor college was now defrauded of their 
 gift, and all was turned another way.* 
 
 " And where(as), likewise, a sum of money of ^300 was 
 given by one of his predecessors, a bishop of Rochester, to 
 remain for ever to the said See of Rochester, in custody of 
 the bishop for the time being, for any sudden occasion that 
 might mischance to the bishopric, the same sum, with ^100 
 more laid to it, was found in his gallery, locked in a chest, 
 and from thence carried clean away by the commissioners. 
 
 "Among all other things found in his house, I cannot 
 omit to tell you of a coffer standing in his oratory, where 
 commonly no man came but himself alone, for it was his 
 secret place of prayer. This coffer being surely locked, and 
 standing always so near unto him, every man began to think 
 that some great treasure was there stored up. Wherefore, 
 
 * Even the furniture of Lady Margaret, in the rooms occupied by 
 the bishop in St. John's College, was seized, and never recovered, 
 (bee Baker's History of St. John's, p. 103.)
 
 286 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 because no collusion or falsehood should be used to defraud 
 the king in a matter of so great a charge as this was thought 
 to be, witnesses were solemnly called to be present. So the 
 coffer was broken up (/.*., open) before them ; but when it 
 was open they found within it, instead of gold and silver 
 which they looked for, a shirt of hair and two or three 
 whips, wherewith he used full often to punish himself, as 
 some of his chaplains and servants would report that were 
 there about him, and curiously marked his doings. And 
 other treasure than that found they none at all. But when 
 report was made to him in his prison of the opening of that 
 coffer, he was very sorry for it and said that if haste had not 
 made him to forget that and many things else, they should 
 not have found it there at that time."* 
 
 * Baily has transcribed the above, adding, however, a few details 
 not found in my copy of Hall's MS., as that the 100 had been 
 given by the bishop, and the inscriptions on the chest that it was the 
 Church's treasure, and on the money bag, Tti qitoqitefac simile.
 
 BELL TOWER.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IN THE TOWER. 
 
 WE have now to consider the bishop's manner of life 
 and sufferings in prison, and to many of the readers 
 of this memoir acquaintance with the scene of 
 these sufferings will add greatly to the interest of the narra- 
 tive. The bishop's palaces at Rochester, Hailing, and 
 Lambeth have perished, but the Tower of London still 
 exists, and within its walls the Bell Tower, in which he 
 was imprisoned for fourteen months, and the Chapel of St. 
 Peter ad Vincula, in which his sacred dust awaits its 
 glorious resurrection. 
 
 There is no place in England so crowded with memories 
 of every kind as the Tower of London : memories of strife 
 and triumph, of glory and misery, of crime and sanctity.* 
 It was for centuries a mighty fortress, a royal palace, and a 
 State prison. The White Tower, or great central keep, from 
 which the whole pile derives its name, was built by one of 
 Fisher's predecessors in the See of Rochester, Gundulf, who 
 had been monk at Bee, and was the friend of Lanfranc and 
 St. Anselm. It had stood unchanged for four hundred and 
 fifty years when Fisher's eyes last rested upon it, and stands 
 unchanged still, now that another three centuries and a half 
 have passed over it. In 1509, the bishop had sat within 
 
 * See History and Antiquities of the Tower of London, by John 
 Bayley (1830); Notices of the Historic Persons Buried in the Chapel 
 of the Tower, by D. C. Bell (1877); and a very interesting article in 
 the Month, for December, 1874, by Rev. J. Morris, S.J.
 
 288 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 its walls at the council table of the youthful king, and from 
 it he rode forth in the magnificent coronation procession of 
 Henry and Catharine. In doing so he must have passed 
 close under the wall of the Bell Tower, which was to be 
 the place of his imprisonment, and which stands at the 
 south-west corner of the inner ward, not far from the 
 entrance gate. This was one of thirteen towers that 
 strengthened the inner ramparts. It was called the Bell 
 Tower, from a small wooden turret in its roof containing the 
 alarm bell of the garrison. Built up against it was the 
 house of the lieutenant. The Tower is circular, and the 
 walls are from nine to thirteen feet thick, with narrow 
 windows or loopholes. The bishop was confined, not in 
 the vaults or dungeon, but in the upper story. "The 
 apartment is spacious and airy, and it was perhaps the 
 best prison in the Tower, and was used for prisoners of 
 distinction ; and as the only mode of ingress or egress was 
 through the lieutenant's house, he was enabled to guard 
 them very vigilantly." * 
 
 The bishop's prison house is little changed since he 
 inhabited it. The same rough stone walls, merely white- 
 washed ; the same flagged floor ; the same apertures for 
 door and windows, though the glass is very different from 
 the rough glazing of the i6th century. But how dif- 
 ferent the prospect from the windows. From that to the 
 south we have a view of the Pool below London Bridge, 
 filled with great steamers and the commerce of the whole 
 world. From another opening to the west there is a view of 
 Tower Hill. The Church of All Hallows is still there, but 
 almost hidden by great warehouses. On its north side is a 
 station of the underground railway. The cruel scaffold is 
 gone, and a cab-stand occupies its place. Instead of the 
 old London of the reign of Henry, with its ninety thousand 
 
 * Mr. Doyne C. Bell, The Chapel in the Tower, p. 64. The Bell 
 Tower is now part of the Queen's or Governor's House.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 289 
 
 inhabitants within the walls and forty thousand dwellers in 
 the suburbs, we look out towards the homes of five millions, 
 a million and a half more than the population of all Eng- 
 land in the days of Fisher. But in that room, and looking 
 from those windows, modern London disappears, and we 
 seem to stand by the aged bishop as he watches the 
 Carthusians dragged on hurdles through the mud towards 
 Tyburn, and thinks of his own death soon to follow, or 
 gazes towards old London Bridge, with the knowledge that 
 the head that gazes will before long be fixed upon a pole 
 above the battlements, to strike fear of treason into the 
 passers-by. But we see the traitor-bishop lift his eyes to 
 heaven, and his thoughts are of the Beatific Vision. 
 
 That the Bishop of Rochester was confined in this Tower 
 has been the constant tradition of the place itself, and is 
 explicitly stated by Dr. Hall. Describing the bishop's 
 death, his biographer says : " The lieutenant came to him in 
 his chamber in the Bell Tower ".* 
 
 r It is to be regretted that a recent writer, who is generally very 
 accurate, while admitting the above fact, and giving a ground plan 
 of the bishop's prison-house and a view of it as it now stands, has 
 added in a note : " Bishop Fisher was also confined in the White 
 Tower; in one of the dungeons below is an inscription, almost 
 obliterated, in which his name can be read ; it was probably c ut out 
 by one of his servants" (Mr. Bell, Chapel in Tower, p. 65). There 
 is indeed an inscription of the following words : " Vestibus sacris in 
 cubiculo carceris mei inventis hie includor. R. Fisher; " i.e., "Sacred 
 vestments having been found in my prison cell, I am shut up here". 
 But (i) no event of this kind is recorded of the bishop ; (2) it savours 
 much more of the days of Elizabeth, when mass was a crime ; (3) it 
 is evidently written by the prisoner himself; (4) the bishop would 
 have signed his name RofTensis, not Fisher; (5) the initial isR., not 
 J.; and (6) if Fisher's servant could write English (which is doubtful), 
 he certainly could not write Latin. Mr. Hepworth Dixon, who has 
 given the whole inscription wrong, says it was made by a "Jesuit father 
 who was concerned in the Powder Plot ". No Jesuit father named 
 Fisher was concerned in that plot. Father Morris thinks the name 
 is really Ithell, as is clear on a rubbing being made of the surface. 
 (See article on the Tower in Month, Dec., 1874.) 
 
 19
 
 290 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 The great infirmities of the bishop at this period of his im- 
 prisonment have been described b,y Cardinal Pole in the 
 following words: "As to the Bishop of Rochester, who 
 survived the long misery of his prison, who, that considered 
 his age, the delicacy of health which belonged to him, and 
 the leanness of his body, could have believed that he could 
 last even one month in prison? Most certainly, when I 
 left England, three years ago,* I thought that even if he 
 should use the greatest possible care about his health, in his 
 own house, considering what he suffered, he could not live 
 another year. And I heard afterwards, that when he was 
 summoned to London to be imprisoned, on the journey he 
 swooned away for some time from weakness. And now, 
 since he has been able to exist for fifteen months in the 
 squalor of that noisome prison, who does not see the hand 
 of God, above the powers of nature, prolonging his life, O 
 king, for your great disgrace, that he might perish by your 
 sword rather than by natural death ? " f 
 
 The cell I have described was not incommodious as a 
 prison-house, but assuredly it was no fit dwelling-place for 
 an old and infirm man, especially during the winter months. 
 If the thickness of the stone walls and the smallness of the 
 windows gave some coolness in the great heats, they rendered 
 the room damp and cold and dark in the long winter. 
 The proximity of the lieutenant's house did not imply 
 either warmth from his fires or dainties from his table. A 
 most pathetic letter has been preserved, written by the 
 bishop to Cromwell on the 22nd December, 1534, after he 
 had been eight months in prison. This precious relic of his 
 martyrdom shall be given in the very words and spelling of 
 the original : 
 
 " After my most humbyl commendations, \vhereas ye be 
 content that I shold wryte unto the King's Hyghnesse, in 
 
 * He is writing in 1535, shortly after the bishop's death, 
 t De Unitate Eccl., lib. iii.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 2QI 
 
 gude faithe I dread mee that I kan not be soo circumspect 
 in my wryteing but that sume worde shal escape me where- 
 with his grace shal be moved to sum further displeasure 
 againste me, whereof I wold be veray sorry. For as I wyll 
 answer byfore God, I wold not in any manner of poynte 
 offend his grace, my dutey saved unto God, whom I muste 
 in every thyng prefer. And for this consideration I am full 
 loth and full of fear to wryte unto his highnesse in this 
 matter. Nevertheless, and if then I conceyve that itt is 
 your mynde that I shal soo doo, I wyll endevor me to the 
 best that I kan. 
 
 " But first here I must beseeche you, gode Master Secre- 
 tary, to call to your rememberance that att my last beyng 
 befor yow, and the other Commyssionars, for taking of the 
 othe concernyng the King's most noble succession, I was 
 content to be sworne unto that parcell concerning the suc- 
 cession. And there I did rehears this reason, which I sade 
 moved mee, I dowted nott but the prynce of eny realme, 
 with the assent of his nobles and commons, myght appoynte 
 for his succession royal such an order as was seen unto his 
 wysdom most accordyng ; and for this reason I sade, that I 
 was content to be sworne unto that part of the othe ass 
 concerning the succession. This is veray trowth, as God 
 help my sowl att my most neede. All be itt I refused to 
 swear to sum other parcels by cause that my conscience 
 wold not serve me so to do. 
 
 " Furthermore, I byseche yow to be gode master unto me 
 in my necessite ; for I have neither shirt nor sute, nor yett 
 other clothes, that ar necessary for me to wear, but that bee 
 ragged and rent to shamefully. Notwithstanding I might 
 easily suffer that, if thei wold keep my body warm. Butt 
 my dyett allso, God knoweth how slendar it is at meny 
 tymes, and noo in myn age my sthomak may nott awaye but 
 with a few kynd of meates, which if I want I decaye forth- 
 with, and fall in to coafes [coughs] and diseases of my
 
 2Q2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 bodye, and kan not keep myself in health. And ass our 
 Lord knoweth, I have nothyng laft un to me for to provide 
 any better, but ass my brother of his own purs layeth out 
 for me to his great hynderance. Wherefoor, gode master 
 secretarye, eftsones I byseche you to have sum pittee uppon 
 me, and latt me have such thyngs ass ar necessary for me in 
 myn age, and specially for my health. 
 
 " And allso that it may pleas you by yo hygh wysdom, 
 to move the Kyng's Highnesse to take me unto his gracious 
 favor agane, and to restore me unto my liberty, out of this 
 cold and paynefull emprysonment ; whearby ye shall fynd 
 me to be your pore beadsman for ever unto Allmighty God, 
 who ever have you in his protection and custoody. 
 
 " Other twayne thyngs I mustt allso desyer uppon yow : 
 thatt oon is, that itt may pleas yow that I may take some 
 preest with in the Towr, by the assyngment of master leve- 
 tenant,* to hear my confession againste this hooly tyme ; 
 the other is, that I may borow sum bowks to styr my devo- 
 tion mor effectuelly thes hooly dayes for the comforth of my 
 sowl. This I byseche yow to grant me of your charitie. 
 And thus our Lord send you a mery Christenmass and a 
 comforthable to your harts desyer. 
 
 "At the Tour, the 22d day of December. 
 " Yo pore Beadsman, 
 
 "JO. ROFFS."t 
 
 This letter suggests several questions as to the treatment 
 of State prisoners, both with respect to body and soul, in the 
 days of Henry VIII. There is no reason to think that 
 Fisher experienced exceptional hardships or privations ; but 
 the lot of all prisoners was bitter indeed. Were they utterly 
 without means or friends, they would no doubt have had 
 
 * Sir Edmund Walsingham was then lieutenant of the Tower, and 
 Sir Thomas Kingston was constable or chief governor. 
 
 t Cotton MSS. Cleopatra, E. vi. , f. 172. Often printed, but with 
 incorrect spelling, as by Lewis, ii. 330.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 293 
 
 bread and water given them sufficient to preserve life, but 
 they would have been left in foul rags in a foul dungeon. 
 Governors and jailors lived on their perquisites, and pri- 
 soners were fleeced without redress. When Sir Thomas 
 More entered the Tower, the porter (in the presence of the 
 lieutenant) demanded of him his upper garment. The 
 cheerful knight feigned to misunderstand him. " Mr. 
 Porter," quoth he, " here it is," and took off his cap and 
 delivered it to him, saying, " I am very sorry it is no better 
 for thee." " No, sir," quoth the porter, " I must have your 
 gown." * Thus he was taught what he had to expect, until 
 he bestowed his last fee and his clothes on his executioner. 
 
 We have heard the Blessed Fisher describe his forlorn 
 condition, cold, nakedness, and monotonous and slender 
 diet. Yet even for this he had to pay an enormous price. 
 A document has been preserved in which are memoranda 
 of the charges of certain persons in the Tower. Amongst 
 others is the following entry: "The Bishop of Rochester for 
 14 months after 205. le week, ^56. Sir Thomas More, for 
 3 months unpaid, after IDS. le week, and his servant 55. le 
 week, 9" t Taking account of the difference in value of 
 money, it would seem from this that the poor bishop, the 
 whole of whose income had been confiscated, had to pay 
 for his somewhat more commodious prison-house, and for 
 his scanty diet, with that of his servant Richard Wilson, 
 from ten to twelve pounds sterling a week in modern value. 
 From a deposition of this servant, that will be mentioned 
 presently, and that of the bishop himself, it appears that 
 this money was paid for him by his brother Robert ; and 
 
 * Roper's Life of More. 
 
 t British Museum, Cotton MS. Titus, B. i., fol. 165. In the 
 time of Richard II. the fees were fixed, for a duke at 5 marks a week, 
 for an earl at 405., for a baron or a bishop at 203., for a knight at los. 
 See Mr. W. H. Dixon's Her Majesty's Tower, ch. viii. ; but Mr. 
 Dixon erroneously supposes that these charges were defrayed by 
 " the Government ".
 
 294 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 when his brother died in the spring of 1535, by a Mr. 
 Thornton and another (whose name is now illegible).* Mr. 
 White, the bishop's brother-in-law, also states that he had 
 received communications concerning the bishop's diet from 
 his servant. George Gold, the lieutenant's servant, mentions 
 also that he was accustomed to go to William Thornton's 
 house in Thames Street for the bishop's diet. An excellent 
 Italian gentleman, named Antonio Bonvisi, a Florentine 
 merchant long resident in London, and who for years had 
 been a most intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, not only 
 supplied the late chancellor with food, but was equally chari- 
 table to the bishop viz., sending a quart of Fiench wine 
 every day and thiee or four dishes of jelly, " until a quarter 
 of a year ago," the evidence being given on yth June, 1535. 
 
 Perhaps this cessation was occasioned by the bishop's 
 illness, for in the same precious depositions John Pennoll, 
 who had been the bishop's falconer, states that in the Lent 
 he carried a letter from Fisher about his disease to Mr. 
 Bonvisi, who consulted Mr. Clement, a physician, another 
 of More's friends and one of his household. Clement sent 
 back word that Fisher's liver was wasted, that he should 
 take goat's milk and other things. He also carried another 
 
 letter to Dr. Tre concerning physic, and others to Mr. 
 
 White, to desire him to seek relief for the bishop.t 
 
 When interrogations were administered to Fisher himself, 
 
 * Mr. Friedmann says that this charge was defrayed by the king 
 (Anne Boleyn, ii. 342). If that was the case, the contributions of 
 friends were for extras. But is it credible that the king should pay 
 at such a rate for lodging a prisoner in his own fortress and the insuf- 
 ficient rations supplied by the lieutenant ? 
 
 t The above details are gathered from depositions 01 a number of 
 witnesses examined regarding the conduct of More and Fisher. They 
 are contained on twenty-one mutilated papers, which have been put 
 together and read with the greatest difficulty by Mr. Gairdner. They 
 will be frequently quoted, as they contain most precious details. We 
 are most grateful to Mr. Gairdner for his labour. (See Letters and 
 Papers, viii., n. 856.)
 
 tN THE TOWER. 295 
 
 regarding his correspondence, he replied "that he wrote 
 oftentimes letters touching his diet to him that provided his 
 diet, as to Robert Fisher while he lived, and to Edward 
 White, and a letter to my Lady of Oxford for her comfort, 
 and letters of request to certain of his friends that he might 
 pay Mr. Lieutenant for his diet, to whom he was in great 
 debt, and he was in great need. He received money of 
 each of them according to his request, and no other answer." 
 This statement was made by him on the i2th June, ten 
 days before his death.* Sir Thomas More also, in a similar 
 deposition, which will be quoted presently, acknowledges 
 that the bishop and he had sent each other little presents of 
 meat and drink by their servants, when they happened to 
 receive some dainties from their friends. 
 
 It is not without suspicion that there may be some error 
 that I give the following extract from Dr. Hall : " The good 
 bishop," he writes, and he is alluding to the last weeks of 
 his life, " chanced at the present to be sick and feeble, that 
 he kept his bed in great danger of his life; wherefore the 
 king sent unto him divers physicians to give him preserva- 
 tives, whereby he might the rather be able to come to his 
 public trial and cruel punishment, which the king above 
 all things desired, in so much so that he spent upon him in 
 charge of physic the sum of forty or fifty pounds ". 
 
 If the king's physician really attended the bishop, the 
 circumstance would have been known to many, and it is 
 one unlikely to have been invented either by Dr. Hall or 
 his informants. We may therefore accept this much of the 
 statement. The sum spent is doubtless a guess, and seems 
 exaggerated^ The time may also have been earlier. Dr. 
 
 * These depositions are printed by Lewis (ii. 407) more fully than 
 in Letters, &>c., n. 858. 
 
 t It is, however, to be noted that the lieutenant's charge given 
 above is for 56 weeks, whereas he was in prison 61 weeks. Perhaps, 
 then, during 5 weeks his diet had been provided by the physicians.
 
 296 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Hall has just mentioned the execution of the second band 
 of Carthusians as having taken place on the igth June, and 
 he is evidently placing the illness between the issue of the 
 commission on the 2nd June and the trial on the lyth. 
 As Bonvisi ceased to send his usual supplies of food about 
 the end of February, and as we know from George Gold's 
 deposition that about that time the bishop became very ill, 
 I should conjecture that this would be the illness referred 
 to by Dr. Hall, and that as the king's physicians were now 
 at last supplying the wants of the sufferer, his friend Bon- 
 visi henceforth confined his supplies to Sir Thomas. 
 
 These details are all that have been handed down to us 
 regarding the holy martyr's bodily sufferings in the Tower ; 
 and though there were no chains or torture, no noisome 
 underground dungeon, no starvation on mouldy bread and 
 filthy water, such as we read of in the acts of many martyrs, 
 yet, when we remember the bishop's great age, his previous 
 long and almost fatal illnesses, his "wasted liver" and 
 dropsy, his want of exercise, and that he was left in tattered 
 clothes without fire throughout the winter, it must be ad- 
 mitted that it was only by a special providence of God that 
 he did not succumb to sickness during those long months 
 of agony, and so lose the crown of perfect martyrdom. 
 
 But it was not the "close, filthy prison," or "to be shut 
 up among mice and rats," to use Mistress More's description 
 of life in the Tower, that pressed most hardly on the bishop's 
 soul. He was deprived of all external helps and consola- 
 tions of religion. It seems somewhat strange that Hall 
 makes no allusion whatever either to the presence or absence 
 of sacred rites, during his imprisonment or at his death. The 
 reason most probably is that there was nothing singular in 
 his case. As a prisoner and a condemned criminal (for so 
 the law regarded him) he would, of course, be precluded 
 from officiating either as a bishop or as a simple priest. To 
 assist at the Holy Sacrifice offered by another is a privilege
 
 IN THE TOWER. 297 
 
 indeed ; but it is one that need not be denied to the most 
 guilty, unless by his contumacy he has been cut off by the 
 Church from sacred rites for a time ; and monastic prisons 
 were generally so contrived that the prisoner could see the 
 priest celebrating at some altar within the church.* But I 
 do not find that this humane provision was imitated in any 
 State prison of that age. There were in the Tower two 
 churches, both still existing; but the beautiful Norman 
 Church of St. John, within the White Tower, was reserved 
 for the royal family, or for the officials of the place ; that of 
 St. Peter ad Vincula was the parish church of the garrison 
 and other residents in the Tower district. Masses were 
 daily offered in both, but not even on Sundays or festivals 
 were the wretched prisoners brought from their cells and 
 dungeons to kneel before the altar. Occasionally, indeed, 
 a greater liberty was granted, and a prisoner of distinction 
 might roam on parole or under guard through certain parts 
 of the enclosure ; and in such rare cases the governor might 
 allow him to assist at mass. This liberty was granted to 
 Sir Thomas More, occasionally at least, at his first coming 
 to the Tower. His daughter, Margaret Roper, writes, when 
 this liberty had been restricted, that she " cannot hear what 
 moved them to shut him up again. She supposes that, 
 considering he was of so temperate mind that he was con- 
 tent to abide there all his life with such liberty, they thought 
 it not possible to incline him to their will, except by restrain- 
 ing him from the church and the company of his wife and 
 children. She remembers that he told her in the garden 
 [of the Tower] that these things were like enough to chance 
 shortly after." t 
 
 If the bishop ever enjoyed a similar liberty he was cer- 
 tainly jealously watched that he should have no communica- 
 
 * See Taylor's Index Monasticus, Introd., p. vi. He instances 
 Norwich and Worcester, Canterbury, Gloucester, and St. Alban's. 
 t More's English Works, p. 1446.
 
 298 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 tion with Sir Thomas ; nor is it anywhere stated that they 
 even once met, though they managed to exchange letters. 
 It seems indeed very probable that, owing to previous open 
 opposition to the king and the anger he felt towards the 
 bishop, no such indulgence was ever granted to him. Per- 
 missions, like that granted to Sir Thomas More, must have 
 been very rare. Thomas Howard, the third Duke of Nor- 
 folk, who was the uncle of the two queens, whose headless 
 trunks were laid in the Tower chapel, and who was one of 
 Fisher's bitterest enemies in the Privy Council, came himself 
 as prisoner to the Tower in the last year of the tyrant. 
 He then became a petitioner for a grace he had little cared 
 to grant to others, "that he might have a ghostly father 
 sent to him, and that he might receive his Maker," and that 
 he might have mass, and be bound upon his life to speak no 
 word to him that shall say mass ; "which he may do," says 
 the duke, "in the other chamber, and I to remain within".* 
 Even this great nobleman was not suffered to leave his 
 prison for the church. 
 
 From a letter of Sir William Kingston, constable of the 
 Tower, to Cromwell, we learn that a barbarous and un- 
 christian custom, that had been reprobated by the Church, 
 of not allowing criminals to receive communion before exe- 
 cution, had again established itself in England. "Sir, the 
 time is short, for the king supposes the gentlemen do die 
 to-morrow, and my Lord of Rochford, with the residue of the 
 gentlemen" [i.e., the four others condemned with him to 
 death on a charge of adultery with Anne Boleyn], "is as yet 
 without Dr. Abbynge" [the confessor], "which I look for; 
 but I have told my Lord of Rochford that he must be in 
 readiness to-morrow to suffer execution, and so he accepts it 
 well, and will do his best to be ready " [i.e,, to make his 
 confession and his peace with God]. " Notwithstanding, he 
 
 * This is the only instance in which hearing mass is even alluded 
 to in all Mr. Baily's records of distinguished prisoners in the Tower.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 299 
 
 would have received his rights, which hath not been used, 
 and in especial here" To receive one's rights* was the 
 usual phiase in that age for receiving holy communion, 
 especially at Easter or before death, when it was right, or a 
 duty, to receive. 
 
 Anne Boleyn made a still bolder petition. Though she 
 had been reported as a favourer of the new Protestant 
 tenets during life, as more favourable to her guilty career, in 
 the presence of death she looked for help to the faith of her 
 days of innocence. Sir William Kingston writes : " And 
 then she desired me to move the king's highness that she 
 might have the Sacrament in the closet by her chamber, 
 that she might pray for mercy ". It is not likely that a boon 
 like this was granted ; but she at least received other helps. 
 "The king's grace showed me," says Kingston, "that my 
 Lord of Canterbury shall be her confessor, and he was here 
 this day, and not on that matter." " The queen hath much 
 desired to have here in the closet the Sacrament, and also 
 her almoner for one hour." And, in another letter : " Sir, 
 her almoner is continually " [i.e., continuously] "with her, and 
 has been since two of the clock after midnight". "This 
 morning she sent for me, that I might be with her as she 
 received the Good Lord, to the intent I should hear her 
 confessions" [i.e., professions] "touching her innocency."f 
 
 I have given these various incidents regarding other 
 illustrious prisoners as the only commentary I could make 
 on the petition of our holy bishop in the letter above quoted : 
 " That I may take some priest within the Tower, by the 
 assignment of Master Lieutenant, to hear my confession 
 against this holy time," i.e., Christmas. Whether he was 
 allowed to receive communion then, or at Easter, or before 
 his death, we cannot now discover. What sort of con- 
 
 * Not rites debita scilicet vel jura, non ritus sacri. 
 t The letters are in Ellis' Collection, first series.
 
 300 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 fessor was assigned him before his execution we shall see 
 presently. 
 
 From a casual remark of his servant Wilson, we learn that 
 the bishop was not deprived of his porteous or breviary, 
 even when other books were taken from him. " I came to 
 my master while he was saying evensong," are his words, and 
 he is speaking of the month of May, 1535.* 
 
 In the letter above quoted, the bishop asks leave to have 
 some books to stir up his devotion. We know that Sir 
 Thomas was allowed books, and that they were all taken 
 from him, together with his writing materials, when his 
 correspondence with Fisher was discovered. He then 
 closed his shutters, and, sitting all day long in a darkened 
 room, gave himself, not to melancholy, but to the con- 
 templation of the joys of heaven. When the lieutenant 
 remarked the closed shutters, Sir Thomas jestingly said that 
 the shop may be shut when the goods are gone. There is no 
 similar record, either of indulgence or restraint, regarding 
 the bishop. In the treatises he wrote there are many 
 quotations from Scripture, and several short sayings of the 
 fathers, but I have found no quotations but such as a man 
 like Fisher might easily have in his memory. As he was 
 led out to execution he took up the New Testament. That 
 consolation, therefore, had not been denied him. That he 
 had any other books we have no proof. The request that 
 he made to Cromwell at Christmas for the use of a few 
 books, "to stir his devotion," seems to indicate that he had 
 none, or very few. 
 
 He was allowed to write a few letters asking food or 
 money, since that was in his jailor's interest. It is pleasant 
 to know that his old friend Erasmus, hearing of his im- 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 856 (19). The words, however, are not 
 conclusive, since the bishop would certainly know vespers by heart, 
 and would have said them even had he no book at hand. Yet it 
 seems unlikely that he would have bsen deprived.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 30 1 
 
 prisonment, wrote to him. The letter passed through the 
 lieutenant's hands and was delivered.* So was that 
 from his college. He distinctly denies any other corre- 
 spondence except with his fellow-prisoner, the history of 
 which will be given in another chapter. 
 
 Both of these noble martyrs during the earlier part of 
 their captivity were allowed the use of pen and paper, and 
 both spent their solitary hours in composing works that have 
 come down to us. We may trust that they will be in future 
 more widely read than they have been hitherto. Sir Thomas 
 More wrote his Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, a 
 treatise which, for sound theology, deep knowledge of Holy 
 Scripture, force of reasoning, wit, pathos, and eloquence, has 
 few equals in Christian literature. The nineteenth and 
 twentieth chapters of the third book treat of imprisonment, 
 and in a life of the Blessed More would deserve to be 
 transcribed at length ; but in a life of Blessed Fisher, I 
 must forbear quotation from a work he never read. One 
 page, however, may be appropriately given here, having been 
 inspired by the building itself in which they were both con- 
 fined. The Tower was a palace as well as a prison, and, in 
 writing his History of Richard ///., Sir Thomas had had 
 occasion to study some part at least of its dreadful tragedies, 
 and had at a later period of his life been eye-witness or 
 sharer in its pageants. With the memory of these strange 
 vicissitudes now vividly recalled by every tower and bastion, 
 he writes as follows : 
 
 "ANTONY. Oh ! cousin Vincent, if the whole world were 
 animated with a reasonable soul, as Plato had weened it 
 were, and that it had wit and understanding to mark and 
 perceive all thing : Lord God ! how the ground, on which a 
 prince buildeth his palace, would loud laugh his lord to 
 scorn, when he saw him proud of his possession, and heard 
 him boast himself that he and his blood are for ever the 
 * In his deposition, Lewis, ii., App. 40.
 
 302 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 very lords and owners of that land ! For then would the 
 ground think the while in himself: Oh! thou silly, poor 
 soul, that weenest thou wert half a god, and art amid thy 
 glory but a man in a gay gown : I that am the ground here, 
 over whom thou art so proud, have had an hundred such 
 owners of me as thou callest thyself, more than ever thou 
 hast heard the names of. And some of them that proudly 
 went over my head lie now in my belly, and my side lieth 
 over them ; and many one shall, as thou doest now, call 
 himself mine owner after thee, that neither shall be sib to 
 thy blood, nor any word bear of thy name. 
 
 " Who aught [owned] your castle, cousin, three thousand 
 years ago ? 
 
 "VINCENT. Three thousand, uncle ! Nay, nay, in anything 
 Christian or heathen, you may strike off a third part of that 
 well enough, and as far as I ween half of the remnant too. 
 In far fewer years than three thousand it may well fortune 
 that a poor ploughman's blood may come up to a kingdom, 
 and a king's right royal kin on the other side fall down to 
 the plough and cart, and neither that king know that ever 
 he came from the cart, nor that carter know that ever he 
 came from the crown. 
 
 "ANTONY. We find, cousin Vincent, in full authentic 
 stories, many strange chances as marvellous as that, come 
 about in the compass of very few years in effect. And be 
 such things then in reason so greatly to be set by, that we 
 should esteem the loss so great, when in the keeping our 
 surety is so little ? " * 
 
 The books written by the bishop of Rochester during his 
 captivity are three in number. One is called A Spiritual 
 Consolation, and is addressed to his sister Elizabeth, who 
 was a Dominican nun at Dartford in Kent. He tells her 
 that nothing helps more to a virtuous life than to stir up the 
 soul by meditation, when it is without devotion and in- 
 * Dialogue of Comfort, book iii., ch. vi.
 
 IN THE TOWER. 303 
 
 disposed to prayer or good works. The meditation he 
 sends her is, he says, a manner of lamentation and sorrow- 
 ful complaining made in the person of one that was hastily 
 overtaken by death. It is a forcible and pathetic piece, but 
 most certainly in no way represented the state of soul of the 
 holy writer, nor (we may well .presume) of his sister. He 
 therefore wrote for her a second treatise called The Ways of 
 Perfect Religion. In this he begins by a curious comparison 
 between the labours of a hunter in quest of game and of a 
 man in pursuit of holiness or of God. A nun rises at 
 midnight but went to bed in good time and returns to bed ; 
 the hunter rises early and lies down late ; he is often up all 
 night. The nun fasts till noon, the hunter till night. 
 The nun singeth all the forenoon ; the hunter hallooeth 
 all the day long. The nun sits long in the choir; the 
 hunter runs over the fallow, leaps hedges, creeps through 
 bushes. Would to God that religious would seek Christ 
 with as little concern for worldly honours, riches, pleasures, 
 as the hunter seeks his game; that their comfort were to 
 converse of Christ as his is to speak of the hare. The love 
 of game makes all things pleasant to the hunter. Love of 
 God should make their life a paradise for the religious; 
 without love it would be weary. He then draws up a series 
 of ten considerations moving to the love of God.* The 
 third treatise is in Latin, and is on the Necessity of Prayer, 
 as also on its Fruits and Method, f 
 
 The comparison with the hunter in the second of these 
 treatises derives some interest from a tradition that the 
 bishop in his earlier days had been fond of field sports or at 
 
 * Both these treatises have been reprinted by the Early English 
 Text Society. 
 
 t I do not know on what grounds Mr. Lewis conjectures that it 
 was first written in English and put into Latin by another hand. I 
 have nowhere seen any allusion to an English original. An English 
 translation was printed in London in 1577, and again in Paris in 
 1640, according to Lowndes. This has been lately reprinted.
 
 304 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 least of coursing. * Coursing was in that age not thought 
 inconsistent with the gravity of the episcopal character, and 
 it may give some support to the tradition that among the 
 servants examined by the Privy Council, as to what messages 
 they had carried to and from the bishop while in the Tower, 
 was one who had been his falconer. It should, however, be 
 remarked that a falconer was not a mere attendant on a 
 sportsman. He was a purveyor of birds for the table, t If 
 ever the bishop allowed himself a few hours' recreation in 
 such ways, it must have been in the spiri^of St. Augustine, 
 who meditated on beauty and order while looking on a cock- 
 fight;^: or like St. Francis Borgia, who, when at the emperor's 
 court, turned hawking into a spiritual exercise. To judge 
 from the bishop's exhortation to his sister, the ardour of 
 huntsmen had been to himself a spur to episcopal zeal. 
 
 * Harl. MS. in British Museum, n. 7047, p. 207. 
 
 t Though hawking was not a prohibited sport, yet it was decreed 
 in a provincial synod in 1530, in which the Bishop of Rochester took 
 part, that if anyone in holy orders, or beneficed cleric, should lead 
 dogs or carry hawks through any town he should be suspended ipso facto 
 for a month. (Wilkins, iii. 721.) 
 
 \ See the metaphysical dialogue on the subject in his treatise De 
 Ordine. St. Augustine's scholar was at a loss to find order in a 
 cock-fight, whereas the saint saw a beautiful order. Perhaps it is 
 needless to say that the fight came about in the order of nature, and 
 was not got up as a sport.
 
 CHAPTER XIV, 
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 
 
 S~ INCE the bishop's imprisonment matters had proceeded 
 rapidly in the direction of schism. When Henry 
 found that his last hopes of a decision in his favour 
 in Rome were at an end, and that the formal censures of 
 the Holy See would fall on him if he persisted in his present 
 marriage with Anne, he at once published an appeal (as has 
 been already said) to the next General Council. Such a 
 proceeding had, by bulls of previous popes, been declared 
 illegal and schismatical. It was, however, the only course 
 now open to the king, unless he was willing to go over to 
 the Lutherans or Calvinists. For that the country was not 
 prepared, and Henry became the author or upholder of a 
 theory that still finds favour among a few. This theory is, 
 that as a venerable bridge might by some convulsion be 
 shattered arch from arch, and yet each arch remain entire 
 by the cohesion of the mortar ; so the Catholic Church 
 may, by the passions of princes or of peoples, be rent into 
 several separate national Churches, each national Church 
 retaining, and able to retain indefinitely, all Catholic truth 
 and worship. Or, to use the words of Mr. Froude, "that 
 it was possible for a national Church -to separate itself from 
 the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or 
 prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacra- 
 mental system could still be maintained, though the priest- 
 hood by whom those mysteries were dispensed should 
 minister in gilded chains. This was the English historical 
 
 20
 
 306 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 theory, handed down from William Rufus, the second 
 Henry, and the Edwards ; yet it was a mere phantasm, a 
 thing of words and paper fictions." * 
 
 Forced, then, upon this royal theory, Henry set about 
 reducing it to practice. As in the days of Rufus and Henry 
 II., there were Court bishops ready to go all lengths with 
 the king against St. Anselm and St. Thomas of Canterbury, 
 so now against Blessed John of Rochester. The king and 
 his Privy Council drew up the following programme : 
 
 "To send for all the bishops of this realm, and specially 
 for such as be nearest to the Court, and to examine them 
 apart, whether they by the law of God can prove or justify, 
 that he, that is now called the Pope of Rome, is above the 
 General Councils, or the General Councils above him ; or 
 whether he hath given unto him, by the law of God, any 
 more authority within the realm than any other foreign 
 bishop ". 
 
 The king seems to have been quite satisfied as to what 
 the answer would be from these bishops, examined each 
 apart, in the way he so well understood, to which Fisher 
 alludes so significantly, and which we have heard Chapuys 
 describe so graphically. So, without waiting for the judg- 
 ments of the bishops on these important questions, the 
 king and council, as if all the bishops of Christendom had 
 decided that the pope was a mere usurper, thus go on with 
 their programme : 
 
 " To devise with all the bishops of their realm, to set 
 forth, preach, and cause to be preached to the king's people 
 (!) that the said Bishop of Rome, called the pope, is not in 
 authority above the General Council, but the General 
 Council is above him and all bishops ; and that he hath 
 not, by God's law, any more jurisdiction within this realm 
 than any other foreign bishop, being of any other realm, 
 hath. And that such authority as he before this hath 
 * History of England, i., ch. 2.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 307 
 
 usurped within this realm is both against God's, and also 
 against the General Council's, which usurpation of authority 
 only hath grown to him by the sufferance of princes of this 
 realm, and by none authority from God." 
 
 Determinations were then made that this new view of the 
 pope's power should be preached Sunday after Sunday at 
 St. Paul's Cross by all the bishops in their dioceses, by 
 all the religious orders, by all parsons, vicars, and curates ; 
 that the late Act of Parliament against appeals should be 
 affixed to every church door in England, as well as the 
 king's appeal to a General Council, "to the intent the 
 falsehood, iniquity, malice, and injustice of the Bishop of 
 Rome may thereby appear to all the world ; and also to the 
 intent that all the world may know that the king's highness, 
 standing under those appeals, no censures can prevail, neither 
 take effect against him and his realm ". 
 
 Before proceeding further with the king's doings, I must 
 set by the side of this programme of 1534 the king's own 
 words to Luther in 1521 : 
 
 " Greece herself, he wrote, though the empire had been 
 transferred thither, yielded to the Roman Church in whatever 
 regarded the Primacy, except in times of some violent schism* 
 
 "St. Jerome shows clearly what judgment he formed of 
 the authority of the Roman See, since, though he was not 
 himself a Roman, yet he openly declares that it is enough 
 for him if the Pope of Rome approves his faith, whoever 
 else may find fault with it. 
 
 " Now, as Luther so impudently lays down that the pope 
 has no right whatever over the Catholic Church, even by 
 human law, but has acquired his tyranny by mere force, I 
 greatly marvel that he should deem his readers so credulous 
 or so stupid as to believe that an unarmed priest, alone, and 
 without followers and such he must have been in Luther's 
 supposition before he obtained the power which he invaded 
 * " Praeterquam dum schismate laborabat."
 
 308 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 could ever even have hoped to acquire such an empire, 
 being without rights and without title, over so many bishops 
 who were his equals, and over so many and far separated 
 nations. Nay, more than this, how can anyone believe 
 that all peoples, cities, provinces, and kingdoms were so pro- 
 digal of their property, their rights, and their liberty as to 
 give to a foreign priest, to whom they owed nothing, more 
 power than he himself ever dared to hope for ? But what 
 matters it what Luther thinks ? In his anger and envy he 
 does not know himself what he thinks, but shows that his 
 science has been clouded and his foolish heart darkened, 
 and that he has been given up to a reprobate sense, to do 
 and say what is unseemly. How true is the saying of the 
 Apostle : If I should have the gift of prophecy and know all 
 mysteries and all science, and if I should have all faith so 
 as to move mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 
 And how far from charity this man is is evident from this, 
 not only that in his madness he destroys himself, but still 
 more that he endeavours to draw all others with him to 
 perdition, since he strives to turn all from their obedience to 
 the Sovereign Pontiff. . . . 
 
 " He does not consider that, if it is provided in Deutero- 
 nomy (xvii. 12) that he that will be proud and refuse to 
 obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at 
 that time to the Lord and the decree of the judge, that man 
 shall die ; what horrible punishment he must deserve, who re- 
 fuses to obey the highest priest of all, and the supreme judge on 
 earth. . . . Yet Luther, as far as in him lies, disturbs the 
 whole Church, and seduces the whole body to rebel against 
 its head, to rebel against whom is like the sin of witchcraft, and 
 like the crime of idolatry to refuse to obey (i Kings xv. 23). 
 
 " Wherefore, since Luther, hurried along by his hatred, 
 casts himself into destruction, and refuses to be subject to 
 the laws of God, setting up his own instead, let us, on the 
 other hand, the followers of Christ, be on our guard, LEST
 
 THE HEW SUPREMACY. 309 
 
 (as the Apostle says) BY THE DISOBEDIENCE OF ONE MAN 
 
 MANY BE MADE SINNERS." 
 
 If it be said by anyone that Henry had grown in know- 
 ledge and in wisdom during the thirteen years since he 
 thus wrote, I will let the king himself reply: "Formerly (says 
 the king) Luther wrote against the Bohemians that they sinned 
 damnably who did not obey the pope. Having written those 
 things so short a time before, he now embraces what he then 
 detested. The like stability he hath in this, that after he 
 preached in a sermon to the people that ' excommunication 
 is a medicine, and to be suffered with patience and obedi- 
 ence,' he himself, being for very good cause, a while after, 
 excommunicated, was so impatient of that sentence, that, mad 
 with rage, he breaks forth into insupportable contumelies, 
 reproaches, and blasphemies ; so that by his fury it plainly 
 appears that those who are driven from the bosom of their holy 
 mother the Church are immediately seized and possessed with 
 furies and tormented by devils. But I ask this : he that saw 
 these things so short a while since, how is it that he becomes 
 of opinion that then he saw nothing at all ? What new eyes 
 has he got? Is his sight more sharp after he has joined 
 anger to his wonted pride, and has added hatred to both ? " 
 
 Yet when the papal nuncio in 1533 expostulated with 
 the king on the inconsistency of his conduct, he had the 
 effrontery, in the very same breath, both to affirm that 
 deeper studies had convinced him of the very contrary 
 of what he had formerly written, and to hint that deeper 
 studies still might lead him once more to his former con- 
 clusions all would depend on the conduct of the pope.* 
 
 * " II estoit bien vray quil avoit autresfoys compose Hvres a la 
 faveur du pape, mais quil avoit depuis mieulx estudie, et trouvoit le 
 contraire de ce quil avoit escript, et quil pourroit estre que Ion luy 
 donneroit occasion destudier plus avant, reconformer ce quil avoit 
 escript, veullant innuyr quil ne tiendra sinon que le pape luy veuille 
 complaire." Letter of Chapuys (Spanish Calendars, iv. 1057).
 
 310 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 From this slight digression we return to the proceedings 
 of 1534. By Act of Parliament an oath with regard to the 
 new succession to the Crown could be required from all, and 
 commissioners had been appointed to demand it, especially 
 from the clergy. This oath, as it was administered even to 
 the laity, comprised an affirmation with regard to the two 
 marriages of Henry, and thus, indirectly at least, touched on 
 the papal authority, and for that reason had been refused by- 
 Fisher. But now, by an exercise of mere arbitrary power, 
 in addition to and in conjunction with the oath of succes- 
 sion, an explicit declaration was required from all the clergy, 
 both secular and regular (under penalty of imprisonment), 
 rejecting the whole jurisdiction and authority of the So- 
 vereign Pontiff.* It is for this reason that the oath of suc- 
 cession came to be popularly spoken of as "the oath of 
 supremacy". The oath of supremacy, strictly speaking, 
 belongs to a later period of Henry's reign and to the reign 
 of Elizabeth. The Act of Supremacy passed at the end of 
 this year, 1534, required no oath. But since the oath of 
 succession indirectly involved the question of supremacy, 
 since in its exaction from the clergy it was supplemented by 
 explicit negations of the pope's authority, and since it was 
 followed up so quickly by the Act regarding the royal supre- 
 macy, it was inevitable that it should be thought of and 
 spoken of as an oath denying the supremacy of the So- 
 vereign Pontiff.f It is important to bear all this in mind if 
 we would trace the progress of the schism, and appreciate 
 the various degrees of responsibility incurred, or the state of 
 men's minds at each step in the great catastrophe. 
 
 * 25th June, 1534. See Letters and Papers, vii. 876. 
 
 t Thus, in the evidence of John Leek against the Blessed John 
 Hall, given on 2oth April, 1535, but referring to the spring of 1534, 
 he says : "He advised Hall not to go to Hounslow before the com- 
 missioners to take oath to renounce the papacy and acknowledge the 
 king's supremacy ". Letters and Papers, viii. 565.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 31 T 
 
 It has been already said that when first the admission of 
 the king's headship in the Church was required of Convoca- 
 tion, no allusion whatever was made to the pope, nor was 
 any definition made as to what was involved in the term. 
 It was merely brought into a parenthesis of an address of 
 thanks, and was then guarded by a qualifying clause. It is 
 probable that even then Henry and his advisers foresaw the 
 consequences they might one day draw from it. But they 
 kept these in the dark, since, if the pope favoured Henry in 
 his divorce suit, they had no intention of proceeding further 
 in the road of schism. There was one, however, who, with 
 sure instinct, penetrated the design. This was the injured 
 queen. Convocation had used the perilous title on nth 
 February, 1531. At the beginning of June of that year, the 
 Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and many earls and bishops, 
 were sent to the queen, urging her not to persist in Irer 
 appeal to Rome, but to allow her cause to be tried else- 
 where. In a letter of 6th June, Chapuys relates how she had 
 had several masses of the Holy Ghost celebrated, on the 
 morning before the interview, to ask for light and strength. 
 The messengers of the king pressed her with many argu- 
 ments, and sometimes in unseemly language. Her replies 
 were both modest and spirited. "As to the Supremum 
 Caput " (for they had urged the new title), " she considered 
 the king as her sovereign, and would therefore serve and 
 obey him. He was also sovereign in his realm, as far as 
 regards temporal jurisdiction ; but as to the spiritual, it was 
 not pleasing to God either that the king should so intend, 
 or that she should consent, for the pope was the only true 
 sovereign and vicar of God, who had power to judge of 
 spiritual matters, of which marriage was one. As to electing 
 any other judge but the pope, it was no use to speak of it, 
 for she would never consent, not for any favour that she ex- 
 pected from his holiness, because hitherto he had shown 
 himself much more partial to the king than could be ex-
 
 312 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 pressed. But as the king in the first instance had recourse 
 to the pope, who held the place and puissance of God upon 
 earth, and, consequently, of the Truth for God was true, 
 and Eternal Truth she wished that truth and justice should 
 be seen and determined by the minister of the Sovereign 
 Truth."* 
 
 What the bishops had foreseen as possible, and tried to 
 guard against, the queen saw as imminent, and protested 
 against it. But the substitution of the royal for the ponti- 
 fical authority was as yet a State secret from the people. 
 Even the " Statute of Appeals," of March, 1533, seemed to 
 them a question of legal procedure, and did not touch on 
 questions of faith or morals. It was still to the successors 
 of St Peter that the commission was given : " Feed My 
 sheep, feed My lambs". But now, in 1534, Christ's flock, 
 which He purchased with His most precious Blood, has 
 become "the king's people," and it is from his lips the 
 bishops receive instruction as to what shall be taught. 
 
 In April, 1534, commissioners were appointed to require 
 submission from all friars and monks. The required for- 
 mulas were signed, alas ! almost without resistance. Hilsey, 
 one of the commissioners, writes with diabolical glee, on 
 2ist June, to Cromwell, that "he has not met many who 
 have refused the oath of obedience, but some have sworn to 
 it with an evil will, and slenderly taken it".t This man was 
 Fisher's successor as Bishop of Rochester, but was not 
 elected till after the martyr's death, who was thereby spared 
 the anguish of seeing his beloved flock given over to a cruel 
 wolf.J The shame, however, of the cowardice of his clergy 
 was not spared him. Cranmer visited Rochester on loth 
 
 ' Letters and Papers, v. 287. 
 
 t Ibid., vii. 869. Surely it is diabolical to rejoice in outraged con- 
 sciences, false swearing, and cowardly hypocrisy. 
 
 J John Hilsey, a Dominican, was elected on 7th August, 1535. 
 The see was declared vacant by forfeiture, not by death.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 313 
 
 June, and by his influence Lawrence Mereworth, the prior 
 of the cathedral church of St. Andrew, the sub-prior, and 
 eighteen monks set their signatures and seal to a form in 
 which they declared "that the Bishop of Rome, who, in 
 his bulls, usurps the name of pope, and arrogates to himself 
 the principality of Supreme Pontiff, has no greater jurisdic- 
 tion given him by God in this kingdom of England than 
 any other foreign bishop. . . . Also, that we will cling only 
 to our aforesaid lord, the king, and to his successors, and 
 maintain his laws and decrees, renouncing for ever the laws 
 and decrees and canons of the Bishop of Rome, which 
 shall be found contrary to the Divine law and Holy Scrip- 
 ture, or contrary to the laws of this kingdom."* Cranmer 
 visited the diocese of Rochester by royal authority in July, 
 and received the adhesion of forty priests of the deanery of 
 Mailing, thirty of that of Dartford, forty-five of that of 
 Rochester, and three of the collegiate church of Cobham.f 
 The bishop must have learnt all these facts from his brother 
 Robert. 
 
 There had been one gleam of light since the bishop's 
 imprisonment. The master and fellows of St. John's 
 College, at Cambridge, had written to him a very affec- 
 tionate and sympathising letter. It appears that it was 
 presented by the master, Dr. Nicolas Metcalf, and some of 
 the fellows personally. They speak of him in terms of most 
 filial reverence; and they write, "more because they are 
 ashamed to be silent, than because they know what is fit for 
 them to say, but they judge it base and wicked in the present 
 condition of affairs not to signity their affection for him and 
 declare their solicitude on his behalf. When all others who 
 bear the Christian name, or love their country, lament at 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vii. 1025. The forms of subscription of the 
 various monasteries are given in Rymer. 
 
 t Ibid., vii. 1025. As the diocese contained only ninety-nine 
 parishes, nearly all the clergy must have taken the oath.
 
 3 J 4 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 this lime his troubles and distress, they snould be very 
 ungrateful did they not feel a still greater grief." After 
 many holy words, they conclude by saying, that " whatever 
 wealth they had in common, if they could spend it all in 
 his cause, they should not yet equal his beneficence to 
 them, but they entreat him to use whatever is theirs as his 
 own ".* 
 
 This letter and visit were no doubt consoling to the 
 venerable founder ; yet they must have increased his grief 
 when he heard, a few weeks later, that those who had 
 reminded him so piously that " if he pleased men he would 
 not be the servant of Christ," had, from sheer fear of dis- 
 pleasing Henry, both taken the oath and renounced all 
 allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff, f It is, however, said 
 that the visit was repeated more than once, and that there 
 are several things entered upon the college books for the 
 bishop's use and service while in the Tower.J 
 
 What better tidings reached him from his diocese, from 
 either clergy or laity, to show him that all his labours had not 
 been in vain, we do not know, but, having mentioned the 
 servility both of Rochester and Cambridge, I am tempted, 
 before continuing the narrative of the bishop's troubles, to 
 give two scraps of history, which, though they were never 
 known to him, will show us that all was not mere slavish 
 timidity in the England of 1534. 
 
 The following letter has by some means got into our 
 Record Office. Probably the writer fell into some trouble 
 on account of it. It is a letter from Elizabeth George, a 
 good lady of Dartford, in Kent, to her son, John George, a 
 friar, residing in Cambridge : 
 
 * The letter, which is in Latin, is printed Dy Lewis, ii. 356. 
 
 + Cambridge subscribed the declaration on and May, 1534. On 
 3rd June, all the scholars in Cambridge took the oath in St. Mary's 
 Church. (Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, i. 368.) 
 
 J Baker's History of St. John's, p. 102.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 315 
 
 " I send you my blessing if you do well ; but then you 
 must change your condition. I hear of you very well, more 
 than I am well content with, for I hear that you are of the 
 new fashion, that is to say, a heretic. Never none of your 
 kindred were so named, and it grieves me to hear that you 
 are the first. I heard also of the letters you sent to the 
 nuns of Detford * [Dartford] and another to your ' bener '. 
 I am sorry for it, but you are not, or you would be ashamed 
 to write to such discreet persons, especially to those who 
 have had to bring you up. I do not marvel at it, for you 
 keep in your company that same Bull that you cannot thrive. 
 Also, I hear in what favour you are with your prior, which 
 grieves me much. And you send me word you will come 
 over to me this summer, but come not unless you change 
 your conditions, or you shall be as welcome as water into 
 the ' schepe '. You shall have God's curse and mine, and 
 never a penny. I had rather give my goods to a poor 
 creature that goeth from door to door, being a good 
 Christian man, than to you, to maintain you in lewdness 
 and heresy, 
 
 " By your mother, 
 
 "ELIZABETH GEORGE." f 
 
 From the nature of the case, few such evidences of the 
 faith and loyalty of the people have come down to us as 
 this letter. It shows how fidelity to Our Lord brought the 
 
 * Unfortunately, these poor nuns, of the Order of St. Dominic, 
 whether by this man's persuasion, or for other inducement, took the 
 oath of succession, which included a rejection of the authority of the 
 Holy See, and acknowledgment of the king as supreme head, in the 
 form in which it was tendered to them. In this, however, they 
 merely followed all the bishops, except their own, and nearly all the 
 clergy, secular and regular. Their declaration is dated i4th May, 
 1534. The bishop's half-sister, Elizabeth Wright, was among them. 
 Letters and Papers, vii. 665, 921. 
 
 f Letters and Papers, vii. 667.
 
 3l6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 sword into families, dividing even between mother and son, 
 in the sense in which He had Himself predicted. Another 
 glimpse at popular feeling may, perhaps, be excused as not 
 altogether foreign to the subject of this memoir, since the 
 scene is in Cambridge. The metaphorical sword in this 
 case takes the material form of a cudgel. 
 
 Henry Kylby, having got into trouble, gives the follow- 
 ing explanation. He is servant to Mr. Patchett, of Leices- 
 ter. His master and he had ridden to London, and were 
 on their way home. On Saturday, and May, they reached 
 Cambridge, and put up at the White Horse, where they 
 remained over Sunday. The very day they arrived the 
 university had subscribed the declaration just mentioned, 
 and of course it must have been the whole subject of talk 
 on the Sunday. On Monday evening, when he was dress- 
 ing his master's horse, he fell into communication with the 
 hostler, who told him there was no pope, but a Bishop of 
 Rome, to which he replied there was a pope, and that 
 whoever held the contrary were strong heretics. Then the 
 hostler answered that the king's grace held of his part. 
 Kilby replied that then was both he a heretic and the king 
 another, and said also that this business had never been if 
 the king had not married Anne Boleyn ; and therewithal 
 they multiplied words, and waxed so hot in their communi- 
 cation, that the one called the other knave, and so fell 
 together by the ears, "so that I brake the hostler's head 
 with a faggot-stick," says Kilby.* 
 
 It would have been well for more learned heads than that 
 of the hostler of the White Horse had they been broken 
 before they used brain and tongue in perverting truth in 
 themselves and others. But to proceed with public events. 
 Parliament met again in November, 1534- It passed the 
 following Acts, which must be given at length, since they 
 were the cause of the bishop's martyrdom. 
 * Letters and Papers, vii. 754.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 317 
 
 Chapter one says : " Albeit the king's majesty justly and 
 rightfully is, and ought to be supreme head of the Church of 
 England, and so is recognised by the clergy of this realm in 
 their convocations ; yet, nevertheless, for corroboration and 
 confirmation thereof, and for increase of virtue in Christ's 
 religion within this realm of England, and to repress and 
 extirpate all errors, heresies, and other enormities and 
 abuses heretofore used in the same ; be it enacted, by 
 the authority of this present Parliament, that the king, our 
 sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, 
 shall be taken, accepted, and reputed, the only supreme 
 head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana 
 Ecclesia, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to 
 the imperial crown of this realm, as well the title and style 
 thereof, as all honours, dignities, immunities, profits, and 
 commodities to the said dignity of supreme head of the 
 said Church belonging and appertaining. 
 
 " And that our said sovereign lord, his heirs and suc- 
 cessors, kings of this realm, shall have full power and autho- 
 rity, from time to time, to visit, repress, redress, reform, 
 order, correct, restrain, and amend all such errors, heresies, 
 abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities, whatsoever they 
 be, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdic- 
 tion ought to be or may lawfully be reformed, repressed, 
 ordered, redressed, corrected, restrained, or amended, most 
 to the pleasure of Almighty God, the increase of virtue in 
 Christ's religion, or for the conservation of the peace, unity, 
 and tranquillity of this realm, any usage, custom, foreign 
 laws, foreign authority, prescription, or any other thing or 
 things to the contrary hereof notwithstanding." 
 
 By the thirteenth chapter of the same year it was made high 
 treason for any person after the first day of February next 
 coming (i.e., February, 1535, new style) " maliciously to wish, 
 will, or desire by words or writing, or by craft imagine, 
 invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or
 
 318 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or 
 their heirs apparent, or deprive them or any of them of 
 their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates, or slan- 
 derously and maliciously publish and pronounce, by express 
 writing or words, that the king our sovereign lord should be 
 heretic, schismatic, tyrant, infidel, &c.". 
 
 In the same session Parliament, as has been already said, 
 attainted of misprision of treason the Bishop of Rochester 
 and Sir Thomas More for refusing to swear to the Act of 
 Succession. 
 
 The statutes of this reign were nearly all of Government 
 initiation, and the independence of Parliament went no 
 farther than some slight resistance or modification. There 
 was a good deal of hesitation at making hasty words treason, 
 and the word " maliciously " had been purposely introduced 
 to exempt from the awful penalties of high treason words 
 uttered incautiously, or words spoken soberly and as the 
 result of conviction, but with no purpose of rebellion or 
 sedition. The precaution was in vain, as we shall see. 
 
 The statute deserves attention from another point. The 
 Government in this Evolution (as it has been justly called)* 
 of ecclesiastical bills felt that they had reached a point where 
 the expressions against which they guard, " heretic, schis- 
 matic, tyrant," were likely to burst spontaneously from the 
 lips of Englishmen. The precaution was itself e kind of 
 impeachment of the king. 
 
 And this new sense of royal dignity, which forbade a whole 
 nation to give to the conduct of its ruler its inevitable qualifi- 
 cation, was accompanied by an insolent and licentious 
 speaking of the supreme ruler of Christendom that was not 
 only tolerated, but provoked by the king. It was well under- 
 stood that the way to gain his favour was to know no bounds 
 
 * See the excellent lecture on " The Reign of Henry VIII." by Dr. 
 Stubbs, the present Bishop of Chester, in his Lectures on the Study of 
 Mediaeval and Modern History (1886), p. 254.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. Sip 
 
 of ribaldry towards the Sovereign Pontiff. * The statute was 
 quickly followed in the spring of 1535 by energetic measures 
 to insult and vilify the person, to repudiate the authority, 
 and to banish if possible the name of the pope from the 
 land which owed both its Christianity and its civilisation to 
 the Holy See. 
 
 Chapuys writes to Charles V. on 28th January, 1535 : 
 " The king has added to his titles that of Sovereign Head of 
 the Church of England on earth, and it is proposed to burn 
 all the bulls and provisions hitherto granted by the Holy 
 See. With this view, on Sunday last an Augustinian friar, f 
 who has been appointed by the king general of all the 
 mendicant orders, in reward for having married the king and 
 the lady, preached a very solemn sermon maintaining that 
 the bishops and all others who did not burn all their bulls 
 obtained from the Holy See, and get new ones from the 
 king, deserved very severe punishment, and that without 
 that they could not discharge any episcopal duty ; that the 
 sacred chrism of the bishops would be inefficacious, as made 
 by men without authority, seeing that they obeyed the bishop 
 or idol of Rome, who was a limb of the devil ; and that to- 
 morrow or after it would be a question whether to re- baptise 
 those baptised during that time. This language is so 
 abominable that it is clear it must have been prompted by 
 the king or by Cromwell, who makes the said friar his 
 right-hand man in all things unlawful. 
 
 " Cromwell does not cease to harass the bishops, even 
 the good ones like Winchester [Gardiner] and some others, 
 whom he called lately before the council, to ask them if the 
 king could not make or unmake bishops at pleasure, who 
 
 * As early as I7th March, 1534, Chapuys could write about the 
 sermons preached in the king's presence": " The invectives of the 
 German Lutherans against the pope are literally nothing in compari- 
 son with the daily abuse of these English preachers". Spanish 
 Calendars, v. 26. 
 
 t Dr. George Brown, afterwards Archishop of Dublin.
 
 320 BLESSED JOHN FIbHER. 
 
 were obliged to say Yes, else they should have been deprived 
 of their dignities, as the said Cromwell told a person who 
 reported it to me, and said the council had been summoned 
 only to entrap the bishops."* 
 
 In the disputes with which England now rang there seems 
 to have prevailed the utmost confusion of thought and of 
 language. Two different questions (a) that of the power 
 of a Catholic king over the clergy and laity of a Catholic 
 nation, and () that of the Bishop of Rome over both king 
 and people of the same nation, with the respective spheres 
 of their authority and their mutual relations questions dif- 
 ficult and delicate enough for jurists and statesmen were 
 cast upon an uneducated people, and a scarcely half 
 educated clergy. And these questions were further 
 complicated by the ambiguity of the metaphorical term 
 Supreme Head. It would be amusing to collect from con- 
 temporary documents instances of the blundering solutions 
 that were current, were not the matter so serious in its own 
 nature and its consequences. When St. Paul gave instruc- 
 tions to St. Timothy, " that he might know how he ought 
 to behave himself in the house of God, which is the Church 
 of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth," he 
 expressed his own reverential awe, and inspired that of his 
 disciple, by the thought that the Church is nothing less than 
 the result of the Incarnation and its permanence among 
 men. " Evidently great is the Mystery of piety, which was 
 manifested in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit, appeared 
 to angels, hath been preached to the Gentiles, is believed in 
 the world, is taken up in glory." f This great " mystery of 
 piety," and the way the Holy Ghost would have it treated,, 
 was to be the subject of roadside talk and ale-house jests. 
 
 Such talk and jests could scarcely be sillier than the 
 conclusions of some who laid claim to education. Cop. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 121, 
 \ i Tim. iii. 15, 16.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 321 
 
 pinger and Lache, two monks of Syon, under the influence 
 of Cromwell and Stokesley, Bishop of London, accept 
 the royal supremacy, and then, by orders of the same, 
 write a letter to the Charterhouse monks, justifying their 
 action and inviting imitation. "As to the king being 
 head of the Church of England, next and immediately 
 under God," argue these wise men, " if there is any Church 
 in England, the king is supreme. St. Paul bids all the 
 Church to be obedient unto his grace, quia superior potestas. 
 St. Peter bids all the Church be subject to his grace, as to 
 the most precellent person among them." So, according to 
 this version of the lesson they are repeating, not only Henry, 
 but Herod and Nero were supreme heads. They go on : 
 " Though it seems that the king does in the spirituality 
 what other princes did not before, the truth is that in this 
 doing he does not break the law of God ; for doctors grant 
 that the Bishop of Rome may license a layman to be judge 
 in a spiritual cause ; and if he may, it is not against the law 
 of God that our prince as judge directs spiritual causes ". 
 This was no doubt intended as an argumentum ad hominem, 
 an overthrowing of the schoolmen by their own weapons. 
 The pope, they say, may delegate one not in holy orders to 
 act in his name ; ergo, the king may thrust the pope aside, 
 and judge doctrine and persons according to his own fan- 
 cies.* 
 
 Mr. Thomas Bedyll, one of the Privy Council sent to 
 reason with the Bishop of Rochester, proceeded more sum- 
 marily : The king is the head of the people ; the people are 
 the Church. Ergo. Even Richard Wilson, the bishop's 
 servant, who overheard this syllogism, was not satisfied, and 
 told his master so.f 
 
 A certain Mr. Morris, a layman, agent to the Bishop of 
 Winchester, was interrogated as to his sentiments by Crom- 
 well. His answers were found satisfactory. The bishop 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 78. t Letters, <&<;., viii. 856. 
 
 21
 
 322 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 had told him that the pope's power was human in its origin, 
 though scholars had sought afterwards Scripture-texts to 
 uphold it ; that if it had been sanctioned by General 
 Councils, why, so had the prohibition of blood ; but such 
 decrees with time become obsolete ; that an Act of Parlia- 
 ment discharges the conscience ; and so in conclusion, from 
 these episcopal premisses, Mr. Morris concluded that " he 
 thinks the Holy Ghost is as much present at an Act of Par- 
 liament as ever He was at any General Council ". * 
 
 The arguments of the prelates, if not more solid, were at 
 least more subtle than the above. Tunstal of Durham, 
 who had at first protested against the title of Supreme 
 Head in the northern Convocation, had afterwards yielded 
 assent to the title, even with the new meaning as conferred 
 by Act of Parliament. It was the wont of the king to com- 
 promise his half-hearted adherents ; so Tunstal received 
 orders to compose, along with Stokesley of London, a letter 
 or treatise on the supremacy, for the conversion of Reginald 
 Pole. They thus develop and defend the metaphor of 
 Supreme Head : 
 
 " And whereas ye think that the king cannot be taken as 
 supreme head of the Church, because he cannot exercise 
 the chief office of the Church, in preaching and ministering 
 of the sacraments, it is not requisite, in every body natural, 
 that the head shall exercise either all manner of offices of 
 the body, or the chief office of the same. For albeit the 
 head is the highest and chief member of the natural body, 
 yet the distribution of life to all the members of the body, 
 as well to the head as to the other members, cometh from 
 the heart, and is minister of life to the whole body, as chief 
 act of the body. . . . The office deputed to the bishops in 
 the mystical body is to be as eyes to the whole body ; and 
 what bishop soever refuseth to use the office of an eve in 
 the mystical body, to show unto the body the right way of 
 * Letters, viii. 592.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 323 
 
 living, shall show himself to be a blind eye. And if he shall 
 take other office in hand than appertaineth to the right eye, 
 shall make a confusion in the body, taking upon him an- 
 other office than is given to him by God. Wherefore if the 
 eye will take upon him the office of the whole head, it may 
 be answered unto it : It cannot be, for it lacketh brain. 
 
 " And examples show likewise that it is not necessary 
 always that the head should have the faculty or chief office 
 of administration. You may see in a navy by sea, where 
 the admiral, who is captain over all, doth not meddle with 
 steering or governing of every ship, but every master parti- 
 cular must direct the ship, to pass the sea, in breaking the 
 waves. . . . And likewise many a captain of great armies, 
 which is not able, nor never could, peradventure, shoot or 
 break a spear by his own strength, yet by his wisdom and 
 commandment only, he achieveth the wars and attaineth 
 the victory. ... By all which it may appear that Christian 
 kings be sovereign over the priests, as over all other their 
 subjects, and may command the priests to do their offices 
 as well as they do other ; and ought by their supreme office 
 to see that all men by all degrees do their duties, whereunto 
 they be called, either by God or by the king. And those 
 kings that do so chiefly, do execute well their office. 
 
 " So that the king's highness, taking upon him, as supreme 
 head of the Church of England, to see that as well spiritual 
 men as temporal do their duties, doth neither make innova- 
 tion in the Church, nor yet trouble the order thereof; but 
 doth as the chief and best of the kings of Israel did, and as 
 all good Christian kings ought to do." * 
 
 Had Henry, indeed, claimed no more than to see that the 
 Church's laws were carried out, he might have pleaded 
 precedent, not only among Jewish, but among Catholic 
 
 * This treatise was published in 1560, immediately after Tunstal's 
 death, by Reginald Wolf; and is reprinted in full in the Appendix to 
 Knight's Erasmus.
 
 324 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 kings, some of whom the Church has ranked among her 
 saints. In that sense there would have been no "innova- 
 tion " in the right claimed, though there would have been 
 novelty in the title. And it seems probable that, by thus 
 explaining the title, Tunstal wished to prevent innovation. 
 But Henry was neither so insane, on the one hand, as to 
 claim the right to say mass and give absolution, nor so 
 childish, on the other hand, as to insist so strongly on the 
 new title merely that he might fulfil an ancient and uncon- 
 tested duty. He meant to be master, especially in the 
 matter of the divorce, though his caprice was to show his 
 mastery against Protestants as much as against the pope. 
 
 Tunstal so6n found, what he ought to have foreseen, that 
 the head included both eyes and mouth ; or, in other 
 words, that the royal supremacy included the power of dis- 
 cerning and defining the doctrine of the faith and sacra- 
 ments ; and that, if the king did not himself preach from a 
 pulpit, he preached by royal proclamations, and by the Acts 
 of his obsequious Parliaments.* The fundamental changes 
 introduced under Edward, always in virtue of the royal 
 supremacy, opened the eyes of Tunstal and others to its 
 true nature. The logic of facts was a more efficient teacher 
 than that of words. Having discovered the error into which 
 they had fallen as to the royal supremacy, they were led to 
 reconsider the whole subject, and to look more deeply into 
 the provisions made by Jesus Christ for the unity of His 
 Church. They thus saw the fallacy of their objections to 
 the authority of the Holy See. Some of the bishops who 
 refused to admit the supremacy of Elizabeth were taunted 
 with their fickleness and inconsistency, since they had so 
 easily admitted and warmly defended that of her father. 
 So far as they were inconsistent, it was with the inconsist- 
 
 * One of his very first Acts as " visitor " of the universities, in the 
 place of the pope, was to abolish all study of canon law, and revolu- 
 tionise theology.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 325 
 
 ency of a sincere repentance. But in reality the change of 
 principles was not so great as it might appear. They had 
 been always firmly attached to the Catholic faith and to the 
 unity of the Church. Owing either to the false principles 
 which had become current since the great schism, to the 
 want of deep theological studies at the universities, or to the 
 contempt of ancient ways that then prevailed among the 
 disciples of the Renaissance, the importance of the supre- 
 macy of the Holy See for the maintenance of unity was less 
 felt than in former ages in England. Tunstal and others 
 considered it to be of merely ecclesiastical institution, 
 like the patriarchal and metropolitan authority, and, in their 
 exaggerated spirit of nationalism, thought that it might be 
 set aside and replaced by that of Catholic kings. The acts 
 of the sovereigns of England, father, son, and daughter, 
 were the best practical refutation of these theories.* 
 
 It must not be thought that I am excusing the conduct 
 of the English bishops. I would merely observe that the 
 
 * A biographical work like this is not a place for controversy not 
 strictly belonging to the subject. I do not feel at liberty, therefore, 
 to examine at length the theory of Henry's claim to supremacy 
 recently put forward by Dean Hook, Canon Dixon, and others. They 
 maintain that it was an ancient right of the Crown of England (and 
 of all Christian kings), and Canon Dixon asserts that it had no 
 primary opposition to the supremacy of the pope. I have tried to 
 show how far this is true and how far false. As to the novelty of the 
 claim as made by Henry, I will be satisfied with the following quota- 
 tions. Mr. Brewer says : " Opposition to papal authority was familiar 
 to men ; but a spiritual supremacy, an ecclesiastical headship, as it 
 separated Henry VIII. from all his predecessors by an immeasurable 
 interval, so it was without precedent and at variance with all tradition. 
 Fools could raise objections ; the wisest could hardly catch a glimpse 
 of its profound significance" (Introductions, vol. i., p. 107). Mr. 
 Gairdner writes that the period from January to July, 1535, "is a 
 very marked period in the history of the reign the very crisis of 
 royal supremacy, ando/a totally new order in the Church" (Preface to 
 vol. viii. , p. i). The competency of both these writers to form a 
 correct judgment regarding the times of Henry will not be questioned.
 
 326 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 question was not so clear to them as it is to us, after the 
 multiplied experience of three centuries and a half. But 
 bishops who, as Tunstal truly said, are eyes in the body to 
 see and make known the way, are bound to see far ahead ; 
 or if they cannot do this, they are at least bound to keep to 
 the ancient ways, even though the new ways may seem to 
 them more commodious and likely to lead to the same 
 goal. I have dwelt on the perplexities and confusion of 
 thought of clergy and laity, in order to show by contrast the 
 perspicacity of Fisher. But the chief condemnation of the 
 blind guides of England at this crisis was that Fisher's 
 writings were quite recent and widely spread, and he him- 
 self survived to enforce their teaching by his example. 
 Henry feared the influence of his books, and by a proclama- 
 tion at the beginning of 1535 required their suppression. 
 Stokesley of London writes to Cromwell on i6th January: 
 " I would have sent you my books of the canon law and 
 schoolmen favouring the Bishop of Rome ; but as I am 
 informed by those to whom you have declared the king's 
 proclamation in this behalf, it is not meant but of the Bishop 
 of Rochester 's books and sermons, and of those who have 
 lately written in defence of the said primacy against the 
 opinion of the Germans, I do not send them until I know 
 your further pleasure. I shall send them and all other 
 books, rather than keep unawares any that maintain that 
 intolerable and exorbitant primacy." * This is a fair speci- 
 men of the eagerness of these servile courtiers to obey, and 
 even to anticipate, the wishes of their master, though com- 
 ing to them only through the arbitrary interpretations of his 
 lay vicar-general. 
 
 Some Anglican writers boast of the unanimity with which 
 this statute was received. That few dared oppose it at first 
 must be admitted. Whether the conduct of its advocates is 
 worthy of admiration may be judged by a few instances. Row- 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 55.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 327 
 
 land Lee writes to Cromwell on yth June, 1535 : "Yester- 
 night I received the king's letter for preaching against the 
 usurped power of the Bishop of Rome. That no dissimula- 
 tion might appear in me, or anything contrary to my promise, 
 I will send for my horses and repair to my diocese, and in 
 my own person, though I was never heretofore in pulpit, and 
 by others, will execute this declaration." * 
 
 Edward Lee, Archbishop of York, a learned man and 
 once an opponent of Erasmus, was somewhat suspected by 
 Henry of being papistically inclined. On i4th June, 1535, 
 he writes to the king to vindicate himself. He had for- 
 bidden the collect Pro papa on Good Friday, and made the 
 deacon omit the pope in the Exultet on Holy Saturday ; he 
 had himself preached in the Cathedral of York before the 
 lord mayor, and taken for his text " Uxorem duxi, ideo non 
 possum venire," explaining the injuries done to the king by 
 the Bishop of Rome.f Unfortunately, we have not the 
 sermon to judge of the application of this strange text. It 
 would seem like a sly joke : "I have married Anne Boleyn, 
 and therefore must make a schism ". 
 
 The same archbishop writes to Cromwell on ist July, 1535: 
 " I send you a copy of a book which I have conceived as a 
 brief declaration of the king's title of Supreme Head, and 
 that the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction here by the 
 law of God. It shall be spread abroad so that curates and 
 others who can perceive and utter it may read it to their 
 audiences." He complains that he does not know twelve 
 secular priests in his diocese who can preach. Those who 
 have the best benefices are not resident. Only a few friars 
 can preach, and none of any other religious order.J 
 
 In these words lies perhaps the real reason of the quick 
 spread of schism and heresy in England. Non-resident 
 pastors and non-preaching clergy must have left the flock in 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 839. t Ibid., viii. 869. 
 
 J Ibid., viii. 963.
 
 328 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the densest ignorance, and an easy prey to a wolf in sheep's 
 clothing, or in his own. Unfortunate people ! the only time 
 they listened to these dumb dogs was when they were forced 
 by the royal lash to baik at the Vicar of Christ. Almost the 
 solitary example of zeal and activity in the pulpits of England 
 in those evil days was on this occasion of the introduction 
 of heresy. The Bishop of Chichester, Robert Sherburn, 
 writes to Cromwell, on 2pth June, 1535: "On Sunday, 
 1 3th June, he preached the Word of God (!) openly in his 
 cathedral, and published the king's most dreadful command- 
 ment as to the union of the supreme head of the Church of 
 England to the imperial Crown, and the abolition of the 
 Bishop of Rome's authority. He has also sent forth his 
 suffragan to preach and publish the same. By this time 
 every abbot, prior, dean, parson, &c., in his diocese has 
 received similar orders."* He had also had 2000 copies 
 printed of a declaration of the king's supremacy to be read 
 to the people.t 
 
 At the beginning of this very year, Chapuys, in a letter 
 to the emperor, i4th January, 1535, mentions that "sermons 
 and farces " against the pope's authority are the order of the 
 day. J Jokes, however, were also made about Henry on the 
 Continent. In one caricature he was represented as stand- 
 ing between Christ, Moses, and Mohamed, with the words 
 underneath, Quo me vertam nescio (I know not to which to 
 betake myself). At least he was determined to allow no 
 hesitation in his bishops. Their master should be the king, 
 and his will their will. Chapuys writes to Granvelle, on nth 
 July, 1535 : " The Bishop of London (Stokesley), whenever 
 preached in his life, on account of his stammering and bad 
 speaking, preached this morning in the cathedral by the 
 king's order. Cromwell was present. The whole of the 
 sermon was to invalidate the king's marriage, and to deny 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 941. f Ibid., viii. 963. 
 
 Ibid., viii. 48. Ibid., viii. 33.
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 329 
 
 the authority of the pope and those who favoured it even 
 those who suffered death in its defence. The other bishops 
 must do the same, or it will cost them their benefices and 
 their lives."* When the Bishop of London thus stammered 
 out his first sermon, the blood of Fisher and More was 
 scarcely dry beneath the scaffold on Tower Hill. 
 
 I am not writing a history of the Church of England in 
 the reign of Henry, except in so far as it is necessary to 
 understand the life and death of one great bishop. I shall 
 not, therefore, inquire what may be said in behalf of the 
 religious orders, the inferior clergy, or the people at this 
 crisis. Only for the people I would remark that, being with- 
 out books or newspapers, or those means of information now 
 universal, they were more dependent on the pulpit than we 
 can well imagine, and that this one source of knowledge was 
 poisoned for them. This was remarked by Chapuys in a 
 letter of 4th February, 1534 : "Every day new tracts and 
 books are published against the authority of the Apostolic 
 See. . . . Were it only a question, by such books and 
 writings, of bespattering the pope and the authority of the 
 Holy See, the measure after all would not be so important ; 
 for the English people, knowing as they do that all this pro- 
 ceeds from passion, malice, and revenge, do not attach 
 much faith to it, but are, on the contrary, very angry with 
 the king for doing so. The worst is that some preachers 
 from the pulpits wherefrom nothing should be said that is 
 not absolutely holy and edifying are, under cover of 
 religious charity and devotion, inculcating on the minds 
 of simple persons the theories propounded in such writings ; 
 whence it is to be feared that, unless the venomous root be 
 promptly pulled up, everything here will go to ruin and 
 perdition." t This was written at the very commence- 
 ment of the preaching campaign. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 1019. f Spanish Calendars, v. 9.
 
 33 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 For the bishops, at least, it would be hard to find any 
 plausible defence, excuse, or palliation. What Fisher knew 
 they should have known ; what he did they were able to do, 
 and were bound to do, even though it were to shed their life- 
 blood, to defend the unity of the Church. But it is most 
 certain that, had they all been dauntless as he was, not 
 even the audacity and obstinacy of Henry could have pre- 
 vailed against a united episcopate ; for the clergy and 
 religious orders would have stood firm at their example and 
 encouragement, and the people would have rallied* to their 
 defence. For the sins of the country God permitted it 
 to be otherwise ; yet, in His merciful providence, He 
 chose for the Church's champions, representatives of both 
 clergy and laity, the two men who deservedly stood 
 highest in public esteem both in England and in Europe. 
 If More and Fisher will stand up in judgment against 
 their faithless and servile contemporaries, they stand 
 up now by way of contrast, to confirm the faith of 
 Catholics, and to give to hesitating Protestants a proof 
 of the sanctity of the cause for which such men were 
 willing to die. 
 
 And, since attempts have been made of late years to 
 represent Henry as merely claiming an ancient right of the 
 Crown of England, and Fisher and More as obstinate .and 
 contumacious in refusing the claim, I will quote the judg- 
 ment of a lord chancellor who was certainly not biassed 
 in favour of the Church, nor inclined to diminish the 
 rights of the State. Lord Campbell remarks, upon the 
 saying of Sir Thomas More, "that after seven years' 
 study he never could find that a layman could be head 
 of the Church". "Taking this position (that the king 
 is head of the Church) to mean, as we understand it, that 
 the sovereign, representing the civil power of the State, 
 is supreme, it may be easily assented to. But in 
 Henry's own sense, that he was substituted for the
 
 THE NEW SUPREMACY. 331 
 
 pope,* and that all the powers claimed by the pope in 
 ecclesiastical affairs were transferred to him, and might be 
 lawfully exercised by him, it is contrary to reason, and is 
 unfounded in Scripture, and would truly make any church 
 'Erastian' in which it is recognised." He adds therefore 
 that he cannot agree with Hume that it is a pity More (and 
 Fisher) did not die for a better cause. 
 
 * Dr. Stubbs, the present Bishop of Chester goes further. He says 
 that Henry from the beginning wished to be the king, the whole king, 
 and nothing but the king ; but that afterwards " he wished to be, with 
 regard to the Church of England, the pope, the whole pope, and 
 something more than pope" (Lectures on Med. and Mod. History, 
 p. 262).
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 
 
 LET us return from this ignominious survey of the 
 English Church outside the Tower walls to its two 
 most illustrious representatives within their enclosure. 
 Lady Alington, Sir Thomas More's stepdaughter, having 
 interceded for him with the chancellor, Audley, he made 
 great pretence of sympathy, and, referring to Sir Thomas' 
 refusal of the oath, said " he marvelled that More was so 
 obstinate in his own conceit, in what everybody went forth 
 withal, except the blind bishop and he ". He then told her 
 a fable about a country where rain fell which made all whom 
 it wetted fools. Some persons concealed themselves in caves 
 till the rain was past, thinking afterwards to rule the fools, 
 but the fools would have none of that, but would have the 
 rule themselves. When the wise men saw this they wished 
 they had been in the rain too. "After telling this story," 
 writes Lady Alington, " he laughed very merrily, and I was 
 abashed at his answer, and see no better suit than to 
 Almighty God." 
 
 When More heard this he said that as a lord chancellor 
 ought to be a wise man, he was afraid that by proposing 
 such a tale, some drops of rain must have entered the cave 
 also. As for him his name was Morus,* and he had not the 
 ambition of the wise men to rule, as he had proved by 
 resigning his chancellorship. 
 
 " Many," Sir Thomas goes on to say, " call the taking of 
 
 * In Greek, a fool.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 333 
 
 the oath a trifle and the refusing an over great scruple. He 
 does not believe, however, that everyone who says so thinks 
 so. But whether they do or not, does not make much 
 difference to him, even if he saw the Bishop of Rochester 
 himself swear the oath. Although he reckons that no one 
 in this realm is meet to be compared with the bishop in 
 wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue, he (More) was 
 clearly not led by him, for he refused the oath before it was 
 offered to the bishop. And also the bishop was content to 
 have sworn in a different manner to what More was minded to 
 do. He never means to pin his soul at another man's back, 
 for he knows not where he may hap to carry it. There is no 
 man living of whom he can be sure while he is alive." * 
 
 Even from the beginning of their long captivity fears had 
 been entertained by many that worse things were meant to 
 follow. "It is feared," writes Chapuys to Charles, "that 
 the king will put to death the Bishop of Rochester and Mr. 
 More, late chancellor, who, as I lately wrote, are confined 
 in the Tower with others for refusal to swear." t This was 
 written on 23rd April, 1534, only a few days after their 
 committal. From the Act of Attainder we find that on the 
 ist of May the commissioners again proposed the oath, and that 
 it was again refused. Dr. Hall relates that the king made 
 many efforts to gain over the venerable confessor by means 
 of more courtly bishops, and as he declares that he learnt 
 this from their own lips, his account must be given in full. 
 "There came to him at several times Bishop Stokesley of 
 London, Bishop Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, Bishop 
 Tunstal of Durham, with certain other bishops, to persuade 
 
 * More's English Works, p. 1437. More might well decline to 
 trust his soul even to his fellow-sufferers ; for Dr. Nicolas Wilson, 
 formerly the king's confessor, and afterwards parson of St. Thomas 
 the Apostle, had refused the oath with More and been committed to 
 the Tower. More and he had studied the question together. But 
 Wilson's courage failed under captivity, and he took the oath. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, vii. 530.
 
 334 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 him to yield to the king's demand And yet no doubt but 
 most of them did this against their stomachs, and rather for 
 fear of the king's displeasure, in whom they knew was no 
 mercy, than for any truth they thought in the matter. For 
 I have credibly heard say, that Bishop Stokesley, all his life 
 after, when he had occasion to speak of this business, would 
 earnestly weep and say : ' Oh ! that I had holden still with 
 my brother Fisher and not left him when time was '. And 
 for this the Bishop of Winchester, myself have divers times 
 heard him, sometimes in the pulpit openly and sometimes 
 in talk at dinner among the lords of the council, and some- 
 times in other places, very earnestly accuse himself of his 
 behaviour and doings in that time. 
 
 " I have also heard the right reverend and learned father, 
 Doctor Thomas Harding, sometime his chaplain and ghostly 
 father, say that oftentimes in much of his secret talk- among 
 his chaplains, he would so bitterly accuse himself of his 
 doings in that and such like business of those days, that at 
 last the tears would fall from his eyes abundantly. And, 
 finally, in the days of King Edward the Sixth, being con- 
 vented before the king's commissioners, and there greatly 
 urged to proceed yet further according to the fruits of that 
 time, he not only retracted, before them all, his former doings, 
 but also suffered himself to be deprived of his great dignity and 
 living, with sharp imprisonment in the Tower of London, the 
 space of five years and more, minding there to have recovered 
 the thing which he before had lost, I mean the blissful state 
 of martyrdom, if God had been so pleased ; or else in place 
 thereof to continue a godly confessor, remaining a perpetual 
 prisoner all the days of his life, for a just and true deserved 
 penance of his offence. Howbeit, shortly after, in the reign 
 of this most noble and virtuous Queen Mary, all fell out 
 otherwise. For after God had once placed her in the 
 government and crown of this realm, she not only restored 
 the ancient and Catholic religion throughout the same realm,
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 335 
 
 but also delivered him out of prison, with the Bishop of 
 Durham before named, and divers others who lay there in 
 like sort, and almost the like space that the Bishop of 
 Winchester did.* These bishops, I say, persuaded thus 
 continually with this holy man, sometime one and some- 
 time another, but all in vain ; for by no means would he be 
 won to swear one jot from that which, by his learning, he 
 knew to be just and true. 
 
 "At another time there came to him, by the king's 
 commandment, six or seven bishops at once, to treat witli 
 him in like sort as the others had done severally before ; and 
 when they had declared their intent and cause of their 
 coming, he made answer again, in these or like words : ' My 
 lords, it is no small grief to me that occasion is given to deal 
 in such matters as these be. But it grieveth me much more 
 to see and hear such men as you be persuade with me 
 therein, seeing it concerneth you in [your] several charge 
 as deeply as it doth me in mine; and, therefore, methinketh, 
 it had been rather our parts to stick together in repressing 
 these violent and unlawful intrusions and injuries daily offered 
 to our common mother the Church of Christ, than by any 
 manner of persuasion to help or set forward the same. And 
 we ought rather to seek by all means the temporal destruction 
 of these ravening wolves that daily go about worrying and 
 devouring everlastingly the flock that Christ committed to 
 our charge, and the flock that Himself died for, than to 
 suffer them thus to range abroad. But alas ! seeing we do 
 it not, ye see in what peril the Christian state now standeth. 
 We are besieged on all sides and can hardly escape the 
 danger of our enemy. And seeing the judgment is begun 
 
 * I have remarked in the Preface that the above passage proves 
 that Dr. Hall was a Catholic in the time of Queen Mary that he was 
 intimate with Gardiner and others of the Privy Council. Therefore, 
 what he is about to relate of the conversation of Fisher in the Tower 
 may be considered authentic.
 
 336 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 at the house of God, what hope is there left, if we fall, that 
 the rest shall stand ? The fort is betrayed even of them 
 that should have defended it. And, therefore, seeing the 
 matter is thus begun, and so faintly resisted on our parts, I 
 fear we be not the men that shall see the end of this misery. 
 Wherefore, seeing I am an old man, and look not long to 
 live, I mind not, by the help of God, to trouble my con- 
 science in pleasing the king in this way, whatsoever become 
 of me, but rather here to spend out the remnant of my old 
 days in praying to God for him.'* 
 
 " And so their communications being ended the bishops 
 departed, some of them with heavy hearts, and after that 
 day came no more to him. But within a little space after 
 these bishops were thus gone, his own man that kept him in 
 the prison, being but a simple fellow, and hearing all this 
 talk, fell in hand with him about this matter, and said : 
 ' Alas ! my lord, why should you stick with the king more 
 than the rest of the bishops have done, who be right well 
 learned and godly men ? Doubt you not he requireth no 
 more of you but only to say he is head of the Church, and 
 methinketh that is no great matter, for your lordship may 
 still think as you list.' The bishop perceiving his simpli- 
 city, and knowing he spake of good-will and love towards 
 him, said unto him again, in the way of talk : ' Tush, tush, 
 thou art but a fool and knowest little what this matter 
 meaneth, but hereafter thou mayest know more. But I tell 
 thee that it is not for the supremacy only that I am thus 
 tossed and troubled, but also for an oath [meaning the oath 
 of the king's succession], which if I would have sworn I 
 doubt whether I should ever have been questioned for the 
 supremacy or no. But, God being my good Lord, I will 
 never agree to any of them both, and this thou may'st say 
 
 * Baily has invented a short speech of Fisher to the bishops which 
 has no resemblance whatever to the above. It is also given, copied 
 from him, by Lewis, vol. ii., ch. xxxiv., n. 6.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 337 
 
 I 
 
 another day thou heard'st me speak, when I am dead and 
 gone out of this world.' " * 
 
 In discussing the force of certain Acts of Parliament, as 
 well as with regard to the last scene in the bishop's life, his 
 arraignment and trial for high treason, I shall gladly quote 
 the words of Lord Chancellor Campbell. t They will carry 
 greater weight in legal matters than those of Dr. Hall, while 
 they entirely sustain the latter both in many parts of his 
 narrative and in his appreciations of persons and events. 
 "The Parliament," says this eminent writer, "which had 
 answered Henry's purposes so slavishly that it was kept on 
 foot for six years, met again on the 4th November, and pro- 
 ceeded to pass an Act of Attainder for misprision of treason 
 against More and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, the only 
 surviving minister of Henry VII., and the son's early tutor, 
 counsellor, and friend, on the ground that they had refused 
 to take the oath of supremacy,! for which alleged offence, 
 created by no law, they were to forfeit all their property and 
 to be subject to perpetual imprisonment. But this was 
 insufficient for the royal vengeance ; and soon after, not 
 only was an Act passed to declare the king supreme head 
 of the Church, but authority was given to require an oath 
 
 * Whether Richard Wilson reported his master's words correctly 
 may be doubted. It is true, however, that the validity of his marriage 
 was the king's point of honour, and on this point he was ever urged 
 by Anne Boleyn. The supremacy was an afterthought, and no one 
 would have been more loyal to the pope than Henry had the divorce 
 been granted. 
 
 T Lord Campbell deals indirectly with Fisher in his Life of More, 
 and more directly in his Lives of Audley and Rich. 
 
 Lord Campbell rightly here uses the word supremacy instead of 
 succession, although he had previously himself found fault with the 
 biographers of More for saying that he refused the oath of "supremacy" 
 when they should have said " succession ". But I have shown that 
 the oath was virtually one of supremacy, especially if the form was 
 proposed which Lord Campbell has himself given. 
 
 26 Henry VIII., c. I. 
 
 22
 
 338 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 acknowledging the supremacy,* and it was declared to be 
 high treason by words or writing to deny it." 
 
 "As More (and Fisher) t were now actually suffering 
 imprisonment and forfeiture of their property for having 
 refused to take the oath, it was impossible to make the 
 enactment about oaths the foundation of a new prosecution, 
 and the plan adopted was to inveigle them into a verbal 
 denial of the supremacy, and so to proceed against them 
 for high treason. With this view the Lord Chancellor, the 
 Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and others of the Privy 
 Council, several times came to them in the Tower." J 
 
 It is remarkable that long before the making of the Act 
 of Supremacy, Sir Thomas More, whose political foresight 
 was almost prophetic, had written to his daugher, Margaret 
 Roper, of his expectation of death by some new law to be 
 made, and several months before the trial Cromwell had 
 made an entry among his private memoranda : " Item, 
 when Master Fisher shall to his execution ? " || And here 
 it may be asked, why, since Fisher and More both expected 
 death and were prepared for it, they were so cautious, after 
 the passing of the Act of Supremacy, in no way to violate 
 it by denying the new title of the king. Was there in this 
 no want of boldness in the profession of the Catholic faith ? 
 Would it not have been nobler to go forward spontaneously, 
 as did the Carthusians, and like the bishop's special patron, 
 St. John Baptist, say : It is not lawful ? No, the cases were 
 very different. Both Fisher and More had long ago, 
 publicly and by writing, defended the supremacy of the 
 
 * 26 Henry VIII., c. 2. This is the formula I have given at p. 265. 
 It is virtually an oath of supremacy. 
 
 ) I have taken the liberty of applying to Fisher what was equally 
 applicable though written only of More, who was the subject of the 
 biography. 
 
 J Life of More. English Works, 1446. 
 
 || Mullinger's University of Cambridge, vol. ii., p. i.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 339 
 
 Holy See, and at this very moment were known to be 
 suffering for their fidelity. They had, therefore, no need to 
 profess their faith or to make protestation. The Carthu- 
 sians on the contrary had at first accepted the supremacy, 
 and now came forward to retract, and to die for their 
 retractation. There was no reason why, being secluded 
 from society (and their seclusion being in itself a public 
 though silent protest), they should, by speaking, sacrifice life 
 as well as liberty ; while, on the other hand, by falling into 
 the snare spread for them, they would have gratified the 
 vengeful spirit of Henry, and involved judges and jury in 
 the guilt of a legal murder. They therefore both resolved 
 on silence. 
 
 The following details of the efforts to entrap the bishop 
 into some verbal denial of the supremacy, when verbal 
 acknowledgment could not be obtained, are taken princi- 
 pally from the depositions of the bishop's servant, Richard 
 Wilson, George Gold the lieutenant's servant, and John k 
 Wood the servant of Sir Thomas, who were subjected to 
 interrogations on the yth, 8th, gth, and nth June.* News 
 first came to the bishop, with regard to the Act which made 
 it high treason to deny any of the king's titles, about 
 Candlemas, t 1535, from his brother Robert Wilson says 
 that on hearing it the bishop blessed himself, and said : "Is 
 it so ? " A prophetic thrill of his martyrdom seems to have 
 passed through his soul. Robert Fisher answered that the 
 Commons had greatly hesitated at making mere words 
 treason, and had inserted the word "maliciously"; adding, 
 however, that " when it was put in it was not worth a ... 
 for they (the lawyers) would expound it at their pleasure ". 
 The event proved that Robert was right, but we shall see 
 the bishop laying much stress on the word. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 856. 
 
 t The act of 26 Henry VIII., c. 13, was to come into operation on 
 ist February, 1535.
 
 340 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 He was not destined to be the first sufferer under the 
 new Act. He had had for some weeks companions in the 
 Tower, whom the Holy See has placed in the same list of 
 honour with himself. These were John Houghton, Prior of 
 the Charterhouse, London ; Augustine Webster, Prior of 
 the Charterhouse, Axholme, Lincolnshire ; Robert Law- 
 rence, Prior of the Charterhouse, Bevall (or Beauvale), 
 Notts; Richard Reynolds, brother of the house of Syon, 
 near London ; and John Hale, or Hall, Vicar of Isleworth, 
 near London. It would be out of place to speak here of 
 their heroic martyrdom. But it will help us to form a proper 
 estimate of Fisher's " good confession before Pilate," if we 
 listen to one of Pilate's friends in defence of his measures. 
 
 Soon after the death of the Carthusians, Dr. Thomas 
 Starkey, who had been chaplain to Blessed Margaret Pole, 
 Countess of Salisbury, and was now chaplain to Henry, wrote, 
 by the desire of the king and of Secretary Cromwell, to 
 Reginald Pole, then on the Continent, to induce him to return 
 to England, and to defend the king's proceedings. The 
 letter is useful, as showing the view the king wished to 
 have spread through Europe, as regards the death of those 
 martyrs, and that of Fisher and More, which was so soon to 
 follow. 
 
 "At the last Parliament," he says, "an Act was made 
 that all the king's subjects should, under pain of treason, 
 renounce the Pope's authority,* to which the rest of the 
 nation agreed, and so did these monks, three priors, and 
 Reynolds of Syon, though they afterwards returned to their 
 old obedience, affirming the same, by their blind supersti- 
 tious knowledge, to be to the salvation of man of necessity, 
 
 * This expression of Starkey, sanctioned by the king, deserves 
 notice. The Act made it treason maliciously to deny that Henry 
 was "supreme head". Starkey and the Court considered this as 
 equivalent to a positive obligation to renounce the pope, under pain 
 of treason.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 341 
 
 and that this superiority of the pope was a sure truth .and 
 manifest of the law of God, and instituted by Christ as 
 necessary to the conservation of the spiritual unity of the 
 mystical body of Christ. . . . Therefore they have suffered 
 death according to the course of the law, as rebels to the 
 same and disobedient to the princely authority, and as 
 persons who, as much as in them lay, have rooted sedition 
 in the community. ... I was sorry to see a man of such 
 virtue and learning [as Reynolds] die in such a blind and 
 superstitious opinion. But nothing would avail. They 
 themselves were the cause. It seemed that they sought 
 their own deaths, of which no one [else] can be justly 
 accused. You may repeat this as you think expedient to 
 those whom you perceive to be misinformed" * 
 
 The effect of this and similar letters, and of the cruelties 
 of the king towards those who were faithful to the obedience 
 of his own better days, was the very contrary of what had 
 been hoped. Instead of being intimidated by the tortures, 
 Pole was animated by the constancy, of the martyrs. We 
 shall hear his own declaration on this subject by-and-by. 
 For the present, having given Henry's view of himself, it 
 may be well to contrast it with the words of an eye-witness 
 and keen observer of all his actions, who had the privilege 
 of expressing his thoughts freely the imperial ambassador 
 at the English Court. The letter was written on the 5th 
 May, the day after the martyrdom of the Carthusians. 
 
 " The enormity of the case, and the confirmation it gives 
 of the hopelessness of expecting the king to repent, compels 
 me to write to your majesty that yesterday there were 
 dragged through the length of this city three Carthusians 
 and a Bridgettine monk, all men of good character and 
 learning, and cruelly put to death at the place of execution, 
 only for having maintained that the pope was the true head of 
 
 * Brit. Mus., Cleopatra, E. vi., 358. Abridged by Mr. Gairdner, 
 in Letters and Papers, viii. 801.
 
 34 2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the Universal Church, and that the king had no right in 
 reason or conscience to usurp the sovereign authority over 
 the clergy of this country. This they had declared to 
 Cromwell of their own free-will, about three weeks ago, in 
 discharge of their own consciences and that of the king, 
 and on Cromwell pointing out to them the danger, and 
 advising them to reconsider it before the matter went 
 further, they replied they would rather die a hundred times 
 than vary. Eight days ago the Duke of Norfolk sat in 
 judgment on them, as the king's representative, assisted by 
 the chancellor and Cromwell, and the ordinary judges of the 
 realm, and the knights of the Garter, who had been at the 
 solemnity of St. George. The monks maintained their 
 cause most virtuously. No one being able to conquer them 
 in argument, they were at last told that the statute being 
 passed they could not dispute it, and that if they would not 
 alter their language they were remanded till next day to 
 hear their sentence. Next day, in the same presence, they 
 were strongly exhorted to recant, and after a long discussion 
 they were sentenced by lay judges and declared guilty of 
 treason. Nothing was said about degrading them or chang- 
 ing their habits. And the same fate has overtaken a priest 
 for having spoken and written concerning the life and 
 government of this king.* It is altogether a new thing 
 that the Dukes of Richmond t and Norfolk, the Earl of 
 Wiltshire, his son (Lord Rochford), and other lords and 
 courtiers were present at the said execution quite near the 
 sufferers. People say that the king himself would have 
 liked to see the butchery, which is very probable, seeing 
 that nearly all the Court, even those of the privy chamber, 
 were there, his principal chamberlain, Norris, bringing with 
 him forty horses, and it is thought that he (Norris) was 
 of the number of five who came thither accoutred and 
 
 * Blessed John Hale. 
 
 + The king's illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 343 
 
 mounted like moss troopers,* who were armed secretly, 
 with visors before their faces, of which that of the Duke of 
 Norfolk's brother got detached, which caused a great stir, 
 together with the fact that while the five thus habited were 
 speaking, t all those of the Court dislodged. 
 
 " It is commonly reported that the king has summoned 
 the Bishop of Rochester, Master More, a doctor who 
 was lately his confessor, J a chaplain of the queen, , and a 
 schoolmaster of the princess, || to swear to the statutes made 
 here against the pope, the queen, and princess, otherwise 
 they would be treated no better than the said monks, six 
 weeks being given to them to consider the matter. They 
 have replied that they were ready to suffer what martyrdom 
 pleased the king, and that they would not change their 
 opinion in six weeks, or even in 600 years, if they lived so 
 long; and many fear they will be despatched like the 
 aforesaid. 
 
 "And it is to be feared that if the king is getting so inured 
 to cruelty he will use it towards the queen and princess, at 
 least in secret ; to which the concubine will urge him with 
 all her power, who has lately several times blamed the said 
 king, saying it was a shame to him and all the realm that 
 they were not punished as traitresses according to the 
 statutes. The said concubine is more haughty than ever, 
 and ventures to tell the king, as I hear, that he is as much 
 bound to her as man can be to woman, for she extricated 
 him from a state of sin ; and, moreover, that he came out of 
 it the richest prince that ever was in England, and that 
 without her he would not have reformed the ecclesiastical 
 affairs of the kingdom, to his own great profit and that of 
 
 * " Ceulx des frontieres d'ecosse." 
 
 f Mr. Gairdner seems to have read parlant. Mr. De Gayangos, 
 in the Spanish Calendar, v. 156, reads partant, i.e., departing. 
 J Dr. Wilson. Thomas Abell (beatified) 
 
 || Richard Featherstone (beatified).
 
 344 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 all the people. Some time ago the queen suspected that 
 foul dealing had been used towards the princess, as appears 
 by a letter which she caused to be written to me, and which 
 I send to Granvelle. I forbear to write about the queen and 
 her affairs, as I presume she is doing it herself."* 
 
 In his letter to Granvelle of the same date, Chapuys adds : 
 "Even if the king wished to give up his abominable ob- 
 stinacy, the lady and Cromwell, who are omnipotent with 
 him, would prevent it, knowing that it would be their 
 ruin ".f 
 
 Such were the thoughts of those outside. We are all 
 familiar with the words of Sir Thomas More inside the 
 Tower. His daughter Margaret was still allowed to visit 
 him occasioually, and was standing by him in his prison cell 
 on the 4th May, when from his window he saw the noble 
 band being led out to execution : " Lo, dost thou not see, 
 Meg, that these blessed fathers be now as cheerfully going 
 to their deaths as bridegrooms to their marriage ". We 
 now know also what were the sentiments of the holy Bishop 
 of Rochester. Richard Wilson, his servant, deposes that 
 the bishop said to him one day : " I pray God that no 
 vanity subvert them " i.e., no vain love of liberty or life. 
 After their death, George Gold, the lieutenant's servant, 
 brought to the bishop some scrolls of paper he had found 
 in their cells. They were scratches of writing with lead,* 
 and letters pricked with a point. He had read for the 
 bishop from one of these the following words, spoken pro- 
 bably, or intended to be spoken, by one of them to the 
 chancellor : " My lord, ye should not judge me to death 
 this day, for if ye should, ye should first condemn yourself 
 and all your predecessors, which were no simple sheep in 
 the flock, but great bell-wethers. And, my lord, if ye 
 should, in detestation of this opinion, dig up the bones of 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 666 ; Spanish Calendars, v. 156. 
 t Ibid., n. 863.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 345 
 
 all our predecessors and burn them, yet should not that 
 turn me from this faith." The bishop, says George, looked 
 at the scroll and said : " They be gone ; God have mercy 
 on their souls ".* It was a little word, and all that he 
 cared to say to the gossiping servant of his jailor ; but who 
 cannot surmise the deep, pathetic thoughts that scroll must 
 have aroused in his mind, and the strength it imparted to 
 his will ? Yet he is said also to have remarked, two days 
 after the execution of the monks, that he marvelled at it, 
 since they had done nothing maliciously or obstinately, and 
 had not, therefore, violated the statute. 
 
 This was said on 6th May, which in 1535 was the feast 
 of Our Lord's Ascension, and we may imagine how the 
 fearless death of these monks, some of whom had been 
 personally known to him, and the certainty that his own 
 death would soon be brought about in a similar manner, 
 must have helped him to raise his heart from his dim prison 
 in the Bell Tower to the glory which his Divine Master was 
 preparing for him. " You are they who have continued 
 with me in my temptations, and I appoint to you, as My 
 Father hath appointed me, a kingdom, that you may eat 
 and drink at My table in My kingdom. "f 
 
 He had not to wait in uncertainty. On the yth May he 
 was visited by the Secretary of State, Thomas Cromwell, 
 and other members of the Privy Council. This visit, as 
 Mr. Bruce remarks, was quite "gratuitous, as nothing in 
 any Act of Parliament authorised the lords of the council to 
 inquire into the opinions of anyone on the subject of the 
 supremacy and king's title ". But Sir Harris Nicolas writes 
 as follows on the subject of the Privy Council in the time 
 of Henry VIII.: "Combining much of the legal authority 
 with the civil and political, the council exerted a despotic 
 control over the freedom and property of every man in the 
 realm, without regard to rank or station. Its vigilance was 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 856. t St. Luke xxii. 28.
 
 346 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 as unremitting as.its resentment was fatal. ... On charges 
 of treason and sedition the conduct of the council was per- 
 fectly frightful. Its ears were always open to any accusation, 
 however insignificant, which could possibly be construed 
 into disaffection to the king or the laws, and many of the 
 matters which were gravely investigated by Henry VlII.'s 
 Privy Council would now only serve to raise a smile in the 
 most sensitive of attorney-generals." * 
 
 In the present case the council did not listen to an 
 accusation, but was sent by the king to create one, by 
 forcing the bishop to speak, though he had no other wish 
 than to remain silent. Cromwell and several other members 
 of the council assembled in the Council Chamber in the 
 lieutenant's house adjoining the Bell Tower, on Friday, 
 7th May, the day after the Ascension.f Of what passed we 
 have but an imperfect knowledge. But we gather from the 
 depositions of his man Richard, who loitered behind a 
 screen, that the council asked the bishop two grave ques- 
 tions, and one of them regarded the new Act of Supre- 
 macy. : There was some discussion with a member named 
 Thomas Bedyll ; and the bishop, when they were gone, 
 asked Richard whether he had been too quick with Bedyll, 
 to which he replied, No. The bishop also observed to his 
 servant that he had given no [compromising] answer to their 
 questions. The council read to him the two statutes, and 
 afterwards the bishop procured a copy of them by means of 
 his brother-in-law, Edward White, who paid him two visits. 
 It was for what passed on this occasion, in all probability, 
 that he was accused of high treason. 
 
 * Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, 
 Preface, pp. xxiv., xxvi. Unfortunately, no records exist of the 
 proceedings of the council till just after Fisher's death. There is a 
 gap of a whole century between 1435 and 1540. 
 
 f This room is now the governor's dining-room. 
 
 J Fisher in his answer says he was asked one question onty, 
 
 Clerk of the council.
 
 KOYAL SNARES. 347 
 
 A few days later the council paid a second visit and again 
 subjected him to examination. The interview lasted long, 
 but the bishop remarked to Richard that they were gone as 
 they came. Having heard from the lieutenant's servant, 
 George, that the council had also been with More, the 
 bishop bade George ask him what answer he had given. 
 Sir Thomas sent back a verbal message, that he had replied 
 that he would not dispute about the king's title, but would 
 give himself to his beads* and think of his passage hence. 
 There then ensued some correspondence between the vener- 
 able confessors, carried to and fro principally by the lieu- 
 tenant's servant. A letter having been intercepted, the 
 servants and all other persons who had hitherto had any 
 intercourse with the bishop were subjected to rigorous and 
 repeated examinations as to letters and messages. The two 
 principals also were plied with.questions. Sir Thomas' answer 
 was as follows : 
 
 " He had written divers scrolls or letters to Dr. Fisher, 
 and received others from him, containing for the most part 
 nothing but comfortable words and thanks for meat and 
 drink sent by one to the other. But about a quarter a year 
 after his coming to the Tower he wrote to Fisher, saying 
 he had refused the oath of succession, and never intended 
 to tell the council why; and Fisher made him answer, 
 showing how he had not refused to swear to the succession. 
 No other letters passed between them touching the king's 
 affairs, till the council came to examine this deponent upon 
 the Act of Supreme Head; but after his examination he 
 received a letter of Fisher desiring to know his answer. 
 Replied by another letter, stating that he meant not to 
 medd!e, but to fix his mind on the Passion of Christ ; or 
 that his answer was to that effect. He afterwards received 
 
 * I.e., prayers. The word was not yet restricted to rosary-prayers, 
 much less to the material rosary.
 
 348 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 another letter from Fisher, stating that he was informed the 
 word maliciously was used in the statute, and suggesting 
 that, therefore, a man who spoke nothing of malice did 
 not offend the statute. He replied that he agreed with 
 Fisher, but feared that it would not be so interpreted. After 
 his last examination sent Fisher word by letter, that Mr. 
 Solicitor had informed him that it was all one not to answer, 
 and to say against the statute what a man would, as all the 
 learned men of England would testify. He therefore said 
 he could only reckon on the uttermost and desired Fisher 
 to pray for him as he would for Fisher." * 
 
 From a paper signed by the bishop and still preserved 
 we learn that about four letters in all were written by each 
 party, t The first letter was written by More shortly after 
 their incarceration to inquire what answer the bishop had given 
 regarding the succession ; and the bishop had replied. No 
 other letter of importance passed until after the first visit of 
 the council regarding the supremacy. George had shown 
 him a letter he was carrying from More to his daughter 
 Margaret, regarding his answer to the council. As More's 
 letter was obscure Fisher wrote to him to ask some further 
 information. He does not remember More's answer. After 
 a few days he wrote his opinion regarding the word 
 " maliciously " in the statute, but asked no advice. He had 
 burnt the letters and also the copy of the statutes lest, if 
 they were found, the lieutenant might get into any trouble 
 for his want of vigilance. J 
 
 The above details are gathered from authentic and un- 
 questioned documents preserved to this day by the Govern- 
 ment. Dr. Hall is the only authority for another "crafty and 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vii., n. 867. 
 
 t Sir Thomas however says eight pairs. Probably the bishop 
 does not reckon the little notes of courtesy. 
 
 } The answers of the bishop are given in full in Lewis, vol. ii., 
 Appendix 41.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 349 
 
 subtle device," as he calls it, practised on the two prisoners at 
 this or a somewhat earlier period. As the whole matter has 
 been travestied by Baily, I will give the exact words of the 
 original biographer. "At solemn day appointed, when my 
 Lord of Rochester was called before them and there sore 
 urged to take the oath, they threatened earnestly upon him, 
 that he rested himself altogether upon Sir Thomas More, 
 and that by his persuasion he stood so stiffly in the matter 
 as he did ; and therefore, to drive him from that hold, they 
 told him plainly and put him out of doubt, that Sir Thomas 
 More had received the oath, and should therefore find the 
 king his good lord, and be shortly restored to his full 
 liberty, with his grace's favour ; which did at the first cast 
 this good father into some perplexity and sorrow for Sir 
 Thomas More's sake, whom for his manifold Divine gifts he 
 tendered and reverenced, thinking it had been true indeed, 
 because he mistrusted not the false trains of the counsellors. 
 But yet could not all this move him to take the oath. 
 
 " Likewise, when Sir Thomas More was called before them, 
 they would persuade with him, as they did before with my 
 Lord of Rochester, making him believe that he would never 
 have stood thus long but for my Lord of Rochester ; and 
 then in the end told him that he (Fisher) was content to 
 accept the oath. Which Sir Thomas More suspected 
 greatly to have been true ; and yet not altogether true,* for 
 that it was so given out by the lords (of whose sleights he 
 was not ignorant), but because it was a common talk among 
 divers others, as he understood by the report of Mistress 
 Margaret Roper, his daughter, who (upon special suit) had 
 free access to her father for the most time of his imprison- 
 ment. She had thus reported unto him upon occasion of 
 talk once with my lord chancellor, who on a time, as she 
 was suitor to him for her father's increase of liberty, 
 
 * He means : " And yet true, not precisely, for that it was given 
 out," &c.
 
 350 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 answered her that her father was a great deal too obstinate 
 and self-willed, saying that there were no more that sticked 
 in this matter but he and a blind * bishop (meaning my Lord 
 of Rochester), who is now content (said he) with much ado 
 to accept the oath ; and so I wish your father to do, for 
 otherwise I can do him no good. And the like answer my 
 lord chancellor made also to the Lady Alice Alington, the 
 wife of Sir Giles Alington, and daughter of Sir Thomas 
 More's last wife, when she at another time before was 
 suitor for her father-in-law,t Sir Thomas More, in the same 
 case." 
 
 Such is Dr. Hall's account of this plot. The present 
 writer is unable to reject it on a priori grounds, with Mr. 
 Lewis, as being too -foul an artifice to be employed by men 
 who had any sense of honour, or because the king is repre- 
 sented as being privy to the lie. Those who have studied 
 the State papers of the period, who remember some of 
 Henry's speeches about the divorce, or the way he tricked 
 Rowland Lee into the secret marriage with Anne Boleyn, 
 will find no difficulty in supposing the king a party to any 
 mean plot ; nor were the members of his council men of 
 too lofty principles to be his tools. Audley, especially, the 
 lord chancellor, was, as Lord Campbell calls him, " a 
 sordid slave," capable of any dirty work. Yet the story is 
 unsupported by the biographers of More, and in the letter 
 of Lady Alington, which I have already given, Audley does 
 not say that Fisher has yielded, but simply reproaches him 
 with his obstinacy. 
 
 Baily's account is given with details of all sorts, not found 
 in Hall, or elsewhere, to my knowledge. As it has been 
 often quoted, it is necessary to note the points that he has 
 added to the original narrative. He supposes both More 
 and Fisher conveyed to " court," i.e., the king's palace. 
 
 * In the language of the period, blind means bigoted, 
 f Her stepfather.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 351 
 
 Hall merely says " called before the council " apparently in 
 the Tower. More is kept waiting " three hours " ; when 
 admitted, " the door was close shut," and he is urged for 
 "about half-an-hour "; then he is "detained in custody 
 within the court," and it is given out that he has yielded. 
 The bishop is then also brought to the court. He has 
 heard the rumours of More's compliance, and believes the 
 assertion of the council, but charitably says : " I am not a 
 fit man to blame him, in regard I was never assaulted with 
 those strong temptations (meaning of wife and children), the 
 which, it seems, have overcome him ". The bishop, how- 
 ever, is steadfast. " He was commanded to be withdrawn 
 and kept close within a chamber of the court, which led 
 towards the king's lodgings." Then the report is spread 
 that he has succumbed. After this follows a long and 
 minute account of a dialogue between Sir Thomas More 
 and his daughter Margaret in the king's palace. If this is, 
 as I take it to be, a sheer invention of Baily's, it is not only 
 a very curious instance of literary forgery or romance, but it 
 is important to stigmatise it, lest it should be copied by 
 future writers as it has been too often already. According 
 to Baily, neither Margaret's tale, told in good faith, nor 
 the deliberate lies of the council, can induce More to 
 believe that Fisher has yielded, and so he tells the 
 council bluntly. In this he contradicts Dr. Hall, who says 
 that More did give credence to the weakness or change of 
 mind of the bishop, though he refused to imitate him. 
 The language of Mrs. Roper, as described by Baily, is 
 very different from what we know to have been hers, from 
 her husband's Life of More* 
 
 * This passage of Baily, being taken for the original narrative of 
 Hall, is the principal ground on which Mr. Friedmann, in his Life of 
 Anne Boleyn (vol. ii., App. E), conjectures that Bishop Fisher after 
 Christmas, 1534, really took the oath in some modified form, and was 
 released for more than a month and frequented the king's Court at
 
 35 2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Dr. Hall relates another attempt to entrap the bishop 
 more successful than the former ; and as his condemnation 
 to death was the result of this stratagem (according to Hall), 
 it must also be given verbatim, for it has been again ampli- 
 fied and misrepresented by Baily. " About the beginning 
 of May, after this blessed father had been prisoner some- 
 what more than a year, the king sent unto him one Mr. Richard 
 Rich, being then his general solicitor, and a man in great 
 trust about him, with a secret message to be imparted unto 
 him on his majesty's behalf. Which message, though it 
 were, indeed, for a time very secret, yet fell it out at last to 
 be openly known to the world, both to the king's great dis- 
 pleasure, and perpetual infamy of the wicked and traitrous 
 messenger, as after shall appear. Nevertheless, this mes- 
 senger, being come to the presence of this blessed father in 
 his prison, did there his errand, as it seemed, according to 
 the king's commandment; for it was not long after his 
 return to the king with an answer of his message, but an 
 indictment of high treason was framed against him, and he 
 
 Westminster, till he was sent back to prison in the middle of 
 February, 1535. The only grounds for this supposition are that a 
 Frenchman mentions an inquiry made at Court, " by Messieurs 
 Suffolk and Fischer". Mr. Friedmann suggests the natural explana- 
 tion that Fischer has been substituted by the editor for Wulchier or 
 Vulchier, as the French wrote Wiltshire (the Earl of Wiltshire, father 
 of Anne Boleyn) ; but he rejects this because of the general accuracy 
 of the editor. Yet in another passage, " Norfolk, Suffolk, Fischer," 
 and others, are said to have " sat in council," where it is clear that 
 Wiltshire is meant, though even here Mr. Friedmann conjectures that 
 Fisher may have been before the council. He acknowledges that 
 such interpretations would be " hard to accept " were it not for two 
 things : i. The fact that the lieutenant of the Tower's charges indicate 
 an absence of Fisher for forty days. But these charges I have 
 accounted for, not by absence, but illness and special attendance of 
 the king's physicians. 2. Mr. Friedmann refers to Baily (as above). 
 I think Mr. Friedmann has not shown here his usual acumen. The 
 idea of Fisher restored to liberty, and frequenting Henry's and Anne 
 Boleyn's Court in January, 1535, provokes a smile.
 
 ROYAL SNARES. 353 
 
 arraigned and condemned at the bar, upon the talk that 
 had passed between them so secretly in the prison, as after 
 shall be declared unto you." * 
 
 * Daily does not imitate the reserve of Dr. Hall and content him- 
 self with declaring the nature of this secret conversation from the 
 evidence given at the trial ; but, as if he had been present, gives a 
 long discourse of Rich and a long answer of Fisher, and puts into 
 both their mouths important matters of which Dr. Hall does not give 
 a hint, and of which there is no confirmation from any source. He 
 makes the solicitor-general say that (in spite of his rude treatment) 
 the king holds the bishop's learning and judgment in the highest 
 esteem, and will be guided by him. " And one thing more he wished 
 me to acquaint you with, which is, that you may see how far his 
 royal heart and pious inclination is from the exercise of any unjust or 
 illegal jurisdiction, that if you will but acknowledge his supremacy, 
 you yourself shall be his vicar-general over his whole dominions, to 
 see that nothing shall be put in execution but what shall be agreeable 
 both to the laws of God and good men's liking." In the answer of 
 the bishop Baily puts a historical dissertation in justification of the 
 English Catholics who withstood the pope in the time of Richard II., 
 when he encroached on royal rights, and yet upheld him in his own. 
 This may have been a common topic in 1655, when Baily wrote, but 
 he had no right to put it in the mouth of Bishop Fisher, discoursing 
 with Rich in the Tower,
 
 CHAPTER XVL 
 
 PAPAL HONOtJRS. 
 
 WHILE the things just related were going on in the 
 Tower, an event occurred in Rome which has 
 been thought by some to have hastened the bishop's 
 martyrdom. Pope Paul III. had succeeded to Clement 
 VII. on 1 3th October, 1534. On 2oth May he created 
 seven cardinals, of whom " the Bishop of Rochester, kept 
 in prison by the King of England," was one.* He was 
 technically a cardinal-priest, of the title of St. Vitalis. If 
 we could put any faith in the bragging letters of Sir Gregory 
 Casale, one of Henry's Italian agents in Rome, the pope 
 most humbly apologised to him when he heard how angry 
 the king would be, and desired him to explain to the king 
 what were his motives in selecting Fisher. His letter is 
 dated 2Qth May, and is addressed to Cromwell : 
 
 "I wrote to you on the 22nd about the creation of 
 cardinals, and amongst them of Rochester. As soon as I 
 was well enough to go out, I visited all the cardinals who 
 are our friends, and proved to them how rashly and foolishly 
 they had acted in choosing Rochester for cardinal, thereby 
 insulting and injuring a most powerful king and the whole 
 English nation. I told them that Rochester is so boastful 
 a man that, in his vainglory and the boastfulness which is 
 
 * Such is the entry in the Diaria Pontificum. The other cardinals 
 were Nicolas Schomberg, Archhishop of Capua; James Simonetta 
 and Jerome Ghinucci, auditors of the Chamber; John du Bellay, 
 Bishop of Paris; Caspar Contarino, a Venetian ; Martin Carracciolo, 
 protonotary.
 
 PAPAL HONOURS. 355 
 
 natural to him, he will persist in his opinion against the 
 most serene king, for which reason he is in prison and con- 
 demned to death ; besides that he is old and decrepit, and 
 utterly useless for the purposes for which they think him 
 fit. I made so much noise about the matter that it became 
 the talk of the whole city, and the pope consequently sent 
 for me. I said much more to him than I had done to the 
 others, and showed him that no greater blunder had ever 
 been committed. The pope appeared to be surprised at 
 the consequences I mentioned, and he tried to show by 
 many arguments that his intention had been good ; for since 
 cardinals had to be created, he was led to choose one from 
 England for two reasons : first, because he had seen letters 
 of the most Christian king (Francis) in which he expressed 
 his wish that matters could be arranged with the King of 
 England, and that satisfaction could be given to him in the 
 affair of his marriage. Hence he thought that (in creating 
 Fisher a cardinal) he would obtain a proper agent to treat 
 of these affairs, and would do a thing pleasing to his 
 majesty. Secondly, that he was thinking much of a council ; 
 and since a certain constitution exacts that cardinals of all 
 nations should be present in a council, it had seemed to him 
 necessary to make some Englishman a cardinal. He had 
 not Rochester in his mind more than any other; but when 
 it was said that the writings of Rochester were held in great 
 esteem, especially in Germany and Italy, and when Cam- 
 peggio and others spoke so highly of him, it appeared to 
 him (the pope) that he should do a nice thing (pulchrum 
 quiddam\ and give pleasure to the king in making him a 
 cardinal. I replied fully to all he said, and at the end 
 advised him, since such a blunder had been committed, and 
 most certainly a very great blunder, if only that it had been 
 done without consulting the king, that he should not pro- 
 ceed to send the red hat and cap till he had heard more 
 from England. The pope begged me most earnestly to do
 
 356 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 everything I could to excuse this affair to the king; that 
 he was extremely sorry for it, especially when I said that it 
 was a matter too serious to admit of excuse." * 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to warn the reader to receive all 
 this vainglorious boasting of Sir Gregory, and his account 
 of the pope's abject apologies, with very large deductions. f 
 
 Sir Gregory was a man to whom lying came easily, and 
 from a letter of his, written at the same time to Cardinal 
 Bellay, we learn that Sir Gregory feared lest he himself 
 should be suspected of having influenced the pope, and 
 should incur the king's displeasure. A more truthful 
 account is given by the Bishop of Mac,on, the French 
 ambassador in Rome, who writes to Francis I., on 29th 
 May, that " the pope has asked him to beg Francis to use 
 all his power with Henry in favour of the Bishop of 
 Rochester. He had replied that he would write in that 
 sense, but feared it would be of little use, for the Imperialists 
 were saying that the creation of Fisher had been at the 
 request of the King of France, hoping by such speeches to 
 make Henry suspicious of Francis. If the latter should 
 now intercede for Fisher the suspicions would be confirmed, 
 and the request might be refused. The pope was greatly 
 distressed and declared himself ready to pass a formal 
 attestation, that he had not been requested by any prince to 
 make Fisher a cardinal. If he had done so, it was merely 
 on account of his fame for virtue and learning, and rather 
 with the intention of pleasing the king than from any ill- 
 feeling towards him." J 
 
 On 3ist May, Dr. Ortiz, the imperial representative in 
 Rome, writes to the Empress concerning the bishop's eleva- 
 
 * State Papers, vii. 425. 
 
 t In spite of the open schism in England, Henry kept his agents 
 in Rome, negotiating in the hopes that Paul III. would rescind his 
 predecessor's decision. 
 
 J Letters and Papers, viii. 779.
 
 PAPAL HONOURS. 357 
 
 tion. He thinks, however, that before the bishop shall hear 
 of it, Our Lord will have given him the true red hat, the 
 crown of martyrdom.* By this time the story of the death 
 of the Carthusians had reached Rome, and had excited 
 great admiration for them and hatred of their murderer. 
 It was generally felt that the pope had miscalculated that, 
 on the one hand, Henry was daring enough to vent his rage 
 even on a cardinal; and that the jealousies and narrow views 
 of the sovereigns of Europe would prevent any effectual 
 interference on their part. 
 
 The Bishop of Faenza, papal nuncio in France, writes to 
 Rome that he has spoken at length to the French king of 
 the pope's concern about Fisher, and begged him to use 
 his influence with the King of England for his liberation. 
 Francis replied that there was no need to speak of his 
 virtues, which were known to the whole world, and that no 
 one had written better than he against the Lutherans. His 
 holiness might be sure he would do all he could for his 
 liberation ; but he doubted his success, for he feared this 
 hat would cause him much injury, according to what he had 
 heard from England, where they have been using strange 
 measures against the Carthusians. He added that the King 
 of England was the hardest friend to bear in the world ; at 
 one time unstable, and at another obstinate and proud, so 
 that it was almost impossible to bear with him. " Some- 
 times," said Francis, "he almost treats me like a subject 
 In effect he is the strangest man in the world, and I fear I 
 can do no good with him ; but I must put up with him, as 
 it is no time to lose friends." 
 
 The nuncio had offered to give the King of France the 
 brief and hat for Fisher, and that all should be put in the 
 Grand Master's hands, so that it might be done sooner ac- 
 cording to the pope's will. Francis told the bishop to keep 
 them, and he would be asked for them when it was time 
 * Letters and Papers, 786.
 
 358 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 " Cardinal Du Bellay has also promised to do what he 
 can, but he fears this cardinalate will make Fisher a martyr. 
 They will try to find some means to make the King of 
 England take it as he ought. Will lose no time and do all 
 he can for his liberation. Would rather see Fisher in 
 Rome than be a cardinal himself, for he hears on every 
 side that his virtue is not less than the world wants now."* 
 
 The news of the Bishop of Rochester's elevation reached 
 England before the end of May. George Golde heard it 
 from John Pennoll, the bishop's late falconer, and he from 
 Bonvisi's servant, who had learnt the news at the French 
 ambassador's. George also heard it at Mr. Thornton's 
 house, and was told the news came from a servant of Lord 
 Rochford. Richard Wilson told what he had heard to the 
 bishop, and, according to his account, the bishop exclaimed: 
 " A cardinal ! then I perceive it was not for nought that 
 my lord chancellor did ask me when I heard from my 
 master the pope, and said that there was never a man had 
 exalted the pope as I had ". George Golde also told the 
 news to the bishop, to which he answered, that " he set as 
 much by that as by a rush under his feet ". The bishop's 
 own testimony is, " that George brought him word since 
 the last sitting of the council here, that he had heard say of 
 Mistress Roper, that this respondent was made a cardinal. 
 And then this respondent said, in the presence of the same 
 George and Wilson, that if the cardinal's hat were laid at 
 his feet, he would not stoop to pick it up, he did set so 
 little by it." 
 
 Dr. Hall's account seems at first the very reverse of this. 
 It is that the king sent Cromwell to the bishop, and that 
 after talk on many matters : " My Lord of Rochester," said 
 the secretary, " if the pope should now send you a cardinal's 
 hat, what would you do? Would you take it?" "Sir," 
 said he, " I know myself far unworthy of any such dignity, 
 * Letters and Papers, viii., n. 837.
 
 PAPAL HONOURS. 359 
 
 that I think nothing less than such matters ; but if he so 
 send it me, assure yourself I will work with it by all 
 the means I can to benefit the Church of Christ ; and in 
 that respect I will receive it upon my knees." This reply, 
 however, does not contradict the former. For the sake of 
 the personal honour he would not stoop to pick up the hat ; 
 for the duties attached to it, and the honour of the Sovereign 
 Pontiff, he would receive it on his knees. 
 
 Dr. Hall adds : " Mr. Cromwell making report afterwards 
 of this answer to the king, the king said again with great 
 indignation and spite: 'Yea, is he yet so lusty? Well, 
 let the pope send him a hat when he will ; but I will so 
 provide that whensoever it cometh, he shall wear it on his 
 shoulders, for head he shall have none to set it on.' " 
 
 That this right royal wit really came from the lips of 
 Henry is both intrinsically probable, and is confirmed by 
 the following letter of Chapuys. 
 
 He writes to the emperor on i6th June, 1535 : 
 
 a As soon as the king heard that the Bishop of Rochester 
 had been created a cardinal, he declared in anger several 
 times that he would give him another hat, and send the head 
 afterwards to Rome for the cardinal's hat. He sent 
 immediately to the Tower those of his council to summon 
 again the said bishop and Master More to swear to the 
 king as head of the Church, otherwise before St. John's day 
 they should be executed as traitors. But it has been 
 impossible to gain them, either by promises or threats, and 
 it is believed they will soon be executed. But as they are 
 persons of unequalled reputation in this kingdom, the king, to 
 appease the murmurs of the world, has already on Sunday last 
 caused preachers to preach against them in most of the 
 churches here, and this will be continued next Sunday. And 
 although there is no lawful occasion to put them to death, 
 the king is seeking if anything can be found against them, 
 especially if the said bishop has made suit for the hat.
 
 360 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 To find out which several persons have been arrested, 
 both of his kinsmen and of those who live in the prison." * 
 
 " It is impossible to describe the distress of the queen and 
 princess on account of these two persons ; and they are not with- 
 out fear that after them matters may be carried further than I 
 have hitherto written. Since the said news of the bishop's 
 creation as cardinal, the king, in hatred of the Holy See, has 
 despatched mandates and letters patent to the bishops, 
 curates, and others commissioned to preach, that they 
 continually preach certain articles against the Church, and 
 to schoolmasters to instruct their scholars to revile apostolic 
 authority; and this under pain of rebellion; also that the 
 pope's name should be rased out of all mass-books, breviaries, 
 and hours, either in the calendar or elsewhere." t 
 
 * This refers to the examination of Edward White and the 
 servants. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, viii. 876. Surely this deliberate perversion 
 of the children was the last stroke of diabolical malice. Yet Gardiner 
 was ready to co-operate. In a letter to Cromwell he mentions some 
 verses he had written against the pope for the Winchester scholars. 
 Henry's frenzy against the Vicar of Christ became so great that he 
 had a picture painted for his palace at Hampton Court, which is thus 
 mentioned in an inventory made in the first year of Edward VI. : " A 
 table of the Busshopp of Rome and the four Evangelists casting stones 
 upon him". (Bib. Harl., 1419; quoted by Sir Henry Cole in his 
 Handbook to Hampton Court, p. 53.)
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE TRIAL. 
 
 'HE news of- the Bishop of Rochester's elevation to the 
 A purple reached England towards the end of May, 
 1535. Though his death was already determined on, 
 and the council had early in May been engaged in the 
 attempt to entrap him into words that could be construed 
 into treason, it is probable, though not certain, that the 
 papal honour accelerated his death.* 
 
 Until recently there hung much obscurity over the trial 
 of the venerable cardinal. Some writers, partial to Henry, 
 were unwilling to admit on Dr. Hall's, or rather on Baily's, 
 testimony that he had been sentenced to death for no other 
 crime than that of denying the king's supremacy ; and as 
 no official records of the trial were then accessible, they felt 
 themselves at liberty to reject or question Baily's narrative, 
 and to give reins to their own conjectures. All uncertainty, 
 however, as to the nature of the accusation has been re- 
 moved by the publication it might almost be said the 
 discovery of the original arraignment and other official 
 deeds regarding the trial. In 1836, the legal records of the 
 
 * Mr. Bruce, and after him Mr. T. A. Turner (in his Introduction 
 to Lewis), have argued that Fisher's elevation could not have in- 
 fluenced the king, since the commission to try him was issued on 
 and June, before the news could have reached England. It is certain, 
 however, from official depositions, that the news travelled fast, and 
 reached England at the end of May. It seems, then, very probable 
 that the commission was issued because of the news of the pope's 
 action.
 
 362 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Court of King's Bench were transferred to the custody of 
 the Master of the Rolls. Among these was what was called 
 the Baga de Secretis (or Bag of Secrets) originally a real 
 bag, but long since transformed into a closet of which the 
 keys were kept by the Lord Chief-Justice, the Attorney- 
 General, and the Master of the Crown Office. This baga 
 consisted of ninety -one pouches, containing principally 
 records of indictments and attainders for high treason and 
 other State offences, ranging from A.D. 1477 to 1813. 
 Pouch 7, bundle 2, contains the records of the trials of 
 Bishop Fisher, Sir Thomas More, and three of the Charter- 
 house monks.* 
 
 There is, unfortunately, no record of evidence tendered 
 and speeches made, and for these we have still to rely on 
 Dr. Hall. But, so far as they go, the official papers not 
 merely prove the accuracy of Hall, but, by the coincidence 
 of their form with his history, show that he had access to 
 authentic sources. I shall be careful, however, as I have 
 done hitherto, to distinguish between what rests on the un- 
 impeachable evidence of original State papers, and what 
 depends on the veracity and accuracy of Fisher's biographer. 
 
 Before entering into details, it may be well to remind the 
 reader that he must not think of a State trial in the time of 
 Henry VIII. as of one in our own days. Mr. Brewer, in 
 relating the proceedings against the Duke of Buckingham 
 (attainted in 1521), as related by Shakspere, observes that 
 the poet gives a true picture of justice as administered by 
 the Tudors. " The presumption that men are innocent until 
 they are legally proved to be guilty, the facilities granted to 
 the accused for substantiating his innocence by retaining 
 the ablest advocate, the methods for sifting evidence now in 
 use, had no existence then. In crimes against the sovereign, 
 
 * See Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records (1842), 
 pp. 16, 211.
 
 THE TRIAL. 363 
 
 real or supposed, men were presumed to be guilty until they 
 had proved themselves to be innocent, and that proof was 
 involved in endless difficulties. What advocate or what 
 witness would have ventured to brave the displeasure of a 
 Tudor king by appearing in defence of a criminal on whose 
 guilt the king had pronounced already ? " * 
 
 The language of Justice O'Hagan is still more emphatic 
 and precise. "It is singular," he says,t "that Mr. Emlyn" 
 the editor of English State Trials " even while indicating 
 the defects of the criminal law, claims for it a striking 
 superiority over that of other nations. If it were so, God 
 help the accused in other nations, for anything more 
 iniquitous than the criminal procedure of England the 
 imagination cannot conceive. . . .+ In the first place, the 
 prisoner was not allowed counsel to defend him in any case 
 of treason or felony ... he was left naked and helpless to 
 contend with an array of learned, experienced, and too often 
 unsparing and unscrupulous antagonists, bent on using all 
 the resources of their powers and attainments for his destruc- 
 tion. It is true that if the ignorant prisoner could himself 
 start any point of pure law, such as a defect in the indict- 
 ment, he was allowed counsel to argue the point. In order 
 to exercise this very poor prerogative, you will imagine 
 that he was allowed to have a copy of the indictment. It 
 would have raised the very hair upon the wig of one of the 
 old judges to fancy the prisoner calling for a copy of the 
 charge against him. He was entitled to have it read out to 
 him, but that did not avail him much, for it was in Latin, 
 and Latin of the most barbarous description. . . . Secondly, 
 what will seem still more startling, no witnesses for .the 
 
 * Introduction to vol. Hi. of Letters and Papers, p. cxviii. 
 
 + Lecture in the Rotunda, Dublin, 1877. 
 
 J The lecturer remarks that he is speaking of past times, not of 
 present, when the law " errs rather in affording loopholes for the 
 guilty than in spreading snares for the innocent ".
 
 364 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 prisoner were permitted to be sworn. They were alloAved 
 to give testimony, indeed, but not upon oath, and the 
 Crown counsel, in their addresses to the jury, rarely failed 
 to descant on the superior credibility of the Crown witnesses 
 (though the most infamous of mankind) over the witnesses 
 for the defence, because the former were upon oath, the 
 latter were not. The force of injustice, you may fancy, 
 could not further go. And yet, such as it was, it was an 
 improvement on the practice of still earlier times. In the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth and before that reign, incredible 
 as it may appear, no witness for the accused was heard at 
 all, either on oath or without oath. And, to complete the 
 picture, the witnesses for the prosecution were then, in 
 many cases, not put upon the table face to face with the 
 prisoner. The depositions of the witnesses were taken 
 behind his back, and upon the trial were simply read to 
 the jury, whose prearranged verdict of Guilty was delivered 
 as simply a thing of course. Thirdly, the most vital of all, 
 was the composition of the jury itself. The panel was 
 selected by the sheriff. The sheriff in counties at large was 
 the nominee and creature of the Crown.* In cities such 
 as London, and other great corporate towns, the appoint- 
 ment of sheriffs lay with the corporations. ... In either 
 case the jury was, to use the familiar phrase, a packed jury. 
 
 "As to the State trials of former times, nothing that I can 
 say can go beyond the pithy expression of Lord Macaulay, 
 that an English State trial in those days was simply a murder 
 preceded by certain mummeries." 
 
 Lastly, Lord Chancellor Campbell, writing of these very 
 trials of More and Fisher, says : "There is a curious con- 
 trast between the history of France and England, that 
 assassination, so common in the one country, was hardly 
 ever practised in the other ; but I know not whether our 
 
 * In Fisher's trial the sheriff for the county of Middlesex selected 
 the panel.
 
 THE TRIAL. 365 
 
 national character is much exalted by adherence to the 
 system of perpetrating murder under the form of law ". * 
 
 We may now turn to the history of the legal murder of 
 England's noblest and holiest son. On ist June a special 
 commission of Oyer and Terminer for Middlesex was 
 directed to Sir Thomas Audley, chancellor ; Charles, Duke 
 of Suffolk ; the Marquis of Exeter, the Earl of Rutland, the 
 Earl of Cumberland, the Earl of Wiltshire, Thomas Crom- 
 well, secretary; Sir John Fitz-James, chief justice; Sir John 
 Baldwin, chief justice of the Common Pleas; Sir William 
 Paulet, Sir Richard Lyster, chief baron of the Exchequer ; 
 and to Sir John Porte and Sir John Spelman, Sir W. Luke, 
 Th. Inglefield, W. Shelley, and Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert,, 
 justices.t 
 
 The cardinal, however, was not brought to trial until the 
 1 7th June. According to Hall the delay was caused by his 
 great sickness. This I have before discussed. The interval 
 was occupied in trying to collect evidence, and for this 
 purpose all who had come into contact with him in the 
 Tower were subjected to repeated interrogations, and the 
 cardinal, as well as Sir Thomas, had to reply to a long list 
 of questions, the answers to which were taken down in 
 writing, and afterwards read to the prisoners, each page 
 being signed by them in testimony of its accuracy. Of 
 those submitted to the bishop on 1 2th June, I have already 
 given the substance. They regarded principally his corre- 
 spondence, and nothing was elicited by them that could be 
 used for his prosecution. The most important answer is 
 that to the fifth question regarding what he had written to 
 More. He says that, "soon after the last being of the 
 council in the Tower, More had communicated to him his 
 wish to know his answer. And he had replied, that ' he 
 
 * Life of Rich. Lord Campbell is of course speaking of assassina- 
 tion by the Government. 
 
 f Baga de Secretis, and also Dr. Hall.
 
 366 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 had made his answer according to the statute which con- 
 demneth no man but him that speaketh maliciously against 
 the king's title ; and that the statute did compel no man to 
 answer to the question that was proposed him ; and that he 
 besought them that he should not be constrained to make 
 further or other answer than the said statute did bind 
 him, but would suffer him to enjoy the benefits of the same 
 statute '. * 
 
 " On i4th June he was asked : 
 
 " i. Whether he would obey the king as supreme head of 
 the Church of England ? He stands by the answer he had 
 made at the last examination, but will write with his own 
 hand more at length. 
 
 "2. Whether he will acknowledge the king's marriage with 
 Queen Anne to be lawful, and that with the Lady Catharine 
 to be invalid ? He would obey and swear to the succes- 
 sion, but desires to be pardoned answering this interrogatory 
 absolutely. 
 
 " 3. For what cause he would not answer resolutely to the 
 said interrogations? He desires not to be driven to answer, 
 lest he fall in danger of the statutes. 1 ' 
 
 The royal inquisitors having been baffled by these cautious 
 answers, and being unable to obtain any evidence against him 
 in his own confession, resolved to arraign and commit him 
 on a charge of words spoken on the yth May. On Thursday, 
 therefore, the i7th June, he was brought to the King's 
 Bench at Westminster Hall, by Sir William Kingston, 
 constable of the Tower, says the official record; and (adds Dr. 
 Hall) "with a huge number of halberts, bills, and other 
 weapons about him, and the axe of the Tower borne before 
 him, with the edge from him, as the manner is. And because 
 he was not yet so well recovered that he was able to walk 
 by land all the way on foot, he rode part of the way on 
 
 * Lewis (ii., App. 41, p. 410), who gives the answers more fully than 
 they are given in Letters and Papers, viii. 858,
 
 THE TRIAL. 367 
 
 horseback, in a black cloth gown, and the rest he was carried 
 by water, for that he was not well able to ride through for 
 weakness." This is confirmed by Cardinal Pole, who writes 
 that " when he was carried out to his trial, in the short journey, 
 from utter exhaustion he was at the point of death ". * 
 
 Hall continues: "Being presented before the commissioners 
 he was commanded by the name of John Fisher, late of 
 Rochester, clerk, otherwise called John Fisher, Bishop of 
 Rochester, f to hold up his hand, which he did with a most 
 cheerful countenance and rare constancy. Then was his in- 
 dictment read, which was very long and full of words, but the 
 effect of it was this : ' That he maliciously, traitorously, and 
 falsely had said these words : The king our sovereign lord is 
 not supreme head in earth of the Church of England'. % Dr, 
 Hall here forgets to mention that the words are said in the 
 
 * Apology, n. 20. 
 
 t In original it is thus : " Also called J. F., late of the city of R., 
 bishop ". The title of Bp. of R. is not given. 
 
 J The words are : " Quidam tamen Johannes Fyssher nuper de 
 civitate Roffen. in com. Kane, clericus, alias Dominus Johannes 
 Fyssher nuper de Roffen. Episcopus, Deum prae oculis non habeas, 
 sed instigatione diabolica seductus, false, maliciose, et proditorie 
 obtans volens et desiderans ac arte imaginans, inventans practicans 
 et attemptans serenissimum dominum nostrum Henricum octavum 
 Dei gratia Angliaa et Franciae Regem, Fidei Defensorem et Dominum 
 Hiberniae atque in terra supremum caput Ecclesiae Anglicanae, de 
 dignitate titulo et nomine suis in terra supremi capitis Anglicanae 
 Ecclesiae, dictae imperialis coronae suae, ut prasmittitur, annexis et 
 unitis, deprivare, septimo die Maii anno regni ejusdem domini regis 
 270 apud Turrim London in com. Middlesex, contra legianciae suae 
 debitum, haec verba anglicana sequentia diversis dicti domini regis 
 veris subditis, false maliciose et proditorie loquebatur et propalabat, 
 videlicet, The king our sovereign lord is not supreme head in earth of 
 the Church of England, in dicti domini regis injuriam, despectum, et 
 vilipendium manifestum, ac in dictorum dignitatis tituli et nominis 
 status sui regalis derogationem et prejudicium non modicum, et 
 contra formam dicti alterius actus predict! anno 26 editi et provisi, 
 ac contra pacem prefati domini regis," &c.
 
 368 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 indictment to have been spoken (i) before several persons, 
 (.2) in the Tower, and (3) on the 7th May. 
 
 The judges had issued their precept to the sheriff of 
 Middlesex for the return of a jury of inhabitants of the 
 Tower,* i.e., freeholders dwelling within "the liberties" of 
 the Tower or the Tower district. 
 
 Before giving the result of the trial I must try to throw 
 some more light on the exact nature of the indictment. 
 Sir Francis Palgrave remarks that in former days, especially 
 in cases of high treason, bills of indictment were virtually 
 the depositions of witnesses or the confessions made by 
 accessories. Hence we can often judge of the evidence 
 offered by the perusal of the indictment. This is not the 
 case with Cardinal Fisher's; but Sir Thomas More's in- 
 dictment is more detailed and throws light not only on his 
 own case but on the Cardinal's. It sets forth that on the yth 
 May, at the Tower, before Thomas Cromwell, Thomas 
 Bedyll, and John Tregonell, and divers others the king's 
 councillors, being examined on the king's supremacy, he 
 replied : " I will not meddle with such matters ". That 
 afterwards, on izth May, the said Sir Thomas, knowing 
 that John Fisher, clerk, was then and had been detained in 
 the Tower for divers great misprisions committed by him 
 against the king, and that the said Fisher being examined, 
 had denied to accept the king as before mentioned, wrote a 
 letter to him, by which he agreed with Fisher in his treason, 
 and intimated the silence which he (More) had observed, he 
 also used the expression : " The Act of Parliament is like 
 a two-edged sword, for if a man answer one way it will 
 
 * Baga de Secrctls. Their names are given by Hall, which shows 
 that he had access to documents. They are : Sir Hugh Vaughan, 
 knight ; Sir Walter Hungerford, knight ; Thomas Burbage, John 
 Newdigate, William Brown, John Hewes, Jasper Leake, John Palmer, 
 Richard Henry Young, Henry Lodisman, John Carlington, and George 
 Everingham, Esquires,
 
 THE TRIAL. 369 
 
 confound his soul, and if the other way it will confound his 
 body". Then afterwards More, fearing lest Fisher on his 
 renewed examination should reveal what More had written, 
 he (More) on 26th May sent other letters, requesting Fisher 
 not to give the same answer, but to speak his own mind, 
 lest the king's councillors should suspect confederacy. 
 Nevertheless Fisher on 3rd June, when examined by Sir 
 Thomas Audley, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, 
 and others, did refuse a direct answer, and said : " The 
 statute is like a two-edged sword, &c., therefore I will make 
 no answer in that matter". That on the same 3rd June, 
 More gave the same answer. Lastly, that on i2th June 
 there was a dialogue between Richard Rich, the solicitor- 
 general, and More which is there detailed, and is the same 
 as in the evidence given by Rich on More's trial, and which 
 More declared to be deliberate perjury. It does not, however, 
 regard the bishop. 
 
 From all this it appears evident that " the divers true 
 subjects of his majesty," to whom Cardinal Fisher was 
 charged with having spoken the treasonable denial of the 
 supremacy, on the yth May, in the Tower of London, were 
 Cromwell, Bedyll, Tregonell, and others of the king's 
 council. The bishop, in his answer to the interrogations 
 on 1 2th June, denies that he ever so committed himself. 
 So did he to his servant Wilson, who thought the words 
 had slipped from him. Wilson's answer made on yth June 
 to the inquisitions of the council in the Tower was that, 
 standing behind the partition on the 7th May, the day after 
 the Ascension, he overheard Mr. Secretary read the Act of 
 Supremacy, and his master answered that he could not 
 consent to take the king as supreme head ; whereupon they 
 read to him the Act making it treason to deny the king this 
 title ; that he (Wilson) cautioned the bishop to beware what 
 answer he made to the supremacy. 
 
 On the 8th June, Wilson was again interrogated, and said 
 24
 
 37 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 that after the second examination of the bishop, his master 
 had said to him that the council had affirmed that on the 
 7th May he had declined to accept the supremacy, " and 
 I," said the bishop, " remember no such thing ". " Nor I 
 neither," replied Wilson. "But a while after he came to 
 his master as he was saying evensong, and said, ' Yes ! that 
 he had answered that he did not think the king might be 
 supreme head ' ; but his master denied having said so." * 
 
 I have given all this detail, because it has only recently 
 been brought to light. It puts the indictment of Fisher in 
 a somewhat different aspect from that in which it has hitherto 
 been presented, though it is uncertain whether any of this 
 evidence, such as it is, was used at the trial. 
 
 The legal papers in the Baga tell us how the bishop 
 pleaded Not guilty to the indictment, how the Venire was 
 awarded the same day, how a verdict of Guilty was returned, 
 how judgment was given with the atrocious penalties usual 
 in high treason, f and how Tyburn was fixed for the place 
 of execution. (We shall see that several of these penalties 
 were remitted, and the place of death changed to Tower 
 Hill.) It may be remarked that the bishop, having been 
 deprived by Act of Attainder of his bishopric, had not the 
 trial of a peer, and that as little attention was paid to his 
 clerical character as to his dignity of cardinal, so that there 
 was not even an allusion to degradation previous to execu- 
 tion, which the law of the Church and of all Catholic 
 countries required. Henry had fourteen years previously 
 thus written of Luther: "We are daily listening for rumours 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 856, n. 19, p. 328. 
 
 f The sentence was as follows (let those blush who enacted it, not 
 those who transcribe it) : " Your sentence is that you be led back to 
 prison, laid on a hurdle, and so drawn to the place of execution, then 
 to be hanged, cut down alive, your members to be cut off and cast 
 into the fire, your bowels burnt before your eyes, your head smitten 
 off, your body quartered and divided at the king's will. And God 
 have mercy on your soul. Amen."
 
 THE TRIAL. 371 
 
 from Germany of men being raised from the tomb, and yet 
 we not only hear of no one being cured, but of good and 
 innocent priests cruelly slain by some of his satellites. This 
 is no doubt for the purpose of teaching us that Order is no 
 sacrament, that the priestly character is a figment, and that 
 David was too timid when he was sorry for having touched 
 the anointed of the Lord." * Since thus writing Henry 
 had well succeeded in getting rid of all superstitious fears, 
 and could slay God's prophets with as little remorse as an 
 Achab or a Jezebel. 
 
 Official documents give us no further assistance regarding 
 the nature of Cardinal Fisher's trial. They prove the im- 
 portant fact that the only charge made against him was 
 denial of the new title of supreme head. He was found 
 guilty of treason, but in his case what was called treason to 
 his sovereign was in fact a higher loyalty and fidelity in 
 refusing flattery and impiety, while it was also an act of 
 allegiance to the Sovereign Pontiff, to his conscience, and to 
 his God. Many Protestant writers have, with great candour 
 and force of language, reprobated the absurd attempt of 
 English law to affix the stigma of treason on acts like that 
 for which Fisher and later martyrs suffered. "Treason," 
 writes Hallam, " by the law of England, and according to 
 the common use of language, is the crime of rebellion or 
 conspiracy against the Government. If a statute is made, 
 by which the celebration of certain religious rites is subjected 
 to the same penalties as rebellion or conspiracy, would any 
 man free from prejudice, and not designing to impose upon 
 the uninformed, speak of persons convicted on such a statute 
 as guilty of treason, without expressing in what sense he 
 uses the words, or deny that they were as truly punished for 
 their religion as if they had been convicted for heresy ? A 
 man is punished for his religion when he incurs a penalty 
 for his profession or exercise to which he was not liable on 
 * Assertio Septem Sacram. (De Extr. Unct.).
 
 372 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 any other account. This is applicable to the great majority 
 of capital convictions on this score under Elizabeth. The 
 persons convicted could not be traitors in any fair sense of 
 the word, because they were not chargeable with anything 
 properly denominated treason." * 
 
 Mr. Bruce, who so patiently and successfully unravelled 
 the history of the Bishop of Rochester's sufferings and 
 death, expresses his opinion of his trial in the following 
 strong language : " The Act of Parliament upon which this 
 indictment was principally founded is certainly of a most 
 atrocious character, and evidences a state of society but 
 little removed from actual barbarism ; but the construction, 
 by which the mere expression of an opinion upon a disputed 
 point in theology was held to amount to a malicious and 
 treasonable attempt to deprive the king of his title of 
 supreme head, is, if possible, even more iniquitous than the 
 statute itself. Every principle of legislation was violated by 
 the lawgivers, who created a treason out of men's wishes 
 and desires ; and not less violence was done to all rules of 
 construction, by stretching the latitude of this highly penal 
 statute, so that not merely wishes and desires, but even 
 opinions, were comprehended within its fatal enactments. 
 
 " Everything relating to the criminal proceedings of this 
 period was so irregular; humanity and even honesty were so 
 frequently absent from the judicial seats ; the influence of 
 the monarch was so openly thrown into the scale by judges 
 who were the mere delegates of his vindictive spirit ; there 
 was so much anxiety to obtain a conviction at whatever 
 cost and by whatever means that those who infer that 
 Fisher could not have been convicted for the mere utterance 
 of an opinion, because such a conviction would have been 
 tyrannical and unjust, show, I fear, a disposition to judge of 
 the legal proceedings of the reign of Henry VIII. by the 
 
 * Constitutional History, ch. iii.
 
 THE TRIAL. 373 
 
 example of our own times rather than by that which they 
 themselves exhibit."* 
 
 Mr. Gairdner also, besides remarking on the absence of 
 malice in any words that may have been spoken, asks very 
 pertinently : " How could Fisher, even if the word maliciously 
 had not been in the statute, have been justly said to 
 'publish and pronounce' an opinion, for which he had 
 been expressly asked in prison bv members of the king's 
 Privy Council ?"t 
 
 We must now examine by what evidence was the supposed 
 crime brought home to the prisoner. The place and the 
 day are specified in the indictment, but not the occasion, 
 nor the persons to whom the words were spoken, nor do we 
 know from official sources the evidence that was offered. 
 We know however, as has been said, that on the 7th of May 
 the bishop had appeared before the council in the Tower, 
 and had been questioned on the subject of the supremacy. 
 Hence it is natural to conclude that the criminal words were 
 charged as having been spoken on that occasion. Yet Dr. 
 Hall gives a perfectly different account of the circumstances 
 of the alleged offence and of the evidence offered. He does 
 not mention the day, yet there is nothing in his version that 
 could not have happened on the day and in the place alleged, 
 though not before the council. If we are to suppose that 
 the words charged as spoken in the Tower on May 7th were 
 words addressed by the prisoner to the council, we must 
 also suppose either that one or more of his majesty's Privy 
 Council came forward as evidence, or that the mere written 
 statement of the council, read to the jury, was considered 
 
 * Bruce, Archaol., xxv. , p. 83. He alludes especially to Mr. Turner's 
 Henry VIII. This author had said that there must have been some 
 other crime than " the mere theoretical refusal to acknowledge the 
 ecclesiastical chieftainship," and that More and Fisher must have been 
 convicted as abettors or participators in treasonable conspiracies 1 
 
 r Introduction to vol. viii. of Letters and Papers, p. xxxiii.
 
 374 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 sufficient and unimpeachable evidence for an immediate 
 conviction. 
 
 This would, however, be to set aside the whole of Hall's 
 account of the trial, which has hitherto been generally 
 accepted as authentic, having been copied into the Slate 
 Trials. Lord Campbell, accepting Hall's narrative without 
 hesitation, writes as follows: "The only witness for the 
 Crown was Rich, the solicitor-general, who, although he was 
 supposed not to have exceeded the truth in stating what had 
 passed between him and the prisoner, covered himself with 
 almost equal infamy as when he was driven to commit per- 
 jury on the trial of More". He then goes on to abridge the 
 evidence, the reply, and the judge's sentence as he found 
 them in Baily. 
 
 I shall now therefore transcribe Dr. Hall's account of the 
 trial in full, premising, however, that neither the certainty of 
 the cause for which the Blessed John Fisher died a martyr, 
 nor the certainty that he was put to death unjustly, even 
 according to the law of England, in any way depends on the 
 truth of the following narrative. 
 
 "These twelve men," writes Hall, "being sworn to try 
 whether the prisoner were guilty of this treason or no, at 
 last came forth to give evidence against him, Mr. Rich, 
 the secret and close messenger that passed between the 
 king and him, as ye have read before, who openly, in the 
 presence of the judges and all the people there assembled 
 (which were a huge number), deposed and sware that he 
 heard the prisoner say in plain words, within the Tower of 
 London : ' That he believed in his conscience, and by his 
 learning assuredly knew, that the king neither was, nor by 
 right could be, supreme head in earth of the Church of 
 England '. 
 
 " When this blessed father heard the accusations of this 
 most wretched and false person, contrary to his former oath 
 and promise, he was not a little astonyed thereat ; where-
 
 THE TRIAL. 375 
 
 fore he said to him in this manner : ' Mr. Rich, I cannot 
 but marvel to hear you come in and bear witness against 
 me of these words, knowing in what secret manner you 
 came to me. But suppose I so said unto you, yet in that 
 saying I committed no treason, for upon what occasion and 
 for what cause it might be said yourself doth know right 
 well, and, therefore, being now urged' (said he) 'by this 
 occasion to open somewhat of this matter, I shall desire my 
 lords and others here to take a little patience in hearing 
 what I shall say for myself. This man' (meaning Mr. 
 Rich) ' came to me from the king (as he said) on a secret 
 message, with commendations from his grace, declaring at 
 large what a good opinion his majesty had of me, and how 
 sorry he was of my trouble, with many more words than are 
 here needful to be recited, because they tended so much to 
 my praise, as I was not only ashamed to hear them, but 
 also knew right well that I could no way deserve them. At 
 last he brake with me of the matter of the king's supremacy 
 lately granted unto him by Act of Parliament, to the which 
 (he said), although all the bishops in the realm have con- 
 sented except yourself alone, and also the whole court of 
 Parliament, both spiritual and temporal, except a very few, 
 yet he told me that the king, for better satisfaction of his 
 own conscience, had sent him unto me in this secret manner 
 to know my full opinion in the matter, for the great affiance 
 he had in me more than any other. He added further that 
 if I would frankly and freely herein advise his majesty of my 
 knowledge, that upon certificate of my misliking, he was 
 very like to retract much of his former doings, and make 
 satisfaction for the same, in case I should so advise him. 
 When I heard all his message and considered a little upon 
 his words, I put him in mind of the new Act of Parliament, 
 which (standing in force as it doth against all them that 
 should directly say or do anything against it) might thereby 
 endanger me very much, in case I should utter unto him
 
 376 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 anything that were offensive against the law. To that he 
 told me that the king willed him to assure me on his 
 honour, and on the word of a king, that whatsoever I 
 should say unto him by this his secret messenger, I should 
 abide no danger nor peril for it ; neither that any advantage 
 should be taken against me for the same, no, although my 
 words were never so directly against the statute, seeing it 
 was but a declaration of my mind secretly to him, as to his 
 own person. And for the messsenger himself, he gave me 
 his faithful promise that he would never utter my words in 
 this matter to any man living, but to the king alone. Now, 
 therefore, my lords' (quoth he), 'seeing it pleased the king's 
 majesty to send me word thus secretly, under the pretence 
 of plain and true meaning, to know my poor advice and 
 opinion in these his weighty and great doings (which I most 
 gladly was and ever will be willing to send him), methink it 
 is very hard injustice to hear the messenger's accusation, 
 and to allow the same as a sufficient testimony against me 
 in case of treason.' 
 
 " To this the messenger would make no direct answer, 
 but with a most impudent and shameless face (neither deny- 
 ing his words for false nor confessing them for true), said, 
 that whatsoever he had said unto him on the king's behalf, 
 he said no more than his majesty commanded him. 'But' 
 (said he) ' if I had said to you in such sort as you have declared, 
 I would gladly know what discharge is this to you in law 
 against his majesty for so directly speaking against the 
 statute.' Whereat some of the judges, taking quick hold 
 one after another, said that this message or promise of the 
 king to him neither could nor did by rigour of the law dis- 
 charge him, but in so declaring his mind and conscience 
 against the supremacy, yea, though it were at the king's own 
 commandment or request, he committed treason by the 
 statute, and nothing can discharge him from death but the 
 king's pardon.
 
 THE TRIAL. 377 
 
 "This good father, perceiving the small account made of 
 his words, and the favourable credit given to his accuser, 
 might then easily smell which way the matter would 
 go ; wherefore, directing his speeches to the lords his 
 judges, he said : ' Yet I pray you, my lords, consider that, 
 by all equity, justice, worldly honesty, and courteous dealing, 
 I cannot (as the case standeth) be directly charged there- 
 with as with treason, though I had spoken the words, 
 indeed, the same being not spoken maliciously, but in the 
 way of advice and counsel, when it was requested of me by 
 the king himself. And that favour the very words of the 
 statute do give me, being made only against such as shall 
 maliciously gainsay the king's supremacy, and none other.' 
 To that it was answered by some of the judges that the 
 word maliciously in the statute is but a superfluous and void 
 word ; for if a man speak against the king's supremacy by 
 any manner of means, that speaking is to be understanded 
 and taken in law as maliciously. ' My lords ' (said he), ' if 
 the law be so understood, then it is a hard exposition, and 
 (as I take it) contrary to the meaning of them that made 
 the law. But then, let me demand this question, Whether 
 a single testimony of one man may be admitted as sufficient 
 to prove me guilty of treason for speaking these words or 
 no, and whether my answer negatively may not be accepted 
 against his affirmative to my avail and benefit or no? ' To 
 that the judges and lawyers answered that (being the king's 
 case) it rested much in conscience and discretion of the 
 jury, and as they upon the evidence given before them shall 
 find it, you are either to be acquitted, or else by judgment 
 to be condemned. 
 
 " The jury, having heard all this simple evidence, departed 
 (according to the order) into a secret place, there to agree 
 upon the verdict; but before they went from the place, the 
 case was so aggravated to them by the lord chancellor 
 making it so heinous and dangerous a treason, that they
 
 37& BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 easily perceived what verdict they must return, or else heap 
 such danger upon their own heads, as was for none of their 
 cases to bear. 
 
 " Some other of the commissioners charged this most 
 reverend cardinal with obstinacy and singularity, alleging 
 that he being but one man did presumptuously stand against 
 that, which was in the great council of Parliament agreed, 
 and finally consented unto by all the bishops of this realm, 
 saving himself alone. But to that he answered, that indeed 
 he might well be accounted singular if he alone should 
 stand in this matter (as they said) ; but having on his part 
 the rest of the bishops of Christendom, far surmounting the 
 number of the bishops of England, he said they could not 
 justly account him singular ; and having on his part all the 
 Catholic bishops of the world from Christ's Ascension till 
 now, joined with the whole consent of Christ's universal 
 Church, 'I must needs' (said he) 'account my own part far 
 the surer. And as for obstinacy, which is likewise objected 
 against me, I have no way to clear myself thereof, but by 
 mine own solemn word and promise to the contrary, if ye 
 please to believe it, or else, if that will not serve, I am here 
 ready to confirm the same by mine oath.' Thus in effect 
 he answered their objections, though with many more words, 
 both wisely and profoundly uttered, and that with a mar- 
 vellous, courageous, and rare constancy, in so much as 
 many of his hearers, yea, some of his judges lamented so 
 grievously, that their inward sorrow on all sides was expressed 
 by the outward tears of their eyes, to perceive such a famous 
 and reverend man in danger to be condemned to cruel death 
 by such an impious law, upon so weak evidence given by 
 such a wicked accuser, contrary to all faith and promise of 
 the king himself. 
 
 " But all pity, mercy, and right being set aside, rigour, 
 cruelty, and malice took place ; for the twelve men being 
 shortly returned from their consultation, verdict was given
 
 THE TRIAL. 370 
 
 that he was guilty of the treason, which although they thus 
 did upon the menacing and threatening words of the com- 
 missioners and the king's learned counsel, yet was it no 
 doubt full sore against their conscience (as some of them 
 would after report to their dying days), only for safety of 
 their goods and lives, which they were well assured to lose 
 in case they had acquitted him. 
 
 "After the verdict thus given by the twelve men, the 
 lord chancellor, commanding silence to be kept, said unto 
 the prisoner in this sort : ' My Lord of Rochester, you have 
 been here arraigned of high treason, and putting yourself to 
 the trial of twelve men, you have pleaded not guilty, and 
 they notwithstanding have found you guilty in their con- 
 sciences ; wherefore, if you have any more to say for your- 
 self you are new to be heard, or else to receive judgment 
 according to the order and course of the law '. Then said 
 this blessed father again : ' Truly, my lord, if that which I 
 have before spoken be not sufficient, I have no more to say, 
 but only to desire Almighty God to forgive them that have 
 thus condemned me ; for I think they know not what they 
 have done'. Then my lord chancellor, framing himself to a 
 solemnity in countenance, pronounced sentence of death 
 upon him, in manner and form following : ( You shall be 
 led to the place from whence you came, and from thence 
 shall be drawn through the city to the place of execution 
 at Tyborne, where your body shall be hanged by the neck, 
 and half alive you shall be cut down and thrown to the 
 ground, your bowels to be taken out of your body and 
 burnt before you, being alive, your head to be smitten off, 
 and your body to be divided into four quarters, and after 
 your head and quarters to be set up where the king shall 
 appoint, and God have mercy on your soul '. 
 
 " After the pronouncing of this horrible and cruel sentence 
 of death, the lieutenant of the Tower * with his band of 
 * Probably it was the constable.
 
 3<Jo BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 men stood ready to receive and carry him back again to his 
 prison. But before his departure he desired audience of 
 the commissioners for a few words, being which granted, he 
 said thus in effect : ' My lords, I am here condemned 
 before you of high treason, for denial of the king's supre- 
 macy over the Church of England, but by what order of 
 justice I leave to God who is searcher both of the king's 
 majesty's conscience and yours ; nevertheless, being found 
 guilty as it is termed, I am and must be contented with all 
 that God shall send, to whose will I wholly refer and 
 submit myself. And now to tell you more plainly my mind 
 touching this matter of the king's supremacy : I think, 
 indeed, and always have thought, and do now lastly affirm, 
 that his grace cannot justly claim any such supremacy over 
 the Church of God as he now taketh upon him, neither 
 hath been seen or heard of, that any temporal prince before 
 his days hath presumed to that dignity. Wherefore, if the 
 king will now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange 
 and unwonted case, no doubt but he shall deeply incur the 
 displeasure of Almighty God, to the great danger of his own 
 soul and of many others, and to the utter ruin of this realm 
 committed to his charge, whereof will ensue some sharp 
 punishment at His hand. Wherefore, I pray God his grace 
 may remember himself in time, and hearken to good counsel 
 for the preservation of himself and his realm, and the quiet- 
 ness of all Christendom.' 
 
 " Which words being ended, he was conveyed back again 
 to the Tower of London, part on foot and part on horse- 
 back, with a like number of men bearing halberts and other 
 weapons about him as was before at his coming to the 
 arraignment. And when he was come to the Tower gate, he 
 turned him back to all his train that had thus conducted 
 him forward and backward and said unto them : ' My 
 masters, I thank you all for the great labour and pains ye 
 have taken with me this day ; I am not able to give you any-
 
 THE TRIAL. 381 
 
 thing in recompense, for I have nothing left, and, therefore, I 
 pray accept in good part my hearty thanks '. And this he 
 spake with so lusty a courage, so amiable a countenance, and 
 with so fresh and lively a colour, as he seemed rather to have 
 come from a great feast or a banquet than from his arraignment, 
 showing by all his gesture and outward countenance such joy 
 and gladness as it was easy to perceive how earnestly he 
 desired in his heart to be in that blessed state for which he 
 had so long laboured. Whereof he made the surer account for 
 that he was thus innocently condemned for Christ's cause." * 
 In this account of Dr. Hall there is only one real diffi- 
 culty. The indictment is for having "falsely, maliciously, 
 and traitorously spoken and published" the words, "The 
 king is not supreme head in earth of the Church of Eng- 
 land," to divers true subjects of the our said lord the king 
 (divers is dicli do mini regis veris subditis). Now, if Rich was 
 the only witness, and if he testified to words spoken secretly 
 to himself, the indictment would not have been verified. To 
 this it may be replied that such inexactness would have been 
 easily condoned by the judges of those days. Perhaps this 
 was the meaning of the cardinal's plea that one witness was 
 not sufficient a plea which was overruled by the lord 
 chancellor. Strict legal justice was of little account in his 
 eyes. Lord Campbell, writing of the very same commis- 
 sioners and. of the trial of Sir Thomas More, which was 
 exactly parallel in all respects with that of Cardinal Fisher, 
 says : " Trusting rather to partial judges and packed jury 
 than the evidence which could be brought againt him, a 
 special commission was issued ".f And after relating the 
 
 * From Hall's MS. 
 
 f- He says also : " We must regard" (Sir Thomas More's) "murder 
 as the blackest crime that ever has been perpetrated in England under 
 the form of law ". I hesitate to assume that he would say exactly 
 the same thing of Fisher's, since it is certain that Rich perjured him- 
 self against More ; against Fisher he was merely treacherous and per- 
 fidious.
 
 382 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 trial of Fisher and the ruling of Chancellor Audley, he says : 
 " This wicked judge had not the apology of having any taste 
 for blood himself, and he would probably have been much 
 better pleased to have sustained the objection " (of the insuffi- 
 ciency of the evidence) " and directed an acquittal. He was 
 merely the tool of a tyrant." This severe censure on the 
 presiding judge is not founded on the single trial of Fisher, 
 but on an accumulation of instances ; so that even if Hall's 
 account were proved erroneous, Audley would not thereby 
 have his character restored. Whereas the notorious in- 
 justice of Audley and the slavishness of his fellow judges in 
 other cases, give a probability to Hail's account and remove 
 the difficulty of reconciling the indictment and the verdict 
 with the evidence.* 
 
 Similar reflections may be applied to the conduct of Rich. 
 It is atrocious as represented by Hall; but from what is 
 known of him, altogether apart from Hall's report of this 
 trial, it is antecedently probable. He acted with even 
 greater effrontery a fortnight later at the trial of Sir Thomas 
 More ; and it is after a review of his whole career that Lord 
 Campbell writes : " Rich was hardly free from any vice 
 except hypocrisy ; he was one of the most sordid as well as 
 unprincipled men who have ever held the office of lord 
 chancellor in England". Rich was then bidding for place; 
 and to him conscience and honour were light things to bar- 
 gain away for wealth and titles. Such men abounded in 
 the 1 6th century. They cared neither for religion nor 
 morality. They called themselves politic^ and made their 
 
 * It was after a careful scrutiny of Audley's whole life that Lord 
 Campbell pronounced him "a sordid slave"; and after weighing his 
 conduct in the trial of Anne Boleyn, and of Archbishop Cranmer in 
 her divorce, he sarcastically remarks : " It was well that Henry did 
 not direct that Audley should officiate as executioner, with Cranmer 
 as his assistant ; for they probably would have obeyed sooner than 
 have given up the seals or the primacy".
 
 THE TRIAL. 383 
 
 study in the arts of flattering the passions and prejudices of 
 the great and powerful. The Court of Henry in his later 
 days, as the Court of Queen Elizabeth afterwards, were their 
 natural home. It is necessary to repeat things, with the 
 authority of men trained in the law and well read as 
 historians, like Justice O'Hagan, Lord Campbell, and Lord 
 Macaulay, when attempts are being made to vindicate the 
 tyranny of Henry, and to sneer at the obstinacy or want of 
 moral courage and truthfulness of Bishop Fisher one of 
 the few fearless truth -tellers in that lying age. 
 
 There is, then, nothing antecedently improbable in Hall's 
 account of the trial ; nothing is attributed to the witness or 
 the judges or the jury but what we might expect from such 
 men ; while it is extremely unlikely that Hall, being well 
 informed as to the names of the judges and the jury, and 
 the exact words of the indictment, should have been misin- 
 formed as to the nature of the evidence by which a convic- 
 tion was gained. To suppose that he wilfully invented the 
 whole episode of Rich's visit to Fisher in the Tower, and of 
 his witness against him at the trial, would be to do him an 
 outrage not justified by anything in his whole account of 
 Fisher, or by anything we know of his personal character. 
 If ever he gives a speech of Fisher, he is cautious to warn 
 the reader that he is merely giving the effect or general 
 bearing of his words ; and he contrasts most favourably with 
 his injudicious plagiarist Baily, both in this and other re- 
 spects. He gives no more of the interview between Rich 
 and Fisher in the Tower than could be gathered from Fisher's 
 own statement at the trial, whereas Baily, who in his account of 
 the trial is cautious enough to follow Hall almost literally, 
 has invented a long and improbable dialogue for the previous 
 interview, which could never have been known to him even 
 though it had been spoken. 
 
 It is to be regretted that from no other source can we 
 clear up the obscurity, if it is judged to be such, regarding
 
 384 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the evidence. The Bishop of Faenza, papal nuncio in France, 
 writing from Paris on the 4th July, tells the rumour that 
 reached him there as follows : " The cause of his death is 
 rumoured in England to have been his writing evii of the 
 king to Sir Thomas More, who was also in prison. And 
 they have caused it to be said to his face by one of his 
 chaplains, that he had written to More against the king on 
 a bit of wood with a needle, having neither paper nor ink."* 
 This remark is curious ; for in the answers of George Golde, 
 the lieutenant's servant, there is mention of some scrolls, 
 found by him in the prison cell of the Carthusian monks, on 
 which were "letters pricked with a point"; these scrolls, 
 however, were not written by Fisher, but shown to him. 
 Some gossip about this may have been the origin of the tale 
 that reached the papal nuncio in Paris. Fisher had certainly 
 no chaplains who could have appeared against him. As 
 to his worthy servant, Richard Wilson, no one has thought 
 that he was called to bear witness ; and we shall see him 
 still waiting on his master between the trial and the exe- 
 cution. 
 
 Writing on the 2oth June, three days after the sentence 
 and the second before the martyrdom, Chapuys, the cardinal's 
 intimate friend, tells Dr. Ortiz, the emperor's ambassador in 
 Rome: "On the i7th the Cardinal of Rochester was 
 sentenced. He was told he did not appear to dispute, but 
 to hear his sentence of death for transgressing maliciously 
 the statutes of the kingdom, by which the king was head of 
 the English Church. He replied that he had not contradicted 
 those statutes maliciously, but with truth and holy intention, 
 as they were opposed to Scriptures and to our faith. He 
 was then sentenced to the same death as the Carthusians, on 
 which he said that he was prepared to die, and hoped God 
 would give him constancy. On his return to the Tower he 
 was followed by a crowd of men and women in great grief, 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 985.
 
 THE TRIAL. 385 
 
 who demanded his blessing when he crossed the water* 
 to enter the Tower." t 
 
 The procession with which Cardinal Wolsey's hat had 
 been brought to Westminster was magnificent, but how 
 much more glorious was this procession of the hatless 
 Cardinal Fisher to his place of martyrdom. 
 
 As a kind of appendix to this chapter I translate a 
 dissertation on the trials of Fisher and More, and the 
 contrast between their conduct, by Cardinal Pole. He 
 is writing to Francisco Navarre, Bishop of Badajoz. No 
 date is given, but by intrinsic evidence it was at the be- 
 ginning of the reign of Edward VI. The bishop had 
 offered some friendly criticisms on certain passages in Pole's 
 book on the unity of the Church, and the cardinal accepts 
 some but refutes others : " You come now," he says, " to 
 the answer of Thomas More, in which you seem to find 
 fault that I, while eager to praise, have really cast a slur on 
 his virtue, if what I have related is true. Well, whether I 
 have narrated things as I should I cannot say, but I am 
 certain that I have told the truth. You do not approve the 
 studied silence of More, or rather that he kept silent so long 
 when asked his belief in a matter of faith, and you say that 
 I might have omitted that, since it does not tend to his 
 praise. But though I agree with you that there should be 
 no dissimulation when we are questioned on our faith, yet 
 it cannot be denied that everything has its proper time, and 
 there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak. The 
 time for speaking for More was, in my opinion, just when 
 he did speak, namely, after he was condemned by the 
 
 * Not the river Thames, for Westminster and the Tower are both 
 on the north side of the river ; but the Tower moat, over which was 
 a drawbridge leading to the entrance gate. 
 
 t The letter of Dr. Ortiz was written to the empress on aoth July, 
 but he says that he quotes from a letter written to him by Chapuys 
 on 2Oth June. Letters and Papers, viii. 1075. 
 
 25
 
 386 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 sentence of the judges. I do not think the same time was 
 the fit one for the Bishop of Rochester. For him the time 
 to speak out was immediately when he was questioned, for 
 this befitted his character of bishop. But More was a 
 layman, and since they were to condemn him by a civil, not 
 an ecclesiastical law, although the law was contrary to the 
 laws of God and the Church, it seemed to be more fitting 
 that, being asked about the law, he should answer according 
 to the law, snatching from them the arms of civil law which 
 they were using against him. This he did when he said 
 that, even if the law was just, he had done nothing against it 
 by word or deed, and therefore he could not be called to 
 account by them, and much less be condemned. 
 
 " Could anything be imagined more apt than this answer, 
 or more suitable to him who was most learned in the laws 
 of the kingdom, which as judge he had administered so 
 many years ; for by this one word he overthrew all their 
 efforts if they had only been willing to stand by their own 
 laws ? Hence I cannot think that More was wanting in his 
 duty to the Church because he did not immediately answer 
 that their decree was against the Divine law ; for about this 
 he was not asked, nor was he called to account for violating 
 Divine law, but human. When he understood that the 
 protection of human law was taken from him, and that he 
 was condemned contrary to the right of human law, then, 
 in the proper time, as it seems to me, he used ecclesiastical 
 arms, saying that, even if he had violated that decree, he 
 could not be condemned by Divine or human right, since 
 the decree was repugnant to Divine law. 
 
 " The more, then, I consider the result of those trials, the 
 cause and the persons who were tried, and the malice of 
 their enemies, the more I am convinced that those two men, 
 os in the matter itself they were taught and confirmed by 
 God, so also in their mode of defending themselves they 
 were guided by Divine rather than by human prudence, and
 
 THE TRIAL. 387 
 
 I have no doubt you will come to the same conclusion if 
 you will consider the matter more attentively."* 
 
 From the unimpeachable testimony of Chapuys and Pole 
 we must conclude that though both More and Fisher 
 pleaded not guilty, yet, when the evidence was brought 
 forward, More ably defended himself in the way described 
 by Roper, and only confessed his faith after his sentence ; 
 while Fisher before his sentence admitted his faith and his 
 having already acknowledged it, but denied that malice 
 could be imputed to him against the king or the law. 
 
 * Pole's Letters, vol. iv., p. 70.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 
 
 THE violent and cruel death of such men as Fisher and 
 More, inflicted by sensual and heartless despots like 
 Henry VIIL, is one of the deepest and most awful 
 mysteries of God's providence. Throughout the whole 
 animal and insect world the small seem to be the prey of 
 the great, the feeble of the strong. It is the same in human 
 society, but with the additional perplexity that the best often 
 succumb to the worst. Yet the Divine Master brings both 
 these mysteries before our eyes, bidding faith and hope 
 triumph over this spectacle of confusion and despair : " Fear 
 not those that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. . , . 
 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing ? And not one of 
 them shall fall on the ground without your Father. But 
 the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not 
 therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows."* 
 
 The God who is the Author of life, and who with bounteous 
 providence watches over life's preservation, clothing the 
 indolent lilies with beauty, and feeding daintily the unthrifty 
 songsters of the air, this God cannot be indifferent to death. 
 Death is not the invading and conquering general of the 
 armies of some other god, as Manicheans have dreamt, 
 Death is the obedient servant of the one true God. Even 
 among the lower orders of God's creation death comes only 
 at the appointed time and in the appointed manner ; however 
 capricious his coming may seem to us, it is in reality " not 
 
 * St. Matt. x. 28-32.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 389 
 
 without Our Father ". The birds were created but for a few 
 summers' mirth, the lilies but for a few days' splendour. 
 How then should death come without their Father's provi- 
 dence to God's dearest and noblest children, for whom 
 another and eternal life is reserved ? 
 
 Yet death is terrible to man, however it may come. 
 Though naturally mortal, he was not made for death. Death 
 is to him the fruit of sin. The lilies and the birds know 
 nothing of the death awaiting them, but man may die a 
 thousand times by anticipation. To accept, therefore, even 
 inevitable death, as from the hand of God, whether by 
 sickness, by accident, in battle, or by the tyranny of a 
 fellow-man, is an act of heroic virtue. But to go to meet 
 death to accept it when, by paltering with the truth or 
 swerving from the right, we could still keep it aloof, is to be 
 associated with the king of martyrs, and to gain a special 
 aureole. How very few are willing thus to lose their lives 
 that they may gain them ! Men know they must die 
 soon : they will squander life in war or duels, and imperil it 
 for paltry gain. But few have faith enough in God to defy 
 a tyrant for His sake. Look at the England of Henry VIII. 
 "That the nation at large disliked the change [in religion] 
 as it disliked the causes of the change, there can be very 
 little doubt," writes Mr. Gairdner. * Yet when acquiescence 
 in the change was required from the nation under penalty of 
 loss of liberty or life, bishops, priests, and religious, nobles 
 and plebeians, vied with each other in submission. " It is a 
 curious fact," writes Lord Campbell he might have said, "It 
 is a shameful fact," "that against bills respecting religion, 
 which must have been most highly distasteful to the great 
 body of prelates, and to many lay peers, after the execution 
 of Fisher there was not a dissentient voice, or the slightest 
 audible murmur of opposition." f 
 
 * Letters and Papers, vol. viii., Introd., p. ii. 
 t In Life of Audlcy.
 
 3QO BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 It is the contrast to all this in the life and death of the 
 Bishop of Rochester that gives them their intense and 
 abiding interest. Yet the holy martyr did not rush upon 
 his death. He took every procaution consistent with faith 
 and holiness to prolong his life. He sighed for martyrdom ; 
 and when at length the hallowed morning came he ex- 
 claimed : " I most humbly thank the king's majesty that it 
 pleaseth him to rid me from all this worldly business". 
 Yet he waited till God should deign to place the crown 
 upon his head, and dared not to snatch it from His hand. 
 Such deaths are precious in the sight of God and man. 
 " The hairs of your heads are all numbered," said Our Lord 
 when He sent His Apostles forth to martyrdom. There- 
 fore the Church has been wont not only to cherish the 
 relics of the martyrs, but to gather up and chronicle reve- 
 rently their acts, to record all their words those words that 
 " are given them " to speak in their last moments. We owe 
 a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Hall, that while those were 
 still alive who could speak as eye-witnesses, he wrote from 
 their report, and has preserved for us the acts of the martyr- 
 dom of Cardinal Fisher. I transcribe his faithful and 
 pathetic narrative. We have seen that the cardinal was 
 condemned to death and sent back to prison on Thursday 
 the i yth June, 1535. The day of his death had not been 
 fixed. It was, however, to be Tuesday the 22nd. Hall 
 continues the history as follows : 
 
 "Thus being after his condemnation the space of four 
 days in his prison, he occupied himself in continual prayer 
 most fervently ; and although he looked daily for death, yet 
 could ye not have perceived him one whit dismayed or dis- 
 quieted thereat, neither in word nor countenance, but still 
 continued his former trade of constancy and patience, and 
 that rather with a more joyful cheer and free mind than 
 ever he had done before, which appeared well by this 
 chance that I will tell you. There happened a false rumour
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 391 
 
 to rise suddenly among the people that he should be 
 brought to his execution by a certain day, whereupon his 
 cook that was wont to dress his dinner and carry it daily 
 unto him, hearing among others of his execution, dressed 
 him no dinner at all that day ; * wherefore, at the cook's 
 next return unto him, he demanded the cause why he 
 brought him not his dinner as he was wont to do. ' Sir,' 
 said the cook, ' it was commonly talked all the town over 
 that you should have died that day, and therefore I thought 
 it but in vain to dress anything for you.' 'Well,' said he 
 merrily to him again, ' for all that report thou seest me yet 
 alive, and therefore, whatsoever news thou shalt hear of 
 me hereafter, let me no more lack my dinner, but make 
 it ready as thou art wont to do, and if thou see me dead 
 when thou comest, then eat it thyself; but I promise thee 
 if I be alive, I mind by God's grace to eat never a bit 
 the less.' 
 
 "Thus while this blessed bishop and most reverend 
 cardinal lay daily expecting the hour of his death, the king 
 (who no less desired his death than himself looked for it) 
 caused at last a writ of execution to be made and brought 
 to Sir Edmund Walsingham, lieutenant of the Tower. But 
 where by his judgment at Westminster he was condemned 
 (as ye have heard before) to drawing, hanging, and quarter- 
 ing, as traitors always be, yet was he spared from that cruel 
 execution, not for any pity or clemency meant on the king's 
 part towards him, but the only cause thereof (as I have 
 credibly heard) was for that, if he should have been laid 
 upon a hurdle and drawn to Tyburn, being the ordinary 
 place for that purpose, and distant above two miles from the 
 
 * This was probably on the igth, on which day three Carthusians 
 Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew, and Sebastian Newde- 
 gate who had been indicted at the same time, but tried before him, 
 were led out to execution at Tyburn. This was the second band of 
 Carthusian martyrs.
 
 39 2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Tower, it was not unlikely but he would have been dead 
 long ere he had come there, seeing he was a man of great 
 age, and beside that very sickly and weak of body through 
 his long imprisonment; wherefore, order was taken that he 
 should be led no further than the Tower Hill, and there to 
 have his head struck off.* 
 
 " After the lieutenant had received this bloody writ, he 
 called unto him certain persons whose service and presence 
 was to be used in that business, commanding them to be 
 ready against the next day in the morning. And because it 
 was then very late in the night, and the prisoner asleep, he 
 was loath to disease him from his rest for that time, and so 
 in the morning before five of the clock he came to him in 
 his chamber in the Bell Tower, finding him yet asleep in 
 his bed, and awaked him, showing him that he was come to 
 him on a message from the king, and after some circum- 
 stances used, with persuasion that he should remember 
 himself to be an old man, and that for age he could not by 
 course of nature live long, he told him at the last that he 
 was come to signify unto him that the king's pleasure was 
 he should suffer death that forenoon. ' Well ' (quoth this 
 blessed father), ' if this be your errand, you bring me no 
 great news, for I have long time looked for this message. 
 And I most humbly thank the king's majesty that it pleaseth 
 him to rid me from all this worldly business, and I thank 
 you also for your tidings. But I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant ' 
 (said he), ' when is mine hour that I must go hence ? ' 
 ' Your hour ' (said the lieutenant) ' must be nine of the 
 clock.' ' And what hour is it now ? ' (said he). ' It is 
 now about five,' said the lieutenant. 'Well, then,' said 
 he, ' let me by your patience sleep an hour or two, for I 
 
 * The above passage reflecting on the motives of the king is 
 omitted by Baily. He may have thought it improbable or unchari- 
 table. It is, however, given as a matter of common opinion in a 
 letter of Erasmus that will be quoted presently.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 393 
 
 have slept very little this night, and yet to tell you the 
 truth, not for any fear of death, I thank God, but by reason 
 of my great infirmity and weakness.' 'The k-ing's further 
 pleasure is,' said the lieutenant, ' that you should use as 
 little speech as may be, specially of anything touching his 
 majesty, whereby the people should have any cause to think 
 of him or his proceedings otherwise than well.' ' For 
 that' (said he) 'you shall see me order myself, as by 
 God's grace, neither the king, nor any man else, shall have 
 occasion to mislike of my words.' With which answer the 
 lieutenant departed from him, and so the prisoner, falling 
 again to rest, slept soundly two hours and more. And after 
 he was waked he called to his man to help him up, but first 
 of all he commanded him to take away the shirt of hair 
 (which accustomably he wore on his back), and to convey 
 it privily out of the house, and instead thereof to lay him 
 forth a clean white shirt, and all the best apparel he had, as 
 cleanly bright as may be. And as he was inraying himself, 
 his man perceiving in him a more curiosity and care for the 
 fine and cleanly wearing of his apparel that day than ever 
 was wont to be before, demanded of him what this sudden 
 change meant, saying that his lordship knew well enough he 
 must put off all again within two hours and lose it. ' What 
 of that?' (said he). ' Dost thou not mark that this is our 
 wedding-day, and that it behoveth us, therefore, to use 
 more cleanliness for solemnity of the marriage?'* About 
 nine of the clock the lieutenant came again to his prison, 
 and, finding him almost ready, said that he was now come 
 for him. 'I will wait upon you straight' (said he) 'as 
 fast as this thin body of mine will give me leave.' Then 
 said he to his man, ' Reach me my furred tippet to put 
 about my neck '. ' Oh, my lord ' (quoth the lieutenant), 
 
 * This wedding-day of Blessed Fisher, 22nd June, is also the feast 
 of St. Alban the protomartyr of Britain, as always celebrated by 
 English Catholics.
 
 394 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 ' what need you be so careful for your health for this little, 
 being, as youi lordship knoweth, not much above an hour.' 
 ' I think no otherwise ' (said this blessed father), ' but yet 
 in the meantime I will keep myself as well as I can, till the 
 very time of my execution, for I tell you truth, though I 
 have, I thank Our Lord, a very good desire and willing 
 mind to die at this present, and so trust of His infinite 
 mercy and goodness He will continue it, yet will I not 
 willingly hinder my health in the meantime one minute of 
 an hour, but still prolong the same as long as I can by such 
 reasonable ways and means as Almighty God hath provided 
 for me.' And with that taking a little book in his hand, 
 which was a New Testament lying by him, he made a cross 
 on his forehead and went out of his prison door, with the 
 lieutenant, being so weak that he was scarce able to go 
 down the stairs, wherefore at the stairs-foot he was taken up 
 in a chair between two of the lieutenant's men and carried 
 to the Tower gate, with a great number of weapons about 
 him, to be delivered to the sheriffs of London for execution. 
 And as they were come to the uttermost precinct or liberty 
 of the Tower, they rested there with him a space, till such 
 time as one was sent before to know in what readiness the 
 sheriffs were to receive him ; during which space he rose 
 out of his chair, and standing on his feet, leaned his 
 shoulder to the wall, and lifting his eyes up towards heaven, 
 he opened his little book in his hand, and said : ' O Lord, 
 this is the last time that ever I shall open this book, let some 
 comfortable place now chance unto me whereby I thy poor 
 servant may glorify Thee in this my last hour ' ; and with 
 that looking into the book, the first thing that came to his 
 sight were these words : ' Haec est autem vita seterna : ut 
 cognoscant te, solum Deum verum, et quern misisti Jesum 
 Christum. Ego te clarificavi super terram : opus consum- 
 mavi, quod dedisti mihi ut faciam : Et nunc clarifica me tu 
 Pater apud temetipsum, claritate quam habui prius, quain,'
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 395 
 
 &c.* And with that he shut the book together, and said : 
 ' Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end '. 
 And so (the sheriff being ready for him) he was taken up 
 again among certain of the sheriffs men, with a new and 
 much greater company of weapons than was before, and 
 carried to the scaffold on the Tower Hill, otherwise called 
 East Smithfield, himself praying all the way, and recording 
 upon the words which he had read ; and when he was come 
 to the foot of the scaffold, they that carried him offered to 
 help him up the stairs, but then said he : ' Nay, masters, 
 seeing I am come so far let me alone, and ye shall see me 
 shift for myself well enough,' and so went up the stairs 
 without any help, so lively that it was marvel to them that 
 knew before of his debility and weakness ; but as he was 
 mounting up the stairs, the south-east sun shined very 
 bright in his face, whereupon he said to himself these 
 words, lifting up his hands : ' Accedite ad eum, et 
 illuminamini et facies vestrae non confundentur ".f By that 
 time he was on the scaffold, it was about ten of the clock, 
 where the executioner, being ready to do his office, kneeled 
 down to him (as the fashion is) and asked him forgiveness. 
 'I forgive thee' (said he) 'with all my heart, and I trust thou 
 shalt see me overcome this storm lustily.' Then was his 
 gown and tippet taken from him, and he stood in his doublet 
 and hose, in sight of all the people, whereof was no small 
 number assembled to see this horrible execution. There 
 was to be seen a long, lean, and slender body, having on it 
 little other substance besides the skin and bones, in so much 
 as most part of the beholders marvelled much to see a living 
 man so far consumed, for he seemed a very image of death, 
 
 * Joan. xvii. 3, 4, 5. " This is life everlasting, that they may 
 know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
 sent. I have glorified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work 
 that Thou gavest me to do." 
 
 t " Come ye to Him and be enlightened : and your faces shall not 
 be confounded." Ps. xxxiii. 5.
 
 396 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 and as it were death in man's shape using a man's voice, and 
 therefore, monstrous was it thought that the king could be 
 so cruel as to put such a man to death as he was, yea, though 
 he had been an offender in deed. And surely it may be 
 thought that if he had been in the Turk's dominion, and 
 there found guilty of some great offence, yet would the Turk 
 never have put him to death being already so near death. 
 For it is an horrible and exceeding cruelty to kill that thing 
 which is presently dying, except it be for pity sake to rid it 
 from longer pain, which in this case appeared not, and, 
 therefore, it may be thought that the cruelty and hard heart 
 of King Henry in this point passed all the Turks and tyrants 
 that ever have been heard or read of.* 
 
 " When the innocent and holy cardinal was come upon the 
 scaffold, he spoke to the people in effect as followeth : 
 ' Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of 
 Christ's holy Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto 
 my stomach hath served me very well thereunto, so that yet 
 I have not feared death ; wherefore I do desire you all to 
 help and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point 
 and instant of death's stroke, I may in that very moment 
 stand steadfast without fainting in any one point of the 
 Catholic faith, free from any fear. And I beseech Almighty 
 God of His infinite goodness to save the king and this realm, 
 and that it may please Him to hold His holy hand over it, 
 and send the king good counsel. ' " 
 
 I interrupt Hall's narrative for a moment. The last words 
 of a martyr are so precious that we must be sure we have 
 them as they were spoken. Hall's account is confirmed by 
 a letter written by the papal nuncio in France, on the 4th 
 July He says the first report which reached him was that 
 the cardinal " spoke to the people boldly, telling them to 
 be loving and obedient to their king, who was good by 
 
 * Baily has omitted all this comparison with the Turk, yet it is cer- 
 tainly not exaggerated or unjust.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 397 
 
 nature, but had been deceived in this matter ; that he was 
 led to death for wishing to preserve the honour of God and 
 the Holy See, at which he did not grieve, but was content, 
 for it was the will of God ". This was the first version, but 
 now he hears from the English ambassador that he only 
 said, that being of flesh which naturally feared death, and 
 knowing that Peter three times denied Christ through fear 
 of death, and having always had a mind to die, if necessary, 
 for the love of Christ and his holy Church, now that he was 
 come to it he begged all present to pray to God to grant 
 constancy and firmness to his fragile flesh to suffer cheer- 
 fully his approaching punishment. * This humble self- 
 distrust and earnest prayer for final perseverance is in per- 
 fect keeping with the saint's whole character, with what he 
 wrote in the Tower concerning the fall of great columns of the 
 Church who failed in humility,f and with his remark when 
 he heard of the constancy of the Carthusians at their trial : 
 " I pray God that no vanity subvert them ''. 
 
 Dr. Hall continues his narrative: "These or like words 
 he spake with such a cheerful countenance, such a stout 
 and constant courage, and such a reverend gravity, that he 
 appeared to all men, not only void of fear, but also glad of 
 death. Besides this he uttered his words so distinctly, and 
 with so loud and clear a voice, that the people were astonished 
 thereat, and noted it for a miraculous thing, to hear so 
 plain and audible voice come from so weak and sickly an 
 old body ; for the youngest man in that presence, being in 
 good and perfect health, could not have spoken to be better 
 heard and perceived than he was. Then after these few 
 words by him uttered, he kneeled down on his knees and 
 said certain prayers, among which (as some reported) one 
 was the hymn of Te Deum laiidamus, to the end, and the 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 985. 
 
 j- In his treatise De necessitate orandi.
 
 398 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 psalm In Te Domine speravi. Then came the executioner 
 and bound a handkerchief about his eyes, and so this holy 
 father, lifting up his hands and heart to heaven, said a few 
 prayers, which were not long but fervent and devout, which 
 being ended, he laid his holy head down over the midst of 
 a little block, where the executioner, being ready with a sharp 
 and heavy axe, cut asunder his slender neck at one blow, 
 which bled so abundantly that many wondered to see so 
 much blood issue out of so lean and slender a body. And 
 so head and body being severed, his immortal soul mounted 
 to the blissful joys of heaven." * 
 
 The king of martyrs has said : " Fear not them that kill 
 the body, and after that have no more that they can do ". 
 They can do no more to cause pain or fear, but they can 
 indulge in outrages on the mangled remains of their victims 
 to show their spite. Several of such outrages were perpe- 
 trated on the lifeless body of Blessed Fisher. Some of 
 these are too well attested to be called in question. One, 
 however, is only given by Hall as a tale or report. It is that 
 Anne Boleyn ordered the head to be brought to her, and, 
 looking at it for a time contemptuously, said these or the 
 like words : " Is this the head that so often exclaimed 
 against me ? I trust it shall never do me more harm ; " and 
 striking the mouth with the back of her hand, received a 
 wound from a tooth that left a scar till her death. Mr. 
 Lewis contends that this story is altogether improbable and 
 incredible, and, as it is not confirmed from any other source, 
 I have no desire to contest his view. But the history of 
 Henry's brutality to the headless body is not so easily set 
 aside. Dr. Hall says that the executioner "stripped the 
 body of his shirt and all his clothes, and left the corpse 
 naked on the scaffold, where it remained uncovered for the 
 most part of that day, saving that one for pity and humanity 
 cast upon it a little straw ; and about eight o'clock in the 
 * Hall's MS.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 
 
 399 
 
 evening commandment came from the king's council to 
 such as watched about the dead body (for it was still 
 watched with many halberts and weapons) that they should 
 cause it to be buried. Whereupon two of the watchers took 
 it upon a halbert between them and so carried it to a church- 
 yard there, called All Hallows, Barking,* where on the north 
 
 PLAN OF THE TOWER. 
 
 1. The Bell Tower. 4. The Lieutenant's Lodgings. 
 
 2. The Beauchamp Tower. 5. The Scaffold. 
 
 3. St. Peter's ad Vincula. 6. All Hallows Barking. 
 
 side of the churchyard, hard by the wall, they digged a grave 
 with their halberts, and therein without any reverence 
 tumbled the body of this holy prelate and blessed martyr 
 all naked and flat upon his belly, without either sheet or 
 other accustomed thing belonging to a Christian man's 
 burial, and so covered it quickly with earth, following here- 
 
 * Called Barking, because in the patronage of the nuns of Barking.
 
 4OO BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 in the king's commandment, who willed that it should be 
 buried contemptuously." 
 
 I cannot be displeased with Mr. Lewis for arguing on the 
 improbability of all these circumstances, since one would 
 desire, for the sake of humanity, that they could be proved 
 fabulous. He considers that no leave was necessary to 
 bury a body that was not to be quartered and exposed, and 
 that Fisher had many friends who would gladly have paid 
 him the last rites. They certainly would had the king per- 
 mitted it. But the Bishop of Faenza, writing from Paris 
 on 4th July, says that he has just heard from the English 
 ambassador that is, I suppose, the French ambassador in 
 London that, instead of being hung, drawn, and quartered, 
 "the bishop was merely beheaded, by the greatest grace 
 obtained from the infinite fury of the king, who finally was 
 content that his body shotdd be buried in the evening" * That 
 the body lay on the scaffold all day, and that the friends of 
 the bishop were not free to dispose of it, is, then, no inven- 
 tion of Dr. Hall. And Cardinal Pole, who would certainly 
 obtain authentic information on such a matter, writing at a 
 later date, says : " Nor did Henry's unrelenting rage end 
 with death. He was not satisfied unless the dead body was 
 exposed to every kind of contumely. He ordered the body 
 should remain quite naked on the place of execution as a 
 spectacle to the people; and no one dared approach for 
 fear of the tyrant, except those whose office it was to out- 
 rage or to strip it." t 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii. 985. Baily has given occasion to ob- 
 jections by saying that leave came to bury the body from the " com- 
 missioners". Hall, however, says the council. Hall explains that 
 the body was buried contemptuously by the king's orders ; Baily omits 
 this important fact. 
 
 f Apologia, 20. " Nudum prorsus in loco supplicii ad spectacu- 
 lum populo relinqui mandaverat, ad quod nemo accedere audebat 
 tyranni metu prseter eos qui contumelite causa accederent, vel qui 
 mortuo indumenta detraxerant."
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 4OI 
 
 Fuller remarks : " The king vouchsafed him the Tower, 
 a noble prison, and beheading, an honourable death ; it is 
 improbable he would deny him a necessary equipage for a 
 plain and private burial". Unfortunately, many things 
 happen that seem improbable, and history cannot be written 
 a priori. Herod had a certain religious fear of John the 
 Baptist, and when he was dead the king allowed John's 
 disciples to bury his headless body. It seems improbable, 
 then, that Herod could have given the head to a dancing 
 girl for her and her mother to outrage. Yet this he did. 
 As to the " noble prison " not only adulterous queens and 
 fallen statesmen were confined in the Tower, but many a 
 common rogue also. Gangs of coiners were shut up within 
 its walls at the very same time as Fisher and More.* If 
 the bishop's dungeon was somewhat more honourable than 
 theirs, it must be remembered that the king, throughout all 
 the long months of the bishop's imprisonment, was eager to 
 obtain his submission, and disappointment was converted into 
 rage. If he remitted some of the sentence as too outrageous 
 to be carried out on such a man, he did it reluctantly, and 
 substituted other insults, a few degrees less villainous. 
 
 Dr. Hall continues: "The next day after his burial, the 
 head being somewhat parboiled in hot water, was pricked 
 upon a pole and set on high upon London Bridge among 
 the rest of the holy Carthusians' heads that suffered death 
 lately before him. And here I cannot omit to declare unto 
 you the miraculous sight of this head, which, after it had 
 stand [stood] up the space of fourteen days upon the bridge, 
 could not be perceived to waste nor consume, neither for 
 the weather, which then was very hot, neither for the par- 
 boiling in hot water, but grew daily fresher and fresher, so 
 that in his lifetime he never looked so well. For his cheeks 
 being beautified with a comely red, the face looked as if it 
 had beholden the people passing by and would have spoke 
 
 * See returns of prisoners in Letters and Papers, viii. 1001. 
 26
 
 402 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 to them, which many took for a miracle. . . . Wherefore 
 the people coming daily to see this strange sight, the 
 passage over the bridge was so stopped with their going and 
 coming that almost neither cart nor horse could pass ; and 
 therefore at the end of fourteen days the executioner was 
 commanded to throw down the head in the night-time into the 
 river of the Thames,* and in place thereof was set the head 
 of the most blessed and constant martyr, Sir Thomas More, 
 his companion and fellow in all his troubles, who suffered 
 his passion the 6th day of July next following." 
 
 In 1536, a long Latin letter was printed in Antwerp, 
 written professedly by Gulielmus Covrinus Nucerinus to 
 Philippus Montanus, on the 23rd July, i535-t The letter 
 gives an account of the deaths of More and Fisher of 
 More, principally from a narrative written in French by an 
 eye-witness, and circulated in Paris ; of Fisher, from letters 
 of friends and general report. The writer of this letter is 
 commonly supposed to have been Erasmus, though he con- 
 ceals, or perhaps rather reveals, his identity by the words : 
 " What does our friend Erasmus feel, whose friendship with 
 More was so close that they had but one soul in two bodies ? 
 Indeed, I fear lest the good old man die for very grief.J if, 
 indeed, he still survives." The writer accounts for his 
 knowledge of London and of English affairs by saying that 
 he was in the suite of Cardinal Campeggio. His account 
 of Fisher's martyrdom is as follows : 
 
 " On 1 7th June, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man 
 who proved himself a true bishop by the sanctity and austerity 
 of his life, by his administration of the sacraments, and his 
 assiduity in teaching both by word and writings, and by his 
 
 * Later on he says, "removed and hidden away". This is also 
 the expression of Erasmus. 
 
 r It was reprinted in 1563 with Mori Lucubrationes, and is also 
 given in More's Life by Roper (ed. 1729). p. 147. 
 
 J In Latin there is a pun Moro sito commoriatur.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 403 
 
 wonderful liberality to the poor and kindness to students, was 
 taken from the Tower to Westminster Hall amidst a large 
 number of armed guards, partly by boat and partly on 
 horseback ; for his body was very weak, not merely by old 
 age, but by the sufferings of his prison, though, indeed, he 
 had himself greatly undermined his health by fasting and 
 watching, by study and toil and tears. Though he knew 
 well what would be the issue of the trial, he was without 
 fear, and with a placid and even joyful countenance obeyed 
 the summons. There, according to the process followed in 
 that country, which I have already described (in the case of 
 More), he was condemned to death, and was to be executed 
 when it should please the king. I suspect that this was 
 added that, perchance, either by hope of pardon or fear of 
 the torment, he might be led to change his mind. The 
 kind of death was both foul and horrible, yet it was inflicted 
 on some Carthusians some say fifteen, but I can scarcely 
 believe it. Along with these suffered a Brigittine monk 
 named Reynolds, a man with the countenance and spirit of 
 an angel, and of sound judgment, as I found by his con- 
 versation when I was in England in the suite of Cardinal 
 Campeggio. I knew none of the Carthusians. Some of 
 these are said to have been dragged along the road, then 
 hanged, and their bowels were drawn out while they were 
 still living, and some of them are said to have been burnt. 
 But the constancy of all was incredible. Rumour generally 
 exaggerates in such matters ; but if this report is correct, it 
 seems to be the intention of the king's advisers to frighten 
 others by the cruelty of the torments. 
 
 " But to return to the Bishop of Rochester. On being 
 conducted back to the Tower after that horrible sentence, 
 he thanked the guards with a cheerful countenance for their 
 attention to him, both in going and coming. You would 
 have said that he was returning from a joyous feast; his 
 colour was brighter, and his whole mien, as far as his
 
 404 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 gravity allowed, showed his gladness of heart, so that every 
 one could see that the holy man, now near to port, was 
 longing for that blessed rest. Nor was his death long 
 delayed. On the 22nd June he was brought to Tower Hill, 
 where, with a courageous and even cheerful face, he briefly 
 addressed the people. He first prayed for the king and his 
 kingdom, and then in a fervent but not lengthened prayer 
 he commended himself to the mercy of God, and kneeling 
 down, received the stroke of the axe upon his slender and 
 feeble neck. . . . What grief this sight caused to all who had 
 any piety, and who had seen how the spirit of Christ animated 
 this holy pastor, anyone may judge from his own feelings. 
 
 " Some think the full severity of the sentence was not 
 executed on him, lest if he had been dragged so far on cart 
 or hurdle, old as he was and exhausted, he would have 
 expired on the way. My own suspicion is that the more 
 atrocious kind of death was threatened to strike terror and 
 make him change his mind. It is also said that his death 
 was hastened, because Pope Paul III., for his learning and 
 holiness, had raised him to the cardinalate. 
 
 " Friends write to me that in Lower Germany it is reported 
 that his head, when fixed on London Bridge, instead of 
 shrivelling, grew more florid and life-like, so that many 
 expected it would speak a thing we read of in the acts of 
 certain martyrs. When this fact or rumour got abroad, the 
 head was taken away and hidden ; for the credulous people 
 are easily moved by a slight occasion to make great tumults. 
 Fearing lest the same thing should happen to the head of 
 More, before it was exposed it was boiled in water, to inspire 
 greater horror.* These and many other things are written 
 from Flanders : I know not how truly. I wish we had here 
 the acts of Fisher as we have those of More." t 
 
 * The same report reached Dr. Ortiz in Rome, and is mentioned by 
 him in a letter of 22nd Nov. (Letters and Papers, ix. 873.) 
 
 t There is much more in the letter on the policy of the king, and
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 405 
 
 In this wish we cordially join. In the absence of more 
 detailed records we gather up every . scrap, and we are 
 thankful that the recent publication of the letters of the 
 imperial ambassador has added to our information three or 
 four important facts first, that an offer of pardon was made 
 and rejected on the scaffold ; secondly, that Cranmer was 
 given to the bishop as his confessor ; and thirdly, that the 
 king's rejoicing over his death was even more abominable 
 than those who think worst of him could have suspected. 
 Chapuys writes to the emperor, on 3oth June, a week 
 after Fisher's death: "On the i7th the good Bishop of 
 Rochester was sentenced to death, for refusing to swear to 
 the statutes made to the prejudice of the pope and of the 
 queen ; and on the 2 2nd his head was cut off in the place 
 where the Duke of Buckingham suffered. The regret and 
 compassion of the people is inconceivable. He was very 
 earnestly solicited, after he mounted the scaffold, to comply 
 with the king's wish on an offer of pardon ; but he refused, 
 and he died very virtuously. 
 
 " There was given him as confessor one of his great 
 enemies, the greatest Lutheran in the world, and patron of 
 all the diableries here ; yet he does not cease to say that one 
 of the most holy men in the world has been put to death.* 
 
 "Cromwell told me that the pope was the cause of his 
 death, who had done very ill and very foolishly in making 
 him a cardinal, seeing he was the worst enemy the king his 
 master had, and that his holiness had excused himself even 
 more foolishly to Gregory da Casale, saying that he had 
 
 of the martyrs. It is enough to say that it is quite Erasmian the 
 policy of peace at any price. It does not harmonise with the death 
 of martyrs. 
 
 * Can these words apply to anyone but Cranmer ? We know that 
 he was appointed to be confessor of Anne Boleyn by the king. State 
 prisoners had no choice of confessors ; and though Cranmer was ex- 
 communicated, schismatic, and heretic, he had jurisdiction in articulo 
 mortis, and the martyr might accept his ministry.
 
 406 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 done it because the pope intended to convoke the council, 
 in which cardinals were to be present from all countries." * 
 
 On the same day Chapuys wrote to Granvelle. He sends 
 him what he calls ironically a gallant and notable interpreta- 
 tion of a chapter of the Apocalypse, which was played on the 
 eve of St John. To see it " the king went thirty miles from 
 here, walked ten miles at two o'clock at night with a two- 
 handed sword, and got into a house where he could see 
 everything.f He was so pleased at seeing himself cutting off 
 the heads of the clergy, that in order to laugh at his ease and 
 encourage the people, he discovered himself. He sent to tell 
 his lady that she ought to see the representation of it repeated 
 on the eve of St. Peter. Sends bills in accordance with this 
 interpretation of prophecy, which will show what hope there is 
 of putting affairs right again. If there be no remedy all will go 
 to ruin. It is wonderful that the people are not Lutherans 
 before this, considering what the king causes to be said." J 
 
 At first this seems beyond belief, yet Chapuys had the 
 play-bill, and could scarcely be misinformed. The day he 
 mentions, the eve of St. John, was the day immediately 
 following that of Fisher's martyrdom, the "midsummer 
 night " on which plays were wont to be acted. We know 
 that he was guilty of abominable levity at the execution of 
 Anne Boleyn, a fact which goes to confirm Chapuys' report. 
 
 * Letters and Papers, viii., n. 948. Spanish Cal., v. 178. 
 
 t The original is : " Ce roy vint de trente milles loing di9y environ, 
 les deux heures de nuyt, traverse dix mille a pied avec une espee de 
 deux mains une bonne partie de la ville pour entrer en une maison ". 
 
 The Court was then at Greenwich. The king came, not went, and 
 the representation must have been in London. I cannot understand 
 the "ten miles," and suspect a fault of the copyist. Chapuys 
 evidently says "he crossed a great part of the town (London) on foot ". 
 Two o'clock at night may be two hours after sunset. 
 
 j Letters and Papers, viii., n. 949. 
 
 M. De Gayangos has translated this : " I send you papal bulls in 
 conformity with the interpretation of the above mentioned prophecy". 
 (Spanish Cal., v. 179.)
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 407 
 
 A few words more will complete all that can be said 
 regarding the relics of the holy martyr. Dr. Hall writes : 
 "Touching the place of his burial in Barking Churchyard, 
 it was well observed at that time by divers worthy personages 
 of the nations of Italy, Spain, and France, that were then 
 abiding in the realm, and more diligently marked and wrote 
 the courses of things, and with less fear and suspicion than 
 any of the king's subjects might or durst do, that for the 
 space of seven years after his burial there grew neither leaf 
 nor grass upon his grave, but the earth still remained as bare 
 as though it had been continually occupied and trodden ".* 
 Dr. Hall does not say that the holy body remained beneath 
 this sterile earth, which seemed to protest against the outrage 
 of which it had been the instrument ; yet he says nothing 
 regarding a removal of the cardinal's remains elsewhere. 
 The Gray Friars' Chronicle the jottings of a contemporary 
 after mentioning that the body was buried " in the church- 
 yard of Barking by the north door," adds that after the 
 death of Sir Thomas More, " then was taken up the bishop 
 again, and both of them buried within the Tower ",f Stow 
 also records this reburial. 
 
 Whether this removal took place at the time of Sir 
 Thomas' burial is uncertain, but it was effected by the care 
 and influence of Sir Thomas's daughter Margaret. Weever 
 says : "How long they lay together in this their house of rest, 
 I certainly know not ; yet this is certain that Margaret . . . 
 removed her father's corpse not long after to Chelsea, and 
 whether she honoured the bishop by another remove to the 
 place of her father's burial or not, I know not ; yet she 
 might by all probability ".{ 
 
 * " Seven years." Perhaps the account Hall refers to was written 
 seven years after the martyr's death. 
 
 t Gray Friars' Chronicle (Rolls Series). 
 
 Weever's Funeral Monuments, p. 278. He is followed by Antony 
 a Wood.
 
 408 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Weeyer does not give any authority for this translation, 
 which he calls certain, of More's body to Chelsea, and 
 other authors contest his accuracy. Of course, therefore, 
 they do not admit a second removal of the remains of 
 Fisher.* 
 
 It is not certain that those who visited the temporary 
 resting-place of the martyr's body in All Hallows' Church- 
 yard were unaware of the removal of the body, since the 
 Chapel of St. Peter, being within the walls of the Tower, 
 was inaccessible to them, and they might naturally pray 
 where the relics had once rested. The first place of burial, 
 then, was in the churchyard, " at the north side, hard by 
 the wall," according to the biographer; "by the north 
 door," according to the chronicle. . A street now passes 
 over this place, running by the north wall of the old church. 
 The second burial-place is not far off. 
 
 In the north-west corner of the Tower is a small church 
 very appropriately dedicated to St. Peter ad Vincula. An 
 ancient feast of St. Peter's Chains has been kept on the ist 
 August to commemorate the Apostle's imprisonments in 
 Jerusalem and Rome ; and it was devoutly thought that 
 those suffering captivity, whether justly or unjustly, might 
 find consolation in the memory recalled by the Church's 
 dedication. Criminals would say : " We indeed justly, but 
 what evil had that man done ? " and men wrongly accused 
 would take courage from the Apostle's own words : " If you 
 suffer anything for justice' sake, blessed are ye. And be not 
 afraid of their terror, and be not troubled." f The church 
 was ancient, but had been injured by fire and almost rebuilt 
 (on a smaller scale) only two years before the Bishop of 
 Rochester was committed to the Tower. In this building, 
 which has lately been architecturally restored to the con- 
 dition in which it then was, still lie (in all probability) the 
 ashes of the Blessed John Fisher, mingled with those of the 
 * See Mr. Doyne Bell's Chapel in the Tower. f i Pet. iii. 14.
 
 ST. PETER S AD VINCULA.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 409 
 
 Blessed Thomas More. The bodies were buried towards 
 the west end of the church, near the entrance to the belfry. 
 The state of this building, the burial-place of so many 
 illustrious and unfortunate persons, had long been con- 
 sidered a disgrace to the nation, when in 1876 her majesty 
 Queen Victoria gave permission for its repair and renewal. 
 Burials had been so hastily made, and the bodies after death 
 so disturbed by other burials, that it was found necessary 
 to take up the floor and remove the human remains from 
 the body of the church, and to rearrange those in the 
 chancel. This was done with all care and reverence. "All 
 the human remains which were found beneath the floor of 
 the chapel were carefully collected and enclosed in boxes; 
 with suitable inscriptions, and all the coffins which were 
 found intact were at once removed to the crypt on the 
 north side of the chapel." * It is probable, however that 
 the remains of Blessed More and Fisher were not disturbed, 
 since they are said to have been laid outside that main 
 passage of the little church which it was necessary to relevel. 
 Near the entrance-door at the west end has been recently 
 placed a memorial tablet, of which the following is the in 
 scription : 
 
 " List of remarkable persons buried in this chapel 
 " i. Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, . 1534 
 "2. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, . 1535 
 " 3. Sir Thomas More, . . . J 535 
 
 "4. George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, . 1536 
 " 5. Queen Anne Boleyn, . . .1536 
 "6. Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, . 1540 
 " 7. Margaret of Clarence, Countess of 
 
 "Salisbury, ..... 1541," 
 &c., in all 34, ending 
 
 "34. Simon, Lord Fraser of Lovat, . . 1747". 
 
 * The Chapel in the Tower, by Mr. C. Doyhe Bell, p. 16.
 
 410 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Just as the Blessed Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, whose 
 ashes also lie in this chapel, had prepared for herself a burial- 
 place that she was destined never to occupy, in the beautiful 
 chantry at Christ Church, Hampshire, so had the Blessed 
 John Fisher prepared his tomb within the chapel of St. 
 John's College, Cambridge. At the east end of the chapel 
 were three arches in the north wall opening into a side 
 chapel. In this the bishop had prepared his tomb. After 
 the Reformation these arches seem to have been walled up 
 and the chapel converted into a lumber-place. The 
 tomb had been taken to pieces, and the arms of the bishop, 
 with his motto, over the chapel defaced, by order of Crom- 
 well, "and monstrous and ugly antics put in their places". 
 In 1773, the tomb was found and carried outside, where it 
 was soon destroyed by rain and frost.* 
 
 One who says he was a young scholar of St. John's Col- 
 lege at the time of the bishop's martyrdom has recorded 
 his recollections in a paper now in the British Museum : 
 "He founded a chapel beside the high altar of the said 
 college, and a tomb of white stone finely wrought, where he 
 purposed to have been buried if God would so have dis- 
 posed. He founded a dirge to be sung yearly for him, at 
 which the master of the college should have a noble, the 
 president a crown, every fellow 33. 4d., and every scholar 
 izd. Also he founded thirty trentals to be said for him by 
 the priests within that college, so that each should have said 
 four trentals in one year." t 
 
 Besides these suffrages, the university had bound itself in 
 1528 to celebrate an annual obit, with dirge and requiem, 
 
 * See Mr. Turner's Introduction to Lewis' Life of Fisher, p. xxx., 
 and Baker's History of St. John's (ed. Mayor), p. 567. When the 
 old chapel was taken down, the three arches, called the Fisher Arches, 
 were re-erected in the new building on the left-hand side of the ante- 
 chapel. 
 
 t MS. Harl. 7047, f. i6 b . See Tablet Newspaper, Jan. 29, 1887, 
 p. 176.
 
 THE MARTYRDOM. 41 r 
 
 as for founders of colleges and great benefactors.* His 
 blessed soul had happily no need of these suffrages. It is, 
 however, a pleasure to read that Catholic sympathy on the 
 Continent supplied what tyranny forbade in England. One 
 of Cromwell's correspondents writes to him on ist Septem- 
 ber that he hears that " a great obsequy " has been made at 
 Paris six days together, and at Rome for a month, for the late 
 Bishop of Rochester and Sir Thomas More.f Nor is it 
 likely that they were forgotten in Spain or Germany. 
 
 * The document is printed by Lewis, App. 21. The bishop's 
 endowment, though made by royal licence, was confiscated in 1545 to 
 the king's use by the Chantry Act. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, ix. 243 ; Letter of John Whalley,
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 
 
 THE public execution of a bishop and a cardinal, and 
 of a bishop such as Fisher, whose reputation for 
 sanctity and learning was European, could not fail 
 to make a profound impression. We have seen something 
 of it in the letter of Erasmus. 
 
 Chapuys has told us of the shock it gave to everyone in 
 England who had any sense left of right and wrong. It is 
 characteristic of Henry and of his sense of justice, that on 
 the 25th June, three days after Fisher's death, and before 
 the trial of Sir Thomas, the king, as if More was already 
 found guilty and executed, sent round England a circular, 
 in which, among other things, those addressed were com- 
 manded "to set forth the treasons of the late Bishop of 
 Rochester and Sir Thomas More ".* In England, however, 
 there was a reign of terror, and few dared to express their 
 thoughts. Let us see what was thought and felt and said in 
 Rome and elsewhere. 
 
 A boastful letter of Casale, written from Rome imme- 
 diately after Fisher's elevation to the cardinalate, has already 
 been given. On the ist June, he wrote again: "The 
 French ambassador has received letters about certain 
 monks executed in England for denying that the king could 
 be supreme in the English Church. t A copy of the letters 
 was read in consistory. They are full of pity for the monks ; 
 
 * Burnet, vi. 106 ; Letters and Papers, viii. 921. 
 f- These were the priors put to death on 4th May.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 413 
 
 they make a great deal of the matter, and report that they 
 gave most wise and holy answers to the king's council, and 
 the kind of death is explained as most cruel. There was 
 great talk in Rome on the subject, and some even of the 
 cardinals said they envied such a death, and wished they 
 belonged to the band. To those who related this to me, I 
 replied that they might tell the cardinals, that if they really 
 wished such a death, they might go to England and 
 imitate the folly of the monks." But Casale adds 
 immediately in cypher : " I really wondered that the 
 French ambassador showed those letters, nor do I quite 
 know what he means. ... As regards the execution of the 
 monks, it is Frenchmen especially who are surprised at 
 it. ... I have heard that directly after Rochester's 
 elevation the imperial ambassador sent a courier to 
 Flanders with orders to boast in the first letters written 
 into England that he has been made a cardinal by 
 Imperialist influence." * 
 
 The news of Fisher's death had not reached Rome 
 except as a rumour on the i6lh July, when Casale wrote 
 again that the pope had sent for him and told him he had 
 heard from the Imperialists that all England rejoiced at 
 Rochester's promotion and praised the pope's goodness, 
 and that the king of England had sent immediately to 
 inquire of Fisher, if he had sought for the honour ; and 
 when it was found that he knew nothing about it, the day 
 of his death had been fixed, unless he should retract what 
 he had maintained hitherto. " I laughed at all this," says 
 Gregory, " saying that I would not answer such tales unless 
 I saw letters from England or France. . . . The whole 
 trick of Rochester's creation has now been found. It was 
 an invention of the Archbishop of Capua, f who brought the 
 pope to believe that he would gain eternal glory if he 
 named Contarini and Rochester cardinals, without consulting 
 * State Papers, vii. 426. f Nicholas Schomberg.
 
 414 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 anyone. And thus the archbishop did his own affair, for 
 he got the dignity he coveted with the rest." He adds that 
 he thinks it better for himself to get away from Rome for a 
 time, so he will go and take the baths at Lucca.* 
 
 On the zyth July he writes from Ferrara thai he does not 
 wish to return to Rome without instructions how to behave 
 and what to answer about all these matters. The death of 
 the Bishop of Rochester was spoken of as certain in Rome 
 a month ago. He had always said that both he and More 
 were condemned to death long before by Parliament, whose 
 statutes the king never opposed ; but he had mercifully 
 allowed delay that they might acknowledge their folly. As 
 they would not recant he could not prevent justice taking 
 its course. To those who have spoken of it since the news 
 came, he has denied that the king executed him because he 
 was created a cardinal, as he cared little what the pope did 
 in England in the way of making bishops or cardinals or any- 
 thing else. Still he asks for instructions, t A correspondent 
 of Peter Vannes writes from Rome less boastfully: "The 
 pope has conceived incredible indignation. A consistory 
 was held on the subject and I hear on good authority that 
 they will proceed to the utmost possible extremities towards 
 us. The pope seems a resolute man, and would sooner have 
 seen his two grandsons slain." Gregory de Casale has also 
 heard from Rome, and writes from Bologna, 2oth July : "The 
 pope and Court are in the greatest indignation about the death 
 of Rochester ; they say the Court of Rome will make more 
 account of his death than of that of St. Thomas himself. 
 Cardinal Tournon's letter describing it moved everybody to 
 tears. It was read in a consistory specially invoked." J 
 
 * State Papers, vii. 429. f State Papers, vii. 430. 
 
 J State Papers, vii. 621. " Curiam pluris facturam hujus 
 hominis mortem quam illam S. Thomae." Mr. Gairdner has trans- 
 lated this in Col. (viii. 1144): " His death will do more for the Court 
 of Rome than that of St. Thomas," which sounds selfish and is in- 
 correct. The true meaning will be seen in the pope's letters.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 415 
 
 The result of this consistory may be seen in the following 
 letter of Pope Paul III. to Ferdinand of Hungary, " King 
 of the Romans " : 
 
 " We doubt not that your majesty has heard of the cruel 
 slaughter of John, Bishop of Rochester and Cardinal, and 
 has been greatly shocked both on account of the dignity 
 and sanctity of the man and of the cause of his death. . . . 
 For Henry, King of England, had impiously and unjustly 
 put away our dear daughter and your aunt, Catharine, 
 Queen of England, with whom he had contracted marriage 
 with the dispensation of the Apostolic See, and by whom 
 he had children, and during her lifetime had by his own 
 authority taken Anne to be his adulterous wife, and to veil 
 his crime he denied the validity of his marriage with 
 Catharine, and the power of the Apostolic See. He with- 
 drew also his kingdom from obedience to the Apostolic See, 
 to which it was tributary, and in many ways cast himself into 
 the company of heretics, besides many other unworthy and 
 impious deeds. And since these things displeased the 
 good, if any found fault with his marriage with an adulteress, 
 he caused them to be arrested, incarcerated, and put to 
 death. For three whole years Christendom and this Apos- 
 tolic See have patiently borne with his impiety, hoping for his 
 amendment ; but how fruitlessly his last deeds have shown. 
 For when in our late creation of cardinals, to honour the 
 virtue and sanctity of the Bishop of Rochester, we placed 
 him among their number, hoping that that dignity, which is 
 everywhere wont to be accounted venerable, would be 
 effective in procuring his freedom, in this also Henry chose 
 to be like himself in his former many cruelties, and like his 
 forefather, Henry II., by whose hatred and persecution the 
 Blessed Thomas, Bishop of Canterbury, became a martyr. 
 But this Henry has far exceeded the impiety of the former 
 one. He slew one only, this man many. He slew the 
 defender of the rights of one particular Church, this man the
 
 4*6 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 defender of the rights of the Church universal. He an 
 archbishop, this man a cardinal of the Roman Church. 
 The former Henry, when obliged to clear himself before 
 Alexander III,, cast the blame on others, and humbly 
 received the penance laid on him by the Roman Pontiff. 
 Whereas this Henry most obstinately defends his deed, 
 shows no repentance, but obstinacy and enmity. And he 
 has not the excuse that he has been injured by the Roman 
 Church, for by her he was adorned with the title of 
 Defender of the Faith, a title which he has ungratefully 
 wrested to the injury of the faith." 
 
 The pope then exhorts the King of the Romans, together 
 with his brother, the emperor, according to the piety of 
 their forefathers, to help the Holy See in the execution of 
 justice on a king who is heretic and schismatic, a notorious 
 adulterer, a public murderer, a sacrilegious rebel, guilty of 
 high treason against the Church, a despiser of the censures 
 of the Church, under which he has lain for two years, and 
 therefore rightly deprived of his kingdom. His messenger 
 will explain more.* This was written on 2 2nd July, 1535. 
 Four days later the pope addressed a similar letter to the 
 King of France. 
 
 " Expecting to hear from day to day of the liberation of 
 John, Cardinal of Rochester, having recommended him 
 most earnestly to Francis, has been astounded at the 
 announcement of his execution by King Henry. Doubts 
 not but that Francis is sorely grieved, seeing that his inter- 
 cession would appear to have hastened the cardinal's death. 
 Deplores his loss to the Church, and especially the degrad- 
 ing mode of death inflicted on him. Regrets still more the 
 cause of his death defending, not the rights of a particular 
 Church, as St. Thomas of Canterbury, but the truth of the 
 universal Church. Henry has thus exceeded his ancestor 
 
 * Printed by Chaco (Ciaconius) in his Lives of the Popes and 
 Cardinals, torn, iii., p. 574.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 417 
 
 in wickedness. Not content with disregarding the cen- 
 sures of Clement VII., and remaining obstinate under them 
 for two years, with the notorious adultery, which gives rise 
 to scandal in the Church, with the sacrilegious slaughter of 
 so many clerks and religious men, with heresy and schism, 
 and the withdrawal of his kingdom from the universal 
 Church and from obedience to the Roman Church, to 
 which it is tributary, he commanded publicly to be executed 
 a man who was elevated to the cardinalate because of his 
 learning and holiness, after endeavouring to get him to 
 recant and to deny the truth, which he would not do ; and 
 hastened his death on hearing of his creation as cardinal, 
 thus committing the crime of lese-majesty, and incurring the 
 usual penalties, especially that of privation. 
 
 " Is not ignorant of Henry's intrigues with Francis at the 
 last meeting at Calais, tending to the universal destruction, 
 nor of their repulse by Francis. Out of respect for Francis, 
 and in hope of Henry's repenting, has for more than three 
 years patiently borne many and great injuries, but has 
 gained nothing. Is compelled therefore, at the unanimous 
 solicitation of the cardinals, to declare Henry deprived of 
 his kingdom and his royal dignity ; and the Roman Church 
 has recourse to Francis, her most dear son, having always 
 been accustomed to have recourse to his predecessors in 
 her oppressions, and earnestly implores him to be ready 
 to execute justice on Henry when required, remembering 
 the great armies with which his forefathers avenged her 
 injuries. Refers him to the Bishop of Faenza, papal 
 nuncio, for further particulars. 
 
 " Rome, at St. Mark's, 26th July, 1535, pont. i." 
 It is needless to say that the jealousies and dissensions of 
 the kings of Europe did not allow them to heed these 
 appeals of the Sovereign Pontiff, which were in harmony with 
 the public international law of Christendom as then accepted. 
 The bull of solemn and formal deposition was never published, 
 
 27
 
 41 8 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 though drawn up and printed, and to be found at the present 
 day in the Bullarium of Paul III. It was about to be 
 published when Catharine's death, yth January, 1536, 
 cooled whatever little warmth the emperor may have felt 
 against his uncle-in-law ; and the death of Anne Boleyn in 
 May caused the pope to entertain hopes of Henry's repent- 
 ance, the cause of his sin being removed. Meantime, 
 whether it was that rumours of this action on the part of the 
 pope had reached Henry's ears, or that he heard of the 
 general indignation that he had stirred upon the Continent, 
 and feared the effects, he thought it expedient to malign 
 the men he had butchered, " with a meanness worthy of the 
 ferocity which sent them to the scaffold," to use the words 
 of a modern writer.* 
 
 The following is the letter written by Cromwell at Henry's 
 dictation to Sir John Wallop, the king's representative at the 
 Court of France : " Concerning the executions done within 
 this realm, ye shall say to the French king, that the same 
 were not so marvellous extreme as he allegeth. For, 
 touching Mr. More and the Bishop of Rochester, with such 
 others as were executed here, their treasons, conspiracies, 
 and practices, secretly practised, as well within the realm as 
 without, to move and stir dissension, and to sow sedition 
 within the realm, intending thereby not only the destruction 
 of the king, but also the whole subversion of the same, being 
 explained and declared and openly detected, and so manifestly 
 proved before them, that they could not avoid nor deny it, and 
 they thereof lawfully convicted and condemned of high 
 treason by the due order of the law of this realm, so that it 
 shall and may well appear to all the world that they, having 
 such malice rooted in their hearts against their prince and 
 sovereign, and the total destruction of the common-weal of 
 this realm, were well worthy, if they had had a thousand 
 lives, to have suffered ten times a more terrible death and 
 
 * Turner, in his Introduction to Lewis, p. vi.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 419 
 
 execution than any of them did suffer." As the indictments 
 of both Fisher and More are yet in existence, we know what 
 to think of the audacity of this lie. In another part of the 
 letter, which is too verbose to copy at length, the king, or 
 Cromwell in his name, says : " Touching such words as the 
 said French king spake unto you concerning how Mr. More 
 died, and what he said to his daughter going to his judgment, 
 and also what exhortations he should give unto the king's 
 subjects to be true and obedient unto his grace, I assure you 
 that there was no such thing, and the king's highness 
 cannot otherwise take it but very unkindly that the said 
 French king should so lightly give ear, faith, and credence 
 to any such vain bruits and fleeing tales, not having first 
 knowledge or advertisement from the king's highness here 
 of the verity and truths. . . . 
 
 "At Thornbery, the 23rd August."* 
 
 Meantime Cromwell's protege Richard Moryson had 
 written home from Italy of the intensity of feeling prevailing 
 everywhere at the report of these executions : " Itali 
 Roffensis trudicatione gravissime commoventur, Mori autem 
 sic offenduntur ut nullis convitiis pasne temperent ".f To 
 counteract these reports, in September the calumny was 
 elaborated more fully in a Latin letter sent to Gregory da 
 Casale. The king is surprised that the pope and his Court 
 are so offended and indignant at the deaths of the Bishop 
 of Rochester and of More. The king owes no account of 
 his actions except to God, with whose will they are in perfect 
 harmony ; nevertheless, to put a stop to calumny, he will 
 relate the matter succinctly. When then the king by the 
 favour of God, and with the counsel of the most learned and 
 virtuous men of Christendom, whose minds and affections 
 were free from all bias, had brought his great cause to an 
 end, these good men, who were greatly disappointed, began 
 
 * MS. Harl. 288, fol. 39-46 ; Lewis, i., vii-xii. 
 
 t Letters and Papers, ix. 198 ; Letter of ajth August, 1535.
 
 420 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 to turn their thoughts maliciously in another direction ; and 
 when the king, as was his duty, was endeavouring to provide 
 for the peace of his kingdom, and to reform the corrupt 
 manners of his people, they tried, though fruitlessly, under 
 specious pretexts to resist his efforts. The king had clear 
 proofs of their wickedness, but he made light of them, 
 hoping that his indulgence would lead them to a better 
 mind ; for hitherto he had held them in some esteem, not 
 really knowing their characters. 
 
 " They, on the contrary, led away by ambition, self-love, 
 and their own private judgments, obstinately abused the 
 kindness of their sovereign ; and when Parliament was 
 summoned they began to inquire secretly with great care 
 what matters would be treated and what measures taken ; 
 and whatever they discovered by report, or from guess or 
 usage, taking counsel together, they interpreted in a way 
 adverse to the interests of the State, and opposed with such 
 arguments and reasons as might easily have seduced the 
 ignorant multitude. 
 
 " But as their evil consciences made them fear that the 
 king was offended with them, and that they could not them- 
 selves easily carry out their secret projects, they made choice 
 of some whom they knew to be bold, and fluent, and self- 
 interested ; and, insinuating themselves into their friendship 
 and familiarity, they poured out their venom into their 
 minds, utterly forgetful of their faith and duty to the king 
 and affection to their country. All this was not hidden 
 from the vigilance of the king. The great iniquity of these 
 men, who were thought so upright, was made manifest by 
 witnesses, by letters in their own handwriting sent by the 
 one to the other, and by their own oral confession. These 
 and many other such matters at last compelled the most 
 just prince to cast into prison these rebels, these enemies of 
 their country, these disturbers of public peace, these impious 
 and seditious men. Unless he wished the contagion to
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 421 
 
 spread, to the neglect of his office, he could not act other- 
 wise. 
 
 " In prison they were treated more gently and humanely 
 than their crimes deserved. The king allowed them 
 to converse with their relatives ; their own favourite 
 servants were permitted to wait on them ; such food was 
 granted to them and such dress as their own relatives and 
 friends judged most suited to their temperaments and the 
 preservation of their health. But in spite of this mercy of 
 the king, all good faith, all obedience, all love of what is 
 right, utterly forsook these rebels and traitors; for when, 
 after long and mature deliberation, with absolute unanimity 
 certain laws and statutes were made in Parliament for the 
 common good of the kingdom, and in perfect accordance 
 with the true Christian religion, these men alone refused to 
 acquiesce, always hoping that with time something might 
 happen to favour their impiety, while they pretended that 
 they had laid aside all thought of human affairs and were 
 intent solely on the contemplation of divine things. In the 
 meantime they gave all their thoughts and vigils, prisoners 
 though they were, how they might elude and refute by their 
 fallacies and juggling arguments these holy laws. Of their 
 impious and perfidious minds there are most manifest proofs : 
 their own handwriting in coal and chalk, when ink was 
 wanting to them ; their secret messages sent backwards and 
 forwards. They could not deny the letters that had passed 
 between them and been burnt.* 
 
 " The most clement king might not longer tolerate such 
 atrocious guilt, and committed them to open trial and 
 judgment. They were found guilty of high treason and 
 
 * In the instructions given to Edward Foxe, Bishop of Hereford, 
 when sent as ambassador into Germany, he is to say that More and 
 Fisher "were of such traitorous hearts as even when in prison to plan 
 an insurrection within the realm, as proved by a great number of 
 honest men " ! (Letters and Papers ix. 213.
 
 422 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 rebellion and condemned. Their punishment was far more 
 lenient than the laws require or their fault deserved. 
 
 "From all this, anyone of unbiassed judgment can 
 clearly perceive how rashly the Pontiff and Roman Court 
 have taken offence. But when malicious men cease to 
 make false suggestions, and the road of lies is closed against 
 them, the Curia will lay aside its indignation. . . . Omit 
 not, then, to make known everything that is here set down. 
 His majesty will be delighted when pure and simple truth 
 is no longer obscured by calumny. However, if lying 
 reports so prevail that truth can find no place in their mind, 
 his majesty with the aid of God will bear with their 
 calumnies. He holds his kingdom in such peace and 
 security, and is so sure of the fidelity and obedience of his 
 subjects, that if any injury is offered to him from outside, 
 he can with God's help easily repel and ward it off. 
 
 "From the king's palace at Brumham, Sept., 1535." * 
 
 It is perhaps needless to say that Henry's account of his 
 proceedings found no more credence on the Continent than 
 in England. There was one at least who told him openly 
 what men thought and said of him. This was his relative, 
 Reginald Pole, afterwards cardinal. The king had sent him 
 a book, written by Sampson, in defence of the new supre- 
 macy, desiring to have his opinion on the subject. In the 
 meantime occurred the martyrdom of Fisher and More. 
 Pole sent the king a treatise, afterwards printed, on the 
 Unity of the Church. He thus addressed the king : 
 
 " Is it possible ? Could you slay men like these, who by 
 your own judgment in former days, and by the judgment of 
 all, were held in the highest esteem for innocence, virtue, 
 and learning, and that for no other reason than that they 
 would not violate their consciences by assenting to your 
 impious laws ? Had you no care for your own judgment, 
 no care for the judgment of other men, to say nothing of 
 * State Papers, vii. 436.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 423 
 
 the judgment of God, though you knew that their memory 
 would be loved and venerated by all good men for ever ? 
 Could you slay Fisher ? Could you slay More ? Could 
 you conceive such a crime, and bring on yourself such a 
 disgrace ? I was not present, but when I think of it, it is 
 like a dreadful nightmare, and those who tell me of it seem 
 to be relating dreams. Why, Nero and Domitian, though 
 sworn enemies of the Christian name, had they known 
 these men as you knew them, could not have been so cruel 
 towards them. And I am bold to swear, that Luther him- 
 self, had he been king in England in your place, though 
 these two men were his direst adversaries, would not have 
 conceived the thought of avenging himself in such a way. 
 What great evil had they done you, these men who never 
 injured you in word or deed ? They refused to subscribe 
 to your impious decree. But what if they refused ; was 
 not perpetual imprisonment penalty enough, which already 
 you had inflicted on them, so that, when you dragged them 
 forth to death they had already for fifteen months endured 
 the squalor of their prison ? O God, a torment like this 
 inflicted on such men, for no fault whatever but for their 
 splendid deeds, would have satisfied abundantly the cruelty 
 of the greatest barbarian ; but yours it did not satisfy. 
 From their prison you dragged them out, like dead enemies 
 from their tombs, to feed your fierce and cruel will on the 
 butchery of their bodies. Condemned to perpetual prison, 
 they were as men dead and buried. W r hat new thing had 
 they done that you should bring them forth to a second 
 death? Nothing whatever, but your impiety could not rest, 
 but pushed you on to add crime to crime. If you were not 
 driven on blindly by furies, you could give some kind of 
 reason (I do not say a just one, for such could not be 
 imagined, even though your law, instead of being unjust 
 and impious, had been most just), but at least some reason 
 with an appearance of legality. But how can such a reason
 
 424 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 be found against men who even before the law was promul- 
 gated were condemned to perpetual bonds ? They had no 
 longer the rights or name of citizens, and could not be 
 required to say whether they approved or disapproved of laws. 
 And More, who was so well learned in matters of justice, 
 objected this very thing on his trial. Never before was it 
 heard of that anyone who had violated the law neither in 
 word or deed should be condemned for mere silence. 
 But setting aside the injustice, what was your end and 
 purpose? What evil did you seek to avoid, what good 
 to attain? Tyrants have one or other of these ends in 
 view. I see what you wanted to silence all ; for who could 
 expect clemency when More and Rochester were con- 
 demned to death ? But your counsel has been defeated. 
 The good, whom alone you feared, are by no means terrified. 
 They are encouraged by the example of More and Fisher. 
 If they were silent before, it was not from fear, but because 
 while those men lived they were not without hope of your 
 return to a sound mind. They did not wish to irritate you 
 by word or deed before the time. But now you have filled 
 all minds with indignation. Never was Christian king 
 spoken of in such words as are applied to you. I experience 
 a strange change in myself. Hitherto I ever kept silence, 
 and felt alarm ; now I am bold to speak openly. I will tell 
 what has happened to me, and God is my witness that I 
 speak the truth. When first I heard of this slaughter, for a 
 month I was like one stupefied and without voice, being 
 stunned with the novelty of the thing and its unheard of 
 cruelty. But when I had recovered myself, as I had ever 
 been of the same mind as those men, I determined, not as 
 hitherto, to whisper what I thought into friendly ears, but, 
 in the words of Christ, to preach it from the roof-top." * 
 
 Pole was not ignorant of the probable consequences of 
 these burning words, not to himself, who was out of the 
 * DC Unitate Eccl., lib. iii.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 425 
 
 tyrant's reach, but to his mother and other relatives resident 
 in England. He was admonished by several to modify his 
 reproaches, but after long deliberation he could not find it 
 in his conscience to do so. It is well known that Henry, 
 not being able to revenge himself on the author of this 
 treatise, caused his aged mother, the Countess of Salisbury, 
 to be beheaded. Bishop Latimer reveals to us the insti- 
 gator of this and the rest of the judicial murders. 
 It was Thomas Cromwell, Henry's evil genius. After the 
 Countess's attainder, Latimer congratulated Cromwell in these 
 words : " I heard you say once, after you had seen that 
 furious invective of Cardinal Pole, that you would make him 
 eat his own heart, which you have now brought to pass ; for 
 he must needs now eat his own heart, and become as heart- 
 less as he is graceless".* What more striking evidence of 
 the havoc wrought in men's minds by the contagion of 
 Henry's blood-thirst than words so atrocious, gloating over 
 the expected death of a venerable lady and the broken 
 heart of her innocent and exiled son, because he had dared 
 to utter a protest against the cruelty that had robbed him 
 of his dearest friends and England of her noblest sons. 
 
 To these earthly judgments regarding the bishop's martyr- 
 dom I will add one which, if it is not directly a heavenly 
 communication, is at least the dream of one whose conver- 
 sation was more in heaven than on earth : 
 
 " Memorandum, that I, John Barley, monk of the Charter- 
 house, beside London, had in my time licence to say ser- 
 vice with a father of our religion named Father Raby, a 
 very old man, insomuch when he fell sick and lay upon his 
 deathbed, and after the time he was aneled and had re- 
 ceived all the sacraments of the Church in the presence of 
 all the convent, and when all they were departed I said 
 unto him : ' Good Father Raby, if the dead may come to 
 
 * Wright's Letters on the Suppression of Monasteries, Letter 71 
 (Camden Soc.).
 
 426 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 the quick, I beseech you to come to me,' and he said, 
 'Yea,' and immediately he died in the cleansing days last 
 past, anno 1534,* and since that I never did think upon 
 him to St. John Baptist day last past " i.e., two days after 
 the bishop's martyrdom. He then relates an apparition, 
 when Father Raby told him of the glory of the martyred 
 prior, John Haughton, and the rest of his brethren, and 
 continues : " Item, upon Saturday next, at five o'clock in 
 the morning, he appeared to me again with a long white 
 beard and a white staff in his hand, lifting it up, whereupon 
 I was afraid. And then leaning upon his staff said to me : 
 ' I am sorry I lived not to I had been a martyr '. And 
 I said : ' I think ye be as well as ye were a martyr '. And 
 he said : ' Nay, for my Lord of Rochester and our father 
 was next unto angels in heaven '. And then I said : ' What 
 else ? ' And then he answered and said : ' The angels of 
 peace did lament and mourn without measure,' and so 
 vanished away. 
 
 " Written by me, John Barley, monk of the Charterhouse, 
 the 27th day of June, the year of Our Lord God afore- 
 said." f 
 
 The document just quoted must have got known and 
 been copied and spread abroad, since on 24th October, 
 1535, Dr. Ortiz, one of the emperor's envoys at Rome, 
 writes as follows : " Letters from England say that in the 
 Charter House of London various revelations have been 
 made by a deceased monk, who has appeared to many of 
 the brotherhood ; which revelations had reference to the 
 glorious crown of martyrdom which the Cardinal of Roches- 
 ter and the other saints lately executed have obtained, thus 
 opening for them the gate of paradise; and that Master 
 
 * I.e., in Lent, 1535, New Style, since the year began on 25th 
 March. Lewis sneeringly says that Darley's vision occurred a year 
 before the bishop's death. If so, Darley would have been a prophet. 
 
 t Cotton MS. ( Brit. Mus.), E. iv., fol. 129. Lewis, App. 37.
 
 CONTEMPORARY JUDGMENTS. 427 
 
 Cromwell he that is bringing about all that Anne, the 
 king's mistress, desires has strictly forbidden the publica- 
 tion of the said revelations. Good Christians, however, 
 have no need of such revelations ; martyrdom for faith they 
 know opens the gates of heaven."* 
 
 The people of England were not slow in interpreting 
 signs of God's displeasure against the king. On June 3oth 
 Chapuys urges certain measures to provoke a rising, " for 
 many begin already to show discontent, saying that ever 
 since these executions it has never ceased raining in Eng- 
 land, and that is God's revenge " ; t and again on the 6th 
 September : "The harvest has been very scanty irdeed this 
 year, and there is every appearance of a famine, owing to 
 which your majesty cannot form an idea of the continuous 
 importunities with which I am daily assailed on every side, 
 soliciting the execution of the Apostolic censures, all people 
 here believing that such a resolution on your majesty's part 
 would be a sufficient remedy, considering the great dis- 
 content prevailing among all classes of society here at this 
 king's disorderly life and government".^: 
 
 Lastly, not to forget the queen, to whom the death of her 
 zealous champion must have been inexpressibly painful, 
 Catharine wrote on loth October, 1535, to her nephew the 
 emperor, that "she finds a great consolation in the idea 
 that she may, perhaps, have to follow so many blessed 
 martyrs in the manner of their death. She is only sorry 
 that she could not imitate them in life". On the i3th 
 December the queen wrote again to her zealous friend in 
 Rome, Dr. Ortiz, in answer to his exhortations to patience and 
 hope : " You ought urgently to solicit from his holiness that 
 the good work which the pope has commenced should be 
 promptly executed. For, should there be the least hesita- 
 tion or delay, it will be tantamount to letting the devil, who 
 
 * Spanish Ceil., v. 217. f Ib., 179. 
 
 t Ib., 201. Ib., 210.
 
 428 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 hitherto has been only half bound, entirely loose and at 
 liberty to do mischief. I cannot, indeed dare not, write to 
 you in clearer terms. It will be sufficient if, as a prudent 
 and wise man, you understand what I mean."* In less 
 than a month from writing this letter, this holy queen, 
 whose last years had been one of the most cruel martyrdoms 
 ever inflicted by tyrant, and one of the bravest ever endured 
 by victim, went to join her friend and guide and comforter 
 in paradise. She died yth January, 1536. 
 
 * Spanish Cal., v. 237.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 
 
 THE first apologists of the Reformation thought it 
 necessary both to eulogise Henry and to depreciate 
 his victims. William Thomas, who wrote in the 
 time of Edward VI., and whose book has been reprinted by 
 Mr. Froude, records Fisher's death in the following style : 
 "The cardinal's hat was already upon the way coming to 
 the Bishop of Rochester, not only as a worthy reward of his 
 merit, but also as a buckler under the which the pope 
 thought to handle his cruel sword. His highness, fearing 
 the example of his predecessor, King John, or ever the hat 
 arrived, shaved the bishop's crown by the shoulders, to see 
 afterwards where the pope would bestow his cardinal's 
 hat."* Bale, another contemporary, and a Protestant 
 bishop, writes of Fisher, and Godwin, another Protestant 
 bishop, copies him, with only a feeble apology that he is a 
 little too severe (paulo acerbius) : " Fisher is described by 
 Erasmus as a man stuffed full (suffarcinatissimus) of all 
 episcopal virtues. . . . When the eternal truth of God 
 began to shine upon the Germans from the Gospel, no one 
 grew hotter, no one raged more mightily against it, than this 
 Papistical driveller and impostor, with an eye only to his 
 purse and his belly. . . . The mad old dotard suffered 
 capital punishment." t These are but specimens which it 
 would be easy, but nauseous, to multiply. 
 
 * 77 Pelerino Inglese, or The Pilgrim, p. 31. 
 f Godwin, De Prasulibus.
 
 43 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 At the present day very few followers of the Reformation 
 would willingly speak ill of Fisher, or would care to defend 
 Henry, yet they see no lesson for themselves in the contrast. 
 Anthony & Wood greatly shocked Burnet when he wrote as 
 follows about the Reformation : " Truth ought to take place 
 and must not be concealed, especially when it is at a dis- 
 tance. And if our religion hath had its original or base on 
 lust, blood, ruin, and desolation, as all religions or altera- 
 tions in government have had from one or more of them, 
 why should it be hidden, seeing it is too obvious to all 
 curious searchers into records? " There was some candour 
 in this language ; but if Anthony k Wood meant that the 
 Christian religion as well as the Protestant reform of it had 
 its origin in the lust and cruelty of its founders, it is a read- 
 ing of history that is new and paradoxical ; nor is it easy 
 to find any of these hateful bases of religion in its first intro- 
 duction into England, as related by Venerable Bede. " Lust 
 and cruelty " were its opponents then, as they were its " ruin 
 and desolation" in the i6th century. 
 
 When it was found that the beginnings of Protestantism 
 were such that no self-respecting historian could either 
 defend or palliate them, recourse was had to the principle 
 that God brings good out of evil, and even to the inspired 
 words that He employs foolish things to confound the wise. 
 Mr. Guthrie, in his History of England, writes : " As true 
 history ought never to be a varnish of falsehood or soften- 
 ings of prejudice, we are afraid of no censure in saying that 
 the light of English reformation as the Spirit of God did 
 upon the earth when it was without form moved upon a 
 chaos of jarring, unconnected, repugnant, tyrannical prin- 
 ciples. Order, indeed, arose out of this confusion, but the 
 human agents are by no means to be justified."* Mr. 
 Guthrie does not show how the light of the Reformation was 
 distinct from the principles over which it moved ; nor does 
 * History of England, vol. iv., p. 1036.
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 431 
 
 he explain wherein the order consists that was the result of 
 this moving. 
 
 A writer of the present century, the Rev. Dr. Russell, is 
 so delighted with this new genesis of Protestantism that he 
 grows pious over the misdeeds of the reformers. " In re- 
 viewing," he says, " the great events of history, and more 
 especially such as have had the most direct influence on the 
 progress of religious truth, it must occur to every reader 
 that there is a remarkable contrast between the instruments 
 which have been employed by Divine Wisdom and the 
 results which have flowed from their operation. Whether 
 we look at the monastery of Wittemberg, or to the council 
 chamber of Henry VIII., or to the castle of St. Andrews, 
 nothing will be seen that can minister to human pride, or 
 exalt our estimate of the purity and disinterestedness of 
 human motives."* Let the reader pause for a moment at 
 this astounding paradox, and imagine for himself an apolo- 
 gist for Christianity writing in this way of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul, or of the assembly in the " upper room " at Jerusalem. 
 Yet this principle, not of good out of evil, but of good by 
 means of evil, appears now to have become an accepted 
 commonplace among English Protestant writers. Quite 
 lately Canon Jenkins wrote : " As the political divisions of 
 the kingdom and the power of the collateral branches of the 
 royal family had assisted in so great a degree the progress 
 of the doctrine of Wycliff, so it was ordained that the ex- 
 cesses, and even sins, of the autocratic Henry should, by 
 freeing the Church of England from the papal yoke, bring 
 in the reign of a reformed Church and faith ".t 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, writes : 
 "It is an objection to the Reformation in England that 
 Henry VIII. was a blustering prince, haughty and resolute, 
 and affecting his own will and pleasure. It is enough to 
 
 * History of the Church of Scotland, ch. v. 
 f Diocesan History of Canterbury, p. 240.
 
 43 2 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 say that a milder prince would not have done much in so 
 rugged a work. When God has His providential works to 
 do, He knows how to raise up such instruments as are best 
 adapted to attempt, prosecute, and perform them in their 
 own time." * This theory of God's wicked instrnments is 
 not surprising in a writer of the i8th century ; yet 
 Canon Perry, as lately as 1886, lays down the following 
 basis for his History of the Reformation in England: "It 
 would be impossible to find in all history a genuine record 
 of any great revolution, either in Church or State, wherein 
 all the agents had proceeded upon pure, disinterested 
 motives, and which was entirely uncontaminated by ambi- 
 tion, self-seeking, covetousness, or any of the baser motives 
 of human actions ". So far the proposition makes no great 
 demand on the candour of his reader; but as a sailor, 
 anxious to moor his vessel safe, throws to the shore a small 
 rope, and he who catches it soon finds that there is attached 
 to its end a great cable, the loop of which he is expected to 
 throw over a strong pillar, so acts the apologist of the 
 Reformation. We have seen the small rope, now follows 
 the cable. "Certainly," continues Canon Perry, "an ex- 
 ception to this cannot be claimed in favour of the English 
 Reformation of the i6th century, whether we look at the 
 usurping and tyrannical king, the timid and too subservient 
 clergy, or the grasping and unprincipled laity." Another 
 pause, good reader. The first proposition was that there 
 has been no great movement in which all agents were 
 absolutely perfect. The second, introduced as a mere 
 exemplification of the first, is that in the Reformation all 
 the agents were thoroughly bad. And now follows a third, 
 not that this is to be considered a blemish or a drawback, 
 but that it was a necessary condition of success. The words 
 following immediately on the above are these : " Yet re- 
 flection shows that there were advantages in these evil 
 * Life of Erasmni, Pref., p. xii.
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 433 
 
 features Nothing less than the bold, overbearing temper 
 of the king would have been adequate to head the move- 
 ment which brought about the emancipation of England 
 from the tyranny of Rome. A bolder struggle for ancient 
 rights on the part of the clergy might have led to the utter 
 apostasy of the State, and the covetous greed with which the 
 laymen fell upon ecclesiastical property gave a stability to 
 the work of change which it could not probably have ac- 
 quired in any other way." * These are not the words of 
 some bitter satirist, nor even of a Gibbon or a Macaulay. 
 They are the calm reasoning of a dignitary of the Church 
 of England. . And to conclude this series of apologists for 
 the Reformation in England with one who deserves to be 
 found in better company than the above, Dr. Stubbs, the 
 present Bishop of Chester, writes : " You will not suspect 
 me of making Henry VIII. the founder of the Church of 
 England ; but I do not conceal from myself that, under the 
 Divine Power which brings good out of evil and overrules 
 the wrath of man to the praise of God, we have received 
 good as well as evil through the means of this ' majestic 
 lord who broke the bonds of Rome '." t 
 
 We are almost inclined to ask, Are these writers disciples 
 of Christ or of Mahomet ? Surely not of Him who sent out 
 His disciples as sheep among wolves, and said : " Fear not, 
 little flock, it hath pleased your Father to give you the 
 kingdom". According to the above theories, victory is 
 with the wolves, and a certain wolfishness is even a neces- 
 sary condition of victory. Good out of evil, forsooth ! Yes, 
 for those who suffer the evil, not for those who do it ; for 
 the Fishers and the Mores, not for the Henrys and Eliza- 
 beths. 
 
 Let, then, the followers of the Reformation look back 
 upon it from their own point of view ; let them prove and 
 
 * History of Reformation in England, p. 2. 
 t Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 202. 
 28
 
 434 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 we will not contest their accuracy that violence in the 
 king, servility in the clergy, avarice in the laity, were neces- 
 sary conditions of its triumph ; let them look with shame 
 on its heroes, and say with affected humility : " All glory be 
 to God, there is nothing here in which we can take com- 
 placency " ; let them represent the Almighty, with Calvin- 
 istic blasphemy, as choosing evil tools, not to chastise His 
 loved ones for a time, but to build up His own work. The 
 Reformation has been a success; it has prevailed and it 
 prevails. Let its followers explain it as they will. As for 
 us, we know that there are successes which are failures. 
 There is no greater calamity or chastisement than when 
 God allows evil to prevail. 
 
 So also there are failures which are triumphs, and such 
 is generally martyrdom. But can this be said of Fisher, if 
 the cause which he opposed has been victorious ? It may 
 be thought by some that the life of Fisher was lived in vain, 
 and his blood was shed to no purpose as far as this world is 
 concerned. And it might be said in explanation that Eng- 
 land was reduced to such extremity by the sins of priests 
 and people that the few just men, as in the days of Ezechiel, 
 were ineffectual as intercessors. " If I send the pestilence 
 upon that land, and pour out my indignation upon it in 
 blood, and Noe and Daniel and Job be in the midst thereof; 
 as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son 
 nor daughter, but they shall only deliver their own soul by 
 their justice." * If we may be allowed reverently to con- 
 jecture the secrets of God's justice and of His mercy from 
 the page of history, such was not His wrath against England. 
 On the contrary, the influence of the holy lives, the fervent 
 prayers, and the heroic deaths of the first martyrs of Henry 
 has been wide and lasting, has gone on ever increasing, and 
 seems destined to be even more effectual in the future than 
 
 * Ezech. xv. 19, 20.
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 435 
 
 in the past. With a slight sketch of these consoling results 
 I will close this study. 
 
 Before commencing the narrative of Fisher's life, I re- 
 called the pathetic lamentation he made over the state of 
 the world in the year 1505, when his prayer was that God 
 would arise and have mercy upon Sion, for the time had 
 come to have mercy upon her, the time had come. His 
 prayer may have seemed to him to have been rejected. Things 
 had gone from bad to worse, and were rapidly hastening to 
 utter ruin. He could say with Elias : " With zeal have I 
 been zealous for the Lord God of hosts : for the children 
 of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, they have thrown 
 down Thy altars, they have slain Thy prophets with the 
 sword, and I alone am left, and they seek my life to take it 
 away".* Indeed, there is something very gloomy in the 
 words penned by him in the Tower, in the year 1534, when 
 the shades of death were gathering round him. "Woe to 
 us," he writes, " who have been born in this wretched age, 
 an age I say it weeping in which anyone who has any 
 zeal whatever for the glory of God, and casts his eyes on 
 the men and women who now live, will be moved to tears 
 to see everything turned upside down, the beautiful order 
 of virtue overthrown, the bright light of life quenched, and 
 scarce anything left in the Church but open iniquity and 
 feigned sanctity. The light of good example is extinguished 
 in those who ought to shine as luminaries to the whole 
 world, like watch-towers and beacons on the mountains. 
 No light, alas ! comes from them, but horrid darkness, and 
 pestilent mischief, by which innumerable souls are falling 
 into destruction. "t 
 
 These words, however, were not a cry of despair, they 
 were not a lamentation over hopeful prayers poured out to 
 
 * 3 Kings xix. 10. 
 
 t De necessitate orandi. Ratio tcrtia. This passage is omitted 
 in the old translation, recently reprinted.
 
 436 BLESSLD JOHN FISHER. 
 
 deaf ears. On the contrary, they occur in a treatise on 
 prayer, and are part of an exhortation to go with confidence 
 to the throne of grace to find help when most in need of it. 
 It was not granted to this great servant of God, to this 
 perpetual intercessor for God's people, to see all the fruit of 
 his prayers. Of course he never doubted that in England, 
 as well as throughout the whole breadth of the Church, 
 there were many holy souls. It was a favourite saying of 
 his that the Holy Ghost, who ever inhabits the Church, 
 cannot remain idle.* But he was not to learn till after 
 death by what magnificent creations of sanctity the Holy 
 Ghost was already in those last days of his on earth 
 beginning to renew the face of the Church. He lamented 
 especially the state of the clergy. Yet what holy popes, 
 bishops, priests, founders and reformers of religious orders, 
 legislators, and missionaries were even then at work, or 
 preparing for their work by a most holy life. The prospect 
 before his eyes was that of a people betrayed by their 
 pastors, of pulpits long silent and now vocal only with 
 insults to God's vicar, and of the glorious Church of Si- 
 Gregory and St. Augustine foundering in heresy and schism. 
 Yet on the feast of Our Lady's Assumption, the i5th 
 August, 1534, while he, a bishop, banished from his people, 
 deposed from his see, shut in a dark prison, without mass, 
 without communion, was calling on the Queen of Mercy to 
 stay the arm of God's vengeance, in Our Lady's Church at 
 Montmartre in Paris the Blessed Peter Faber was offering 
 that eventful mass at which St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, 
 with four companions, whose names are hardly less illus- 
 trious, pronounced their first vows and laid the foundations 
 of the Society of Jesus. Could Fisher in spirit have seen 
 
 * " Sancti Spiritus non otiosa in Ecclesia residentia" (De Saccrd., 
 col. 1241). " Non otiosus esse potest, qui ad tantum negotium, tarn 
 inclytus, a tarn eximiis personis, Patre videlicet et Filio missus esse 
 non ambigitur " (Assert. Lut. Conf., col. 287).
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 437 
 
 that act and known its consequences, he would have known 
 that his prayer was answered beyond his hope or imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 This was but little. When the beacons seemed to him 
 extinguished, they were being kindled on every mountain. 
 Michael Ghisleri, afterwards better known as Pope St. Pius 
 V., was sanctifying the order of St. Dominick ; St. Thomas 
 of Villanova, afterwards Archbishop of Valencia, as provincial 
 of the Augustinians in Spain, was making reparation for the 
 apostasy of Luther in Germany ; St. Peter of Alcantara, in 
 his poor Franciscan habit, was in ecstasy before the Blessed 
 Sacrament ; Blessed John of Avila was exercising his wonder- 
 ful apostolate in Andalusia ; St. Cajetan was, by his example 
 and his preaching, kindling the fires of divine love in Naples ; 
 St. Jerome Emilian was drawing near to the close of his 
 holy life in Rome ; St. Lewis Bertrand, a holy child of 
 nine, was beginning those austerities which gave supernatural 
 vigour to his missionary labours in America ; St. Andrew 
 Avellino, a young cleric of fifteen, was growing into that 
 perfect spirit of the priesthood, of which he was to be so 
 great a promoter among the clerks regular ; t! spirit of 
 God had already drawn St. Philip Neri to Rome, where, at the 
 nge of twenty, he was mature in sanctity ; and St. Francis 
 Borgia, then known as the young Marquis of Gandia, was 
 leading, in the married state, a life so pure and lofty that he 
 was as perfect a model for noble laymen as he afterwards 
 becr<me for priests and religious. I have mentioned only 
 such as were already or were one day to be priests, and 
 have chosen only names that are familiar. Who that knows 
 the meaning of the article of his creed, " I believe in the 
 cor.imunion of saints," can doubt that Blessed John Fisher's 
 life and prayers were among the efficient causes of the graces 
 poured out so abundantly on the Church , and that on the other 
 hand the prayers and merits of saints unknown to him were 
 strengthening him in his heroic confessorship and martyrdom ?
 
 438 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 We have seen that the fame of his martyrdom soon 
 spread through Europe ; and during the last three centuries, 
 though the Church, from prudence probably, and not to 
 stir up fierce fanaticism in England, had delayed to enrol 
 him in her catalogue of canonised saints, or to give him a 
 place in her martyrology, the name of John Fisher, the 
 champion to death of the rights of the Holy See against the 
 tyrant Henry, has been a household word with every educated 
 Catholic in Christendom. Nor was it altogether forgotten 
 even in his own ungrateful country. It was certainly the 
 memory of his constancy that touched the hearts of Tunstal 
 and Gardiner with sorrow for their weakness and made them 
 bold to endure years of imprisonment, even before their 
 reconciliation with the Church. It was the example shown 
 by him that upheld the English hierarchy at the accession 
 of Elizabeth, and prevented them from imitating the recre- 
 ancy of the courtier bishops of Henry. I have alluded to 
 the saints who sprang up so numerously in Europe after the 
 great apostasy of the i6th century. But there is one 
 country especially rich in saints, and of saints who rank in 
 the first order, that of martyrs. That country is the land of 
 Fisher. Other Churches were the joyful mothers of con- 
 fessors ; the English Church, in her humiliation and agony, 
 was to bring forth martyrs. Before the close of the century 
 which witnessed Fisher's death, hundreds would like him 
 endure spoliation and imprisonment, and hundreds like him 
 would be faithful unto death. And it must be observed 
 that all, or nearly all, died for the same cause for resisting 
 the usurpation by the civil power of supremacy over the 
 Church. 
 
 It is this that has made a thoughtful German writer 
 remark, that if Anglicanism has kept more of the externals of 
 the Catholic Church, and seems like Henry himself to have 
 retained more of the Catholic faith and worship than the 
 Churches of Luther and of Calvin, yet in reality it is more
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 439 
 
 deeply opposed to the Divine constitution of the Church 
 and more deeply branded with injustice and cruelty. Not 
 much Catholic blood was deliberately and legally shed in 
 Calvinistic Scotland and Switzerland, or in the Lutheran 
 parts of Germany. It was in England, Wales, and Ireland, 
 where the royal supremacy was forced on unwilling popula- 
 tions, that martyrs were made. " Germany," writes Dr. 
 Kerker, " would not submit to a despotism so gross as that 
 which weighed on England. Her revolutionary movement 
 was the work of theologians, not of princes ; not princes 
 but theologians formulated her doctrines and her discipline ; 
 and the civil and ecclesiastical powers have ever been kept 
 distinct. In England, on the contrary, though episcopacy 
 has been retained, it derives its jurisdiction from one who 
 makes no pretence to be a bishop. By virtue of civil power 
 alone the State decides for the Church her doctrines and 
 regulates her discipline. It is the most odious form of the 
 Protestant revolt."* 
 
 These words of a modern German remind me, by way of 
 a very curious contrast, of a letter written by an English- 
 man in the 12th century. When Frederick Barbarossa was 
 troubling the face of Christendom, John of Salisbury asked 
 indignantly : "Who has made the Germans judges over the 
 nations? Who has given to these rude and impetuous men 
 authority to set, at their pleasure, a prince over the heads of 
 men ? I know well what this German emperor is plotting, 
 for I was at Rome when Eugenius was pope, at the time 
 when the first embassy was sent, at the beginning of this 
 emperor's reign ; and their intolerable pride and unguarded 
 tongues laid bare the impudence of their designs. He 
 promised that he would reform the government of the whole 
 world, and bring it all into subjection to Rome, if only the 
 Roman Pontiff would favour his plans. His plan was that 
 against whomsoever the emperor should draw the sword, the 
 * Life of Fisher, part iii., ch. xv.
 
 44O BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 Roman Pontiff should also draw the spiritual sword. But he 
 has not found yet anyone who will consent to such iniquity."* 
 This ancient plan of tyranny, by making the spiritual 
 power the tool of the civil, and thus degrading both, was 
 one of the favourite schemes of the i6th century. A 
 suggestion was made to the Emperor Charles V. during the 
 siege of Rome in 1527, that either the papacy should be 
 kept low, and made to do the bidding of the empire, or 
 that it should be abolished, and each king should set up a 
 patriarch as the creature and puppet of his own will in his 
 kingdom. f By God's providence the emperor consented to 
 neither project. Yet it was in that moment that Henry 
 thought to make the pope the aider and abettor of his own 
 lawless passions ; and failing in that, he adopted the scheme 
 of the puppet-patriarch or primate. It is very notable that, 
 in that very crisis of the papacy, the two men who after- 
 wards died for it were upholding it with their prayers. 
 More, we are told, in his parish church of Chelsea, with his 
 family, made earnest supplication for the deliverance of the 
 Holy Father. And Fisher was so zealous in the same holy 
 cause that Wolsey knew no better way to insinuate himself 
 into his confidence, than by speaking to him of public 
 prayer and penance to be done for the wants of the Holy 
 See.J Such men were already martyrs in heart. It was by 
 a special providence of God that Fisher was not called on 
 
 * Ep. 59 (Bib. Max. Pair., t. xxiii., p. 423). 
 
 t See Mr. Brewer's Introduction to vol. iv. of Letters and Papers, 
 p. 170. 
 
 J See p. 153. When Wolsey left Rochester he proceeded toCanterbury, 
 and there presided at the litanies and solemn supplications that were 
 being made for the pope. During these he wept bitterly. Mr. Brewer 
 thinks it was at the foresight of his own ruin. Cavendish, who wit- 
 nessed it, thought it was from compassion for the Holy Father. 
 Though his conduct was not loyal to the Sovereign Pontiff, yet there 
 is no need to reject the view of Cavendish, as if noble thoughts and 
 compunction never visited him.
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 44! 
 
 to shed his blood for any of the sacraments he had main- 
 tained against Luther and (Ecolampadius, nor More for his 
 defence of Catholic traditions against Fish and Frith and 
 Tyndal. They died for something more fundamental still 
 for the Divine constitution of the Church, the pillar and 
 foundation of all truth. Their example thereby became 
 more practical for all times and persons. It has been often 
 said, by way of removing from Protestantism the odium of 
 these cruel deaths, that the Reformation was not begun in 
 England when More and Fisher died, and that they died by 
 the hands of a fierce persecutor of Protestants. But if 
 Henry was neither Lutheran nor Zuinglian, he was the 
 founder of that which is the essence of Anglicanism, the 
 supremacy of the civil power in the things of God. He laid 
 down the doctrine of the Supreme Head, which God's pro- 
 vidence, I would almost say His Divine irony,* reduced to 
 its most ludricrous forms in the headship of his child-son 
 and his bastard and shameless daughter, and showed in its 
 absurd consequences in the three systems of religion pro- 
 duced by the same authority in those three reigns. It was 
 *against this public tampering and trifling with all truth, 
 with the very existence of objective and permanent truth 
 upon the earth, that these noble martyrs protested by their 
 death. No one can say with any plausibility that they were 
 victims to their prejudices, or to the superstitions in which 
 they had been educated, or that they died from obstinate 
 resistance to progress and blind conservatism. It was, on 
 the contrary, from a narrow conservatism that the rest of 
 the bishops yielded to Henry. He was the enemy of 
 heretics, they thought, the protector of the Church in her 
 honours and riches in their day. More and Fisher cared 
 little for this, when they saw him introducing a principle 
 which might be the source of every error. 
 
 Their crime was said to be treason, not heresy, for fidelity 
 * " Dominus subsannabit eos " (Ps. ii. 4).
 
 442 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 to the Church under this new impiety had become treason 
 to the sovereign. They were thus the fitting leaders of a 
 series of martyrs, all of whom were branded as traitors. 
 Even when the charge was that of offering Holy Mass, it 
 was only as treason to the sovereign that it became a deadly 
 crime. The State had long punished heresy with death, 
 considering it a treason against God, and an attack on the 
 fundamental unity of the nation and of Christendom ; but 
 it had neither taken on itself to decide what was heresy, nor 
 to make .the malice of heresy consist in resistance to the 
 dictation of the civil power in things Divine. A new crime, 
 that of treason for adhering to the unity of Christendom, was 
 invented by the odious tyranny of Henry, and by him 
 handed down to his successors. Fisher and More died, not 
 merely for fidelity to conscience, a glory not denied to them 
 even by those who think their conscience erroneous and 
 unenlightened. They died for the rights of the human 
 conscience to receive religious Truth from God only, 
 through His own appointed channels ; and not from 
 human power, to which Truth is nothing else than State 
 Expediency. 
 
 Yet the death of More and Fisher has also an important 
 bearing even on those works of controversy which were un- 
 connected with the charge of treason, since it proves beyond 
 gainsay their authors' conscientiousness and love of truth,* 
 and explains the only point requiring explanation or apology 
 a certain asperity that is common to them both. There 
 is no unfairness in their controversy. Fisher quotes his 
 opponents in full, and gives their own words and context, 
 and then meets them openly. Sir Thomas neither under- 
 states the arguments of his antagonists, nor imputes to them 
 
 * Dr. Knight, in his Life of Colet, has dared to say : " Sir Thomas 
 More was a leading reformer, but human fears and worldly policy 
 stopped him short and turned him out of the way he saw to be 
 right" (p. 147).
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 443 
 
 what they would repudiate. But they both handle their 
 opponents severely and defend the severity of their language. 
 Why was this? I have already remarked that they were 
 arguing with apostate Catholics, and had a right to use a 
 tone which would ill befit us in controversy with modern 
 Protestants. But there were special reasons for such 
 severity. The controversy of the first Protestants adopted 
 two forms that of indignant invective or that of unctuous 
 piety. According to their bias, they sought to copy the 
 denunciations of the Prophets or the exhortations of the 
 Apostles. And this language imposed upon the people. 
 When they read the impetuous declamation of Luther 
 against the pope, they were hurried away into the belief 
 that nothing less than some dread mystery of iniquity could 
 have aroused such passion. When they read the "sweet 
 reasonableness " with which (Ecolampadius argues against 
 the Real Presence, it seemed the very tone of adoration in 
 spirit and in truth. So it was with our English heresiarchs, 
 with whom More had his encounters. They took both 
 styles as it suited them. Now that which gives freshness 
 and human interest to the writings of More and Fisher, even 
 at the present day, is to see how the mask was stripped off 
 these hypocrites or self-deceivers by both the Churchman 
 and the Statesman. Neither Fisher nor More was naturally 
 disputatious ; they had not grown up amidst polemics. The 
 candour of both had long been shown in bewailing or 
 denouncing and correcting the evils that disfigured the 
 , Church they loved. But the keen sight of a saintly and 
 contemplative mind made Fisher see through the pretences 
 and shudder at the blasphemies with which the revelations 
 and institutions of God Himself were now attacked ; and a 
 similar spiritual sensitiveness, together with a practised wit 
 and shrewedness, made these even more apparent to Sir 
 Thomas. If they had both died full of honours, we might still 
 have appreciated the sincerity and singleness of their hearts
 
 444 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 in their warmest controversy; but their patient endurance 
 for truth, their death rather than swerve even a hair's-breadth 
 from what they knew to be right, from the path of honour 
 and conscience and allegiance to God, oblige us to admit 
 that zeal for truth, and not for party, had alone sharpened 
 their pens in controversy. 
 
 It will, of course, be said that some of the opponents of 
 More, at least, died for their convictions, and that such 
 deaths on either side proved only ardour or sincerity, and 
 not truth. Even were there no difference in the cases, I 
 would reply that my argument at the present moment is 
 for sincerity and simplicity of character rather than objective 
 truth. But the calm dignity with which More and Fisher 
 went to their deaths from amidst dignity and honours may 
 well challenge comparison with the hot enthusiasm or 
 evasions and retractations and relapses of the greater num- 
 ber of Foxe's martyrs. The former died for the one Catholic 
 and Apostolic faith, the latter for private fancies and enthu- 
 siasms. To lay down one's life in duty to one's country 
 and to perish in a duel are two different things. 
 
 This connection between the writings and the deaths of 
 More and Fisher has been admirably stated by Cardinal 
 Pole. " The disputes," he says, " that the conduct of Henry 
 has aroused in England have brought everything into 
 doubt ; men do not know what to believe, which side to 
 take. How can we know, they ask, when clever men, 
 learned men, and, as far as we can see, good men, take 
 opposite sides ? Would you not, then, if you could, send 
 ambassadors to Jesus Christ to ask Him to decide ? But, 
 you say, this is not serious. Cities of Greece could send 
 ambassadors to consult the oracle, but Christ is in heaven. 
 Nay, but listen : Supposing that you could send an embassy, 
 whom would you send ? Not priests only, but priests and 
 laymen at least one of each class. Now, had you to 
 choose among all the priests and bishops in England, would
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 445 
 
 there have been any hesitation ? Would not all by acclama- 
 tion have selected the Bishop of Rochester ? What other 
 have you, or have you had for centuries, to compare with 
 Rochester in holiness, in learning, in prudence, and in 
 episcopal zeal ? You may be, indeed, proud of him ; 
 for, were you to search through all the nations of Christen- 
 dom in our days, you would not easily find one who was 
 such a model of episcopal virtues. If you doubt of this, 
 consult your merchants who have travelled in many lands ; 
 consult your ambassadors ; and let them tell you whether 
 they have anywhere heard of any bishop who has such a 
 love of his own flock as never to leave the care of it, evei 
 feeding it by word and example ; against whose life not even 
 a rash word could be spoken ; one who was conspicuous not 
 only for holiness and learning, but for love of country ? " 
 After further commendation of Fisher, he proceeds : 
 
 " Do you seek a colleague worthy of such a man a lay- 
 man of great learning and sanctity, but without superstition 
 or weakness ; a man acquainted with public affairs and with 
 men ? Again there will be no hesitation. More is that 
 man. Brought up amongst clever men, learned, incorrupt, 
 holy, familiar with matters of State, loving his country, 
 there is no one else in whom all such qualities are united, 
 at least in such a degree. 
 
 " Well, would you not send these on your embassy ? But, 
 see, of their own accord, before you thought of it, they have 
 undertaken the task and have brought back the answer from 
 Christ. Both of them by their learned writings have told 
 you what to think of the disputes of our days ; and now, 
 lest you should doubt whether they really speak in Christ's 
 name, He has set the same seal on them that He gave to 
 Himself and His Apostles. He allowed Satan to open the 
 gates of hell against them and to try them to the utmost, 
 and He gave them strength in the sight of the whole Church, 
 of men and of angels, to undergo a contest and win a crown,
 
 446 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 than which none more glorious has been won since the days 
 of the Apostles. What ! my country, were you not a 
 spectator of this, when every deceit was practised, every 
 snare was spread on one side the favour of the prince, 
 power, honour, and whatever is delightful to men, and on 
 the other side prison, torment, infamy, and death, or rather 
 deaths ? From these two gates all the armies of Satan 
 issued forth and assaulted these two soldiers of Christ to 
 drive them from the citadel of truth. You saw this, my 
 country ; you saw not only that they did not faint for fear, 
 nor were driven from the battlements, but, on the contrary, 
 the enemy was repulsed, his war-machines were broken, and 
 they remained more constant than ever in the possession of 
 the truth. You beheld this, and did you not admire ? Did 
 you not gather from -your admiration how true was their 
 doctrine, how agreeable to the will of Christ ? It was not 
 mere death that they encountered with constancy, as even 
 criminals may sometimes do, but they chose it in preference 
 to the favour of the king, to riches and power and honour. 
 This they could not have done without the assistance of 
 Him who gave victory to the martyrs and Apostles." * 
 
 Can I better conclude than by again putting before the 
 reader the martyr's own words, already quoted in the first 
 chapter : " Set, O Lord, in Thy Church strong and mighty 
 pillars, that may suffer and endure great labours, watching, 
 poverty, thirst, hunger, cold, and heat, which also shall not 
 fear the threatenings of princes, persecution, neither death. 
 Oh ! if it would please Our Lord God to show this goodness 
 in our days, the memorial of this His so doing ought of very 
 right to be left in perpetual writing, never to be forgotten of 
 all our posterity, that every generation might love and wor- 
 ship Him time without end." 
 
 The feast of the English martyrs, John Fisher, Thomas 
 More, and others, is kept on the 4th May. 
 * De Unitate Bed. , lib. iii.
 
 LESSONS OF THE MARTYRDOM. 447 
 
 ORATIO. 
 
 Deus, qui beatos martyres tuos, Joannem Pontificem, 
 Thomam eorumque socios, verse fidei summique sacerdotii 
 propugnatores, inter Anglos omni ex ordine suscitasti : 
 eorum meritis ac precibus concede : ut ejusdem fidei pro- 
 fessione unum omnes, sicut tuus rogavit Filius, efficiamur et 
 simus : Qui tecum vivit ac regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, 
 Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.
 
 CHRONOLOGY AND INDEX OF FISHER'S LIFE. 
 
 1469. Birth at Beverley, 6 
 
 1483. Enters Cambridge, n 
 
 1487. B.A., 13 
 
 1491. M.A. and Fellow of Michael House, ... 13 
 1494. Senior Proctor Makes acquaintance of 
 
 Lady Margaret, ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 1497. Master of Michael House, 19 
 
 1501. Julys. S.T.P., 19 
 
 M J 5- Vice-Chancellor of University, 19 
 
 1502. Confessor to Lady Margaret Resigns 
 
 Mastership of Michael House 19 
 
 1503. Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, ... 21 
 
 1504. Chancellor, 26 
 
 ,, Nov. 24. Consecrated Bishop of Rochester (age 35), 56 
 
 1505. April. Foundation of Christ's College begun, ... 21 
 Master of Queen's, ... ... ... ... 27 
 
 Visit of Henry VII. to Cambridge Feast of 
 
 St. George, .'.. ... ... ... 27 
 
 1506. Second Visit of Henry VII 28 
 
 1509. 21. Henry VII. dies The Bishop preaches his 
 
 Funeral Sermon, May 10, ... ... 106 
 
 ,, June 29. Lady Margaret dies The Bishop preaches 
 
 at her " Month's Mind," 106 
 
 Foundation of St. John's College begun, ... 28 
 
 1512. Feb. 4. Colet's Sermon before Convocation, ... 84 
 ,, Appointed to be King's Orator in Council of 
 
 Lateran (does not go), 71 
 
 1511-1513. Erasmus at Cambridge, 93 
 
 1514. Chancellor for Life, 35 
 
 1515. Sept. 5. Wolsey made Cardinal, ... ... ... 80 
 
 1516. Fisher learns Greek Visit of Erasmus, ... 94 
 1518. Lent. Speech before Legatine Council, 75 
 
 20
 
 45 
 
 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 1520. 
 1521. 
 I5 2 3- 
 
 > 
 1524. 
 
 1525- 
 
 1526. 
 1527. 
 
 June 7. 
 May 12. 
 
 August. 
 
 Quin.Sun 
 May 6. 
 
 1528. 
 
 June 2. 
 
 July 4- 
 Dec. 7. 
 June. 
 Oct. 8. 
 
 Book against Jaques Le Fevre (De Unica 
 
 Magdelena), 
 Learns Hebrew, 
 
 Field of Cloth of Gold, 
 
 Sermon at Burning of Luther's Books, 
 
 Opposes Subsidy in Convocation, 
 
 Publishes Lutheran te Assertionis Confutatio, 
 Publishes work on St. Peter in Rome against 
 
 Ulrich Willen, 
 
 Publishes Defence of the King's Book against 
 
 Luther, 
 
 Publishes Defence of Sacred Priesthood, ... 
 
 Eck of Ingoldstadt visits Fisher, 
 
 Writes in Defence of Blessed Sacrament 
 
 against CEcolampadius, ... ... ... 
 
 Preaches at Retractation of Dr. Barnes, 
 Rome Sacked by the Imperial Army, 
 Collusive Suit before Wolsey and Warham 
 
 against Marriage of Henry and Catharine, 
 Fisher writes Letter in Defence of the Mar- 
 
 riage, 
 
 1529. 
 
 1530. 
 
 May 31. 
 June 28. 
 Oct. 25. 
 Nov. 3. 
 
 Dec. 
 Sept. 12. 
 Oct. 
 
 Ma# 24. 
 Nov. 26. 
 
 Attempt of Wolsey to circumvent Fisher, ... 
 
 The Pope escapes from Rome, 
 
 The Sweating Sickness, 
 
 Campeggio arrives in London as Legate 
 
 regarding the Divorce, 
 Campeggio confers with Fisher, 
 The King's Speech at Blackfriars' regarding 
 
 the Legates, 
 
 Legatine Court opened, , 
 
 Speech of Fisher against the Divorce, 
 
 Sir T. More, Lord Chancellor, 
 
 Opening of the " Long Parliament " of 
 
 Henry, 
 
 Provincial Council of Canterbury, 
 
 Fisher accused of Disparaging the Commons 
 
 in Parliament, 
 
 Proclamation against obtaining Bulls from 
 
 Rome, 
 
 Fisher Arrested for Appealing to the Holy 
 
 See against Parliament, ... 
 Proclamation against Heretical Books, 
 Death of Wolsey, 
 
 108 
 
 95 
 81 
 
 50 
 
 in 
 
 in 
 114 
 
 122 
 
 51 
 122 
 
 150 
 
 150 
 153 
 153 
 157 
 
 159 
 
 160 
 
 147 
 165 
 170 
 170 
 
 181 
 79 
 
 185 
 190 
 
 189 
 191 
 193
 
 CHRONOLOGY AND INDEX OF FISHERS LIFE. 451 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1531. Feb. ii. The Clergy acknowledge Henry Supreme 
 
 Head " as far as God's Law permits," 202 
 
 Feb. 20. Attempt to Poison Fisher, 213 
 
 1532. May 10. Fisher consulted by Convocation, 220 
 
 16. Sir Thomas More resigns the Great Seal 
 
 Parliament refuses the Pope Annates,... 222 
 
 June 8. Fisher preaches against the Divorce, ... 224 
 
 Aug. 23. Archbishop Warham dies, 206 
 
 1533. Jan. 25. Anne Boleyn secretly married to Henry, ... 225 
 
 March 30. Cranmer consecrated, 225 
 
 ,, April 6. Fisher's Second Arrest (Paim Sunday), ... 226 
 May 23, Cranmer gives Sentence against Henry's 
 
 Marriage with Catharine, ... ... 227 
 
 June i. Coronation of Anne Boleyn (Whitsunday), 228 
 
 13. Fisher released, 228 
 
 ,, July ii. The Pope annuls Cranmer's Proceedings, ... 228 
 ,, Aug. 8. Brief of Censure against Henry, Anne, and 
 
 Cranmer, 228 
 
 ,, Sept. 7. Elizabeth born, ... ... ... ... 225 
 
 Dec. Great Illness of Fisher, 247 
 
 1534. Jan 15. Opening of Session, ... ... ... ... 251 
 
 ,, Feb. 21. Act of Attainder against Fisher on account 
 
 of Holy Maid of Kent introduced, ... 259 
 March 23. Clement VII. gives Final Sentence on 
 
 Henry's Marriage Case, ... 261 
 
 30. Fisher's Attainder passed by King, 260 
 
 ,, April 13. Fisher refuses the Oath of Succession Sent 
 
 to Tower, 274 
 
 May i. Oath again proposed, and refused by Fisher, 280 
 
 ,, Sept. 26. Death of Clement VII 274 
 
 Oct. 12. Cardinal Farnese becomes Pope Paul III., 
 Nov. Fisher attainted of Misprision of Treason a 
 
 second time, ... ... ... 2 go 
 
 18. Henry declared by Parliament Supreme 
 
 Head Treason to refuse the Title, ... 317 
 
 Dec. 22. Fisher writes to Cromwell from Tower, ... 290 
 1535. May 4. Martyrdom of Three Carthusian Priors, of 
 
 Reynolds, and Thomas Hale, ... ' ... 34O 
 
 . .. 6- Feast of the Ascension 345 
 
 . > 7- Fisher, called before the Council, refuses to 
 
 admit the King's Supremacy, 04:- 
 
 20. Fisher created Cardinal, 354 
 
 June i. Special Commission for Tjrial of Fisher, ... 365
 
 452 BLESSED JOHN FISHER. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1535. June 3. Bishop interrogated in Prison, 345 
 
 12,14- Do - 347 
 
 17. Trial at Westminster, 3 6 5 
 
 ,, 19. Three Carthusians (the second band) mar- 
 tyred, 39* 
 
 22. (Monday, Feast of St. Alban.) Martyrdom 
 
 of Blessed John Fisher (age, about 66), 393
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A VERY courteous critic of the former edition of this 
 work expressed surprise that I had nowhere referred to 
 some important collections in a MS. volume in the British 
 Museum, viz., Arundel, 152. The complaint was just. I was 
 indeed aware of these papers, and had intended to study them, 
 but being prevented by illness, arid not wishing to postpone 
 the publication of my book, I thought it sufficient to ascertain 
 by a cursory inspection that the Arundel Volume could 
 neither add much to what I had gathered from other sources 
 nor modify in any important matter what I had written. 
 This however did not satisfy me entirely, and I have now 
 not only gone through the whole volume carefully, but ex- 
 amined several other MSS. with results which I will detail in 
 this appendix. 
 
 Since preparing these notes, I have been delighted to find 
 that one of the learned Bollandist Fathers, Von Ortroy, has 
 been working on the same MSS. to enrich with notes a 
 Latin translation of Hall's Life of Fisher, of which he has 
 discovered two MSS. His work will appear in the Analecta 
 Bollandiana, probably simultaneously with this second 
 edition.
 
 ENGLISH LIFE OF FISHER. 
 (ATTRIBUTED TO DR. HALL.) 
 
 Of the English Life of Fisher mentioned in the Preface 
 and frequently quoted by me there exist several copies. 
 They are identical except in a few points. The oldest seems 
 to be Arundel 152 in the British Museum. It is now much 
 burnt, but when complete was partly copied into Harl. 7047. 
 There is a passage that shows the genealogy of all the MSS. 
 In mentioning the death of Fisher. Arundel 152 (f. 77 b.) 
 says : " In the year of our Redemption 1535, and the 27th 
 year of King Henry VIII. , after he had lived full threescore 
 and sixteen years, and of that had most worthily governed 
 the See of Rochester the space of thirty years nine months and 
 odd days ". The words printed in italics are absent from all 
 other MSS., while the words " nine months and odd days," 
 which belong to the omitted clause are retained ; and thus 
 come to be added to the 76 years. Thus Harl. 6896, which 
 is one of the earliest copies, has, " after he had lived full 
 threescore and sixteen years nine months and odd days ". 
 The 76 years here correspond with the date assigned to 
 Fisher's birth, viz. : 1459, and to the death, viz. : 1535 ; but 
 since he died in June, if nine months were added to the 76 
 years, his birth should have been placed in 1458. Evidently 
 then the first copyist omitted a line by mistake, and all 
 other copies have been made directly or indirectly from the 
 first defective copy. 
 
 Another indication shows that Arundel 152 is either the 
 author's autograph or represents his first completed version. 
 At f. 14 Heath is mentioned as " now chancellor ". Heath
 
 APPENDIX. 451 
 
 resigned the great seal at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. 
 This then had been written in the time of Mary. At a later 
 date the author, or some other reviser, struck out the word 
 " now," and wrote over it " after," i.e., he was Chancellor 
 after the event referred to. Again the composer of the 
 first version, after relating that a copy of Fisher's Statutes 
 of St. John's College was preserved by Dr. Watson, after- 
 wards Bishop of Lincoln, and that they were by him enforced 
 when Master of St. John's, added, "which now stand in 
 force at this day" (f. 58). This could only have been written 
 in Queen Mary's time. Subsequently these words were 
 struck through, and the following inserted : " which stood 
 in force until wickedness again got the upper hand". 
 
 Another passage indicates both the time of composition, 
 and some of the sources from which the narrative was de- 
 rived : " It was once told me by a Rev. Father that was 
 Dean of Rochester many years together, named Mr. Philips, 
 that on a time in the days of King Edward VI., when certain 
 commissioners were coming toward him to search his house 
 for books, he, for fear, burnt a large volume which this holy 
 bishop had compiled, containing in it the whole story and 
 matter of the Divorce, which volume he gave him with his 
 own hand a little before his trouble. For the loss whereof 
 the dean would many times after lament, and wish the book 
 whole again, upon condition that he had not one groat to 
 live on. Many other of his works were consumed by the 
 iniquity of heretics, which shortly after his death swarmed 
 thick in every place, and grew into great authority, doing 
 thereby what themselves liked. And as it has been reported 
 by a good old priest, called Mr. Buddell, who in his youth 
 wrote many of his books for him, there came to him on a 
 certain time, in the aforesaid King Edward's day, a minister, 
 by authority of him that then occupied the See of Rochester, 
 and took from him as many written books and papers of 
 this holy man's labours and travail as loaded a horse ; and
 
 452 APPENDIX. 
 
 carrying them to his master they were all afterwards burnt, 
 as he heard say, by the master-minister and the man. This 
 Mr. Buddell was then parson of Cookston in Kent, not far 
 from Rochester, where he yet liveth, a very old man, and 
 declareth many notable things of the austere life and virtue 
 of the holy man." * 
 
 Now Philips had been the last prior of the Cathedral 
 Church of Rochester. At the suppression under Henry he 
 took the schismatical oath, and was made the first dean in 
 the secular foundation ; this place he retained under Edward, 
 Mary, and Elizabeth, and died on the 23rd Nov. i57o.t 
 
 John Buddell or Bottyll, as he was called on his epitaph, 
 rector of Cuxton, died in 1568.+ These two men, though 
 time-servers, were in heart Catholics, and no doubt com- 
 municated their reminiscences of the holy martyr to his 
 biographer in the time of Mary. He would hardly have 
 mentioned them so honourably after their second relapse 
 into schism. 
 
 In another place the writer says : " I have divers times 
 heard (Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester) sometimes in the 
 pulpit openly, and sometimes in talk at dinner, among the 
 lords of the council, and sometimes in other places, very 
 earnestly accuse himself of his behaviour and doings at that 
 time " (i.e. in the days of Henry.). 
 
 Who then is this writer, old enough, and high enough in 
 position to have dined with the lords of the council in the 
 days of Mary, when Gardiner was Chancellor ? No MS., I 
 
 * The last two lines are now consumed in Arundel f. 82, but were 
 copied before the fire in Harl. 7047, f. 10. 
 
 f His epitaph was formerly in the nave : Gualterus Philips novissi- 
 mus prior et primus decanus, obiit, 23 Nov., 1570, aetatis 70, decanatus 
 30. (Archczol Cantiana, xi. 9). 
 
 J Bevan's Handbook of Kent, p. 57. The brass is still in the keeping 
 of the Anglican rector. 
 
 Arundel 152, f. 64.
 
 APPENDIX. 453 
 
 believe, bears the name of any author. Some things, how- 
 ever, will be clear to any one who reads the original care- 
 fully. First, the author had never been a Protestant, i.e., a 
 follower of Luther or Calvin. Secondly, he was a Cam- 
 bridge man, and almost certainly a member of either Christ's 
 or St. John's College. The life is generally attributed to 
 Dr. Richard Hall, and it will be necessary to say something 
 regarding him. Lord Acton thus writes in the Quarterly 
 Review : " Richard Hall, a man who seems to have given 
 proof of sincerity, as he was a Protestant under Mary and a 
 Catholic under Elizabeth, wrote a life of Fisher about the 
 year 1580," and he recommends the collation of the various 
 MSS. of this Life.* Now certainly the English Life in 
 question was first written in the time of Queen Mary, and 
 its writer was a staunch Catholic. What authority had Lord 
 Acton for the date 1580? And what for the assertion that 
 Hall had been a Protestant ? I am unable to answer the first 
 question, but I notice that Pits, the literary historian, declares 
 that he made Hall's acquaintance at Douai in 1580, and Pits 
 also attributes to him a Life of Fisher in English, which he saw 
 (though not in 1580) at the Anglo-Benedictine Monastery 
 of Dieulward in Flanders. t But Pits does not say when 
 this life was composed, nor that Hall had ever been a 
 Protestant. Lord Acton seems to have drawn this from a 
 note by the learned and generally accurate Baker, prefixed 
 to a Latin Life of Fisher, in Harleian MS., 7030 p. 8. 
 Baker quotes a writer named Wren, who had compiled 
 some notices of the Fellows of Pembroke College, Cam- 
 bridge, to which College Hall had migrated from Christ's. 
 Temporibus Marianis religionem Protestantium probe coluit, 
 sed post tamen ad Pontificios defecit, ediditque libellos de 
 schismate et de erronea conscientia. If this were true we 
 
 * Quarterly Review, January 1877, p. 47. 
 
 t J. Pitsei Relatio Historica de Rebus Anglicis, p. 802. (Ed. Paris, 
 1619.)
 
 454 APPENDIX. 
 
 should have to seek some other author for this English Life. 
 But the assertion is clearly a mistake. Had Hall been a 
 Protestant, how could he have retained his Fellowship at 
 Pembroke after the weeding out of Protestants that took 
 place at the visitation of the University in 1554 ? And why 
 should he have resigned his fellowship on July i5th, 1560, 
 except that he was a Catholic, and could not accept the 
 oath of supremacy ? There is nothing in Hall's other works 
 so far as I can discover, to indicate that he was ever a Pro- 
 testant, while the Life of Fisher, which is certainly not the 
 work of a convert, was attributed to Hall, not only by Pits, 
 but by another writer, who in 1620 published a book called 
 "The Theatre of the Catholic and the Protestant reli- 
 gions ".* 
 
 In 1579 Richard Hall published in Latin Fisher's treatise 
 on Prayer. Though this is no proof that he had written the 
 life of its author, it shows the interest he took in him. 
 Again, Hall had been educated in Christ's College, Cam- 
 bridge, founded by Fisher's influence and energy, and in 
 that place would learn to venerate his memory. 
 
 Since then everything is in harmony with Dr. Hall's 
 authorship, and there is no other claimant, he may remain 
 in possession. In an early year of Elizabeth's reign he had 
 retired to the Continent. He went first to Flanders, then 
 to Rome, where he completed his theological studies, and 
 took the degree of Doctor in Theology. Returning to 
 Flanders, he taught theology at Douai in the College of 
 Marchiennes, and in 1576 went to reside with Dr. Allen at 
 the English Seminary, where he lectured for many years on 
 
 * In a marginal note at p. 557. From the fact that this note is in 
 Latin, sc. In ejus vita (viz. J. Fisher), Baker has conjectured that the 
 author may allude to the Latin Life Harl. 7030 but I will show 
 presently that that Latin Life was not in existence in 1620. The 
 book called " The Theatre," etc., was written by J. C., supposed by 
 Baker to stand for Joseph Creswell.
 
 APPENDIX. 455 
 
 Holy Scripture. He is always mentioned in the Douai 
 Diaries with the deepest respect.* Pits tells us that he 
 frequently heard him lecture in Latin, and preach both in 
 French and English. He mentions his great piety, charity, 
 and kindness, and the universal esteem in which he was 
 held. Later he became canon and official in the Cathedral 
 of St. Omer, where he died in 1604. 
 
 I have no doubt that Dr. Hall not only gathered his 
 materials during Mary's lifetime, but had finished the Life 
 before the accession of Elizabeth. No allusion whatever to 
 that Queen occurs anywhere, and the mention of the relapse 
 of the country into schism is, as I have shown, a later cor- 
 rection. Among the authors quoted in praise of Fisher the 
 latest is Stanislas Hosius, and he wrote during Mary's reign. 
 How Hall's Life and his collection of materials got into the 
 hands of the Earl of Arundel is not known. At p. 255 b., 
 which is a blank page in the midst of Hall's first rough 
 sketch, are written the following words in another hand : 
 " Anno Domini, 1604. Item, my master reckoned with the 
 brewer's clerk the 24th day of March, and he paid him for 
 20 barrels of beer which came to 3/. . . ." This was the 
 very year of Hall's death, and I conjecture that the servant 
 who scribbled this note had got possession of the papers, 
 and may have afterwards sold them. 
 
 There are several copies of this Life of Fisher in the 
 British Museum, all of which I have examined. There is 
 also an excellent MS. in the possession of the Jesuit Fathers 
 at Stonyhurst. By their kind permission a copy has been 
 made, of which I have had the use, and from which I quote. 
 The MSS. are however almost identical. I shall notice in 
 this appendix the few points of difference. 
 
 In addition to the evidence of the time and sources of 
 
 * " Vir ornatissimus, vir eximius, eruditus," etc. Some of the 
 references in the Index of the Douai Diaries lately published, refer to 
 another, a much younger man.
 
 45 6 APPENDIX. 
 
 composition contained in the Life, there is a mass of materials 
 for a biography of Fisher in the volume already mentioned 
 of the Arundel collection ; and an examination of these shows 
 that they have been worked up into the English life. In 
 the first place, from p. 248-276, there is a first rough sketch 
 of the Life, a mere scrawl, with many blanks left to fill up 
 names and dates. Then in several handwritings are answers 
 to questions, and episodes of Fisher's life, supplied by cor- 
 respondents, together with extracts from MSS. Sometimes 
 there are marginal notes, questioning the accuracy of certain 
 details, or indicating that additional information would be 
 needed. 
 
 One writer says : " Of his notable acts I have no know- 
 ledge, for I was but a young scholar of St. John's College 
 when he died. You may ask Mr. Langdale your neighbour 
 what he can remember of him and old Mr. Roper. I know 
 no more that can say anything."* This must have been 
 written in the time of Mary, when Alban Langdale was 
 Archdeacon of Chichester. 
 
 Another writer, resident in Cambridge, has been asked to 
 make researches in the registers regarding several sufferers 
 for the faith. He writes as follows : " After my humble 
 commendations, for answer unto your letter dated London 
 Dec. 8, may it please you to understand that the sermons 
 mentioned in the former letters be the very same that you 
 write of. As touching my late Lord of Canterbury's books 
 sent unto Benet College, truth it is that there came down 
 somewhat after Michaelmas, as I take it, certain vessels with 
 books, which yet remain unbroken up at the carrier's. But 
 what is the cause I know not. As touching your schedule 
 that was enclosed, you have imposed upon me one of Her- 
 cules' labours." Then follows information regarding the 
 Academic degrees of many persons, among others " Item, 
 
 * Fol. 284 b., also copied in Harl. 7047, f. 16. I have a conjecture 
 that this correspondent was Watson, Bishop of Lincoln.
 
 APPENDIX. 457 
 
 one Greenwood, Doctor in Divinity, 1532, and he was of 
 St. John's College, whom I knew". (This is the martyred 
 Carthusian.) The signature to this letter has been most 
 carefully obliterated.* If the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 mentioned is Cranmer, the date of the letter will be the end 
 of 1554. If however it is Parker, as seems more probable 
 from the mention of Benet College, the writer must have 
 been a friend of Hall's corresponding with him at a much 
 later date. Another writer says : " If you will have this 
 more plainly and largely, with the manner of the execution 
 and the death, send word hereafter unto these parts and 
 you shall have better instructions of them ".+ All this proves 
 that the writer of Fisher's Life had both the desire to obtain 
 full and accurate information and the means of obtaining it. 
 I shall note in this appendix the sources of the more im- 
 portant parts of Hall's narrative as far as they can be dis- 
 covered from this MS. collection. 
 
 By far the most important of these documents is a long 
 extract of several chapters from some complete work, the 
 writer of which declares himself to have been present at the 
 death of the holy martyr. Hall's account of the martyrdom 
 is almost a transcript of this ; and although it bore such 
 intrinsic marks of authenticity as to have merited general 
 approbation and confidence, yet it becomes far more inter- 
 esting when we know that it is the description of an eye- 
 witness. Who was this witness ? I feel confident it was 
 Mr. Justice Rastall, the nephew of Blessed Thomas More. 
 My reasons for this conclusion are the following : i. Rastall 
 is known to have written a life of More. It is mentioned 
 by both Sander and Pits. Burnet, in his usual impertinent 
 manner, has placed this among the false statements of 
 Sander, saying that no such life was ever heard of. Yet in 
 Arundel 152, f. 246 (copied in Harl. 7047, p. u) are four 
 
 * Fol. 286. t Harl. f. 19, b.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 pages called " Notes from the Life of More by Mr. Justice 
 Rastall ". Now these notes are evidently gathered from the 
 longer Fragment of a complete work in the same volume. 
 2. In his first draught Dr. Hall placed a marginal note (f. 
 261) "Vide vitam (?) Thomae Mori for the names of the com- 
 missioners ". In his finished life he gives the names of the 
 commissioners and those of the jury. Both are found in 
 this Fragment. It would seem then that he got it 
 transcribed from RastalPs Life of More. 3. The Fragment 
 is not from a Life of Fisher. The account of Fisher's trial, 
 death and burial, though very minute, is but an episode, for 
 after the death follows a chapter on the " Bishop's Life, 
 Qualities, Virtues and Learning," at the beginning of which 
 the writer says, " for lack of learning I cannot, as I gladly 
 would if I could, declare unto you the whole trade of the 
 life of the Blessed Bishop, the only lanthern of light to all the 
 Bishops of England, of whom not one followed him, yet I 
 shall show you somewhat I have heard and know ". This 
 is a chapter in the third book of the whole work. In the 
 account of Fisher's burial he promises to speak of that of 
 More " in the 7 7th chapter of this third book ". In one place 
 after naming Henry VII., he says, " father to the King 
 Henry VIII. of whom this story treateth". This implies 
 not indeed a history of Henry nor of his reign, but of some 
 events or persons which required frequent mention of Henry. 
 This would of course well apply to a life of More. 4. 
 Lastly there is every probability that Rastall would have 
 been present at the deaths both of Fisher and of More. 
 
 Though these are but probabilities, yet as there is no other 
 work or author to whom we can assign this important frag- 
 ment, I shall venture in quoting it in this Appendix to call 
 it Rastall's Fragment, and so distinguish it from the Notes 
 from Rastall that bear his name.
 
 SOME LATIN MS. LIVES. 
 
 I have examined also three Latin Lives in MS. One 
 was lent to me by the Rev. John Morris, SJ. It proved to 
 be merely a greatly abridged translation of Hall. A second 
 is in the Harleian Volume, 7030. This copy was made from 
 a MS. of Sir Roger Gale. The copyist thinks it the original 
 from which Dr. Hall drew. Anthony a Wood also refers to 
 it as an older life than Hall's. But they are both mistaken, 
 as I have assured myself by a careful collation. The Latin 
 is an amplified translation of the English. It was written in 
 Paris by an Englishman. At f. 53 he says : In hac inclyta 
 Parisiensi Academia. The writer, therefore, gives develop- 
 ments and explanations wherever English terms or Academic 
 or Parliamentary usages are referred to. He intends his 
 book for readers on the Continent. That Hall's English 
 Life is the original, and not the Latin, is clear from this, that 
 where Hall speaks of personal knowledge the Latin phrase 
 is changed. Hall writes, " N. told me. The Latin writer, 
 "N. saepe narrare solebat".* 
 
 The Latin has also the mistaken calculation about Fisher's 
 age, arising (as I have explained above) from the omission of 
 a line by the first copyist, f The date of the Latin para- 
 
 * Harl. , 7030, p. 42. 
 
 t Hoc factum contigit die martis Junii, 27, anno Reg. Hen. viii. 27. 
 S. Albano Angliae Protomartyri sacro, postquam septuaginta annos, 
 novem menses et octodecim dies decursu laborum pariter et honorum 
 curriculo feliciter compleverat, p. 191. Probably the original English 
 had 76 in numerals, which the translator mistook for 70. He has 
 placed Fisher's birth in 1459, so that 70 would be in contradiction with 
 himself. He also mistook odd for 18.
 
 460 APPENDIX. 
 
 phrase may be ascertained by a passage that I will here trans- 
 late, both because it is worth making known on its own 
 account and because it will give a specimen of the writer's 
 amplification. Hall then wrote in English as follows : 
 " In our time we may remember that famous learned father 
 Mr. Richard Raynoldes, Doctor of Divinity, a monk pro- 
 fessed in Sion, of the rule of St. Bridget, and Mr. William 
 Exmewe, a Carthusian professed in London, both which 
 came out of Christ's College, and suffered martyrdom in the 
 time of the late King Henry VIII. From that place sprang 
 also that most reverend and grave doctor, Mr. Nicholas Heath, 
 Archbishop of York, and after* Chancellor of England, and 
 Mr. Cuthbert Scott, Bishop of Chester. Likewise out of 
 the College of St. John came that famous martyr Doctor 
 Greenwood, who suffered death under King Henry for the 
 Supremacy. And of bishops came Mr. George Day, Bishop 
 of Chichester ; Mr. Ralph Bayne, Bishop of Lichfield ; Mr. 
 Thomas Watson, Bishop of Lincoln ; Mr. John Christo- 
 pherson, another Bishop of Chichester, and Mr. Thomas 
 Bourcher, Bishop elect of Gloucester,t and before that 
 Abbot of Leicester ; all right grave divines," etc. 
 
 This passage the Latin writer gives as follows : " From 
 Christ's College came two martyrs, Richard Reynolds, 
 learned both in Greek and Hebrew, a professed Bridgetine 
 religious in the monastery of Sion, who won the crown of 
 martyrdom under Henry VIII., and William Exmewe, M.A., 
 a professed Carthusian in the London monastery. In the 
 same college was brought up the Bishop of Chester, Cuthbert 
 Scott, who, being in Louvain when that sacred war was begin- 
 ning, which was so happily carried on by Dr. Harding and 
 others, gave no little assistance both by his authority and his 
 money. There also was educated Nicholas Heath, a man of 
 
 * The Arundel MS., f. 14, has " now," which is struck through and 
 " after " written over it. 
 
 t His election was only a few weeks before Mary's death.
 
 APPENDIX. 461 
 
 prudence and moderation, who exercised at the same time 
 the offices of Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor. 
 The College of St. John counts Dr. Greenwood, a Carthusian 
 monk, who, with others of his order, endured martyrdom 
 under Henry VIII. in the question of royal supremacy,* Dr. 
 Day, Bishop of Chichester ; Ralph Bayne, who was Regius 
 Professor of Hebrew in the illustrious University of Paris, 
 and afterwards Bishop of Lichfield ; Thomas Watson, an 
 excellent theologian and Bishop of Lincoln ; Dr. John 
 Christopherson, Bishop of Chichester, who is famed for his 
 Ecclesiastical History ;t Thomas Boucher, Abbot of Leicester 
 and afterwards Bishop elect of Gloucester. 
 
 " Let me add to these another, though of less dignity, the 
 brilliant (acutissimum) John Wright, who, after being im- 
 prisoned for seven years in the Castle of Hull, and being 
 victorious in many a dispute with the most learned heretics 
 of those parts, at last was banished, and being made Dean of 
 Courtrai in Flanders, slept in the Lord at a good old age. 
 ... I might mention many more, but I place my finger on 
 my lips, since some are now enjoying the presence of God, 
 for whom they always lived ; others are still labouring 
 secretly in the harvest. Et bene vixit bene qui latuit, sed in 
 tempore erit respectus illorum." The date of Wright's exile 
 was 1585, and, according to Dodd, he died Dean of 
 Courtrai about 16224 Thus then this Latin Life was not 
 
 * Collegium D. Joannis suos agnoscit D. Doctorem Greenwoodum 
 ordinis Carthusian! monachum, qui in causa primatus regii, cum 
 reliquis sui ordinis, sub Henrico 8vo, martyrium subiit (fol. 53). 
 There was also a lay brother named Greenwood among the martyrs. 
 Dr. Greenwood, the priest, seems to have been more generally called 
 Green. 
 
 t Cujus laus est in historia ecclesiastica. I think this refers to his 
 translation of Eusebius, not to his own future fame. 
 
 There were two Wrights, John and Thomas. According to 
 Dodd it was Thomas who was exiled in 1585 and became Dean of 
 Courtrai. But this does not affect the argument.
 
 462 APPENDIX. 
 
 written till after the date at which both Pits (1619) and J. 
 C. (1620) had published their books alluding to a Life of 
 Fisher by Dr. Hall, and about 20 years at least after Hall's 
 death. The English, therefore, is the original and the Latin 
 a translation. 
 
 A third Latin Life is to be found in the same vol. of the 
 Arundel Collection 152. It is of considerable length, ex- 
 tending from f. 91 to f. 244. Unfortunately it has been in 
 the fire and by far the greater number of its leaves are 
 mere fragments, many of them very small, and others, 
 though larger, almost entirely illegible. It had been written 
 out by one hand, with large spaces between the lines, and 
 had been then subjected to revision, many lines being 
 cancelled and pages or half pages rewritten. The reviser, 
 however, may have been the original composer, for there is 
 intrinsic evidence that the first hand is that of a copyist. 
 
 This Life seems to have been composed in the time of 
 Mary. Deploring the results of Henry's usurpation of the 
 supremacy, the writer says, at f. 222, "We have seen a 
 destruction so vast and grievous that the pious have little 
 hope that it can be repaired even by Queen Mary, strong 
 though she is in Catholic faith, munificent in alms for sacred 
 purposes, and most intent on restitution. I have not dis- 
 covered any indications by which to identify the writer. It 
 is certainly not a translation of Hall, nor is Hall's Life a 
 translation of this work. There are even curious dis- 
 crepancies, though not precisely contradictions. Thus the 
 Latin writer has not a word of Rich's evidence at the trial, 
 nor, consequently, of Fisher's reply to him, which is so 
 prominent a feature in Hall's description. On the other 
 hand, he puts a long speech into Fisher's mouth against the 
 supremacy, supposed to be uttered before the verdict of the 
 jury. There is nothing resembling this in Hall. Again, 
 the Latin writer makes the blessed Cardinal, when carried 
 off towards the scaffold, quote a passage from Horace. This
 
 APPENDIX. 463 
 
 incident, which shall be given presently, is so curious that I 
 am surprised to find no allusion to it in Hall. On the other 
 hand, if Hall had not seen this Life, the two writers must have 
 worked on the same materials. Both writers give reasons 
 for Fisher's preference for the North of England, and speak 
 of the eminent champions of the Catholic faith produced by 
 the two colleges of Lady Margaret's foundation, and mention 
 the same names in the same order.* Both writers speak of 
 a third college the holy Bishop had contemplated, to be 
 founded entirely at his own expense.f Both writers 
 enumerate the same eulogists of Fisher, Paul Jovius, Alfonso 
 de Castro, and compare him with the same eminent men, 
 St. John of Beverley, St. Justin of Rochester, the early 
 Roman martyrs, St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist. 
 Both writers, too, after describing the martyrdom give a 
 similar description of the personal appearance of Fisher. 
 Such coincidence cannot be accidental. Either one copies 
 the other, or both use a third document. I shall note in this 
 Appendix in what points Hall's Life is corroborated by this 
 author, and what the latter adds, so far as can now be 
 ascertained from the burnt MS. 
 
 There is another Latin life which I have not seen. It is 
 a translation of the English life which I call Hall's. I am 
 assured by the Rev. Father Von Ortroy that the English is 
 the original. 
 
 (At page 6.) 
 FISHER'S AGE. 
 
 I find that the Rev. W. G. Searle, in his History of 
 Queens' College (1867) p. 132, has anticipated my argu- 
 ments, and comes to the same conclusion with myself, that 
 
 * In the Latin Life at f. 151. Though much is illegible, the names 
 are easily recognised. 
 
 t In the Latin, f. 152, in the second writing.
 
 464 APPENDIX. 
 
 Fisher was born about 1469. The ancient writers had no 
 documentary evidence regarding his age, and cannot be looked 
 on as authorities. Hall's first rough draft of a Life (Arundel 
 152, f. 248) begins: "This blessed man John fyssher was 
 
 born in the year of our Lord God ". A blank is left to be 
 
 filled up after more inquiry, and the word in is struck through 
 and about written over it. In the same draft the writer 
 
 says that Fisher was consecrated in 1506, " in the year 
 
 of his age ". The year of consecration is incorrect, and the 
 year of birth was quite unknown. Among the questions 
 addressed by Hall to various correspondents, which, together 
 with the answers, are contained in the same vol. 152, is 
 one addressed to a Cambridge friend regarding Fisher's 
 place and time of birth. He answers as regards place, but 
 declares his ignorance as to the date, adding that it could 
 not have been "much before St. Alban's field " (i.e. 1461). 
 In the notes from Rastall's Life of More (Arundel 152) it 
 is said that at his death the bishop was " about the age of 
 70 years ". Over the numerals 70 another hand has written 
 74. This number 74 is a correction derived from the longer 
 Fragment from Rastall. We do not know what authority 
 Rastall had for this statement. Mr. Mullinger in his Life of 
 Fisher in the National Biographical Dictionary, published 
 since my first edition, says that the portraits by Holbein are 
 marked " aetat. 74 ''. No such inscription is on either of 
 the crayons by Holbein ; I suppose, therefore, that Mr. Mul- 
 linger alludes to the two old paintings possessed by St. 
 John's College. But these are certainly not by Holbein, 
 and bear no resemblance to his authentic sketches. No 
 doubt the painter who put this inscription intended it to 
 refer to Fisher's age at his death, and took this from Rastall 
 or a similar tradition. 
 
 The earliest copy of Hall's completed Life in this same 
 volume of Arundel MS. is defective at the beginning, but 
 in relating the martyr's death says, that at his death he was
 
 APPENDIX. 465 
 
 aged 76 years. This would place his birth in 1459. I 
 have explained, in my account of the various MSS., the 
 origin of the error of the copyists who say : " he was aged 
 76 years, 9 months and odd days," as if some precise infor- 
 mation had been attained. The Latin translation of Hall 
 (Harleian 7030) has changed 76 into 70, and made other 
 slips. The half-burnt Latin life, in Arundel 152, says he 
 was about 77 at his death. 
 
 I therefore adhere to the opinion that he was born about 
 1469, and was about 65 at his death, though from austerity, 
 sickness and sufferings he looked much older. 
 
 (At page 7.) 
 His FAMILY. 
 
 The Cambridge writer " who was but a young scholar of 
 St. John's College when he (Fisher) died," says : " His 
 mother married a certain White, and had 3 sons and a 
 daughter John White, merchant of the staple who dwelt 
 in Beverly in the Merchant Row in St. Mary's parish, 
 Thomas who dwelt in Lynn, a merchant also, and Richard 
 White, priest, B.D. and vicar of Bugden in Huntingdon- 
 shire, imprisoned in the time of Henry VIII. by Goderich, 
 Bishop of Ely, for religion. Also a nun, who was so like 
 the said Bishop of Rochester in person, that Queen Mary 
 knew her. His brother,' Robert Fisher was not married." * 
 
 The name of Agnes Fisher's second husband was White 
 not Wright as I gave it in my first edition, having been misled 
 by Lewis. The Stonyhurst MS. has Wight; Harl. 6896, 
 Weight; Harl. 6382, Wight; the Latin translation (Harl. 
 9030), Whitus. Baker's transcript of the Arundel has also 
 White. 
 
 Sanders in a report made to Cardinal Morone in 1560 
 tells the interesting fact that Elizabeth White, the Domini- 
 
 * Arundel 152, f. 281 ; Harl. 7047, f. 14. 
 2
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 can nun of Dartford survived her brother many years. She 
 rejoined her sisters when a nunnery was established by 
 Queen Mary, and at its suppression by Queen Elizabeth 
 was allowed to cross the sea to Flanders.* 
 
 (At page 8.) 
 His FATHER'S WILL. 
 
 Lewis in his copy of Robert Fisher's will puts the date 
 1470, though he elsewhere says that he died in 1477. But 
 Baker has a copy of the will, Harl. 7030, p. 4. In this the 
 will is written "on 3oth June, 1477". As I had put John's 
 birth in 1469, I was obliged to consider him the youngest 
 of Robert's children. But if his father really died in 1477, 
 John may have been the eldest of the four. Baker's copy 
 begins " 30 die mensis Junii anno 1477," yet at the end 
 says " pro bat. fuit praesens Test. 26 die mensis Junii anno 
 D. supra dicto," perhaps this last date should be Julii. 
 
 (At page 15.) 
 HOLBEIN'S SKETCHES. 
 
 During the Tudor Exhibition, in the early months of 
 1890, the authorities of the British Museum exposed in the 
 King's Library Holbein's sketch of Fisher, which is in their 
 collection ; at the same time that the Windsor sketch was 
 on view in the New Gallery in Regent Street. These 
 sketches resemble each other closely ; that in the Museum 
 collection is perhaps more finished and pleasing. The 
 Windsor drawing is well reproduced in my frontispiece, 
 but instead of the uniform reddish tint, the ground is gray, 
 the outline of the face in crayon, and a slight red tint has 
 
 * Vatican MS. See also Life of Cardinal Howard, by Rev. R. 
 Palmer, O. P., p. 70. Seven of the old community of Dartford sur- 
 vived and were reunited, first at King's Langley, in Hertfordshire, 
 afterwards at Dartford. Father Palmer gives their subsequent history.
 
 APPENDIX. 467 
 
 been washed on the lips and inside of the eyelids. The 
 dress is merely indicated by a few hasty lines, with more 
 resemblance to a muffler or shawl than any ecclesiastical 
 dress. In the Museum drawing the ground is of a pinkish 
 or flesh tint. 
 
 Horace Walpole gives the history of the Windsor collec- 
 tion. At Holbein's death his sketches were sold in France; 
 those of Henry's court were purchased and presented to 
 Charles I. by M. de Liencourt. Charles exchanged them 
 with the Earl of Pembroke for a Raphael. Lord Pembroke 
 gave them to the Earl of Arundel. How they came again 
 into the royal collection is not known. In fact they were 
 lost for a time till rediscovered by Queen Caroline. They 
 were engraved by Francis Bartholozzi, and published by 
 John Chamberlaine in 1800, with biographical sketches by 
 Lodge; and again reproduced in 1884 by Hamilton, 
 Adams & Co. But this collection is not faithful to the 
 original. A splendid set of Autotypes have been published 
 by Braun. 
 
 (At page 21.) 
 PREACHERSHIPS. 
 
 In the dedication of Ecclesiastes sive Concionator Evan- 
 gelicus to Christopher Stadius, Bishop of Augsburgh, 
 Erasmus writes as follows : 
 
 "These materials for a work, for so I would rather. call 
 them than a work, I had not indeed promised, but in my 
 own mind I had almost destined them for John Fisher, the 
 Bishop of Rochester, a man of singular piety and erudition, 
 with whom I had a very long and close friendship. For it 
 was he, principally, who by his letters urged me to under- 
 take this labour, saying that in the celebrated University of 
 Cambridge, of which he was Chancellor for life, he was 
 founding three colleges, whence might issue theologians not
 
 468 APPENDIX. 
 
 armed for battles of words, but well furnished for preaching 
 the word of God soberly.* 
 
 " He himself had a singular gift of preaching, and on this 
 account was very dear to the paternal grandmother of the 
 present king. God had put into her mind a thought above 
 her sex. While other princely ladies bestow rich revenues 
 on the foundation of monasteries, rather (I fear) from vain- 
 glory than piety, she on the contrary, while in life and 
 health, gave all her care to that which is most holy, seeking 
 no popular applause, but proceeding almost by stealth. 
 In many places she endowed, with very liberal salaries, 
 preachers fit to announce to the people the philosophy of 
 the Gospel, and to the same end gave over to the Bishop 
 of Rochester a very large sum of money, which he, with the 
 greatest integrity, spent either in the education of preachers 
 or the relief of the poor, not only deducting nothing for 
 himself, but adding more from his own." t 
 
 (At page 26.) 
 ZEAL FOR THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 The following letters not only illustrate the friendship of 
 Fisher and More, but show their zeal for learning : 
 
 Fisher to More : " Sit per te, quaeso, nobis Cantabrigien- 
 sibus apud regem florentissirrium aliqua spes, ut nostra 
 juventus itidem beneficiis tanti principis ad bonas literas 
 
 * Erasmus mentions three colleges ; as a long resident at Cam- 
 bridge and friend of Fisher, he knew Christ's and St. John's which 
 is the third ? Some have supposed that he was contemplating a new 
 foundation at his own cost ; others that Erasmus alludes to a college 
 of preachers throughout England and Ireland. In a letter to 
 Fonseca, Archbishop of Toledo, Erasmus speaks of Fisher having, at 
 great expense, instituted three colleges. 
 
 t Here Erasmus is mistaken ; the money was left to the Bishop to 
 use entirely as he liked, and he had no obligation to spend it as he 
 did. See, p. 33, his own words on this subject.
 
 APPENDIX. 469 
 
 excitetur. Pancos in aula fau tores habemus, qui rem 
 nostram et velint et possint regiae celsitudini commendare ; 
 inter quos et te praecipuum numeramus, qui semper ante- 
 hac, et quum inferioris ordinis esses, nobis favisti plurimum. 
 Nunc ergo in equestrem sublimatus dignitatem, et regi tarn 
 intimus effectus (de quo sane et tibi vehementer gratulamur 
 et nobis exultamus) ostendas quantum faveas. Juva juve- 
 nem istum, qui et theologise studiosus est, et assiduus apud 
 populum declamator. Sperat enim et te tanta apud illus- 
 trissimum regem auctoritate pollere, ut possis, et meam tibi 
 commendationem adeo acceptam ut velis." 
 
 More to Fisher: "Apud regem si quid possum (certe 
 perparum possum), sed tamen si quid, id tuae paternitati, 
 scholasticisque tuis omnibus (quorum ego tarn egregiis in 
 me affectibus, quam ipsorum ad me testantur literse, per- 
 petuam debeo gratiam) non minus profecto libere quam sua 
 cuique domus patebit. Vale, praesul optime atque huma- 
 nissime, meque, ut soles, complectere." * 
 
 (At page 28.) 
 KING'S COLLEGE CHAPEL. 
 
 I have supposed that the unfinished chapel of King's 
 was used on the feast of St. George in 1505. It may be 
 that the service was held in another chapel, yet my con- 
 jecture has no intrinsic improbability. In Mr. Maxwell 
 Lyte's history of Eton (p. 20), we read that Bekynton was 
 consecrated at Eton in the old church. " After the conclu- 
 sion of the service, attired in his new episcopal robes, he 
 proceeded across the cemetery to the site of the future 
 church, whose walls as yet only rose a few feet from the 
 ground. An altar protected from the weather by a tent or 
 awning, had been erected for the occasion immediately over 
 
 * Apud Stapleton. Vita Mori, cap. 5.
 
 47 APPENDIX. 
 
 the spot where Henry VI. had laid the foundation stone, 
 and there it was that Bekynton celebrated his first mass as 
 bishop." 
 
 Fisher, therefore, would have followed a precedent set 
 him in the sister foundation. There is another royal chapel 
 associated with Fisher's name, viz., St. George's in Windsor 
 castle. He served as crossbearer to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury on Candlemas Day, 1506, when the King of 
 Castile was invested in the order of the garter ; the Bishop 
 of Chichester (Fitzjames) being gospeller, and the Bishop 
 of Norwich (Nyx) epistoler. See Memorials of Henry VIL 
 (Rolls Series), p. 290. 
 
 (At page 65.) 
 EPISCOPAL VIRTUES. 
 
 One of Hall's correspondents writes : " He would always 
 tell his brother, that was steward of his house, that he would 
 have his revenue fully spent every year, so that he were not 
 brought in debt" (Harl. 7047 f. 15). The same writer 
 mentions his standing at the window to see the poor fed (Ib.} 
 Also : " His diet was most spare and he did eat his bread 
 and drink and meat by weight, and kept a precise hour of 
 eating". (/&) Another correspondent, apparently a Carthu- 
 sian, and probably Chauncy, writes : " By watching, abstin- 
 ence, and much study he looked lean, wan and pale. . . ." 
 It hath been said also that when his meat was served in, 
 there was also served in it a dead man's head " (Arundel 152, 
 p. 278.) This seems to refer to the skull on the table. 
 There is here a marginal note written by Hall : " Inquire 
 whether it is true or no," which shows that pains were taken 
 to be accurate even in detail. A third correspondent gives 
 the details of the visiting of the poor and the rest, that Hall 
 has adopted. 
 
 In the rough sketch (Arundel 152, p. 250) there is the
 
 APPENDIX. 471 
 
 same account, with a few verbal differences, of the visitation 
 of the poor, but after saying that the Bishop would sometimes 
 remain three or four hours with the sick preparing them for 
 death, the writer adds : " as his chaplain Mr. Henstowe 
 would report unto me ". 
 
 All this is written out again in another hand, p. 266 b., 
 with the remarks " as some of his servants have told me ". 
 In the rough sketch (p. 256) his austerity was described as 
 follows : " In diet he was so temperate that almost he drank 
 by weight and measure, but his chief sustenance was a kind 
 of thin pottage wherein flesh was boiled, but of flesh he eat 
 very seldom, and that of small quantity. His drink was a 
 kind of ale made for him of purpose, so thin that it differed 
 but little from water. He used in his meals a due hour, 
 which he never altered. And when at his apprehension he 
 was brought from Rochester to London, because the time 
 of his refection was come, he took his dinner upon the top 
 of Shooter's Hill, his servants and others such as had charge 
 of him standing round about him." This last circumstance 
 Hall had learnt from his Cambridge correspondent. 
 
 " His lodging was not very curious [i.e. carefully prepared] 
 for he would sometimes repose himself upon a mat within 
 his gallery standing near to his cathedral church in Roches- 
 ter, out of which he had caused a hole to be made through 
 the wall, where he might hear and see Divine service. He 
 slept never commonly above three hours at a time, as I am 
 credibly informed (p. 256 b.). Rastall says : " Many years 
 before his death never lay he in feather bed, but on a hard 
 mattrass, nor lay in any linen sheets but only in woollen 
 blankets ". 
 
 (At page 65.) 
 INTERDICT AT GRAVESEND. 
 
 As an illustration of the Bishop's assertion of the duty of 
 obedience to the Church's authority, it may be mentioned
 
 47 2 APPENDIX. 
 
 that in 1522 he made his visitation of the parish of St. 
 Mary's, Gravesend ; and because the church bells were not 
 rung at his coming he placed his interdict on the Church. 
 The church wardens asked pardon, and explained that they 
 and the whole parish had been summoned by the king's 
 officers to a meeting concerning the subsidy to be raised for 
 war against the French and Scotch. The bishop raised the 
 interdict, but reminded them that they had been guilty of 
 the same neglect on the last visitation, three years before, 
 and warned them that if such a thing should happen 
 again the rigour of the law regarding interdict for such 
 offence would be enforced. (Thorpe's Register, App. p. 
 261.) 
 
 In 1510 Blessed Fisher consecrated the Chapel of Ease of 
 St. George's at Gravesend, but only for Mass. Pocock's 
 History of Gravesend and Milton.} 
 
 (At page 70.) 
 OFFERS OF PROMOTION. 
 
 Hall says that Fisher was offered at one time the bishopric 
 of Lincoln, at another that of Ely, and refused them. The 
 Latin translation of Hall (Harl. 7030) says that Henry VIII. 
 offered Fisher the bishopric of Lincoln and the archbishopric 
 of York. In his first rough sketch (Arundel 152) Hall had 
 merely written : " He would in no wise exchange that living 
 [of Rochester] when in his time divers greater were offered 
 him". There is certainly nothing but what is most probable 
 in this statement, for Henry at one time was very proud of the 
 Bishop of Rochester. Yet there could hardly have been 
 question of York, since the only vacancy was in July, 1514, 
 at the death of Cardinal Bainbridge, and Wolsey was then 
 the candidate. Perhaps when Wolsey resigned Lincoln for 
 York, the former See may have been offered to Fisher, or 
 again in 1521 at the death of Bishop Atwater. The only
 
 APPENDIX. 473 
 
 vacancy in Ely was in 1515, when it was filled by the ap- 
 pointment of Nicolas West. It does not appear on what 
 authority Hall mentions these Sees. 
 
 (At page 94.) 
 WILLIAM LATIMER. 
 
 LATIMER TO ERASMUS : 
 
 " As to what you write to me so often of the Bishop of 
 Rochester, you prove your own great love for him, and eager 
 desire to promote Greek studies, when you seek to make 
 that literature familiar to the illustrious bishop, who excels 
 in every kind of learning, and under whose protection not 
 only it will be secure against gain say ers and detractors, but 
 become acceptable and admirable to all Britain. For who 
 would dare to oppose what that bishop defends ? Or who 
 will be unwilling to embrace what is known to be pleasing 
 to so great a prelate ? I see that for these reasons you and 
 More desire me to contribute my help, and you consider 
 that I am even bound to do this by love of my country. 
 Now I hope and beg, Erasmus, that you will not think 
 me so obstinate or uncivil, or devoid of all humanity, that 
 after the request of such dear friends I should grudge to 
 undertake the explanation of a little book, or refuse a month's 
 labour, for I owe you more than I could repay in many 
 months. And do not think me so imprudent as to be un- 
 willing by so slight a labour to render service to such a man, 
 or to win the favour of a bishop, who, in addition to his 
 singular learning and sanctity has so much authority and 
 influence, and who is, as you write and many declare, and I 
 readily believe, so grateful. Again, do not esteem me so 
 negligent as to let slip such an occasion of forwarding good 
 letters by his means, and through a little labour conferred 
 on him bringing great honour to my country. I am deterred 
 from accepting your honourable proposal by the considera- 
 tion that I could not in so short a time satisfy the bishop's
 
 474 APPENDIX. 
 
 and your desire ; for it is a many-sided and intricate matter, 
 and though laborious rather than difficult, it requires time 
 even for what has to be committed to memory. Don't 
 think I am measuring the talents of others by my own slow- 
 ness. I have heard from many of the bishop's singular 
 intelligence, and I believe that it is equal to greater efforts 
 than this. You tell me of his wish and ardent desire for 
 these studies, whence I clearly foresee what would be his ap- 
 plication. I therefore allow that he would profit as much as 
 can be hoped from a man endowed with excellent talents, very 
 diligent and very eager. Still I cannot think that the profit 
 would be much in so short a time. You seem to hope for 
 great progress ; I also think that the progress would be great 
 for the time, but in itself only small." 
 
 He then reminds Erasmus what masters Grocyn and 
 Linacre had, and yet spent under them ten whole years or 
 more ; how he himself (Latimer) after six or seven years' 
 study, was still in many points ignorant ; that Tunstall and 
 Pace had studied still longer ; " You know how acute More 
 is, how eager is his intellect, and with what energy he follows 
 out whatever he begins in a word, how like he is to your- 
 self. I will not pursue this subject, for to speak of yourself 
 might seem flattery ; yet neither of you, I think, will say that 
 he got through these rough places so quickly as to be able 
 after a month or two to advance without a guide at his own 
 will, since there are so many windings and bye-roads capable 
 of leading astray even the experienced traveller. There- 
 fore, if you wish that the bishop should really advance and 
 profit in these studies, let him summon some learned teacher 
 from Italy, who may be willing to remain with him for some 
 time, until he feels his footing firm and solid, so that he 
 may not merely crawl, but stand erect and walk. 
 
 "OXFORD, 3oth January, 1518. "* 
 * Inter Epist. Erasmi, Ep. 301 (Leyden).
 
 APPENDIX. 475 
 
 To this Erasmus replied that Italy was far off, and not 
 so fruitful as formerly in learned men ; that there would be 
 danger of bringing over a mere pretender to learning ; that 
 Italians of even moderate talents expect immense sums for 
 migrating to the " Barbarians " ; that well instructed men 
 are not always as virtuous as such a prelate would require ; 
 that time would be wasted in negotiation and travelling, etc. 
 He then urged him again to undertake the work : " For 
 great geniuses, it is often enough to have shown them the 
 way " ; More and he had asked a month, only because they 
 were ashamed to mention three months ; perhaps after that 
 the bishop may find another instructor ; and even if the 
 bishop made no great progress, yet it would be a great 
 stimulus to others to know that such a man was intent on 
 Greek. * 
 
 More writes to Erasmus : " Your letter and mine 
 persuading Latimer to spend a month or two with 
 Rochester, came too late to him, since he had already 
 resolved to go to Oxford, and I could not induce him to 
 defer his journey. You know what immutable laws to 
 themselves are the decrees of these philosophers I think 
 they take pride in their firmness." t 
 
 (At page 162.) 
 BOOKS ON THE MARRIAGE. 
 
 Fisher denies having sent any of his books on the 
 marriage question beyond seas. This seems contrary to 
 the words quoted in the note, p. 164, "the book which he 
 lately wrote and which he sent to your majesty ". The 
 copy of the original of Chapuys' letters is unfortunately 
 not in the Record office ; but there are copies of several 
 
 * Ib. 363- 
 
 t Ib. in App. 87. The date giving Oct. 31, 1516. It should 
 be 1518.
 
 47^ APPENDIX. 
 
 of those written in 1530, 1531, and 1532, in the Archives 
 Royales de Belgique in Brussels, from which a friend has 
 supplied me with transcripts. The passage is as follows : 
 "P Evesque . . a paracheve de reveoir et corriger le livre 
 jadis par lui compose" que nagueres ai envoye a ve majeste ". 
 It is therefore Chapuys, not Fisher, who sent the book. 
 In the same note I have given Mr. Gairdner's translation 
 of some other words of Chapuys : " Some thought he 
 [Fisher] would be annoyed and feared the King's dis- 
 pleasure ; but the King has shown himself quite in- 
 different ". This is an incorrect rendering. It was not 
 the King but the bishop who was indifferent. The French 
 is: "De quoy plusieurs pensoint que le bon evesque, pour 
 craincte du roy, en seroit desplaisant, mais yl ne luy en 
 chault, puisque cela a etc fait sans son sceu. Et si ne luy 
 desplayra que les autres deux qu'yl a depuis faitz soyent 
 imprimes de compagnie, et a cette cause en ay escris a 
 Mssr May, qu'a bon moyen de ce fere. Et du tout serait 
 recquis en avoir plusieurs copies pour les semer par icy, et 
 les publier solempnemant (seulement) si le cas le recqueroit, 
 comme pense sera necessaire au temps du dit parlement. 
 I.e. " At this [circulation of his books in Spain] some 
 thought the good bishop would be displeased, for fear 
 of the King, but he is quite indifferent since it was done 
 without his knowledge," etc. 
 
 There is a letter of iyth Dec., 1531, written from Brussels, 
 by the Emperor to Chapuys, now in the Belgian archives, 
 of which there is no copy either in the Letters and Papers 
 of Mr. Gairdner, or in the Spanish papers of Mr. Gayangos. 
 I will, therefore, copy in the original French the passage 
 which refers to Fisher : " Quant au livre qu'avez envoye 
 touchant 1'affaire de la Royne notre tante, ce nous a este 
 plesir et 1'avons incontinent fait adresser a notre ambassa- 
 deur a Rome . . . Et si venoit a propos et que pussiez 
 rencontrer 1'opportunite vers le bon personnage aucteur du
 
 APPENDIX. 477 
 
 dit livre, lui pourriez dire de notre part, que tenons et 
 reputons a tres-grand et singulier plesir et service la bonne 
 volonte, saincte et tres louable intention et pene qu'il a 
 prins. Comme encore nous veons qu'il continue jour- 
 nellement, au bien, soulestement et deffence de la juste 
 cause de le dite Royne notre tante, et que si n'oublierons 
 jamais de le recognoistre envers luy et les siens, quant 
 1'opportunite s'y offrera ; oultre ce qu'il fait service et 
 oeuvre a Dieu tres-agreable, dont il aura la principale 
 retribution" (Papiers d'etat et de 1'audience, No. 378, page 
 145, alias 51). 
 
 This is no doubt the message alluded to in Chapuys' 
 letter of nth January, 1532, which I have given at p. 218. 
 As so much use is made throughout this volume of the 
 letters of the Imperial Ambassador, the reader may wish to 
 know who he was. The Mayor of Annecy writes to Mr. 
 Gairdner : " M. Eustache de Chappius was born at Annecy 
 in 1499, and died at Louvain the i6th January, 1556. He 
 was official of the bishop Jean Louis de Savoie in 1517, 
 and dean of Vullionex in 1521. He became privy coun- 
 cillor of the Duke of Savoie, whom he served in several em- 
 bassies. The Emperor Charles V., struck by his eloquence, 
 kept him in his service and sent him as ambassador to 
 Francis I. and Henry VIII. By his will of i3th Dec., 
 1551, he founded two colleges, one at Annecy, for lower 
 studies, the other at Louvain for more advanced in law, 
 medicine and theology." 
 
 Chapuys' first letter from London is dated ist Sept., 1529. 
 
 (At pages 177, and 190.) 
 CHALLENGE TO FISHER. 
 
 On 2ist Dec., 1530, Chapuys wrote to the Emperor: 
 " Last Sunday the Archbishop of Canterbury (Warham) 
 invited the Bishop of Rochester to his house, where the
 
 47$ APPENDIX. 
 
 Bishop of London (Stokesley*) and Drs. Lee and Fox 
 were awaiting him. The Archbishop and the others with 
 fair words sought to induce the Bishop of Rochester to re- 
 tract what he had written for Rome and take the King's 
 side; otherwise the Bishop of London and the other doctors 
 were sent there by the King to discuss (disputer) the matter, 
 and convince him by arguments. To this he replied very 
 prudently that there was no need of discussion, the matter 
 being very clear. Besides that, the question could now 
 only be debated before the Pope, who was the right judge. 
 When they saw that they could neither lead him to dispute 
 nor win him to their opinion, they accused him of obstinacy 
 (luy donnarent par la teste de 1'obstine et oppiniatre) and 
 told him that in spite of himself he would have to dispute, 
 since the King was absolutely resolved to have the matter 
 debated by six doctors on his side, as well as six for the 
 Queen; and that two neutral judges, to be appointed by the 
 King, having heard the discussion, would settle the case 
 (diffimvoient le cas). Sire, the discussion is appointed for 
 the 1 2th of January to which time most of the prelates of 
 the kingdom are adjourned." 
 
 I have shown, p. 189, 190, that the intrepid bishop had 
 only just been released from arrest when this snare was laid 
 for him. 
 
 (At page 197.) 
 
 SUPREME HEAD. 
 
 The accounts of the proceedings in the famous Convoca- 
 tion of 1531 regarding the title of Supreme Head differ 
 much. I do not know that any of the three following is in 
 print. 
 
 i. Justice Rastairs Account. An extract from Rastall's 
 Life. 
 
 * Consecrated Nov. 27, 1530.
 
 APPENDIX. 479 
 
 Rastall, in the Notes that bear his name, says that the 
 parliament of 1529 was packed with heretics and the King's 
 servants, and " these, by the King's own drift, made a com- 
 plaint to the King and likewise complained of the clergy 
 and their abuses in the Parliament house". Harl. 7047, p. 
 ii. 
 
 Of Convocation he says : * "The King moved the Con- 
 vocation by his confederates to acknowledge him to be 
 head of the Church, which they denied ; and then the con- 
 federates took upon them to dispute openly on the King's 
 behalf, and by disputation they were confounded, and being 
 but a very few in respect of the rest they perceived they 
 laboured in vain. Wherefore the King sent for diverse of 
 the bishops and the best of the Convocation, and exhorting 
 them to agree to his demand, protesting and swearing that 
 he would not challenge thereby any new authority or spiri- 
 tual jurisdiction, but only the very same that he and his 
 predecessors had already of his regal power, and minded 
 thereby to require no further authority over the spirituality. 
 The King's confederates reported to the Convocation the 
 King's meaning . . . and they affirmed that they were not 
 good and true subjects to the King that would not give their 
 consent to his demand and credit him in his protestation and 
 oath. The Convocation seemed to be resolved with these 
 crafty persuasions; but the good Bishop of Rochester denied 
 to grant it, and required the Convocation to consider well 
 what inconveniences would ensue by the grant of suprem- 
 acy to the King thus absolutely and simpliciter, if the King 
 changed his mind . . . The King's confederates replied how 
 the King had no such meaning as the bishop feared, alleg- 
 ing the royal oath ; and that though it were granted ab- 
 solutely, yet it should and must needs have implied in it the 
 condition quantum per legem Dei licet, which is (quoth 
 
 * I omit only a little of the verbiage.
 
 480 APPENDIX. 
 
 they) that he being a temporal prince cannot by God's law 
 intermeddle as Supreme Head with spiritual jurisdiction, 
 spiritual laws or spiritual matters. The whole Convocation 
 were, by these crafty persuasions and other secret practices, 
 fully persuaded to credit the King herein ; which being per- 
 ceived by the Bishop of Rochester, and being angry with 
 their so sudden and light persuasion, and withal very loth that 
 the grant should pass thus absolutely, and not being able to 
 stay it otherwise: If you will need, quoth he, grant the 
 King this his request, yet, for declaration of your full mean- 
 ing express these conditional words in your grant : Quantum, 
 etc. The King's confederates urged still to have the grant 
 pass absolutely ; but the Convocation answered resolutely 
 that they would not grant the title without these words. 
 Whereof the King by his confederates, being made secretly 
 privy and seeing he could not obtain it otherwise, was of 
 force contented to accept it conditionally." It will be seen 
 that this is identical with the account given by Hall, who 
 has even adopted whole lines from Rastall, as, ex. qr. 
 those I have put in Italics. 
 
 2. A Second Account is in the (half-burnt) Latin Life of 
 Fisher in the Arundel MS. 152, partly copied Harl. 7047. 
 There is a long account of the Convocation from f. 174-179, 
 but it is so burnt and erased that only a line here and there 
 can be deciphered. It seems to relate endeavours made by 
 the king and his confederates, Stokesly of London, and 
 Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, to gain over and deceive 
 Fisher. Gardiner, however, was not made Bishop until ten 
 months later. The first writer of this MS. (for it has been 
 revised and interpolated by another) had several times 
 mentioned Cantuariensis among the originators of the 
 schism ; but the word has been afterwards struck through. 
 (See 176 a, IT 6 b, 177 b.} This is important, because it 
 shows that the writer was probably under the impression 
 that Cranmer was then archbishop, a mistake made by
 
 APPENDIX. 481 
 
 several, as will be shown presently. He may, however, 
 have meant Warham. In any case the reviser noticed the 
 mistake. Among the words still legible the following are 
 noticeable : regi pro tempore satisfied . . . regis auctori- 
 tati nihil accressere . . . Pontifici summo nihil detractum 
 videri.* These were the pretexts of the king's advocates. 
 Two other matters of interest may be yet clearly read. 
 The writer declares that when the rest had signed their 
 names to the decree or address to the king, Fisher, not 
 content with the condition (protestatione) contained in the 
 document itself, subscribed : Joannes Roffensis quatenus 
 verbo Dei consentit. He adds, as another proof that the 
 title at first was considered tolerable even by men of timid 
 conscience, that when Lockwood, the master of St. John's,t 
 returned from the Convocation to Cambridge, the senior 
 members of the College ran eagerly to meet him, asking 
 him what had been done. He replied, laughingly: "We 
 have given the king a ball to play with ". Regi pilam 
 dedimus qua se oblectet (Harl. 7047, p. 34, b). 
 
 3. Dr. Richard Hillyard's Account. A very different 
 history is related by Dr. Richard Hillyard. The passage 
 had been extracted from a history in Latin of his own 
 times, which is not known now to exist. It was in Dr. 
 Hall's collection, though he seems to have attached no 
 value to it. As, however, Hillyard was a contemporary and 
 secretary to Bishop Tunstall of Durham, his statement 
 deserves to be given. The clergy, he says, were unanimous 
 in rejecting Henry's demand of the title of Supreme Head, 
 until they were persuaded to give it, though with a saving 
 clause, by the Bishop of Rochester ! Erat inter regni 
 proceres Episcopus felicissimse memorise, Roffensis, cujus 
 sententise et judicio, turn ob vitas summam integritatem, 
 
 * On fol. 174, b. 
 
 t He should have said "master of Christ's ". 
 3
 
 482 APPENDIX. 
 
 turn ob singularem in sacris litteris eruditionem, plurimum 
 tribuit universus clerus. Hunc, quern pacis et concordise 
 studiosissimum sciebant, Regis factionis callidissimi vulpes, 
 magnis precibus rogabant, ut sua auctoritate, qua plurimum 
 erga alios omnes valeret, clero persuaderet saltern regi velle 
 concedere quod per Dei legem et sacras litteras liceret. 
 Quibus verborum lenociniis pulsus Episcopus, homo fraudis 
 ignarus et pacis cupidus, una cum Episcopo Bath, magnae 
 etiam auctoritatis homine, clerum adeunt, pericula quae ex 
 indignatione regis secutura essent, proponunt, suadent ut 
 ad leniendam ad tempus regis iram, petitionem admitterent, 
 modo petitioni adjungeretur hoc veluti temperamentum : 
 Quantum per Dei legem licet. Optime enim noverat pius 
 et eruditissimus Pontifex nulla nee lege nee exemplo nee 
 ratione licere regi, qui films ecclesiae non dominus, ovis non 
 pastor, laicus non sacerdos erat, ut ecclesisa regimini, quod 
 solis episcopis et sacerdotibus commissum a Spiritu Sancto 
 erat, sibi usurparet. Sed ad placandum ad tempus regis 
 animum, qui quotidianis et importunis meritriculse quam 
 perdite amabat, questibus in odium cleri provocabatur, leni 
 et opportune quodam remedio opus esse putabat . . . 
 Sed bone Deus ! quam sua se fefellerit opinio, et quam hac 
 una in causa ostenderit Deus, simplicitatis amator, omnem 
 omnino abesse debere fucum et fraudem, et solam puram 
 simplicitatem exigi et requiri, quoties Dei agitur negotium. 
 Id quod hujus negotii exitus optime declarabat, de qua ego 
 in sequentibus fusius loquar. 
 
 His rationibus et sua qua in clerum plurimum valebat 
 auctoritate et gratia effecit Episcopus Roffensis, ut cleri 
 consensu Rex in regno Angliae, quantum per Dei legem 
 licuerat, caput Ecclesise Anglicanae haberetur. Ex quo 
 velut ex venenato fonte, omnia quae nunc in Anglia publice 
 et impune grassantur mala, emanaverunt. Dr. Hillyard 
 then goes on to tell how the title was given in parliament 
 without the saving clause, and how all the bishops objected
 
 APPENDIX. 483 
 
 and all the abbots assented. Quae cum Roffensi narra- 
 bantur a doctis quibusdam amicis, et mala quae inde secu- 
 tura erant exponebantur, rei veritate victus, non lingua 
 (quam vehemens dolor ex rei indignitate conceptus eripuit) 
 sed lachrymis se impiorum fraudibus deceptum ac circum- 
 ventum testabatur. (Arundel 152, art. 19, f. 312; Harl. 
 7047, p. 27 b.) 
 
 The writer of the above was a confessor of the faith, he 
 was condemned to death by Parliament, but saved his life 
 by flight into Scotland. His words may therefore be 
 listened to with respect. ' He belonged, however, to the 
 northern convocation, and was not an eye-witness of the 
 proceedings of the southern Province. May he not have 
 been moved by his partiality for Tunstall. who at first 
 declined to give the title, and against whom Fisher's 
 example was objected by the king, to have listened to 
 some unfair statement of Fisher's conduct in this matter ? 
 Certainly his assertion, that Convocation would have re- 
 fused the title altogether but for Fisher, is directly contrary 
 to all other authorities, and to the words of Chapuys 
 written at the time (see p. 209). At the outset of his 
 narrative, he says that Cranmer and Lee were at that time 
 Archbishops of Canterbury and York. Now, the title was 
 granted in February, 1531, and Lee was not consecrated 
 till December, and Cranmer not till 1533. Hillyard had 
 therefore no distinct remembrance of the course of affairs. 
 
 It is worth observing that not one of the three authors 
 here quoted makes the least allusion to the king's claim 
 having any bearing upon the papal supremacy, except that 
 the Latin writer makes the king's advocates assert that no 
 derogation is intended to the authority of the Roman Pontiff. 
 
 It was the old question of the immunity of the clergy, 
 and the independence and supremacy of the spiritual power 
 in general, not of its interior organisation. However closely 
 these questions are connected, they are distinct.
 
 484 APPENDIX. 
 
 Among the Arundel Notes occur the following words : 
 " He [Fisher] was laboured by B. Tunstall, Gardiner and 
 others set on by the king not to show himself obstinate, 
 but to go as far as might quantum cum verbo Dei. In 
 private talk he seemed to consent so far to the request, 
 whereupon they took greater hold than reason was, and 
 abused his good nature." (Arundel 152, f. 282 ; Harl. 
 7047, f. 14 b.) This passage, however, has been cancelled 
 in the Arundel. 
 
 This is merely the report of one who was then a young 
 scholar, and proves nothing beyond the reports current in 
 Queen Mary's time. As Tunstall issued a protest against 
 the concession of the title, it is not likely that he acted as 
 described. Not only so, but he was not in London. The 
 king constantly kept him away under one pretext or 
 another, from Parliament and Convocation, until 1534. 
 Hillyard has himself narrated how Tunstall was met by 
 royal messengers and sent back to his diocese, seemingly 
 at this very time, the beginning of 1531 ; Hillyard accom- 
 panied him, so he can only relate the rumours that reached 
 Durham. 
 
 (At page 197.) 
 SANDER'S ACCOUNT. 
 
 In the first Roman edition of Sander's History of the 
 Anglican Schism and in all subsequent editions, wherever 
 published, there occurs the following passage : 
 
 His inquam aliisque multis rationibus inductus as deceptus 
 Roffensis (de quo postea saepissime gravissimeque doluit), 
 necessitati praesenti cedendum ratus, persuasit reliquis, qui 
 firmiores adhuc erant in clero (nam plerique jam Archiepi- 
 scopis Cranmero et Leio, huic Eboracensi, illi Cantuariensi, 
 qui ambo Regis negotium promovebant, adhaeserant), ut 
 saltern cum exceptione ilia praedicta (quantum per Dei
 
 APPENDIX. 485 
 
 verbum liceret) obedientiam Regi in causis ecclesiasticis ac 
 spiritualibus jurarent. Cujus facti Roffensem postea usque 
 adeo pcenituit, ut publice se incusans diceret, suas, id est 
 Episcopi, partes fuisse, non cum exceptione dubia, sed 
 aperto et disertis verbis caeteros potius docuisse quid verbum 
 Dei permitteret, quidve prohiberet, quo minus alii in fraudem 
 incurrerent : nee unquam sibi deinceps peccatum hoc 
 expiasse videbatur, quousque proprio sanguine hanc maculam 
 eluisset. 
 
 This strange passage is an interpolation of the Roman 
 editor. There is nothing resembling it in the original edition 
 of Sander by Rishton.* Whence it was derived I cannot 
 say, but it so closely resembles the passage from Hillyard 
 quoted in the preceding note that in all probability the 
 Roman editor had Hillyard's MS. in his possession and 
 transferred his statement to Sander. It in no way fits in 
 with that writer's narrative. It contains the same anachron- 
 isms as Hillyard's story, if we suppose the writer to refer to 
 the Convocation of 1531- Mr. Gladstone in the Nineteenth 
 Century (Nov., 1889) put out a theory that the words 
 obedientiam jurarent referred to the oath of succession of 
 1534 that Fisher must have first taken this oath and then 
 rejected it. It is needless to enter upon this subject. Mr. 
 Gladstone's theory was shown to be quite untenable, both in 
 articles of the Tablet for Nov., 1889, and in the Dublin 
 Review of January, 1890. 
 
 Sander's own words in his De Visibili Monarchia are 
 entirely contrary to the passage foisted into his Historia 
 Schismatis. Henry, he says, decreed summum Ecclesias 
 Anglicanse caput immediate sub Christo non dici tantum sed 
 et scribi et jurato credi. Quod idolum sanctissimus Episco- 
 pus Roffensis cum adorare nollet, Deus illi mercedem 
 laborum suorum redditurus ad martyrii coronam hominem 
 
 * Translated into English by Mr. David Lewis.
 
 486 APPENDIX. 
 
 evexit. . . . Quod igitur de primatu Pontificis Romani 
 Episcopus Roffensis verbo scripserat hoc demum sui 
 sanguinis effusione obsignavit, p. 566 (Ed. 1592). 
 
 (At page 214.) 
 THE POISONING. 
 
 The rough sketch (Arundel, 152, p. 259), after describing 
 the attempt to poison, adds, " But one of his chaplains and 
 three other of his servants died of the same poison, and, as 
 Master Henslowe, his chaplain, before named, told me, him- 
 self went not free, for, by means of a quantity of the 
 empoisoned pottage which he ate, he used customably many 
 years after to break out in scabs about the waist and arms 
 nearly about the time of the year that he took the poison ". 
 There must be error in the number of deaths, since the Act 
 of Parliament mentions only two. The writer probably dis- 
 covered his error before he completed his work. 
 
 (At page 238.) 
 THE HOLY MAID. 
 
 I have not ventured to pronounce an opinion regarding 
 Elizabeth Barton. Blessed Edmund Campion thus wrote in 
 his Story of the Divorce, printed in Harpsfield's History of the 
 Church, p. 738, and in the volume of his Opuscula lately pub- 
 lished in Spain (I translate the passage). " Elizabeth Barton, 
 being seized with a frenzy, fell into an ecstasy, and in the 
 presence of the priests Masters and Becking uttered many 
 rash and marvellous things. She was led by them to the 
 chapel of Our Lady at Aldington, where she recovered ; but 
 afterwards, being taught by the monks, who either believed 
 what they said or sought to make money, that she could not 
 have thus spoken except by divine inspiration, she makes her 
 religious profession at Canterbury, acquires a great fame of
 
 APPENDIX. 487 
 
 sanctity, and imitates the symptoms of her old malady her 
 broken words, cries, and contortion of limbs. At last, 
 surrounded by a great company of people, she praises 
 Catherine, speaks disdainfully of Anne, and denounces the 
 guilty marriage. The matter being suspected, they are 
 thrown into prison, confess their fraud, and suffer capital 
 punishment." 
 
 How either Masters or Bocking could have made money 
 by the girl's ecstasies does not appear. She was not a 
 fortune-teller to the people, and had she been a source of 
 gain why did they send her to a nunnery ? Campion's 
 words, however, show how the story was accepted in 
 Elizabeth's days. 
 
 (At page 271.) 
 PRESENTIMENT OF DEATH. 
 
 Rastall tells the following story : " For three or four 
 years before his death when in a Christmas time he had 
 caused to be prepared worshipful fare and honest pastimes 
 for his kinsfolk and friends that then came to visit him, as 
 that manner was much used in England in the Christmas, he 
 commanded his officers to entertain gently and make hearty 
 good cheer unto friends and kinsfolk so repairing unto him, 
 and came also among them and cheered them very heartily, 
 and, leaving them at their pastimes, went himself away into his 
 study to his prayer and meditations. Which one of his chief 
 officers and trusty servants perceiving, came unto him and 
 said : ' My Lord, I pray you leave off your study for the merry 
 time of Christmas while your friends be here, and come among 
 them and keep them company, or else will they think themselves 
 not welcome to you '. ' Why,' quoth the Bishop, ' have they 
 not all such things as was prepared for them?' 'Yea/ 
 quoth the servant, ' they have ; but what then ? Your lord- 
 ship's presence shall more cheer your friends than all your
 
 400 APPENDIX. 
 
 meat and the pastimes.' ' Well,' quoth the Bishop, ' I pray 
 you be content, let me alone here in my study ... for I 
 tell you in secret I know I shall not die in my bed, wherefore it 
 behoveth me to think continually upon the dreadful hour of 
 my account.'" (Fragment in Arundel, 152.) 
 
 (At page 285.) 
 
 THE DEPOSIT. 
 
 Letter to Erasmus about Money. 
 
 " I send you a little gift, but it is not taken from that 
 deposit, which you think is in my hands, and no small one. 
 Believe me, Erasmus (let men say what they will) there is no 
 deposit in my hands to be dispensed at my free choice. 
 The use of that money is on trust, so that I could not 
 borrow from it however much we might wish. I see you so 
 necessary to our university that I will not see you want so 
 long as there remains anything at my disposal from my little 
 means. And I will also try, when occasion offers, to get the 
 help of others when my own means fail. Your friend 
 Mountjoy, or rather our friend, will remember you if he 
 formerly promised it, and I will gladly exhort him to do so, 
 for he is now at court." 
 
 Among Ep. of Erasmus. App. 430 (no date). 
 
 (At page 295.) 
 LAST ILLNESS. 
 
 The anonymous writer, probably Justice Rastall, who was 
 an eye-witness of the execution, has given the story of the 
 King's physician, and the charge of ^40. It was probably 
 derived from him by Dr. Hall. A key to this rather mys- 
 terious business may, perhaps, be found in the following very
 
 APPENDIX. 489 
 
 interesting and humorous letter which has been published 
 by Sir Henry Ellis. We learn from it that there was, 
 indeed, a very serious illness in the last days of the 
 Bishop of Rochester, and that the physician made a 
 claim on the King. But it would be amazing, indeed, 
 if his claim was so handsomely recognised as by a fee 
 of ^40. It is more likely that he got little or nothing, 
 and spread about that he had deserved this sum. The 
 good doctor talks as if his patient had died under his 
 hands. He means, of course, that he got him ready for 
 the headsman 
 
 The letter was written nearly two months after the cardi- 
 nal's death, by John Friar, a physician of Cambridge, to the 
 Lord Privy Seal : 
 
 " MY SINGULAR GOOD LORD, 
 
 " This shall be to advertise the same, that whereas 
 of late, the Bishop of Rochester, at what time he was sick, 
 required me to look to him, and to give attendance upon 
 him both night and day, promising to recompense my 
 labour and pain, and where(as), after he was departed, 
 all his goods were taken up by Mr. Gostwick, and 
 converted to the King's coffers, so that for 12 days 
 labour and 4 nights' watching, as yet, I have recovered 
 nothing in so much that, except your Lordship be 
 good to me, I shall both lose my labour, my friend, and 
 also my physic. 
 
 " And, truly, if physicians should take no money for 
 them that they kill, as well as for them that they save, 
 their living should be very thin and bare ; therefore, I 
 beseech your good Lordship, as to send to Mr. Gostwick, 
 that I may have some recompense and reward for my 
 pain. And, I beseech your Lordship, it may be so 
 much the more liberal, because it shall be the last pay- 
 ment. For, of them that scape, we may take the
 
 49 APPENDIX. 
 
 less, because we hope they shall once come again in to 
 our hands. . . . 
 
 " From London, the i6th August. 
 
 " JOHN FRIAR, Physician." * 
 
 (At page 300.) 
 FISHER'S SERVANT. 
 
 Richard Wilson, the bishop's servant, must be the 
 authority for some of the last details about his master's 
 life. Therefore any notice regarding him will be of interest. 
 A writer in the Arundel collection, after giving an account 
 of the bishop's attainder, says he ' ' was sent to the Tower, 
 where he was closely imprisoned and locked up in a strong 
 chamber from all company, saving one of his servants, who, 
 like a false knave, accused his master to Cromwell after- 
 wards ". This seems rather unfair to poor Richard, who 
 gave no evidence but what he was compelled to give about 
 the letters ; and for this his master would not have blamed 
 him. 
 
 The writer of the Latin Life in the same vol. (f. 208) 
 tells us that, after the martyr's death, he became a priest, 
 and went to Flanders : Famulus ille post obitum domini 
 sui presbyter ordinatur . . . malorum quae ab hoc fonte 
 dimanarunt non ignarus fuit. Nam postea pertaesus 
 calamitatum . . . religionis ergo in Belgica exulabat. 
 
 (At page 303.) 
 BOOK ON PRAYER. 
 
 Bishop Fisher's treatise on prayer was written by him in 
 Latin, but not printed during his life time. Its first appear- 
 
 * Orig. Letters, 3rd Series, vol. ii., p. 346 (letter 242). Sir Henry 
 Ellis notes that a Doctor John Friar died in prison, and his son, 
 John Friar, was an exile, according to Sander. The elder was pro- 
 bably the attendant on the martyr in his last sickness.
 
 APPENDIX. 491 
 
 ance was in an English translation in 1560. A copy is in 
 the British Museum. Fisher's name was concealed by the 
 translator. The title is : "A godly treatisse declaryng the 
 benefites, fruites, and great commodities of prayer, and also 
 the true use thereof. Written in Latin, fourtie years past, 
 by an Englyshe man of great vertue and learnyng, and 
 lately translated into Englyshe. 1560." The colophon is : 
 " Imprinted at London, in Powles Churchyarde, by John 
 Cawood, one of the printers to the Queenes majestic. 
 Cum privilegio regise majestatis." The translator prefixes 
 an address to the reader of 1 2 pages. At p. 5, he says : 
 " This little treatise, written in Latin by an Englishman, 
 a bishop of great learning and marvellous virtue of life, 
 such one as seemed perfectly to taste and savour how sweet 
 and pleasant the Spirit of God is ... in that his time, 
 more than forty years past, lamented, moaned, cried out 
 upon the decay of prayer. . . . This I have to say, that, 
 seeing the same in written hand, as it were neglected as a 
 thing of small price, being, indeed, such a work as the like 
 (I believe) hath not often been written in that matter, I 
 could not satisfy myself to see such a pearl hidden." 
 
 The Latin first appeared in print in 1576. The title is : 
 Tractatus de orando Deum et de fructibus precum, modoque 
 orandi, nunquam antehac I^atine editus. Auctore R. in 
 Christo Petre, Joanne Ep. Roffensi Anglo. Duaci ex 
 officina Joannis Rogardi, anno, 1576." From this title it 
 might be conjectured that the original was in English, and 
 this a translation ; but the editor, Richard Hall, in his 
 dedicatory epistle, expresses a wish that it might be trans- 
 lated into French, sicut jam olim ab annis sexdecim in 
 nostram vernaculam linguam a quodam vicecomite praeclaro 
 [Vicecomite Montecutio] sano et docto et constanter 
 Catholico viro est conversus. Duaci ex collegio Marti- 
 niensi, i6th Dec., anno 1576. R. P. T. deditissimus 
 Richardus Halus. There is no copy of this edition in the
 
 492 APPENDIX. 
 
 British Museum. I have taken the above from an entry in 
 Bishop Kennett's collections (Lansdowne MSS., 45, p. 
 128 b.). The reference to Viscount Montague is placed by 
 Kennett in square brackets, and it does not appear whether 
 it is a conjecture of his own, or taken from Hall's margin : 
 Hall distinctly says that the English translation is from the 
 pen of a learned Viscount ; yet the address to the reader, 
 which is from the pen of the translator, bears no sign of 
 having been written by a layman. We must suppose that 
 the English translator had good reason for his assertion 
 that the treatise was composed about 1520, and not in 1534, 
 in the Tower, as I had been led to suppose by Lewis. 
 
 (At page 365.) 
 THE JUDGES. 
 
 Nothing is more curious than the reflections of Mr. 
 Edward Foss in his Lives of the Judges of England on the 
 servility of Fisher's Judges. Of Anthony Fitzherbert he 
 writes : " He was one of the Commissioners appointed on 
 the trials both of Sir T. More and Bishop Fisher. Notwith- 
 standing the -disgust which the conviction of these two ex- 
 cellent men universally excited, Fitzherbert's reputation sus- 
 tained no blemish, the world knowing that his being joined 
 in the commission was an act that he could not prevent, 
 and that his interference with the will of the arbitrary despot 
 would have been both useless and dangerous" (Vol v. 168). 
 Surely Mr. Foss does not hold that a man may co-operate 
 in an evil deed except when he has a casting vote. Is it 
 not sometimes a duty to protest, even when protesting is 
 dangerous as well as useless ? 
 
 Of the Chief Justice, John Fitzjames, Mr. Foss writes : 
 " It is not improbable that Fitzjames partook of the faults 
 which pervaded the whole bench at the period in which he 
 flourished ; but they were faults arising more from that awful 
 dread of Majesty which the Tudors inculcated than from
 
 APPENDIX. 493 
 
 any personal cruelty or delinquency" (Ib. p. 179). The 
 historian of Judges should be familiar with the words of the 
 son of Sirach : " Seek not to be made a judge, unless thou 
 have strength enough to extirpate iniquities ; lest thou fear 
 the person of the powerful, and lay a stumbling-block for 
 thy integrity " (Ecclus. vii. 6.) 
 
 (At page 375.) 
 THE TRIAL. 
 
 Dr. Hall derived his account of the king's stratagem to 
 entrap Fisher, and of the evidence given against him by the 
 king's messenger, from the writer whom I take to be Justice 
 Rastall, who does not however say that the messenger was 
 Rich, the future chancellor. There is nothing of this in the 
 burnt Latin Life. There, after the arraignment, the bishop 
 makes a long speech, which is however most clearly a 
 rhetorical composition of the writer. He is made to ac- 
 knowledge his denial of the king's title, and to defend it 
 principally on three heads: (i) that the title was new and 
 exorbitant ; (2) that he had said nothing sponte, but only in 
 reply to the interrogations of the council ; and (3) that he 
 had not spoken maliciously, and therefore did not fall under 
 the law. Plane (he says) quoad summam accusationis, reum 
 confitentem habetis, neque erim negare possum neque volo 
 ea me verba quibus dominum regem a titulo saeculis superi- 
 oribus inaudito dimovere aut abstrahere me eo die prolocu- 
 tum esse (Arundel 152, p. 215). It must be admitted that 
 this agrees with the passage I have quoted at p. 386 from 
 Cardinal Pole, in which he states that the bishop spoke out 
 before the sentence, and More not till after it. 
 
 (At page 398.) 
 DETAILS OF MARTYRDOM. 
 
 Sander's account of Fisher's martyrdom is very short : 
 " As soon as he came in sight of the place where he was to
 
 494 APPENDIX. 
 
 be conqueror in the glorious contest, he threw his staff away, 
 saying, ' Now my feet must do their duty, for I have but a 
 little way to go'. Having reached the place of his martyr- 
 dom, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, ' Te Deum 
 laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur '. When he had finished 
 the hymn he bowed his head beneath the sword of the 
 executioner, gave up his soul to God, and received the 
 crown of justice" (Anglican Schism, Trans. Lewis, p. 122). 
 
 Stapleton writes as follows of the deaths of More and 
 Fisher : " Kneeling on both knees More recited with a clear 
 voice the Psalm Misereri mei Deus, as Rochester had recited 
 the Canticle Te Deum laudamus. For Rochester, filled 
 with Divine exultation, all glad and joyous, hastened to the 
 scaffold, casting from him the staff of his old age ; and on the 
 same day on which he was to die he slept peacefully till the 
 morning was well advanced, and asked for some milk for 
 his breakfast. More, filled with the spirit of humility and 
 fear, chose the prayer of penance, not the canticle of praise. 
 Both spirits pleased God, since both came from Him " (Vita 
 Thomas Mori. cap. 20). Hall's account of the martyrdom is 
 copied almost word for word from Rastall (Arundel 152). 
 The important omission is the parenthesis in the following 
 passage : "Then was his gown taken off from him and his 
 tippet, and he stood up there in the sight of the people, 
 where was a wondrous number of people gathered to see 
 the horrible execution (of which myself were one)". 
 
 The writer was near enough to see clearly, and to hear the 
 speech, which was spoken loudly, and which he gives exactly 
 as Hall has reported, with the same phrase : " these words 
 or words of like effect ". He does not seem to have been 
 near enough to follow the prayers, said in a lower tone ; for, 
 in naming the Te Deum and In Te Domine speravi,* he 
 
 * Hall makes the In Te Domine speravi a Psalm distinct from the 
 Te Deum, meaning no doubt either that part of the 3Oth Psalm which 
 is recited at Compline, or (though less probably) the yoth Psalm, in
 
 APPENDIX. 495 
 
 adds, " as some reported". He did not see the opening 
 of the New Testament, nor hear the ejaculation when the 
 sun shone on Fisher's face, and of these he says nothing ; 
 but he is very minute about the death. The words of Hall, 
 " he laid his holy head down over a little block," led me to 
 think that being on his knees he merely bent forward over 
 such a block as is now shown in the Tower (which has been 
 represented on the cover of this book) ; but the words of the 
 eye-witness leave no doubt that the block was merely a log : 
 "Then was he blindfolded with a handkerchief about bis 
 eyes, and then lifting up his hands and heart toward heaven, 
 he said a few prayers, which were not long but fervently 
 devout ; which done he laid down on his belly, flat on the 
 floor of the scaffold, and laid his lean neck upon a little block, 
 so that his body was on one side of the block and his head 
 on the other side, and that his neck was just upon the 
 middle of the block. And then came quickly the execu- 
 tioner, and with a sharp and heavy axe cut asunder his 
 neck." No special outrage was intended by this manner of 
 beheading. It was the usual method ; the Duke of Somerset 
 in 1552 "laid himself along," and Lady Jane Grey "laid 
 her down" and "stretched forth her body " (State Trials I., 
 526, 726). See letters in the Times regarding the execution 
 of Charles I., May loth igth, 1890. Though the contro- 
 versy was not decided as to the height of the block on which 
 the king laid his head, all were agreed as to the low block 
 used at an earlier date. 
 
 This eye-witness, as I have said, has not recorded the 
 opening of the New Testament; he confined himself to 
 what he could see and hear. The burnt Latin Life here 
 gives some very interesting additions. The writer says that 
 
 which are verses admirably appropriate. But Rastall, from whom 
 Hall draws his account, says clearly, " he said the Psalm or Canticle 
 Te Deum laudamus to the end In Te Domine speravi, non confundar 
 in aeternum.
 
 49^ APPENDIX. 
 
 the news that the sentence of hanging and quartering at 
 Tyburn had been commuted into one of beheading on 
 Tower Hill, was not communicated to the Bishop until the 
 moment that he left the prison to die (Arundel 152, p. 
 226, b.). He gives also the following curious story, not 
 mentioned, so far as I know, in any printed book. 
 
 When the venerable sufferer was being hurried towards 
 the scaffold on the shoulders of the guards, he spoke out 
 loud some words, as if addressing the absent king. These 
 were Latin words taken from the i6th poetical Epistle of 
 Horace, who had himself adapted them from the Greek of 
 Euripides. They express the intrepidity with which the 
 really virtuous man would address a tyrant. On hearing 
 him speak the soldiers stopped, but he bade them proceed 
 while he finished his quotation, which implies that by means 
 of death, which is the goal of all things, God delivers the 
 just man even from the tyrant who inflicts it.* This story 
 is not a substitution for that of the words he found on 
 opening the Gospel, for the Latin writer relates both 
 incidents, while Hall says nothing of the quotation from 
 Horace. The question arises at once : On what evidence 
 does this story rest ? Can we trust it ? It seems to me 
 intrinsically very probable. From his long practice in the 
 schools, Fisher must have been very familiar with Horace, 
 and the sentiments contained in this epistle of the Roman 
 poet were such as he might often have recalled and re- 
 
 * Interim, festinatione nimia agitatus, regem Henricum, ut vide- 
 batur, absentem allocutus, ex Horatii epistolis versus quosdam 
 pronuntiat. 
 
 Vir bonus et sapiens audebit dicere : Pentheu, 
 Rector Thebarum, quid me perferre patique 
 Indignum coges ? 
 
 Ad quas voces . . . paulisper requiescere passi sunt. Sed hos ille 
 procedere jussit, sermonem incoeptum memoriter claudens. 
 Ipse deus, simul atque volam, me solvet. Opinor, 
 Hoc sentit. Moriar : mors ultima linea rerum est (f. 227).
 
 APPENDIX. 497 
 
 peated to himself in his long imprisonment. His speak- 
 ing them out loud is in perfect keeping with all that is 
 told us of his calm on that morning of his nuptials, as he 
 called it. They were a natural introduction to the higher 
 thoughts which he drew from the Gospel, as soon as he was 
 set down by the soldiers, and had leisure to open it ; and 
 his speaking out loud is in harmony with what Hall tells us 
 of his "recording" or reflecting aloud, during his second 
 carriage to the scaffold. It appears then more likely that 
 he should have really quoted the words than that his 
 biographer should have invented the whole incident, for, 
 though the writers of those days held themselves justified 
 in composing long speeches for their heroes, yet in this they 
 used some discretion, and considered the last moments of a 
 martyr better told in all simplicity. How comes it however, 
 that Hall knew nothing of this Horatian episode ? I can- 
 not answer. He may not have thought it edifying ; he may 
 not have believed the reporter ; he may not have heard the 
 report. We may be sure that neither soldiers, nor the 
 lieutenant, nor Wilson, the Bishop's servant, knew anything 
 of Horace. Yet there may have been some pupil of Colet, 
 or some of More's and Fisher's learned friends near at hand 
 on that memorable morning, eager to catch the martyr's 
 last words, and able to recognise the quotation. 
 
 VARIOUS INCIDENTS. 
 
 As regards the incidents of Blessed Fisher's last days, 
 it may be well to note here that the burnt Latin Life 
 mentions the breaking open of the chest by Richard 
 Morison, the king's saying about the cardinal's hat, the 
 interview with Cromwell, Bedyl, and Tregonel on yth May, 
 the story of the cook not preparing dinner, the two hours' 
 sleep on the last morning, and the care with which he 
 dressed for the scaffold. The "young scholar" mentions 
 the story of the cook, the longer sleep, the precise dressing, 
 
 4
 
 49^ APPENDIX. 
 
 the opening of the New Testament, the ejaculation when 
 the sun shone on his face, his answer to Cromwell that he 
 would receive the hat kneeling. Of all these he says " I 
 heard say credibly ". He also says : " It was reported unto 
 me by Mr. Trustin (?) who was both his chaplain and his 
 steward, that at the time of his apprehension he had not of 
 ready money in all the world much above ^30, which 
 money was taken from him" (Arundel 152, p. 262 b., also 
 Harl. f. 1 6). 
 
 I have said that when collecting materials, Dr. Hall 
 wrote on the margin of his notes " Vide Thomae Mori, for 
 the names of the commissioners (Ib. p. 261). These he 
 has given in his completed life as well as those of the jury, 
 and they are found in the fragment of the book which I 
 suppose to be the life of More, by Justice Rastall. 
 
 Rastall says that at a great banquet at Hanworth, Anne 
 Boleyn asked the heads of Fisher and More (p. 309, b). 
 Hall says the same thing where he is comparing Anne to 
 the daughter of Herodias. 
 
 It is Rastall who says that the sentence was commuted 
 lest he should die on the road if dragged to Tyburn. He 
 relates the Bishop's courteous speech on his return to the 
 Tower, the lieutenant's waking him, his careful dressing, and 
 his being carried to Tower Hill. He has not the story of 
 the cook, nor does he mention the opening of the New 
 Testament. From him also Dr. Hall borrowed the com- 
 parison between Henry's cruelty and that of the Turk. 
 
 \At page 400.] 
 
 AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Outrages. The eye-witness writes: "Then took the 
 executioner away the bishop's clothes and his shirt, and 
 left the headless body lying there naked upon the scaffold, 
 almost all that day after. Yet one at the last, for pity and
 
 APPENDIX. 499 
 
 humanity, cast a little straw upon the dead body, and 
 almost eight o'clock in the evening commandment was 
 come to bury the body, to certain men that tarried there 
 about the scaffold with the body all that afternoon, with 
 halberds and bills. Whereupon one of them took up the 
 dead body without the head upon his halberd, and carried 
 it to a churchyard of a parish church there hard by, called 
 Barking, where on the north side of that church, hard by 
 the church wall, he and his fellows with their halberds 
 digged a grave (for other grave had he none), and therein, 
 without any reverence, they vilely threw the holy innocent 
 bishop's dead body, all naked, flat upon his belly, without 
 any winding sheet, or any other accustomed funeral cere- 
 monies, and then covered it quickly with the earth, and so 
 following herein the commandment of the King, buried it 
 very comtemptuously " (Arundel 152. Harl. 7047). 
 
 Hall has copied this account, but supposes the body to 
 have been laid across two halberds. The eyewitness, how- 
 ever, says one man carried it on his halberd. He must, 
 therefore, have run the hooked part into the body and 
 carried it on his back, as a butcher moves the carcass of 
 a sheep.* 
 
 The same story is told in the burnt Latin Life, f. 231, b. 
 As regards the head, the story of the outrage by Anne 
 Boleyn, which I have given with reserve, at p. 398, is in all 
 the MSS. copies of Hall, except Arundel 152, f. 77, which 
 as I have said, is the oldest and perhaps the original. It 
 is, therefore, a later addition, either by the author or his 
 first copyist. 
 
 * " The tyrant dragged him forth, with limbs tottering under him, 
 to the scaffold, and even when the life was gone, left him to lie on 
 that scaffold like a dead dog ! Savage monster ! Rage stems the 
 torrent of our tears, hurries us back to the horrid scene, and bids us 
 look about us for a dagger to plunge into the heart of the tyrant." 
 WILLIAM COBBETT.
 
 500 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The eye-witness tells the story of the head continuing 
 "fresh and lively" for fourteen days on London Bridge; 
 at the end of which time, he says, it was thrown into the 
 river. 
 
 In 1536, Joannes Cochlaeus published a little book at 
 Leipsic. It contains an epistle of Pope Nicolas I., but 
 also a defence of Fisher and More against a paper written 
 by Sampson. In this book Cochlaeus speaks* of the two 
 heads and their removal. Sir Richard Morison w'as set to 
 answer this work, which he did in a book called Apomaxis 
 Calunmiarum, etc. At f. 93, b., he denies the removal of 
 the heads : Accede ad nos, videbis etiamdum utriusque 
 caput eo loco conspici quo primo positum fuit, homines 
 etiamdum eo spectaculo admoneri, ne quid sceleris aut in 
 regem aut in regni leges moliantur. Of course it was safe 
 to assert or deny anything against Cochlaeus far away in 
 Germany. Cochlaeus, however, in 1538, replied in a little 
 book called Scopa J. Cochlaei in araneas R. Morison 
 (Lipsiae). At F. i he says, that the account he had given 
 of the trials and deaths of Fisher and More was taken from 
 the report of a learned and trustworthy man, who signed 
 himself C. G., but whose name he did not know. 
 
 The Body. Nothing is more strange and perplexing lhan 
 the discrepancies regarding the sacred bodies of Fisher 
 and More. 
 
 In his first rough sketch, Hall had written : "His body 
 was buried, as I heard, in the chapel of the Tower " 
 (Arundel 152, f. 264 b.). In his finished Life he says 
 nothing of the chapel in the Tower, but relates the burial 
 in All-Hallows yard, and the ground remaining sterile for 
 seven years. Rastall gives the burial in All-Hallows. It 
 was not within his scope to tell what happened later on. 
 The mysterious period of seven years receives an elucidation 
 and the different accounts of the burial place are reconciled, 
 by a writer who mentions the removal, after seven years,
 
 APPENDIX. 501 
 
 from All-Hallows to the Tower. This is the writer of the 
 burnt Latin Life. The Latin of the following important 
 passage may be still clearly read : " His body was buried 
 in the cemetery of the parochial church of All-Hallows, 
 commonly called Barking, near the Tower ditch and not 
 far from where he was beheaded. When it became gener- 
 ally known where the sacred body was buried, there was a 
 great concourse to the place by the more devout among 
 the people. Italians especially, Frenchmen, Germans and 
 Spaniards, and other foreigners, caring less for the King 
 and more for the cause of (the Martyr's) death, and being 
 better founded in religion, frequented the holy grave and 
 reported miraculous occurrences.* This especially was 
 publicly remarked, that the soil itself, from the time it 
 received the sacred relics in its bosom, seemed to change 
 its nature, and for seven years brought forth no grass. The 
 martyr's enemies were so angry at the concourse that they 
 had the body exhumed and carried to the Tower, and with 
 the relics of Thomas More cast into an obscure place.f 
 But certain chroniclers (rerum observatores) have left on 
 record that the bodies of these holy men did not even rest 
 there, but when the heat of persecution somewhat abated, 
 they were devoutly carried to the village of Chelsea, where 
 Thomas More had resided, near London, and are there 
 kept to this day entombed in a new monument, which he 
 had prepared for himself when he was in (royal) favour. 
 But while I was endeavouring to discover by common 
 report or by written records, the real place where this 
 precious treasure is hidden, I was interrupted. May God, 
 who is the just Judge of men's deeds and merits, and the 
 bountiful Rewarder of His saints even beyond their merits, 
 
 * Sacrum tumulum frequentarunt mirabiliaque narrarunt. Fol. 233. 
 
 t The chapel was not obscure, but the portion of it where Fisher 
 and More were buried. It is said to have been near the entrance to 
 the belfry.
 
 502 APPENDIX. 
 
 grant that some day, when religion revives and peace is 
 restored to the church, it may be made known to the 
 faithful where are those longed for relics." The Latin 
 is as follows : " Sed nee ibi conquievisse corpora justorum 
 quidam rerum observatores scriptum reliquerunt, verum, 
 furore defervescente, a devotione . . . Chelseam in villam 
 Thomae Mori prope Londinum reportata, ibique in monu- 
 mento novo, quod sibi, dum gratia floreret, pararat, tumu- 
 lata hodie asservari. Ita ubi loci tarn pretiosus thesaurus 
 recondatur, defossusque sit, per famam consignataque monu- 
 menta quserenti mihi, impedita res fuit. Faxit Deus qui 
 est factorum meritorumque Justus censor, supraque merita 
 sanctorum largus remunerator, ut tandem aliquando, revive- 
 scente religione paceque Ecclesiae restituta, ubi istorum 
 reliquiae desideratissimse sint, fidelibus constare possit" (fol. 
 
 2 34)- 
 
 As both this writer and Hall give the story of the sterile 
 grave in almost the same words, one must have copied the 
 other, or else both wrote from a third document. It is not 
 likely that Hall copied from the Latin, since he has not a 
 word of the removal to the Tower, which is, however, 
 necessary to the narrative, for otherwise the seven years 
 remain unexplained. It seems to me that Hall, having in his 
 first sketch mentioned the chapel in the Tower, and having 
 afterwards met with some imperfect document about the seven 
 years, as well as with Rastall's account of the burial in All 
 Hallows, thought that he had been mistaken in what he had 
 said about the Tower and cancelled it. The burnt Latin Life 
 was certainly begun in Mary's reign, and speaks of her as 
 still busy in restoring the church ; but the passage just 
 quoted must have been written later, after the accession of 
 Elizabeth. Probably then the interruption in the writer's 
 researches was caused by that event. The writer does not 
 say that he could not discover the monument at Chelsea, for 
 that was well known, as he has just said. What he says is
 
 APPENDIX. 503 
 
 that he could not discover whether there was any truth in 
 the report of the removal from the Tower to Chelsea. 
 
 I think we may safely assume that this removal was 
 never made, and that the relics of both More and Fisher still 
 repose in St. Peter's chapel, for More's great grandson, 
 Cresacre More, does not allude to any such removal. There 
 existed, therefore, no tradition of it in the family. Cresacre 
 More's book appeared in 1627. He writes as follows : 
 " His (More's) head was put upon London Bridge, where 
 traitors' heads are set up on poles. His body was buried 
 in the chapel of St. Peter, which is in the Tower, in the 
 belfry, or, as some say, as one entereth into the vestry, near 
 unto the body of the holy martyr Bishop Fisher, who, being 
 put to death just a fortnight before, had small respect done 
 to him all this while." These words would seem to imply 
 that the two bodies rested together from the time of More's 
 burial, and that either Fisher had been originally buried in 
 the Tower or that his body was then at least brought to St. 
 Peter's. The last remark of Cresacre that the Bishop's body 
 had been treated with small respect in the interval would 
 have no meaning had he been first buried in the Tower, for 
 what additional respect did he receive after More's body had 
 been deposited by his side ? They have a meaning if we 
 suppose that the writer had heard of the rude interment of 
 the body in All Hallows, and contrasts it with the more 
 decent and Christian burial, probably by the care of 
 Margaret Roper, with shroud and coffin and some sacred 
 rites and prayer in the chapel. 
 
 To sum up, Rastall, an eyewitness, followed by Hall, the 
 Latin writer, and the compiler of the Grey Friars Chronicle 
 all say that Fisher was first buried in All Hallows churchyard. 
 No author denies this, though some are silent about it. The 
 words of Cresacre More seem to favour it. The Grey Friars 
 Chronicle says that Fisher was removed to the Tower at the 
 burial of More, and Cresacre's words also imply it. On the
 
 504 APPENDIX. 
 
 other hand, the Latin writer says the removal took place 
 after seven years, and Hall's mention of the seven years' 
 sterility seems to confirm this account, though he mentions 
 no removal. I think then the removal may be considered 
 certain, though the time is uncertain. That the sacred 
 bodies still repose in St. Peter's is almost equally certain. 
 As to the exact spot, Cresacre speaks of an entrance to 
 a vestry. A learned architect and ecclesiologist, after 
 a careful examination of the church, assures me that 
 there cannot have been any vestry in the form of an out- 
 building. 
 
 Stapleton, who had his information direct from Margaret 
 Clements and Dorothy Harris, who had assisted Margaret 
 Roper in "honourably" burying the body of More in St. 
 Peter's, has no allusion to any subsequent removal, though 
 he is professing to tell what became of the body. It is not 
 a little strange that Harpsfield, writing in Mary's reign, and 
 dedicating his Life of More to William Roper, from whom he 
 could obtain full details, merely records the placing of More's 
 head on London Bridge, without mentioning its recovery by 
 Margaret Roper, and he does not so much as allude to the 
 disposal of the body. 
 
 (At page 410.) 
 THE BISHOP'S CHANTRY AND TOMB. 
 
 At the west end of the north side of St. John's Chapel the 
 Bishop erected a chantry for himself, with a tomb in which 
 he hoped to rest. The chantry was begun in 1525, but not 
 finished until 1533, in which year Mr. Lee, " the fremason," 
 received 6 135. 4d. for making and setting up the tomb, 
 and again ^4 " in full payment for my lord's tombe and for 
 stone to the same". The chantry communicated with the 
 choir by three arches. Above it was a room, probably 
 intended for an organ chamber, with a large arch opening
 
 APPENDIX. 505 
 
 into the choir. When Fisher's chapel was demolished the 
 arches were placed in the south end of the south transept of 
 the new chapel. In the i8th century the arches were 
 blocked, and the chantry was known as an "old disused 
 chapel". In 1773 some masons, wishing to make use of 
 this, cleared away some rubbish, and the tomb of Fisher, 
 which had been defaced or taken to pieces after his execu- 
 tion, was discovered. The fragments were, however, ex- 
 posed to the air and soon destroyed. A rough sketch is 
 given in Vol. II., p. 286, of Willis & Clarke's Architectural 
 History of the University of Cambridge. A full page cokmred 
 engraving of the old chapel of St. John's, showing the 
 arches of Fisher's chantry, may be seen in Knight's Old 
 England, II., 280. 
 
 
 
 A POSTHUMOUS BOOK. 
 
 In the British Museum there is a copy of a small book 
 with the following title page : Reverendi Patris D. Joannis 
 Fischerii, quondam Episcopi Roffensis Opusculum, de 
 fiducia et misericordia Dei. Nunc primum in lucem editum. 
 Coloniae, apud haeredes Arnoldi Birckmanni, 1556. It 
 consists of 12 axioms regarding the necessity of faith-con- 
 fidence, followed by 32 passages from the Gospels, 41 from 
 St. Paul, and several from the other books of the New 
 Testament, with commentaries or reflections on each. The 
 Latin is not the Vulgate version. There is an appendix of 
 two passages from St. Bernard and St. Anselm, and from 
 the few words of introduction to these passages it would 
 seem that the editor was anxious to conciliate Lutherans, by 
 showing how such men as Fisher, held doctrines almost 
 identical with theirs on faith in Christ. The book may 
 be Fisher's, for it is pious and orthodox ; yet there are 
 a few expressions on justification by faith that would 
 not have been written after the definitions of Trent.
 
 506 APPENDIX. 
 
 Of course there may have been some tampering by the 
 editor, since the book was not printed in the bishop's 
 lifetime. However the faith so much lauded is not Lutheran 
 faith. 
 
 In B.M. is a small German book consisting of extracts 
 from Fisher regarding Confession. John Cocleus translated 
 into German Fisher's Assertions against Luther in 1524, and 
 his work against CEcolampadius in 1528. 
 
 RELICS. 
 
 I am not aware of many relics of Blessed John Fisher, with 
 the exception of his sacred remains, in St. Peter's Chapel, 
 which are inaccessible. 
 
 1. A gold ring with a "beautiful cameo is in the possession 
 of Alfred Newdigate, Esq. The Newdigates received it 
 from Mr. Boynton, Mr. Boynton from Colonel Messiter. 
 The Messiters, descended from the martyr's family, had 
 held it from time immemorial as " Cardinal Fisher's 
 ring". 
 
 2. His staff is treasured by the Eystons at Hendred House. 
 
 3. Papers written by his hand are in the British Museum, 
 the Record Office, and the archives of St. John's, Cam- 
 bridge. 
 
 4. The Public Library of Douai has a book on a fly-leaf 
 of which are written some quotations, followed by the names 
 of Joannes Fisher and Thomas Morus. It has been 
 erroneously supposed that these are autographs. I have re- 
 ceived a photograph of the page, which shows at once that 
 the two names and the quotations are written by one and 
 the same hand, at a much later date than that of the Holy 
 Martyrs. 
 
 5. I am told that at Stonyhurst is a small piece of bone 
 marked B Roffensis Cardinalis, the writing being very 
 old.
 
 APPENDIX. 507 
 
 A MS. LIFE OF FISHER. 
 
 In the possession of the Catholic Archbishop of St. 
 Andrews is a very long MS. life of Fisher. Its title is : 
 " The Life and Death of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 
 and Cardinal Priest of the Title of St. Vitalis and Martyr". 
 On the first page is written : " Ex dono auctoris P. Perry ". 
 The Rev. Philip Mark Perry, D.D., died President of the 
 English College at Valladolid, Sept. 5, 1774. The MS. was 
 formerly in the possession of Bishop Alexander Cameron, 
 V.A., who died in 1828. 
 
 Dr. Perry mentions in his introduction the first short 
 sketches published soon after" the martyr's death ; then the 
 life by Dr. Richard Hall, of which he had not seen a copy ; 
 the Life by Bailey based on Hall's MS. ; the intended Life of 
 Fiddes. He mentions the help derived from Thomas 
 Baker's printed works, and also from his MS. collection re- 
 garding Fisher among the Harleian MSS. in the British 
 Museum. He had also received from Dr. Alban Butler a 
 transcript made by him of the Treatise on the Divorce by 
 Fisher, which is in the University Library, Cambridge. He 
 has divided his work into three volumes or books. The 
 first comprises Fisher's Academical Life and Foundations, 
 the second his Episcopal Acts and his writings, the third the 
 history of the Divorce and the Bishop's sufferings and death. 
 He had completed his work, for he says that the third part 
 " had cost him much more labour and study than the other 
 two ". It is therefore very much to be regretted that this 
 third part is missing. The book is very voluminous, and 
 indeed prolix. The first volume contains 614 pages, the 
 second 558. The digressions are immense, Fisher's action 
 as Chancellor being introduced by a treatise on universities 
 in general and Cambridge in particular of about 200 pages ; 
 and a detailed account given of Erasmus and all others 
 who had relations with the subject of the biography.
 
 508 APPENDIX. 
 
 Nevertheless it would be hard to speak too highly of the 
 care and research bestowed on this Life. Dr. Perry had 
 no doubt a fine library and used it well. He was especially 
 diligent in the collation of the letters and other writings of 
 Erasmus.
 
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 Foot of the Cross . . . . . . .060 
 
 Growth in Holiness . . . . . . .060 
 
 Hymns . . . . . . . . .060 
 
 Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects, 2 vols. . o 10 O 
 Poems . . . . . . , . .05 
 
 Precious Blood . . . . . . . .05 
 
 Sir Lancelot ..... ..05 
 
 Spiritual Conferences . . . . . . .060 
 
 Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber, !>.!>., 
 Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. By John 
 Edward Bowden of the same Congregation . . 060 
 
 FAWKES, REV. ALFRED. 
 
 The Sacred Heart, and other Sermons. Red buckram, 
 
 gilt 026 
 
 " Bright, scholarly, thoughtful,* and redolent of the modern 
 spiri t. " A cademy. 
 
 " The language is well chosen and often poetical, and the thoughts 
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 FORMBY, REV. HENRY. 
 
 Monotheism : in the main derived from the Hebrew 
 nation and the Law of Moses. The Primitive Reli- 
 gion of the City of Rome. An historical Investiga- 
 tion. Demy 8vo . . . . . .050 
 
 FRANCIS DE SALES, ST. : THE WORKS OF. 
 
 Translated into the English Language by the Very Rev. 
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 Right Rev. Bishop Hedley. O.S.B. 
 
 Vol. I. Letters to Persons in the World. 3rd Ed. .060 
 "The letters must be read in order to comprehend the charm and 
 sweetness of their style." Toilet. 
 
 Vol. II. The Treatise on the Love of God. Father 
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 but it has been modernized and thoroughly revised 
 and corrected. 2nd Edition . . . . .060 
 "To those who are seeking perfection by the path of contemplation 
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 Vol. III. The Catholic Controversy. . . .060 
 "No one who has not read it can conceive how clear, how convinc- 
 ing, and how well adapted to our present needs are these controversial 
 leaves.'" Tablet.
 
 8 SELECTION FROM BURNS & GATES' 
 
 FRANCIS DE SALES, ST. continued. 
 
 Vol. IV. Letters to Persons in Religion, with intro- 
 duction by Bishop Hedley on "St. Francis de Sales 
 and the Religious State. " 2nd Edition . . . o 6 o 
 "The sincere piety and goodness, the grave wisdom, the knowledge 
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 its perfection that pervade the letters, make them pregnant of in- 
 struction for all serious persons. The translation and editing have 
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 GALLWEY, REV. PETER, (S.J.) 
 
 Precious Pearl of Hope in the Mercy of God, The. 
 Translated from the Italian. With Preface by the 
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 Lectures on Ritualism and on the Anglican Orders. 
 2 vols. ( Or may be had separately.) 080 
 
 Salvage from the Wreck. A few Memories of the 
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 Portraits. Crown 8vo . . . . .076 
 
 GIBSON, REV. H. 
 
 Catechism Made Easy. Being an Explanation of the 
 
 Christian Doctrine, gth Edition. 2 vols., cloth. .076 
 "This work must be of priceless worth to any who are engaged in 
 any form of catechetical instruction. It is the best book of the kind 
 that we have seen in English." Irish Monthly. 
 
 GILLOW, JOSEPH. 
 
 Literary and Biographical History, or, Bibliographical 
 Dictionary of the English Catholics. From the 
 Breach with Rome, in 1534, to the Present Time. 
 Vols. I. , II. III. and IV. cloth, demy Svo . . each 015 o 
 5th, and concluding vol. in preparation. 
 
 "The patient research of Mr. Gillpw, liis conscientious record of 
 minute particulars, and especially his exhaustive bibliographical in- 
 formation in connection with each name, are beyond praise." British 
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 The Haydock Papers. Illustrated. Demy 8vo . 076 
 "We commend this collection to the attention of every one that 
 is interested in the records of the sufferings and struggles of our 
 ancestors to hand down the faith to their children." Tablet 
 
 St. Thomas' Priory ; or, the Story of St. Austin's, 
 Stafford. With Three Illustrations. Tastefully 
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 GLANOEY, REV. M. F. 
 
 Characteristics from the Writings of Archbishop Ulla- 
 thorne, together with a Bibliographical Account of 
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 hear. We have perused this book with interest, and have no hesita- 
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 Birmingham Weekly Mercurv. 
 
 GRADWELL, MONSIGNOR. 
 
 Succat, The Story of Sixty Years of the Life of St. 
 
 Patrick. Crown 8vo, cloth . . . . . 050 
 "A work at once bright, picturesque, and truthful. "Tablet. 
 "We most heartily commend this book to all lovers of St. 
 Patrick." Irish Ecclesiastical Record. 
 
 GROWTH IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Meditations for every Day in the Year, exclusive of 
 those for Festivals, Days of Retreat, &c. Adapted 
 from the original of Abbe de Brandt, by Sister Mary
 
 CATALOGUE OF PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 Fidelis. A new and Improved Edition, in 3 Vols. 
 Sold only in sets. Price per set, . . . . l t 6 
 "The praise, though high, bestowed on these excellent meditations 
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 spectacles, spreads treasures before our vision without attracting 
 attention to itself." Dublin Review. 
 
 HEDLEY, BISHOP. 
 
 Our Divine Saviour, and other Discourses. Crown 
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 "A distinct and noteworthy featuie of these sermons is, we cer- 
 tainly think, their freshness freshness of thought, treatment, and 
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 A Retreat: consisting of Thirty-three Discourses with 
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 Religious, and others. Crown 8vo, half leather 060 
 
 "This ' Retreat,' which will remain as a treasure with Catholics 
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 (Dr. Hedley's) qualifications as a preacher and a guide of souls. It 
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 INNER LIFE OF FATHER THOMAS BURKE, O.P. 
 
 By a Dominican Friar of the English Province. Dark 
 
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 years ago. 
 
 " It is a singularly pleasing picture of a most attractive character, 
 in which humour, humility, and piety each found an appropriate 
 place." Scotsman. 
 
 KING, FRANCIS. 
 
 The Church of my Baptism, and why I returned to 
 
 it. Crown 8vo, cloth 026 
 
 "Altogether a book of an excellent spirit, written with fresh- 
 ness and distinction." Weekly Register. 
 
 LEE, REV. F. G., D.D. (of All Saints, Lambeth.) 
 
 Edward the Sixth : Supreme Head. Second edition. 
 
 Crown 8vo . . . . . , . .060 
 
 "In vivid interest and in literary power, no less than in solid his- 
 torical value, Dr. I.ee's present work comes fully up to the standard 
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 book evinces Dr. I.ee's customary diligence of research in amassing 
 facts, and his rare artistic power in welding them into a harmonious 
 and effective whole." John Bull. 
 
 LIGUORI, ST. ALPHONSUS. 
 
 New and Improved Translation of the Complete Works 
 of St. Alphonsus, edited by the late Bishop Coffin :- - 
 
 Vol. I. The Christian Virtues, and the Means for Ob- 
 taining them. Cloth . . . . . .030 
 
 Or separately : 
 
 1. The Love of our Lord Jesus Christ . . O I O 
 
 2. Treatise on Prayer. (In the ordinary editions a 
 
 great part of this work is omitted) . . O I O 
 
 3. A Christian's rule of Life . . . . .010
 
 SELECTION FROM BURNS & GATES' 
 
 LKHJORI, ST. 
 
 Vol. II. The Mysteries of the Faith The Incarnation ; 
 containing Meditations and Devotions on the Birth 
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 and Christmas. ....... o 2 6 
 
 Vol. III. The Mysteries of the Faith The Blessed 
 
 Sacrament . . . . . . . .026 
 
 Vol. IV. Eternal Truths Preparation for Death . 026 
 Vol. V. The Redemption Meditations on the Passion. 026 
 Vol. VI. Glories of Mary. New edition . . .036 
 Reflections on Spiritual Subjects . . . .026 
 
 LIVIUS, EEV. T. (M.A., C.SS.R.) 
 
 St. Peter, Bishop of Rome ; or, the Roman Episcopate 
 of the Prince of the Apostles, proved from the 
 Fathers, History and Chronology, and illustrated by 
 arguments from other sources. Dedicated to his 
 Eminence Cardinal Newman. Demy 8vo, cloth . 0120 
 
 " A book which deserves careful attention. In respect of literary 
 qualities, such as effective arrangement, and correct and lucid 
 diction, this essay, by an English Catholic scholar, is not unworthy 
 of Cardinal Newman, to whom it is dedicated." The Sun. 
 
 Explanation of the Psalms and Canticles in the Divine 
 Office. By ST. AI.PHONSUS LIGUORI. Translated 
 from the Italian by THOMAS Livius, C.SS. R. 
 With a Preface by his Eminence Cardinal MANNING. 
 Crown 8vo, cloth . . . . . . .076 
 
 "To nuns and others who know little or no Latin, the book will 
 be of immense importance." Dublin Review. 
 
 " Father Livius has in our opinion even improved on the original, 
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 it especially useful." Month. 
 
 Mary in the Epistles; or, The Implicit Teaching of 
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 forth in devout comments on their writings. 
 Illustrated from Fathers and other Authors, and 
 prefaced by introductory Chapters. Crown 8vo, 
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 The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six 
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 with the work of his fellow-Redemptorist on the ' Dowry of Mary, ' 
 this volume, in which we hear the combined voices of the Fathers of 
 the first six centuries united in speaking the praise of the Mother ot 
 God." Dublin Review- 
 
 MANNING, CARDINAL. Popular Edition of the Works of 
 
 Four Great Evils of the Day. 7th edition . . 026 
 
 Fourfold Sovereignty of God. 4th edition . . 026 
 
 Glories of the Sacred Heart. Jth edition . . 040 
 
 Grounds of Faith. loth edition . . . . o I 6 
 
 Independence of the Holy See. 2nd edition . . 026 
 
 Internal Mission of the Holy Ghost. 6th edition . 050 
 
 Miscellanies. 2 vols. .... each 060
 
 CATALOGUE OF PUBLICATIONS. II 
 
 MANNING, CARDINAL. continued. 
 
 Pastime Papers. 2nd edition . ... o 2 6 
 
 Religio Viatoris. 5th edition . . . . o I 6 
 
 Sermons on Ecclesiastical Subjects. Vol. I. . . O 6 O 
 
 (Vols. II. and III. out of Print.) 
 
 Sin and its Consequences. 9th edition . . . 040 
 
 Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. 4th edition 050 
 
 True Story of the Vatican Council. 2nd edition . 026 
 
 The Eternal Priesthood. 1 1 th edition . . . 026 
 The Office of the Church in the Higher Catholic 
 
 Education. A Pastoral Letter . . . . 006 
 Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England. 
 
 Reprint of a letter addressed to Dr. Pusey in 1864 O I 6 
 
 Lost Sheep Found. A Sermon . . . . O O 6 
 
 Rights and Dignity of Labour . . O O I 
 
 The Westminster Series 
 
 In handy pocket size. All hound in cloth. 
 The Blessed Sacrament, the Centre of Immutable 
 
 Truth O I O 
 
 Confidence in God. . . . . . . O I O 
 
 Love of Jesus to Penitents. . . . . O I O 
 
 Office of the Holy Ghost under the Gospel . I O 
 
 Holy Ghost the Sanctifier . . . . O 2 O 
 
 MANNING, CARDINAL, Edited by. 
 
 Life of the Cure of Ars. Popular edition . . .026 
 
 MEYNELL, ALICE. 
 
 Lourdes : Yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow. Transla- 
 ted from the French of Daniel Barbe by Alice Mey- 
 nell. With twelve full pages water colour drawings 
 by Hoffbauer, reproduced in colours. Royal 8vo, 
 blue buckram, gilt . . . . . .060 
 
 MORRIS, REV. JOHN (S.J., F.S.A-) 
 
 Letter Books of Sir Amias Poulet, keeper of Mary 
 
 Queen of Scots. Demy 8vo .... net 036 
 
 Two Missionaries under Elizabeth . . . O 14 O 
 
 The Catholics under Elizabeth . . . . o 14 o 
 
 The Life of Father John Gerard, S.J. Third edition, 
 
 rewritten and enlarged . . . . . . o 14 O 
 
 The Life and Martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket. Second 
 and enlarged edition. In one volume, large post 8vo, 
 cloth, pp. xxxvi., 632, . . . . . o 12 6 
 
 or bound in two parts, cloth . . . . .0130 
 
 " Father Morris is one of the few living writers who have succeeded 
 in greatly modifying certain views ot English history, which had long 
 been accepted as the only tenable ones. . . To have wrung an 
 adrrmsion of this kind from a reluctant public, never too much in- 
 clined to surrender its traditional assumptions, is an achievement not 
 to be underrated in importance." Rev. Dr. Augustus Jessopp, in 
 tht Academy.
 
 SELECTION FROM BURNS 
 
 MORRIS, REV. W. B. (of the Oratory.) 
 
 The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. Fouilli 
 
 edition. Crown 8vo, cloth ..... .0 5 o 
 
 " Promises to become the standard biography of Ireland's Apostle. 
 For clear statement of facts, and calm judicious discussion of con- 
 troverted points, it surpasses any work we know of in the literature 
 of the subject." American Catholic Quarterly. 
 
 Ireland and St. Patrick. A study of the Saint's 
 character and of the results of his apostolate. 
 Second edition. Crown 8vo, cloth. . . .050 
 
 "We read with pleasure this volume of essays, which, though 
 the Saint's name is taken by no means in vain, really contains a 
 sort of discussion of current events and current English views of 
 Irish character." Saturday Review. 
 
 NEWMAN, CARDINAL. 
 
 Church of the Fathers . . . . . .040 
 
 Prices of other works by Cardinal Newman on 
 application. 
 
 PAGANI, VERY REV. JOHN BAPTIST, 
 
 The Science of the Saints in Practice. By John Bap- 
 tist Pagani, Second General of the Institute of 
 Charity. Complete in three volumes. Vol. I, 
 January to April (out of print). Vol. 2, May to 
 August. Vol. 3, September to December . each 05 
 
 " This work iseminently adapted tor the use of ecclesiastics and of 
 religious communities." Irish Ecclesiastical Record- 
 
 PAYNE, JOHN ORLEBAR, (M.A.) 
 
 Recordsof the English Catholics of 1715. Demy 8vo. 
 
 Half-bound, gilt top o 15 o 
 
 "A book of the kind Mr. Payne has given us would have astonish- 
 ed Bishop Milner or Dr. Lingard. They would have treasured it. 
 for both of them knew the value of minute fragments of historical 
 information. The Editor has derived nearly the whole of the informa- 
 tion which he has given, from imprinted sources, and we must 
 congratulate him on having found a few incidents here and there 
 which may bring the old times back before us in a most touching 
 manner." Tablet. 
 
 English Catholic Non-Jurors of 1715. Being a Sum- 
 mary of the Register of their Estates, with Genea- 
 logical and other Notes, and an Appendix of 
 Unpublished Documents in the Public Record 
 Office. In one volume. Demy 8vo . I I o 
 
 "Most carefully and creditably brought out . . . From first to last, 
 full of social interest and biographical details, for which we may 
 search in vain elsewhere." Antiquarian Magazine. 
 
 Old English Catholic Missions. Demy 8 vo, half-bound. 076 
 
 " A book to hunt about in for curious odds and ends." Saturday 
 Rtvicw. 
 
 "These registers tell us in their too brief records, teeming with inter- 
 est for all their scantiness, many a tale of patient heroism." Tablet. 
 St. Paul's Cathedral in the time of Edward VI. Being 
 a detailed Account of its Treasures from a Document in the 
 Public Record Office. Tastefully printed on imitation hand- 
 made paper, and bound in cloth 026
 
 CATALOGUE OF PUBLICATIONS. 13 
 
 PERRY, REV. JOHN, 
 
 Practical Sermons for all the Sundays of the year. 
 First and Second Series. Sixth edition. In two 
 volumes. Cloth PO 7 o 
 
 " The price at which it is issued puts it within reach of the most 
 moderate purse. It has been carefully edited, printed in clear type, 
 and neatly bound. We trust its circulation may be so extensive as 
 to verify in Father Perry's regard that which was written of another 
 great servant of God : ' being dead he yet speaketh.' " Tablet. 
 
 POPE, REV. T. A. (of the Oratory.) 
 
 Life of St. Philip Neri. Translated from the Italian of 
 Cardinal Capecelatro. Second and revised edition. 
 2 vols, cloth . . . . . . o 12 6 
 
 " Altogether this is a most fascinating work, full of spiritual lore 
 and historic erudition, and with all the intense interest of a remark- 
 able biography. Take it up where you will, it is hard to lay it down. 
 We flunk it one of the most completely satisfactory lives of a Saint 
 that has been written in modern times." Tablet. 
 
 POUVILLON, E. 
 
 Bernadette of Lourdes. Translated from the French. 
 
 By Henry O'Shea. Blue buckram, gilt, . .026 
 "A very charming little miracle-play. It is in the form of prose- 
 narrative, interspersed with dialogue and lyrical :snatches ; simple, 
 devout, and strewn with tender fancy." Weekly Register. 
 
 " A creditable version of a clever and original work." Birmingham 
 Daily Gazette. 
 
 QUARTERLY SERIES- Edited by the Rev. John 
 Gerard, S.J. 92 volumes published to date. 
 
 Selection. 
 
 The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier. By the 
 
 Rev. H. J. Coleridge, S.J. 2 vols. . . o 10 6 
 
 The History of the Sacred Passion. By Father Luis 
 de la Palma, of the Society of Jesus. Translated 
 trom the Spanish. . . . . . .050 
 
 The Life of Dona Louisa de Carvajal. By Lady 
 
 Georgiana Fullerton. Small edition . . .036 
 
 The Life and Letters of St. Teresa. 3 vols. By Rev. 
 
 H. J. Coleridge, S.J each 076 
 
 The Life of Mary Ward. By Mary Catherine Elizabeth 
 Chalmers, of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin. 
 Edited by the Rev. H. J. Coleridge, S.J. 2 vols. o 15 o 
 
 The Return of the King. Discourses on the Latter 
 
 Days. By the Rev. H. J. Coleridge, S.J. . . 076 
 
 Pious Affections towards God and the Saints. Medi- 
 tations for every Day in the Year, and for the 
 Principal Festivals. From the Latin of the Ven. 
 Nicolas Lancicius, S.J. . . . . .076 
 
 The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ in Meditations 
 for Every Day in the Year. By Fr. Nicolas 
 Avancino, S.J. Two vols. . . . . o 10 6 
 
 The Baptism of the King : Considerations on the Sacred 
 
 Passion. By the Rev. H. J. Coleridge, S.J. . . 076 
 
 The Mother of the King. Mary during the Life of 
 
 Our Lord .076
 
 14 SELEC110N FROM BURNS & GATES' 
 
 QUARTERLY SERIES (selection} continued. 
 
 The Hours of the Passion. Taken from the Life of 
 
 Christ by Ludolph the Saxon .... ^o 7 6 
 
 The Mother of the Church. Mary during the first 
 
 Apostolic Age 060 
 
 The Life of St. Bridget of Sweden. By the late F. J. 
 
 M. A. Partridge ... ...060 
 
 The Teachings and Counsels of St. Francis Xavier. 
 
 From his Letters . . . . . . .050 
 
 The Life of St. Alonso Rodriguez. By Francis 
 
 Goldie, of the Society of Jesus . . .076 
 
 Letters of St. Augustine. Selected and arranged by 
 
 Mary H. Allies . .....066 
 
 A Martyr from the Quarter-Deck Alexis Clerc, S.J. 
 
 By Lady Herbert .050 
 
 Acts of the English Martyrs, hitherto unpublished. 
 
 By the Rev. John H. Pollen, S.J. . . .076 
 
 Life of St. Francis di Geronimo, S.J. By A. M. Clarke. 076 
 Aquinas Ethicus ; or the Moral Teaching of St. Thomas . 
 
 By the Rev. Joseph Rickaby, S.J. 2 vols. . . o 12 o 
 The Spirit of St. Ignatius. From the French of the 
 
 Rev. Fr. Xavier de Franciosi, S.J. . . .060 
 
 Jesus, the All-Beautiful. A devotional Treatise on 
 
 the character and actions of Our Lord. Edited by 
 
 Rev. J. G. MacLeod, S.J 066 
 
 The Manna of the Soul. By Fr. Paul Segneri. 
 
 New edition. In two volumes. . . . . o 12 o 
 Saturday dedicated to Mary. From the Italian of Fr. 
 
 Cabrini, S.J .060 
 
 Life of Father Augustus Law, S.J. By Ellis Schreiber. 060 
 Life of Ven. Joseph Benedict Cottolengo. From the 
 
 Italian of Don. P. Gastaldi. . . . .046 
 
 Story of St. Stanislaus Kostka. Edited by Rev. F. 
 
 Goldie, S.J. 3rd Edition. . . . .046 
 
 Two Ancient Treatises on Purgatory. A Remem- 
 brance for the Living to Pray for the Dead, by 
 
 Father James Mumford, S.J. ; and Purgatory 
 
 Surveyed, by Father Richard Thimelby, S.J. With 
 
 an Introduction by Rev. J. Morris, S.J. . .050 
 
 The Lights in Prayer of the Venerable Fathers Louis 
 
 de la Puente and Claude de la Colombiere, and the 
 
 Rev. Father Paul Segneri. Edited by the Rev. J. 
 
 Morris, S.J. 050 
 
 Life of St. Francis Borgia. By A. M. Clarke. 066 
 
 Life of Blessed Antony Baldinucci. By Rev. F. 
 
 Goldie, S.J. . 060 
 
 Distinguished Irishmen of the Sixteenth Century. 
 
 By Rev. E. Hogan, S. J 060 
 
 Journals kept during Times of Retreat. By the late 
 
 Fr. John Morris, S.J. Edited by Rev. J. Pollen, S.J. 060 
 Life of the Rev. Mother Mary of St. Euphrasia Pel- 
 
 letier, First Superior-General of the Congregation of 
 
 Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd of Angers. 
 
 By A. M. Clarke 060
 
 CA TALOGUE OF PUBLIC A TIONS. 15 
 
 QUARTERLY SERIES (selection) continued. 
 
 VOLUMES ON THE LIFE OF OUR LORD. 
 
 7*he Holy Infancy. 
 
 The Preparation of the Incarnation .... ;o 7 6 
 The Nine Months. The Life of our Lord in the Womb. 076 
 The Thirty Years. Our Lord's Infancy and Early Life. 076 
 
 The Public Life of Our Lord. 
 
 The Ministry of St. John Baptist ... 066 
 
 The Preaching of the Beatitudes . . . .066 
 The Sermon on the Mount. Continued. 2 Parts, each 066 
 The Training of the Apostles. Parts!., II., III., IV. 
 
 each 066 
 
 The Preaching of the Cross. Part I. . . .066 
 
 The Preaching of the Cross. Parts II., III. each 060 
 Passiontide. Parts I. II. and 1 1 1., each . . .066 
 Chapters on the Parables of Our Lord . . .076 
 
 Introductory Volumes. 
 The Life of our Life. Harmony of the Life of Our 
 
 Lord, with Introductory Chapters and Indices. 
 
 Second edition. Two vols. . . . . .0150 
 
 The Passage of our Lord to the Father. Conclusion 
 
 of The Life of our Life. . . . . .076 
 
 The Works and Words of our Saviour, gathered from 
 
 the Four Gospels 076 
 
 The Story of the Gospels. Harmonised for Meditation 076 
 
 RENDU, A. (LL.D.) 
 
 The Jewish Race in Ancient and Roman History. 
 Translated from the eleventh corrected edition, by 
 Theresa Crook. Crown 8vo, cloth . . .060 
 
 " Wonderfully well executed." Tablet. 
 
 " It has the merits of clearness and condensation." Scotsman. 
 
 ROSE, STEWART. 
 
 St. Ignatius Loyola and The Early Jesuits, with more 
 than IOO Illustrations by H. W. and H. C. Brewer 
 and L. Wain. The whole produced under the 
 immediate superintendence of the Rev. W. H. Evre, 
 S.J. Super Royal 8vo. Handsomely bound in 
 
 cloth, extra gilt net. o 15 o 
 
 "This magnificent volume is one of which Catholics have justly 
 reason to be proud. Its historical as well as its literary value is very 
 great, and the illustrations from the pencils of Mr. Louis Wain and 
 Messrs- H. W. and H. C. Brewer are models of what the illustrations 
 of such a book should be." Month. 
 
 RYDER, REV. H. I. D. (of the Oratory.) 
 
 Catholic Controversy : A Reply to Dr. Littledale's 
 
 "Plain Reasons." Seventh edition . . .026 
 "Father Ryder of the Birmingham Oratory, has now furnished 
 in a small volume a masterly reply to this assailant from without. 
 The lighter charms of a brilliant and graceful style are added to the 
 solid merits of this handbook of contemporary controversy." Irish 
 Monthly- 
 
 SCHOUPPE. REV. F. X. (S.J.) 
 
 Purgatory. Illustrated by the lives and legends of 
 
 the Saints. Cloth . . . . . .060 
 
 " We feel absolutely confident that Father Schouppe's work will 
 soon become one of our most popular works on Purgatory, and that 
 we shall ere long have to notice its second edition." Tablet.
 
 16 BURNS &- OATHS' PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 STANTON REV. R. (of the Oratory.) 
 
 A Menology of England and Wales ; or, Brief Mem- 
 orials of the British and English Saints, arranged ac- 
 cording to the Calendar. Together with the Martyrs 
 of the i6th and I7th centuries. Compiled by order of 
 the Cardinal Archbishop and the Bishops of the Pro- 
 vince of Westminster. With Supplement, containing 
 Notes and other additions, together with enlarged 
 Appendices, and a new Index. Demy 8vo, cloth ,' o 16 o 
 
 The Supplement, separately . . . . .020 
 
 SWEENEY, RT. REV. ABBOT, (O.S.B.) 
 
 Sermons for all Sundays and Festivals of the Year. 
 Fourth edition. Crown 8vo, handsomely bound in 
 half leather . . . . . . . o 10 6 
 
 " For such priests as are in search of matter to aid them in their 
 round of Sunday discourses, and have not read this volume , we can 
 assure them that they will find in these 600 pages a mine of solid 
 and simple Catholic teaching. ' Tablet. 
 
 THOMPSON, EDWARD HEALY, (M.A.) 
 
 The Life of Jean-Jacques Olier, Founder of the 
 Seminary of St. Sulpice. New : and enlarged edi.tion. 
 Post 8vo, cloth, pp. xxxvi. 628 . . . .0150 
 
 " It provides us with just what we most need, a model to look up to 
 and imitate; one whose circumstances and surroundings were suffi- 
 ciently like our own to admit of an easy and direct application to our 
 own personal duties and daily occupations." Dublin Review. 
 
 The Life and Glories of St. Joseph, Husband of 
 Mary, Foster-Father of Jesus, and Patron of the 
 Universal Church. Grounded on the Dissertations of 
 Canon Antonio Vitalis, Father Jose Moreno, and other 
 writers. Second edition. Crown, 8yo, cloth 060 
 
 Life of Marie Lataste. Cloth . . . . . 050 
 
 Letters and Writings of Marie Lataste, with Criti- 
 cal and Expository Notes. By two Fathers of the 
 Society of Jesus. Translated from the French. 
 3 vols ....... each 050 
 
 ULLATHORNE ARCHBISHOP. 
 
 Autobiography of, (see Drane, A. T. ) ; . .076 
 Letters of, do. ,, . . . . .090 
 
 Endowments of Man, &c. Popular edition. . . 070 
 Groundwork of the Christian Virtues : do. . .070 
 Christian Patience, . . do. do. . .070 
 
 Memoir of Bishop Willson . . " . . .026 
 
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 The Canons and Decrees of the Sacred and CEcumenical 
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 Pontiffs, Paul III., Julius III., and Pius IV., trans- 
 lated by the Rev. J. WATERWORTH. To which are 
 prefixed Essays on the External and Internal History 
 of the Council. A new edition. Demy 8vo, cloth. O 10 6 
 
 WISEMAN, CARDINAL. 
 
 Fabiola. A Tale of the Catacombs. New edition. 
 
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