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., andv
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 Dcrvyt 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.
•f1 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 learned1'. — 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. 41
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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