JOHN
463
JOHN
have lasted a few months only, for in February,
1531, Convocation met, and Fisher was present. This
was the occasion when the clergy were forced, at a
cost of £100,000, to purchase the king's pardon for
having recognized Cardinal Wolsey's authority as
legate of the pope; and at the same time to acknowl-
edge Henry as Supreme Head of the Church in Eng-
land, to which phrase, however, the addition "so far
as God's law permits" was made, through Fisher's
efforts.
A few days later, several of the bishop's servants were taken ill after eating some porridge served to the household, and two actually died. Popular opinion at the time regarded this as an attempt on the bishop's life, although he himself chanced not to have taken any of the poisoned food. To disarm suspicion, the king not only expressed strong indig- nation at the crime, but caused a special Act of Par- liament to be passed, whereby poisoning was to be accounted high treason, and the person guilty of it boiled to death. This sentence was actually carried out on the culprit, but it did not prevent what seems to have been a second attempt on Fisher's life soon afterwards.
Matters now moved rapidly. In May, 1532, Sir Thomas More resigned the chancellorship, and in June, Fisher preached publicly against the divorce. In August, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, and Cranmer was at once nominated to the pope as his successor. In January, 1533, Henry se- cretly went through the form of marriage with Anne Boleyn; Cranmer's consecration took place in March of the same year, and, a week later, Fisher was ar- rested. It seems fairly clear that the purpose of this arrest was to prevent his opposing the sentence of divorce which Cranmer pronounced in May, or the coronation of Anne Boleyn which followed on 1 Jime; for Fisher was set at liberty again within a fortnight of the latter event, no charge being made against him. In the autumn of this year (1.533), various ar- rests were made in connexion with the so-called revelations of the Holy Maid of Kent (see Barton, Eli2.a.beth), but as Fisher was taken seriously ill in December, proceedings against him were po.stponed for a time. In March, 15.34, however, a special bill of attainder against the Bishop of Rochester and others for complicity in the matter of the Xun of Kent was introduced and passed. By this Fisher was condemned to forfeiture of all his personal es- tate and to be imprisoned during the king's pleasure. Subsequently a pardon was granted to mm on pay- ment of a fine of £300.
In the same session of Parliament was passed the Act of Succession, by which all who should be called upon to do so were compelletl to take an oath of suc- cession, acknowledging the issue of Henry and Anne as legitimate heirs to the throne, under pain of being guilty of misprision of treason. Fisher refused the oath and was sent to the Tower of London, 26 April, 1534. Several efforts were made to induce him to sul> mit, but without effect, and in November he was a second time attainted of misprision of treason, his goods being forfeited as from 1 March preceding, and the See of Rochester being declared vacant as from 2 June following. A long letter exists, written from the Tower by the bishop to Thomas Cromwell, which re- cords the severity of his confinement and the sufferings he endured.
In May, 1535, the new pope, Paul III, created Fisher Cardinal Priest of St. Vitalis, his motive being apparently to induce Henrv by this mark of esteem to treat the bishop less severely. The effect was pre- cisely the reverse. Henry forliade the cardinal's hat to be brought into England, declaring that he would send the head to Rome fur it instead. In June a special commission for Fisher's trial was issued, and on 17 June he was arraigned in Westminster Hall on a
charge of treason, in that he had denied the king to be
supreme head of the Church. Since he had been de-
prived of his bishopric by the Act of Attainder, he was
treated as a commoner, and trietl by jury. He was
declared guilty, and condemned to be hanged, drawn,
and quartered at Tyburn, but the mode of execution
was changetl, and instead he was beheaded on Tower
Hill. The martjT's last moments were thoroughly in
keeping with his previous life. He met death with a
calm dignifietl courage which profoundly impressed all
present. His headless body was stripped and left on
the scaffold till evening, when it was thrown naked
into a grave in the churchyard of AUhallows, Barking.
Thence it was removed a fortnight later and laid be-
side that of Sir Thomas More in the church of St.
Peter ad Vincula by the Tower. His head was stuck
upon a pole on London Bridge, but its ruddy and life-
hke appearance excited so much attention that, after
a fortnight, it was thrown into the Thames, its place
being taken by that of Sir Thomas More, whose mar-
tyrdom occurred on 6 July next following.
Several portraits of Fisher exist, the best being that by Holbein in the royal collection ; and a few secondary relics are extant. In the Decree of 29 December, 1SS6, when fifty-four of the English martyrs were beatified by Leo XIII, the first place of all is given to Blessed John Fisher. A list of Fisher's writings will be found in Gillow, " Bibliographical Dictionary of the EngHsh Catholics" (London, s. d.), II, 262-270. There are twenty-six works in all, printed and MS., mostly ascetical or controversial treatises, several of which have been reprinted many times. The original editions are very rare and valuable. The principal are: " Treatise concernynge . . . the seven penytencyall Psalms" (London, 150S); "Sermon . . . agajii ye pernicyous doctrin of Martin Luther " (London, 1521) ; "Defensio HenriciVIII" (Cologne, 1525) ; "DeVeri- tate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia, ad- versus Johannen Oecolampadium " (Cologne, 1527); "De Causa Matrimonii . . . Henrici VIII cum Cath- arina Aragonensi " (Alcala de Henares, 1.530); "The Waves to Perfect Religion " (London 1535) ; " A Spir- ituall Consolation written ... to nys sister Eliza- beth" (London, 1735).
B,\iLT, Life and Death of John Fisher (London, 1655), really written by Hall; Lewis. Life of Dr, John Fisher (2 vols.. Lon- don, 1855); Stewart, Life of John Fisher CLondon, 1879); Bridgett, Life of Blessed John Fisher (London, 18SS); Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry Vlll. with prefaces by Brewer and G.uiDlNER, vols. IV-VHI (London, 1S75-1SS5) ; Baker, History of St. Johns College, ed. IIator (Cambridge. 1869); Sander, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, ed. LEW^s (London, 1877), 64, 66, 111, 121; Gairdner. Lollardy and the Reformation (London, 1908), I, iv; Dixon, History of the Church of England (London, 1S7S), I.
G. Roger Hudleston.
John Forest, Blessed, b. in 1471, presumably at Oxford, where his surname was then not unknown; suffered 22 May, 153S. At the age of twenty he re- ceived the halMt of St. Francis at Greenwich, in the church of the Friars Minor of the Regular Observance, called for brevity's sake "Observants". Nine years later we find him at Oxford, studying theology. He is commonly styled "Doctor" though, beyond the steps which he took to qualify as bachelor of divinity, no positive proof of his further progress has been found. .\fterwards he became one of Queen Catherine's chap- lains, and was appointed her confessor. In 1525 he appears to have lieen provincial, which seems certain from the fact that he threatened with excommunica- tion the lirethren who opposed Cardinal Wolsey's lega- tine powers. Already in 1531 the Observants had incurred the king's displeasure by their determined opposition to the divorce: an<l no wonder that Father Forest was soon singled out as an object of wrath. In November. 1532, we find the holy man discoursing at Paul's Cro.ss on the decay of the realm and the pulling down of churches. At the beginning of February,
