imprudence or zeal had tempted him again to meddle with dangerous matters. A correspondence had passed between the Bishop and the King,[1] on the Act of Supremacy, or on some subject connected with it. The King had taken no public notice of Fisher's words, but he had required a promise that the letter should not be shown to any other person. The unwise old man gave his word, but he did not observe it; he sent copies both of what he had himself written and of the King's answer to the Sion monks,[2] furnishing them at the same time with a copy of the book which he had written against the divorce, and two other books, written by Abel, the Queen's confessor, and the Spanish ambassador. Whether he was discovered to have held any other correspondence, or whether anything of an analogous kind was proved against More, I am unable to discover. Both he and Fisher had been treated with greater indulgence than was usual with prisoners.[3] Their
- ↑ He wrote to the King on the 14th of June, in consequence of an examination at the Tower; but that letter could not have been spoken of on the trial of the Carthusians.—See State Papers, vol. i. p. 431.
- ↑ 'I had the confessor alone in very secret communication concerning certain letters of Mr Fisher's, of which Father Reynolds made mention in his examination; which the said Fisher promised the King's Grace that he never showed to any other man, neither would. The said confessor hath confessed to me that the said Fisher sent to him, to the said Reynolds, and to one other brother of them, the copy of his said letters directed to the King's Grace, and the copy of the King's answer also. He hath knowledged to me also that the said Fisher sent unto them with the said copies a book of his, made in defence of the King's Grace's first marriage, and also Abel's book, and one other book made by the Emperour's ambassador, as I suppose.'—Bedyll to Cromwell: Suppression of the Monasteries, pp. 45, 46.
- ↑ The accounts are consistent on this subject with a single exception.
