OF FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 55 



kyndness or servyce doner to her before, which is no lytel part of 

 veray nobleness. She was not vengeable ne cruell, but redy anone 

 to forgete and to forgive injury es done unto her, at the least desyre 

 or mocyon made unto her for the same. Mercyfull also and pyteous 

 she was unto such as was grevyed and wrongfully troubled, and to 

 them that were in poverty or sekeness, or any other mysery. She 

 had, in a manner, all that was praysable in a woman, either in soul 

 or body."* 



Fisher passed through the extremes of fortune, he stood the test 

 of dangers, temptations, and sacrifices, with the same heroic coijj- 

 stancy as More ; he manifested that temper of concentrated resolu- 

 tion in prison, at the tribunal, and on the scaffold, which marked 

 the bearing of those whose names are most conspicuous in the annals 

 of the Reformation ; and there was that composed dignity in his 

 character which rendered him equally indifferent with More to the 

 plaudits of his countrymen. It is, then, a subject of censure that 

 Burnett should have evinced such reluctance to give this martyr of 

 the Romish church,t of whom, from his saint-like qualities, she 

 may be justly proud, his due ranV among the ancient worthies of 

 the realm, especially as there was not an atom of that lust of self- 

 aggrandisement or power which is so emphatically called, in the 

 History of his own Times, the besetting sin of the churchman. 

 For when offered, by Henry VIII., at one time the see of Ely, and 

 at another that of Lincoln, each of which was treble in value to his 

 own, his memorable answer was, " Others may have a larger in- 

 come, as for me I shall not change my little old wife, to whom I 

 have been so long wedded, for a wealthier ;"J and upon being told 

 that Paul III.,§ in testimony of his great merits, and of his follow- 



* There is a reprint of this interesting discourse, in 1708, by Baker, the 

 Cambridge antiquary. 



•f Fuller has been styled " a man of praises ;" but the quaint old historian 

 was not so imbued with the fashionable liberality of this generation, as to 

 bestow them upon an individual whose religious faith differed in several re- 

 spects so widely from his own, unless the Avhole life of such a person was, in 

 his opinion, a copy to be admired. Speaking then of Fisher,' fee says, "He 

 was generally pitied for his age, honoured for his learning, admired for his 

 holy conversation. Besides it was not worth while," he adds, " to take away 

 his life, who was not only mortalis, as all men, and niortificatus, as all good 

 men, but also moritunis, as old men, being past seventy-six years of age." — 

 Church Hist, b. v., sect. 3. 



t See Fuller, 201, 203. 



§ In following Burnett, a late respectable Historian is evidently mistaken 

 when he says " that Clement VII. bestowed that honour upon him." — See 



