60 AN HISTORICAL VIEW OP THE CHARACTER 



consent to become a party in her cause he manifested the most un- 

 flinching adherence to it. He was one of her councillors upon the 

 hearing before the legate at Blackfriars, and in that capacity so ex- 

 asperated and envenomed the ire of Henry that this proved the 

 stepping-stone to his tragical end.* And in a speech in the upper 

 house of the convocation of Canterbury he had lifted up a protest- 

 ing voice against the suppression of the lesser monasteries, with 

 such energy and freedom as must have conjured to his audience the 

 image of most dangerous consequences, from their conviction of the 

 deep and indelible offence which such an address would give to their 

 tyrannical sovereign. If the following were not the words of 

 truth, they were at least the words of undaunted faithfulness to the 

 opinions which he had espoused. " Beware, my lords/' exclaimed 

 Bishop Fisher, " beware of yourselves and of your country, beware 

 of your holy mother, the catholic church. The people are subject 

 to novelties, and Lutheranism spreads itself among us. Remember 

 Germany and Bohemia. Let our neighbour's houses, which are on 

 fire, teach us to beware of our own. An axe," continued the 

 learned prelate, " came upon a time into the wood, making his 

 moan to the great trees that he wanted an handle to work withall, 

 and for that cause he was constrained to sit idle ; therefore he made 

 it his request to them to grant him one of their small saplings with- 

 in the wood to make him an handle. But now, becoming a com- 

 plete axe, he fell so to work within the same wood that, in process 

 of time, there were neither great nor small trees to be found in the 

 place where the wood stood. And so, my lords, if you can grant 

 the king these smaller monasteries, you do but make him an handle 

 whereby, at his own pleasure, he may cut down all the cedars of 

 the Lebanons."t 



The man who did not sihrink from giving vent in such an open 

 and frontless manner, to his indignation against measures which, 

 according to his clear and compendious logic, were culpable, because 

 arbitrary and unjust, was not likely to submit to the bent of Crom- 

 well's courtly politics, even though they assumed the colours of 

 goodness, upon an occasion in which his own personal honour and 



• "John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester," says Fuller, "led here the front, 

 whom some catholics call John the Baptist, because he was beheaded, though 

 on a contrary account, John the Baptist for saying it is not lawful, John Fish- 

 er for saying it is lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." 



-f- This speech was said to be delivered in 1529, upon a motion being made 

 in the Uj)j)er House of the Convocation of Cantofbury for suppressinpf the 

 lesser monasteries. — Ur. Hall's Life of Fuher, p. 108. 



L 



