OF FISHERj BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 63 



their sentiments of detestation upon the king's vindictiveness and 

 hardness of heart. To avert, then, this storm of moral indignation 

 from themselves, and to turn it, if they possibly could, upon their 

 innocent victim, it was necessary to have recourse to some such ex- 

 pedient as the one just mentioned. Now Henry despised the voice 

 of conscience, or at least it was but feeble when it told him to do 

 what opposed his revengeful passions ; and as for his unscrupulous 

 vicar- general, who was bred up in the Machiavellian school,* we 

 have the most clear and undoubted proofs in Remembrances of his 

 — Records, we would call them, of ministerial despotism — that he 

 was quite a stranger to any of those restraints by which tender 

 natures are kept back from daring and atrocious undertakings. At 

 the nod of his royal master he was willing to execute the most 

 odious of the purposes of tyranny ; and it is equally undeniable 

 that he could practice in secrecy and concealment, for the attain- 

 ment of his own selfish and ambitious views, acts the most atrocious 

 and iniquitous, acts not only repugnant to all the commonest feel- 

 ings of justice, but also contrary to all the fundamental principles 

 of the English constitution. In verification of these assertions we 

 will give some of the items of the memoranda which he carried in 

 his pocket when he went to the court, the council, or the parlia- 

 ment : — 



*' To causet indictaments to be drawen for all the offenders in trea- 

 sone and mysperusion, as the case requyre, concerning the nonne of 

 Canterbury. To advertise the kyng of the orderyng of Maister 

 Fyssher, and to shew hym of the indenture which I have delyveryd 

 to the solicitors. To knowe when Maister Fyssher shall go to his 

 execution. To remembre specyally the Ladie of Sar. To send 

 Gendon to the Towre to be rakkyd.% To remembre to know the 



* See Poll. ApoL, p. 128. 



t Sir Henry Ellis, in his Letters on English History^ in which the above 

 extracts are to be found, has the following remarks in reference to them : — 

 " The Cottonian Manuscript Titus, b. i., contains numerous Notes, in Lord 

 Cromwell's own hand, of remembrances when he went to the Court, the 

 Council, or the Parliament. Their folds and creases show that they were 

 the memoranda which he doubled up and carried in his pocket : and it is 

 singular that he should have sufl'ered such to remain."— Second Series, v.ii, 

 p. 120. 



X Those legal luminaries, Fortescue and Coke, and other eminent autho- 

 rities on the common law, have expressed themselves in the most forcible 

 terms against the use of torture in every form. — De Laud, Leg. Angl., cap. 

 22, and 3rd Institute, p. 35 — while, in the following passage, which, as it is 

 not a hackneyed one we shall quote entire. Sir Thomas Smith, who took a lead 



