OP FISHER, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER. 65 



sonal character of Cromwell, we express, without reserve, our be- 

 lief that this extraordinary (as he might with more justice be deno- 

 minated rather than great) man, as he is unjustly designated, would 

 not be stopt by difficulties to which others would yield — would not 

 be deterred, by any delicacy of moral feeling, from virtually pledg- 

 ing himself to the truth of a declaration, every line of which he 

 knew was traced with the characters of falsehood and injustice. 



In Burnett's refutation of the lies and calumnies of that open 

 and decided enemy to the protestant cause, the noted Roman Ca- 

 tholic writer Sanders, there is one instance in reference to Fisher 

 which, it must be fairly admitted, places the Bishop on the wrong, 

 and Sanders on the right side in their respective statements. " The 

 Bishop of Rochester," says Sanders, ** was condemned because he 

 would not acknowledge the king's supremacy." Burnett^s reply is, 

 " He was never pressed to acknowledge it."* During Fisher's con- 

 finement in the Tower, which was altogether for fourteen months, 

 and where his treatment was such as to make the poor remnant of 

 his life as wretchedt as it could be, from the want of clothes and 

 fire, he was visited several times by the lords of the council. In 

 the interval between their first and second visit, there had been the 

 session of parliament of the 26th of Henry VIII., in which was 

 passed the celebrated statute that conferred upon Henry the title of 

 the supreme head of the church, and which made words, contrary 

 to all constitutional forms, treason. Upon their second visit we 

 are expressly told the lords of the council went to know his opinion 

 touching the statute of supreme head. So much for Burnett's de- 

 claration that he was never pressed to acknowledge it. Fisher, 

 however, with all his straight-forwardness and conscientiousness of 

 purpose, was so wary and unconfiding in his answer to their inter- 

 rogatories, in the full conviction that they were put to entrap and 

 criminate him, that the lords could draw no other reply than this — 

 that " the statute did not compel any man to answer ; he, there- 

 fore, besought that he should not be constrained to make farther or 

 other answer than the statute did bind him to make.''{ He was 

 again examined by the council for a third time. But though, on 

 all these occasions, he still declined offering any opinion on the su- 

 premacy, lest he might fall into the danger of the statutes, never- 



• History of the Reform., v. i., par. ii, p. 438. 



•f Burnett himself does acknowledge that ** the old Bishop was hardly 

 used." — History of the Reform., v. i., p. 318. 



X See Bruce, p. 80—83; liord Herbert, p. 392; and Roper's Appendix, 

 Letters xi. and xii. 



VOL. VI. — NO. XIX. I 



