49 



AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE CHARACTER OF 

 FISHER, BISHOP OF*ROCHESTER. 



" I love Fisher ; you have taught me to hate Harry the Eighth more 

 than ever." — Dii. Parr.* 



Almost every learned foreigner of the present day who has di- 

 rected his researches to English history, has animadverted upon the 

 disposition of Protestant writers to exaggerate the merits of Henry 

 VIII. and unduly to soften his crimes ; while another main impres- 

 sion is, their disparagement of those personages who had the rare 

 magnanimity to oppose his arbitrary dogmas in church and state. 

 It is quite impossible not to attach this charge of partiality to the 

 historian of the Reformation, Bishop Burnett, however loud and 

 frequent may be his vauntings that truth was the sole end and ob- 

 ject of his labours. This celebrated author may be said to have 

 given the impulse, to have set the tone to this favourite and fashion- 

 able principle. In exemplification of this remark, take his delinea- 

 tion of the characters of Cranmer, Cromwell, and Fisher. Surely 

 he might have done ample justice to the two former without at- 

 tempting to throw a cloud over the venerable virtuest of the latter. 

 We do not blame him for his lavish praises upon the two great in- 



* See Butler's Reminiscences, vol. ii., p. 227- 



f So unconscious, however, does Burnett appear of making his readers 

 more acquainted with the faults than with the excellencies of Fisher, that he 

 does not scruple to say, " I seem to write like one that intended to raise his 

 character rather than to depress it." — Hisi. of the Reform.^ v. iii,,part 2., p. 519. 

 Now it must strike a man of plain understanding to be rather a novel me- 

 thod of exalting Fisher's character, to affirm that " he was much addicted to 

 the superstitions in which he was brought up." — Hist, of the Reform., v. i., 

 p. 708 : and, again, " his charity was burning indeed. He was a merciless 

 persecutor of heretics, so that the rigour of the law under which he fell was 

 the measure that he had measured out to others." — Hist, of the Reform.^ v. i., 

 part 2, p. 439. " Call you that backing of your friends ? A plague upon such 

 backing." Moreover, it may be observed, that a less partial historian, if he 

 had occasion to couple the names of Fisher and More in the same sentence, 

 would not have passed over the merits of the former in the slighting man- 

 ner Burnett has done, as if there were no elements of greatness or goodness 

 in his composition, however true it may be that the reputation of the latter 

 still shines with undiminished brightness. "The taking so many lives, 

 particularly Fisher's and More's, the one being extreme old, and the other 

 one of the glories of his nation, for probity and learning, &c. &c." — Preface 

 to the Hist, of the Reform., p. xvi. 



VOL. Vr. — NO. XIX. G 



