Bishop Burnet has written that news of Fisher’s sufferings reached the ears of Pope Clement, who, “by an officious kindness to him, or rather to spite King Henry, declared him a Cardinal, and sent him a red hat. When the King heard of this, he sent to examine him about it; but he protested that he had used no endeavour to procure it, and valued it so little that, if the hat were lying at his feet, he would not take it up. It never came nearer him than Picardy, yet did this precipitate his ruin.” Henry had sworn that before the cardinal’s hat could arrive the Bishop should have no head upon which to place it.
When asked by the Lord Chancellor, after he had been declared guilty of high treason, what he had to say in arrest of judgment, the venerable old man answered: “Truly, my lord, if that which I have said be not sufficient I have no more to say; but only to desire Almighty God to forgive them who have condemned me, for I think they know not what they have done.” The Chancellor then read out the sentence by which the Bishop was doomed, by the usual ghastly form of words, to a traitor’s death. As Fisher was passing under Traitor’s Gate, where he had been landed on his return to the Tower from his trial, he turned to his guard of halberdiers and said: “My masters, I thank you for all the great labours and pains which ye have taken with me to-day. I am not able to give you anything in recompense, because I have nothing left, and therefore I pray you accept in good part my hearty thanks.” Those who were present were struck by the “fresh and lively colour in his face, as he seemed rather to have come from some great feast or banquet rather than from his trial and condemnation, showing by all his carriage and outward behaviour nothing else but joy and satisfaction.” Three more days of prison and the good old man’s troubles ceased.
At five o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd of June, the Lieutenant of the Tower awoke Fisher from his sleep, telling him that he had come with a message from the King—namely, that he was to die that day. “Well,” answered the Bishop, “If this be your errand you bring me no great news, for I have sometime looked for this message. I most humbly thank his Majesty that it pleases him to rid me of all this worldly business, and I thank you also for your tidings. But pray, Mr Lieutenant,” he added, “when is my hour that I must go hence?” “Your hour,” said the Lieutenant, “must be nine of the clock.” “And what hour is it now?” said Fisher. “It is now about five.” “Well then, let me by your patience sleep an hour or two, for I have slept very little this night; and yet, to tell you the truth, not for any fear of death, thank God, but by reason of my great weakness and infirmity.” “The King’s further pleasure is,” said the Lieutenant, “that you should use as little speech as may be upon the scaffold, especially as to anything concerning his Majesty, whereby the people should have cause to think otherwise than well of him and his proceedings.” “For that,” remarked the Bishop, in answer to this practical confession of the injustice of his sentence, “for that you shall see me order myself so, by God’s grace, as that neither the King nor any one else shall have occasion to dislike what I say.”
He then slept on for two hours more, when he rose and was helped to dress; a hair shirt, which he wore next to his body, he removed, replacing it with a clean white one. Upon his ordering his attendant to give him his best clothing, the latter remarked upon the care and attention that he was bestowing upon his dress that day. “Dost thou not mark that this is our wedding-day,” said Fisher in answer, “and it behoves me therefore to be more nicely dressed than ordinary for the solemnity of the occasion.”
At nine o’clock the Lieutenant called for him. “I will wait upon you straight,” said the Bishop, “as fast as this body of mine will give me leave.” He then called for his furred tippet, which he placed round his neck, “Oh, my Lord,” said the Lieutenant, “what need you be so careful of your health for this little time, which you know is not much above an hour.” “I think the same,” said Fisher, “but yet, in the meantime, I will keep myself as well as I can to the very time of my execution. For I tell you truly, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so that of His infinite goodness he will continue it, yet will I not willingly incommodate my health in the meantime one minute of an hour, but I will still continue the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways and means as God Almighty hath provided for me.” With that, taking a little book in his hand—it was a Latin New Testament—that lay by him, he made the sign of the cross upon his forehead, and then went out of the chamber with the Lieutenant, being so weak that he could scarcely go down the stairs. For this reason he was placed in a chair, and carried by two of the Lieutenant’s men to the Tower Gate, surrounded by a small number of guards. At the Gate he was to be delivered over to the Sheriffs of London and Middlesex for his execution, but when the procession arrived there it had to wait until a messenger, who had been sent to the Sheriffs, returned to say whether those officials were ready to receive him. During this waiting the Bishop rose from his chair, and stood leaning against the wall with his eyes raised to the sky. Then he opened the Testament he was carrying in his hand, and said, “O Lord, this is the last time that I shall ever open this book, let some comfortable place now chance to me, whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in this my last hour!” Looking into the book, the first words he espied were these! “And this is the life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with thine own self.” Fisher then closed the book, saying, “Here is learning enough for me to my life’s end.” From the Gate he was carried to the scaffold on Tower Hill, praying as he went, and when several persons offered to help him to mount the steps, he turned to them and said, “Nay, masters, seeing that I am come so far, let me alone, and you shall see me shift for myself well enough.”
The sun shone brightly on the old man’s face when, standing on the scaffold, with uplifted hands, he pronounced the words “Accedite ad eum et illuminamini, et facies vestrae non confundentur.” The headsman, as was the custom, knelt and asked the Bishop’s forgiveness for the task he was about to perform. “I forgive thee with all my heart, and I trust thou shalt see me overcome this storm with courage,” answered the Bishop. Before kneeling down, he spoke a few words to the dense crowd gathered around the scaffold. He had come there, he said, to die for the Faith of Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, he begged their prayers that he might be enabled at the point of death, and at the moment of the supreme stroke, to continue steadfast without wavering in any one point of that Faith. Then he prayed for the King, and for the realm, being so cheerful that he seemed glad to die, and “although he looked death itself in the human shape,” according to one of the writers of the time, “his voice was full, strong, and clear.” When on his knees before the block, the venerable Bishop repeated certain prayers, the Te Deum, and the Thirty-first Psalm, “In te Domine speravi.” Then the axe fell, and his head rolled on the scaffold. Thus died John Fisher, a true martyr to his Church and Faith, far worthier of canonisation than many enrolled in the long list of hagiology.
Henry was not content with merely putting this aged and venerable man to death, but, if Cardinal Pole is to be believed, he ordered the headless body of the Bishop to be treated with insult. It was left naked for hours on the scaffold, until some charitable soul with a touch of humanity, cast some straw over the poor remains of one who, but a short time before, had been among the best, if not the greatest of English Churchmen (Dr Hall’s “Life of the Bishop of Rochester”). Fisher’s head was stuck upon a pike and placed on London Bridge. Dodd, in his history of the Church, recounts that after the head had been some days on the Bridge, it was taken down and thrown into the river, the reason for this being that rays of light were seen shining around it. Hall, in his “Life of the Bishop,” states that “the face was observed to become fresher and more comely day by day, and that such was the concourse of people who assembled to look at it, that almost neither cart nor horse could pass.”
Sir Thomas More
(From the drawing by Holbein at Windsor.)
The Bishop of Rochester’s judicial murder was immediately followed by that of Sir Thomas More; it would not be easy to say which execution was the greater crime: their blood lies equally on Henry’s soul.