, a man who deserves some notice on account of his zeal for the
, a man who deserves some notice on account of his zeal for the reformation, was born in Kent,
and, after an education at Oxford, went about 1525 to
Gray’s Inn, to study the law. A play was then written
by one Roo, or Roe, in which cardinal Wolsey was severely
reflected on; and Fish undertook to act the part in which
he was ridiculed, after every body else had refused to venture upon it. The cardinal issued his orders against him
the same night, but he escaped, and went into Germany,
where he found out, and associated himself with, William
Tyndale. The year following he wrote a little piece,
called, “The Supplication of Beggars;
” a satire upon
bishops, abbots, priors, monks, friars, and indeed the popish
clergy in gejieral. About 1527 or 1528, after it had been
printed, a copy was sent to Anne Boleyne, and by her
given to the king, who was not displeased with it, and
Wolsey being now disgraced, Fish was recalled home,
and graciously countenanced by the king for what he had
done. Sir Thomas More, who, when chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster, had answered Fish’s pamphlet, in
another, entitled “The Supplication of Souls in Purgatory,
” being advanced to the rank of chancellor in the
room of Wolsey, the king ordered sir Thomas not to meddle with Fish, and sent a message to this purpose, with his
signet, by the Jiands of Fish. On his delivering the message, sir Thomas told him, all this was sufficient for himself, but not for his wife, against whom it was complained
that she had refused to let the friars say their gospels in
Latin at her house. The chancellor appears to have made
some attempt to prosecute the wife, but how far he succeeded is not known. Fish himself died about half a year
after this of the plague, about 1531, and was buried in the
church of St. Dunstan in the West. In one of the lives of
sir Thomas More, it is reported that he turned papist before his death, but this circumstance is not mentioned by
Fox. The “Supplication
” was one of the publications
afterwards prohibited by Cuthbert Tonstall, when bishop
of London. Tanner ascribes to Fish two works called
“The Boke of merchants rightly necessary to all folkes,
newly made by the lord Pantapole
” and “The Spiritual
Nosegay.
” He also published about The Summ
of the Scriptures,
” translated from the Dutch. His widow
married James Bainham, afterwards one of the martyrs.