FISHER, JOHN: Bishop of Rochester; b. at
Beverley (9 m. n.n.w. of Hull), Yorkshire, 1459;
d. in London June 22, 1535. He was educated in
his native town and at Michaelhouse, Cambridge
(B.A.,
1487; M.A., 1491), of which he became
master in 1497. In this same year he was appointed confessor of Margaret, Countess of Richmond and mother of the king. Four years later
he was elected vice-chancellor of his university,
and in 1503 he was appointed by Margaret to her
newly established professorship of divinity, and in
1504 was chosen chancellor of Cambridge, being
reelected annually until 1514, when he was ap.
pointed for life. In 1504 he was consecrated to the
see of Rochester, but his interest in his university
was undiminished, sad he was active in the foun-
wasion both of Christ's College and of St.
John's
College, in addition to holding the presidency of
Queen's College from 1505 to 1508. Though he
induced Erasmus to visit Cambridge' Fisher was a
faithful adherent of Roman Catholicism, and
assailed the teachings of Luther in his
Confutatio
assertions
Lutheranor (Antwerp, 1523) and other
treatises, criticizing as well Œcolampadius and
Velenus-the latter maintained that the Apostle
Peter never was in Rome.
Fisher lost the royal favor by his opposition to
Henry's claim to spiritual supremacy and to the
divorce of Queen Catherine, whose confessor he was.
His unpopularity was increased by his unfortunate
belief in the impostures of
Elizabeth Barton (q.v.),
the Maid.of Kent, who named him one of her
confederates. Early in 1534 he was sentenced to
be attainted of misprision, to be imprisoned at the
king's pleasure, and to forfeit all his goods, although
he was. released on the payment of £300. On Apr.
13, however, he was cited to appear at Lambeth
to take the oath of compliance with the Act of
Succession, but though he and Sir Thomas More
were willing to admit the succession of the children
of Henry and Anne Boleyn, both refused to declare
the children of Catherine and the king illegitimate.
Three days later Fisher was committed to the Tower,
and with the passage of the Act of Supremacy in
Nov., 1534, both Fisher and More were again
attainted of misprision of treason and the see of
Rochester was declared vacant from Jan. 2, 1535.
Fisher's doom was sealed by the inadvertent act
of Paul III., who on May 20 created him cardinal
priest of, St. Vitalis, not knowing the extreme dan-
ger in which the biehop stood. Henry, in fury, for-
bade the hat to be brought to England, and Fisher
was trapped into statements which were twisted
into treason. On June 17 be was condemned to be
executed at Tyburn as a traitor, but the sentence
was changed to decapitation at Tower Hill, where
it was carried out a fortnight before the execution
of More. The chief works of Fisher were his
De
unica Magdalena
(Par s, 1519) and his
De eueiuH
ristia contra Johannem Œcolampadaum
(Cologne,
1527); the greater part of his Latin writings were
collected and published at Würzburg in 1597. A
volume of a projected edition of his English works
was edited for the Early English Text Society by
J. E. B. Mayor (London, 1876), and a few other
writings by him are extant in manuscript.
Bibliography:
The Life was first written ostensibly by
Thomas Bailey, really by Richard Hall, London, 1655,
republished, 1835. Consult also: John
Lewis, Life of
Dr. John Fisher, 2 vols., ib. 1854; J. Gillow, Bibliograph-
ical Didionarv of Bn91ia. Catholics, ii. 262-270, ib., 188
DNB, xix. 58-83.
