they were treated with contemptuous disrespect. For Fisher himself we must feel only sorrow. After seventy-six years of a useful and honourable life, which he might have hoped to close in a quiet haven, he was launched suddenly upon stormy waters, to which he was too brave to yield, which he was too timid to contend against; and the frail vessel drifting where the waves drove it, was soon piteously to perish.
Dec. 17.Thus triumphant on every side, the Parliament, in the middle of December, closed its session, and lay England celebrated its exploits as a national victory. 'The King removed to Greenwich, and there kept his Christmas with the Queen with great triumph, with great plenty of viands, and disguisings, and interludes, to the great rejoicing of his people;'[1] the members of the House of Commons, we may well believe, following the royal example in town and country, and being the little heroes of the day. Only the bishops carried home sad hearts within them, to mourn over the perils of the Church and the impending end of all things; Fisher, unhappily for himself, to listen to the wailings of the Nun of Kent, and to totter slowly into treason.
Here, for the present, leaving the clergy to meditate on their future, and reconsider the wisdom of their answer to the King respecting the ecclesiastical jurisdiction (a point on which they were not the less certain to be pressed, because the process upon it was temporarily suspended), we must turn to the more painful matter- ↑ Hall, p. 768.
