he college. He was appointed the first
'Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity' in the University of Cambridge
in 1503, and in 1504 was consecrated Bishop of Rochester. The firmness
with which he opposed the royal supremacy, and the divorce of Henry
VIII., brought on him the displeasure of the King, and in 1534, having
given too ready a credence to the 'revelations' of Elizabeth Barton,
'the nun of Kent,' he was attainted of misprision of treason, and soon
afterwards, on his refusal to acknowledge the King's supremacy and the
validity of his marriage with Anne Boleyn, was committed with Sir Thomas
More to the Tower. During his imprisonment Pope Paul III. created him a
cardinal, an act which greatly increased the irritation of the King
against him, and on the 22nd of June 1535 Fisher was beheaded on Tower
Hill.

Bishop Fisher, who was the author of a considerable number of
controversial tracts, was a man of great learning, and is said to have
possessed the finest library in the country. In an account of his life
and death first published in 1665, which was professedly written by
Thomas Baily, a royalist divine, but is said to have been really the
work of Dr. Richard Hall of Christ's College, Cambridge, who died in
1604, a relation is given of the seizure of his goods and books after
his attainder. 'In the meantime lest any conveyance might be made of his
goods remaining at Rochester, or elsewhere in Kent, the King sent one
Sir Richard Moryson, of his Privy Chamber, and one Gostwick, together
with divers other Commissioners, down into that Countrey, to make
seisure of all his moveable goods that they could finde there, who being
come unto Rochester, according to their Commission, entred his house;
and the first thing they did was, they turned out all his Servants; then
they fell to rifling his goods, whereof the chief part of them were
taken for the Kings use, the rest they took for themselves; then they
came into his Library, which they found so replenished, and with such
kind of Books, as it was thought the like was not to be found againe in
the possession of any one private man in Christendom; with which they
trussed up and filled 32 great vats, or pipes, besides those that were
imbezel'd away, spoyl'd and scatter'd; and whereas many yeares before he
had made a deed of gift of all these books, and other his household
stuffe to the Colledge of St John in Cambridge, ... two frauds were
committed in this trespasse; the Col