But between her coronation and execution two illustrious victims had passed away. John Fisher, who as a College Principal had done splendid service in the way of advice and assistance to the munificent works of the “Lady Margaret,” Countess of Richmond, Henry VII’s mother, was raised in 1504 to the bishopric of Rochester. He was a man of saintly life, and eager to promote learning. There seems to have been a mutual distrust between him and Wolsey, which Burnet bluntly attributes to Fisher’s grief at the Cardinal’s lax morality. When the question of King Henry’s divorce was raised Fisher expressed himself firmly against it, and when, further, the doctrine of the royal supremacy was proposed to Convocation, he declared that the acceptance of it would “cause the clergy of England to be wiped out of God’s holy Catholic Church.” When it was carried in Convocation, it was he who procured the addition of the saving clause “quantum per Dei legem licet.” Unfortunately he compromised himself by giving countenance to Elizabeth Barton, “the nun of Kent,” when the _soi-disant_ prophetess threatened calamity to the King for his marriage with Anne Boleyn. In April, 1534, he and Sir Thomas More were summoned to Lambeth to take the oath to the Act of Succession. They both agreed to that portion of the Act which fixed the succession to the offspring of the King and Anne, but firmly objected to call the Princess Mary illegitimate, and to the words denying faith, truth, and obedience to the Roman Church. The commissioners were anxious, Cranmer at the head of them, to accept the submission as sufficient for the occasion, but they were both sent to the Tower; and when the Act of Supremacy was passed in November, 1554, Secretary Cromwell read it to Fisher, with the clause making it high treason to deny the King’s right to the claim. Fisher declined to subscribe to it. Henry was unwilling to proceed to extremities, but at this very moment Pope Paul III, ignorant (as he afterwards declared) of the unhappy relations between King and bishop, and desirous of rewarding learning, made Fisher a Cardinal. Henry broke out into ungovernable fury when he heard it, and declared that the red hat might come, but that there should be no head on which to place it. The bishop was brought to trial at Westminster and beheaded on Tower Hill June 15, 1535. “There is in this realm no man,” said Sir Thomas More, “in wisdom, learning, and long approved virtue together, meet to be matched and compared with him.” He died with perfect calmness and dignity. The head was fixed on London Bridge, and the body lay exposed to insult all day. In the evening it was buried without ceremony in the Church of Allhallows Barking.