John "Jacky" Fisher

John Fisher was Bishop of Rochester and was executed for refusing to accept Henry VIII's supremacy over the English church. Born in Beverley in Yorkshire in 1469, the son of a mercer, he studied at Cambridge and became master of Michaelhouse and then chancellor of the university. He was the confessor and adviser of Lady Margaret Beaufort, the king's grandmother, and directed her benefactions: the foundation of Christ's College and St John's College, Cambridge, and endowed chairs at both universities. He brought Erasmus to Cambridge, learned Greek and some Hebrew in middle age, and was among the most respected theologians in Europe — a reforming bishop who was resident in his diocese, preached regularly and lived austerely, which was unusual. He wrote extensively against Luther, and his reputation for learning was such that his eventual condemnation embarrassed the government abroad. He was the only bishop to oppose Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon consistently and publicly, appearing as her counsel at the legatine court in 1529 and saying he was prepared to die for the marriage's validity as John the Baptist had died for marriage. He resisted the convocation's grant of supremacy in 1531, securing the qualifying phrase as far as the law of Christ allows, and in 1533 was implicated in the affair of the Nun of Kent. He refused the oath under the Act of Succession in 1534 and was imprisoned in the Tower for over a year in poor conditions. Pope Paul III made him a cardinal in May 1535, which enraged Henry. He was tried under the Treasons Act and beheaded on 22 June 1535, and Thomas More followed two weeks later.

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