nce of the will for a purely national
religion need be quoted. "God hath showed himself the God of England,
or rather an English God," wrote Hugh Latimer, [Sidenote: 1537] a
leading Lutheran; not only the church but the Deity had become insular!

[Sidenote: Fisher]

But there were a few, and among them the greatest, who refused to
become accomplices in the break with Roman Christendom. John Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, a friend of Erasmus and a man of admirable
steadfastness, had long been horrified by the tyranny of Henry. He had
stoutly upheld the rightfulness of Catharine's marriage, and now ho
refused to see in the monarch the fit ruler of the church. So strongly
did he feel on these subjects that he invited Charles to invade England
and depose the king. This was treason, though probably the government
that sent him to the tower was ignorant of the act. When Paul III
rewarded Fisher by creating him a cardinal [Sidenote: May 20, 1535]
Henry furiously declared he would send his head to Rome to get the hat.
[Sidenote: June 22] The old man of seventy-six was accordingly
beheaded.

[Sidenote: Sir Thomas More executed, July 6]

This execution was followed by that of Sir Thomas More, the greatest
ornament of his country. As More has been remembered almost entirely
by his noble _Utopia_ and his noble death, it is hard to estimate his
character soberly. That his genius was polished to the highest
perfection, that in a hard age he had an altogether lovely sympathy
with the poor, and in a servile age the courage of his convictions,
would seem enough to excuse any faults. But a deep vein of fanaticism
ran through his whole nature and tinctured all his acts, political,
ecclesiastical, and private. Not only was his language violent in the
extreme, but his acts were equally merciless when his passions were
aroused. Appointed chancellor after the fall of Wolsey, he did not
scruple to hit the man who was down, describing {295} him, in a
scathing speech in Parliament, as the scabby wether separated by the
careful shepherd from the sound sheep. In his hatred of the new
opinions he not only sent men to death and torture for holding them,
but reviled them while doing it. "Heretics as they be," he wrote, "the
clergy doth denounce them. And as they be well worthy, the temporality
doth burn them. And after the fire of Smithfield, hell doth receive
them, where the wretches burn for ever."

As chancellor he saw with gro