rest, giving his unwilling
acquiescence.

So for the present terminated this grave matter. The pardon was immediately
submitted to parliament, where it was embodied in a statute;[298] and this
act of dubious justice accomplished, the Convocation was allowed to return
to its usual occupations, and continue the prosecutions of the heretics.

The House of Commons, during their second session, had confined themselves
meanwhile to secular business. They had been concerned chiefly with
regulations affecting trade and labour; and the proceedings on the
premunire being thought for the time to press sufficiently on the clergy,
they deferred the further prosecution of their own complaints till the
following year. Two measures, however, highly characteristic of the age,
must not be passed over, one of which concerned a matter that must have
added heavily to the troubles of the Bishop of Rochester at a time when he
was in no need of any addition to his burdens.

Fisher was the only one among the prelates for whom it is possible to feel
respect. He was weak, superstitious, pedantical; towards the Protestants he
was even cruel; but he was a singlehearted man, who lived in honest fear of
evil, so far as he understood what evil was; and he alone could rise above
the menaces of worldly suffering, under which his brethren on the bench
sank so rapidly into meekness and submission. We can therefore afford to
compassionate him in the unexpected calamity by which he was overtaken, and
which must have tried his failing spirit in no common manner.

He lived, while his duties required his presence in London, at a house in
Lambeth, and being a hospitable person, he opened his doors at the dinner
hour for the poor of the neighbourhood. Shortly after the matter which I
have just related, many of these people who were dependent on his bounty
were reported to have become alarmingly ill, and several gentlemen of the
household sickened also in the same sudden and startling manner. One of
these gentlemen died, and a poor woman also died; and it was discovered on
inquiry that the yeast which had been used in various dishes had been
poisoned. The guilty person was the cook, a certain Richard Rouse; and
inasmuch as all crimes might be presumed to have had motives, and the
motive in the present instance was undiscoverable, it was conjectured by
Queen Catherine's friends that he had been bribed by Anne Boleyn, or by
some one of her party, to remove out o