f the way the most influential of the
English opponents of the divorce.[299] The story was possibly without
foundation, although it is not unlikely that Fisher himself believed it.
The shock of such an occurrence may well have unsettled his powers of
reasoning, and at all times he was a person whose better judgment was
easily harassed into incapacity. The origin of the crime, however, is of
less importance than the effect of the discovery upon the nation, in whom
horror of the action itself absorbed every other feeling. Murder of this
kind was new in England. Ready as the people ever were with sword or
lance--incurably given as they were to fighting in the best ordered
times--an Englishman was accustomed to face his enemy, man to man, in the
open day; and the Italian crime (as it was called) of poisoning had not
till recent years been heard of.[300] Even revenge and passion recognised
their own laws of honour and fair play; and the cowardly ferocity which
would work its vengeance in the dark, and practise destruction by wholesale
to implicate one hated person in the catastrophe, was a new feature of
criminality. Occurring in a time so excited, when all minds were on the
stretch, and imaginations were feverish with fancies, it appeared like a
frightful portent, some prodigy of nature, or enormous new birth of
wickedness, not to be received or passed by as a common incident, and not
to be dealt with by the process of ordinary law. Parliament undertook the
investigation, making it the occasion, when the evidence was completed, of
a special statute, so remarkable that I quote it in its detail and wording.
The English were a stern people--a people knowing little of compassion
where no lawful ground existed for it; but they were possessed of an awful
and solemn horror of evil things,--a feeling which, in proportion as it
exists, inevitably and necessarily issues in tempers of iron. The stern man
is ever the most tender when good remains amidst evil, and is still
contending with it; but we purchase compassion for utter wickedness only by
doubting in our hearts whether wickedness is more than misfortune.

"The King's royal Majesty," says the 9th of the 22nd of Henry VIII.,
"calling to his most blessed remembrance that the making of good and
wholesome laws, and due execution of the same against the offenders
thereof, is the only cause that good obedience and order hath been
preserved in this realm; and his Highness having most ten