t certainly untruly, that he could not recollect
the name either of the Prince who wrote the letter which had been
discovered or of the messenger who brought it. It was probably some German
prince, but, as God might help him, he could not say which, unless it was
Ferdinand, King of Hungary. E. R. was not himself, nor did he ever consent
that the writer should attempt anything with the German Princes against
the King.

He had been careful. He had desired Chapuys from the beginning that his
name should not be mentioned, except in cipher. He had perhaps abstained
from directly advising an application to Ferdinand, who could not act
without the Emperor's sanction. His messages to Charles through his
Ambassador even Fisher could scarcely have had the hardiness to deny; but
these messages, if known, were not alleged. The Anglo-Imperial alliance
was on the anvil, and the question was not put to him.[333]

Of Fisher's malice, however, as the law construed it, there was no doubt.
He persisted in his refusal to acknowledge the supremacy of the Crown.
Five days after his examination he was tried at Westminster Hall, and in
the week following he was executed on Tower Hill. He died bravely in a
cause which he believed to be right. To the last he might have saved
himself by submission, but he never wavered. He knew that he could do
better service to the Queen and the Catholic Church by his death than by
his life. Cromwell told Chapuys that "the Bishop of Rome was the cause of
his punishment, for having made a Cardinal of the King's worst enemy." He
was "greatly pitied of the people." The pity would have been less had his
real conduct been revealed.

A nobler victim followed. In the lists of those who were prepared to take
arms against the King there is no mention of the name of Sir Thomas More;
but he had been Fisher's intimate friend and companion, and he could
hardly have been ignorant of a conspiracy with which Fisher had been so
closely concerned; while malice might be inferred without injustice from
an acquaintance with dangerous purposes which he had not revealed. He paid
the penalty of the society to which he had attached himself. He, even more
than the Bishop of Rochester, was the chief of the party most opposed to
the Reformation. He had distinguished himself as Chancellor by his zeal
against the Lutherans, and, if that party had won the day, they would have
gone to work as they did afterwards when Mary became Queen. No one