Protestantism in England From the Times of Henry VIII - James Aitken Wylie

king, and punished as treason.
But amid the crowd of scaffolds now rising in
England--some for refusing the oath of supremacy,
and others for denying transubstantiation--there are
three that specially attract our notice, and move our
sorrow, though not in equal degree. The first is that
of Dr. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.
He was a man of seventy-seven, and refusing to
take the oath of supremacy, he was committed to
the Tower. He had been there a year when the
Pope, by an unseasonable honor, hastened his fate.
Paul III sent him a red hat, which when the king
learned, he swore that if he should wear it, it would
be on his shoulders, for he should leave him never
a head. He was convicted of treason, and executed
on the 22nd June, 1535. This prelate had illustrated
his exalted station by a lowly deportment, and he
attested the sincerity of his belief by his dignified
behavior on the scaffold.
The next was a yet nobler victim, Sir Thomas
More, the flower of English scholars. His early
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