[The following takes place during the first throes of the Protestant Revolution in England]
On June 22, John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man of seventy-four years, “a long lean slender body, nothing in a manner but skin and bare bones, so that the most part that there saw him marveled to see any man so far consumed” mounted the scaffold unaided, and lifted that high silvery voice for the last time to refuse the pardon offered him. The greater barbarities of the penalty were omitted for fear the compassion of the people might be too far aroused, but the naked corpse was left all day to view, before it was huddled in a shallow ditch beside the wall of All Hallows, Barking, and the noble head, so skull-like in life that death could hardly change it, was impaled on a pike on London Bridge whence it looked “sadly and constantly upon the people coming into London,” until men began to talk of a miracle, and it seemed wiser to throw it into the river.
Source:
Mattingly, Garrett. “Part III: The Divorce of Henry VIII (1527-1536); Chapter Five, Section iv” Catherine of Aragon. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 418. Print.
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