Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament by John Patrick Coby

Author:John Patrick Coby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reacting Consortium Press

Simon Fish, A Supplication for the Beggars, 1529

Little is known about Simon Fish (?–1531) other than that he was a Gray’s Inn lawyer and religious radical of the 1520s. He fled England in 1525 after acting in a play offensive to Cardinal Wolsey. He went to Antwerp and there helped with the spread of William Tyndale’s New Testament. In 1529 he authored the anticlerical pamphlet for which he is famous. The king appreciated the pamphlet and gave his approval for Fish to return. The church, though, judged the matter differently and arrested Fish on charges of heresy. Fish died of the plague in 1531 before coming to trial.

In the Supplication, Fish contends that the poor and their king have a similar grievance against the English clergy: for the clergy compete as beggars with the poor, worsening the poor’s condition; while with the king, the clergy compete as rulers, usurping his wealth and his powers.

SOURCE: Four Supplications: 1529–1553 A.D., ed. J. Meadows Cowper (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1871); repr. Kraus Reprint, Millwood, N.Y., 1975; modernized.

To the King Our Sovereign Lord

Most [men] lamentably complain of their woeful misery unto your Highness—these your poor daily beadsmen, the wretched hideous monsters (on whom scarcely for horror any of you dare look), the foul, unhappy sort of lepers, and other sore people; needy, impotent, blind, lame, and sick that live only by alms; how that their number is daily so sorely increased that all the alms of all the well-disposed people of this your realm are not half enough to sustain them, but for that very constraint they die for hunger. And this most pestilent mischief is common upon your said poor beadsmen, for in the times of your noble predecessors past, there craftily crept into this your realm another sort of beggars and vagabonds (not impotent, but strong, puissant, counterfeit holy, and idle), who since the time of their first entry, by all the craft and wiliness of Satan, are now increased under your sight, not only into a great number, but also into a kingdom. These are (not herds, but the ravenous wolves going in herds’ clothing, devouring the flock) the bishops, abbots, priors, deacons, archdeacons, suffragans, priests, monks, canons, friars, pardoners, and summoners. And who is able to number this idle, ravenous sort, which (setting all labors aside) have begged so importunately that they have gotten into their hands more than the third part of all your realm. The goodliest lordships, manors, lands, and territories are theirs. Besides this, they have the tenth part of all the corn, meadow, pasture, grass, wool, colts, calves, lambs, pigeons, geese, and chickens. Over and besides, the tenth part of every servant’s wage; the tenth part of the wool, milk, honey, wax, cheese, and butter. Yea, and they look so narrowly upon their profits [are determined to exact every last profit] that the poor wives must be accountable to them of every tenth egg or else she gets not her rights at Easter and shall be taken as a heretic.

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