How strong was the hold of Luther on the country will presently be shown, but here {294} only one instance of the exuberance of the will for a purely national religion need be quoted.

"God hath showed himself the God of England, or rather an English God," wrote Hugh Latimer, [Sidenote: 1537] a leading Lutheran; not only the church but the Deity had become insular! [Sidenote: Fisher] But there were a few, and among them the greatest, who refused to become accomplices in the break with Roman Christendom.

John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a friend of Erasmus and a man of admirable steadfastness, had long been horrified by the tyranny of Henry.

He had stoutly upheld the rightfulness of Catharine's marriage, and now ho refused to see in the monarch the fit ruler of the church.

So strongly did he feel on these subjects that he invited Charles to invade England and depose the king.