A Heritage of Heresy?

It was with the greatest excitement that my startled eyes happened upon a passage this evening, perhaps revealing a hitherto unknown ancestor. Nearly falling out of my chair, I felt a sudden surge of knowing recognition, much as one might feel when he hears of the misadventures of his long-passed grandfather and says to himself, “The blood remains thick, indeed!”

While approvingly perusing what appears to be a very promising anti-clerical tome, The Profits of Religion (1918) by Upton Sinclair, that great and often overlooked American man of letters, I encountered the name of one “Simon Fish,” a 16th century Englishman imbued with a peculiar amount of gumption. In beginning his excoriation of the Anglican establishment, Sinclair draws from a succession of sources to show the historical complicity of the English clergy in every sort of plutocratic robbery and plunder. After excerpting from a poem by Piers Plowman, “the poet of the people,” Sinclair proceeds to introduce Mr. Fish and his petition to Henry the Eighth, entitled the “Supplicacyon for the Beggars.” The author can be forgiven for not properly citing and dating his source, for the flavor of the document is too precious for words.

Horrified by the poverty around him, and outraged at the wealth of the men of the cloth, “strong, puissant and counterfeit holy and ydell,” Fish pleaded for the intervention of the sovereign:

“They have begged so importunatly that they have gotten ynto their hondes more than a therd part of all youre Realme. The goodliest lordshippes, maners,
londes, and territories, are theyres. Besides this, they have the tenth
part of all the corne, medowe, pasture, grasse, wolle, coltes, calves, lambes,
pigges, gese and chikens. Ye, and the looke so narrowly uppon theyre
prouffites, that the poore wyves must be countable to thym of every tenth eg, or
elles she gettith not her rytes at ester, shal be taken as an heretike . . . Is
it any merveille that youre people so compleine of povertie? The Turke
nowe, in your tyme, shulde never be abill to get so moche grounde of
christendome . . . And whate do al these gredy sort of sturdy, idell, holy
thieves? These be they that have made an hundredth thousand idell hores in
your realme. These be they that catche the pokkes of one woman, and bere
them to an other.”

Although Fish inarguably erred in making his appeal to the king, in a manner unbefitting a free man, we can also forgive him, for his proffered remedy is simply spectacular - he petitions the King to “tie these holy idell theves to the cartes, to be whipped naked about every market towne till they will fall to laboure!”

For those who know me intimately, they can imagine the delight I find in these words. They may recall that the maiden name of my beloved mother is Fish (or Fyshe, in the old English spelling). A genealogical study of the Fish line, compiled some years ago, traced the family roots as far back as the late 18th century, when Simeon Fish of Massachusetts made his way to the frontier of that territory. Settling in the wooded wild, Simeon Fish eked out his living from the stony earth and sturdy timbers of the area now comprised of the towns of Somerville and Jefferson, battling both natives and the great proprietors of Boston for his right to the soil after his service in the army of the Revolution. Could Simeon have been a descendant of the aforementioned Simon, the former Fish the distant spawn of the latter?

We will have to settle the question at a much later date. I have neither the time nor the energy for such an extended pursuit, which no doubt will be taken up my brother, who has a passion for historical research. In the meantime, I will flatter myself with the thought that a clear continuity might be established solely by the precise harmony of our opinions. Good form, my newfound kinman! Let’s put those idle grafters to work!