Saint John Fisher

SAINT JOHN FISHER

Born: 1469
Deceased: June 22, 1535

Bishop of Rochester, 1504-1535
Cardinal 1535
Beatified 1886
Canonized 1935

Official blazon
English	blazon wanted

Origin/meaning

The arms show the arms of the See of Rochester (saltire with scallop) impaled with the personal arms of the bishop. There are different versions of the personal arms known.

The oldest contemporary source is the parliamentary Roll of 1515 in the British Library. This Roll shows the Fisher arms as an heraldic dolphin with three ears of wheat (see image below). No bordure is present. The other arms in the roll all seem to be accurate, so it is presumed that this version was used by Fisher in 1515.
A second source is in a manuscript in the College of Arms (MS L. 10, fol. 71r), compiled by/for Thomas Wriothesley in the early half of the 16th century (date unknown). This page also shows the arms without bordure.

The second version showed a bordure engrailed and is seen in the Writhe’s Book of Knights (British Library Additional MS 46354, c. 1522, no. 797).

The third version is with the arms with bordure, but now quartered with ‘Argent three eel-spears tines upward Sable on a Chief Azure a lion passant guardant Or’. There is no record in the College of Arms of these latter arms, so it is presumed that the quartering refers to his mother Agnes, but no arms for her are known.
The quartered arms appear in the Parliament Roll of 1523, so only one year after the non-quartered version, and in a much later page of the same manuscript L. 10 (95v) where the arms without bordure are listed (see above).

Most likely he thus used arms without bordure to +/- 1520 and then changed his arms and added the quartering.

Interestingly is that both the arms without bordure and the version with the quartering, only seem to appear in the above mentioned contemporary sources. All later sources show the arms shown above, with the non-quartered Fisher arms and with a bordure. They also, of course, appear without the arms of the see.

The arms in the Parliamentary Roll for 1515

The arms based on the Parliamentary Roll for 1523
(The roll does not show a hat and tassels)

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