Note 48 — Chapter II · THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN ENGLAND

Bishop Fisher’s love and zeal for learning is notorious. He did all in his power to assist in the foundation of schools of sound learning at Cambridge, and especially to encourage the study of Greek. Richard Croke, the protégé of Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher, after teaching Greek in 1516 at Leipzig, was sent by Fisher in 1519 to Cambridge to urge the utility of Greek studies at that university. In the Orationes he delivered there, after speaking of the importance of Greek for all Biblical study, he says that Oxford had taken up the work with great avidity, since “they have there as their patrons besides the Cardinal (Wolsey), Canterbury (Warham), and Winchester, all the other English bishops except the one who has always been your great stay and helper, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Bishop of Ely.” It was entirely owing to Bishop Fisher’s generosity, and at his special request, that Croke had gone to Cambridge rather than to Oxford, whither his connection with Warham, More, Linacre, and Grocyn would have led him, in order to carry on the work begun by Erasmus.