The beginning of all our knowledge of St. John Fisher is a life written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from thirty to forty years after his death. This account, after circulating in manuscript for almost a century, was finally published as The Life and Death of that renowned John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Comprising the highest and hidden Transactions of Church and State in the Reign of Henry the 8, with divers Morall, Historicall, and Political Animadversions upon Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas Moor, Martin Luther, with a full relation of Queen Katherine’s Divorce. Carefully selected from sever all ancient Records, by Tho. Bailey, D.D. London. Printed in the yeare, 1655.

The Dr. Bailey thus responsible for this first publication was not however the author of the Life. A manuscript of it, that belonged at one time to the English Benedictine monks of Dieulouard in Lorraine had come into his hands and “making some alteration therein"—“verbiage, méprises, et sottes interpolations,” the later scientific Bollandist styles them—he had printed it as his own work. Bailey was soon found out, but his ill-informed and stupid manipulation of the text threw a discredit upon the biographer whom he had exploited which lasted down to our own times. The pioneer in the work of restoring the credit of this sixteenth century writer was Fr. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R., whose monumental life of the martyr appeared in 1888.