HIlary Mantel reporting on St. John Fisher

Through the eyes of Cardinal Wolsey

from Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel

Who is advising Katherine? John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. "Do you know what I can't endure about that man?" the Cardinal says. "He's all skin and bone. I abhor your skeletal prelate. It makes the rest of us look bad. One looks . . . corporeal."

He is in his corporeal pomp, his finest scarlet, when the King and Queen are summoned before the two Cardinals at Blackfriars. Evereyone had supposed the Katherine would send a proxy, but instead she appears in person.

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