Simon Fish

Simon Fish (died 1531) was a 16th-century Protestant reformer and English propagandist. He is best known for helping to spread William Tyndale's New Testament and for authoring the vehemently anti-clerical pamphlet Supplication for the Beggars (A Supplycacion for the Beggars) which the Roman Catholic Church condemned as heretical on 24 May 1530. His pamphlet can be seen as a precursor to the English Reformation and the Protestant Reformation. Fish was eventually arrested in London on charges of heresy, but he was stricken with bubonic plague and died before he could stand trial. His widow married vocal reformer James Bainham, and then became a widow again in April 1532 when Bainham was burned at the stake as a heretic.