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