Simon Fish (Fish, Simon, -1531) was a pamphlet writer during the English Reformation, known for pamphlets attacking the clergy. His representative work, A Supplication for the Beggars, uses the voice of beggars to satirize the greed and privileges of the clergy, linking social poverty to the wealth held by the ecclesiastical order in a sharp, direct and strongly argumentative style. Works of this kind circulated widely in sixteenth-century English religious controversy; by means of plain language and the pamphlet form, they turned abstract doctrinal and institutional criticism into political expression that ordinary readers could readily understand, and helped shape public opinion against abuses of church power. Public information about his life and education is limited, and only one of his works is held in the collection, so his influence is described chiefly through the subject matter and circulation of his writings.
