He matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford, in Michaelmas term, 1634; three years later he moved to Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Returning to England, before long, he enlisted as an ensign in the army raised (1639) by Charles I for the Bishops' War, and during this campaign made acquaintance with the cavalier poet Richard Lovelace.
Subsequently, Fisher took service in Ireland, where he rose to the rank of captain, and, returning about 1644, was made, by Lord Chichester's influence, sergeant-major of a foot regiment in the royalist army.
William Winstanley summed up Fisher's character in the following words: 'A notable undertaker in Latin verse, and had well deserved of his country, had not lucre of gain and private ambition overswayed his pen to favour successful rebellion.'
Winstanley adds that he had intended to 'commit to memory the monuments in the churches in London and Westminster, but death hindered him'.
By his turn for Latin verse and his adulatory arts, or, as Anthony Wood termed it, by his ability 'to shark money from those who delighted to see their names in print,' Fisher soon became the fashionable poet of his day.
He wrote not only Latin panegyrics and congratulatory odes on the Protector, dedicating his works to John Bradshaw and the most important of the parliamentary magnates, but also composed elegies and epitaphs on the deaths of their generals.
set forth in a panegyric, written in Latin, and faithfully done into English verse by T. Manly' (London, 1652, 8vo), was added an elegy upon the death of Henry Ireton, lord deputy of Ireland.
To the 'Paean' was added an epitaph on Admiral Robert Blake, which, like most of Fisher's odes and elegies, was also published separately as a 'broadsheet' (see list in Wood, ed.
It was a usual habit of the poet's to put different dedications to such of his works as might court the favour of the rich and powerful.
He printed "what he had done" in the Mercurius Politicus (1658), which called forth some satire doggerel from Samuel Woodford in Naps upon Parnassus (1658) (see Wood).
With the return of the Stuarts the time-server turned his coat, and his verses were now as extravagant in praise of the king as they had been of the Protector.
At the Restoration there was a pamphlet entitled 'The Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, and John John Bradshaw, intended to have been spoken at their execution at Tyburne 30 June 1660, but for many weightie reasons omitted, published by Marchamont Nedham and Pagan Fisher, servants, poets, and pamphleteers to his Infernal Highness,' 1660, (Bodl.)
He spent several years in the Fleet Prison, and while there he published two works on the monuments in the city churches, written before or just after the Great Fire of London.
Besides the works above, and a quantity of other odes and epitaphs, Fisher edited poems on several choice and various subjects, occasionally imparted by an eminent author (i. e. James Howell); collected and published by Sergeant-major P. F., London, 1663; the second edition, giving the author's name, is entitled 'Mr.