the Marshalsea like a bishop, and
all the people by the wayside bade him welcome home, both man and
woman, and as many of the women as might kissed him; and so he came to
Paul's, and knelt on the {p.033} steps, and said his prayers, and
the people rang the bells for joy."[78]

[Footnote 78: _Chronicle of the Grey Friars of
London_, p. 82.]

While Mary was repairing acts of injustice, Gardiner, with Sir William
Petre, was looking into the public accounts. The debts of the late
government had been reduced, the currency unconsidered, to
L190,000.[79] A doubt had been raised whether, after the attempt to
set aside the succession, the queen was bound to take the
responsibility of these obligations, but Mary preferred honour to
convenience; she promised to pay everything as soon as possible.
Further, there remain, partly in Gardiner's hand, a number of hasty
notes, written evidently in these same first weeks of Mary's reign,
which speak nobly for the intentions with which both Mary and himself
were setting generally to work. The expenses of the household were to
be reduced to the scale of Henry VII., or the early years of Henry
VIII.; the garrisons at Berwick and Calais were to be placed on a more
economical footing, the navy reduced, the irregular guard dismissed or
diminished. Bribery was to be put an end to in the courts of
Westminster, at quarter sessions, and among justices of the peace;
"the laws were to be restored to their authority without suffering any
matters to be ordered otherwise than as the laws should appoint."[80]
These first essentials having been attended to, the famous or infamous
book of sales, grants, and exchanges of the crown lands was to be
looked into; the impropriation of benefices was to cease, and decency
to be restored to the parish churches, where the grooms and
gamekeepers should give way to competent ministers; economy, order,
justice, and reverence were to heal the canker of profligate profanity
which had eaten too long into the moral life of England.

[Footnote 79: August 1553. Debts of the crown.
Irish debt, L36,094 18s. Household debts, L14,574
16s. Further household debts, L7450 5s. Berwick
debt, with the wages of the officers, L16,639 18s.
Calais debt, beside L17,000 of loans and other
things, L21,184 10s. Ordnance Office, L3134 7s.