believed nothing of all the doctrines for
which he had pretended to be so zealous under Edward. "Alas!" he
cried, "is there no help for me?" "Let me live but a little longer to
do penance for my many sins." Gardiner's heart was softened at the
humiliating spectacle; he would speak to the queen, he said, and he
did speak, not wholly without success; he may have judged rightly,
that the living penitence of the Joshua of the Protestants would have
been more useful to the church than his death.[94] Already Mary had
expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man should be spared;
and he would have been allowed to live, except for the reiterated
protests of Renard in his own name and in the emperor's.

[Footnote 94: The authority for this story is
Parsons the Jesuit, who learnt it from one of the
council who was present at the interview. Parsons
says, indeed, that Mary would have spared the duke;
but that some one wrote to the emperor, and that
the emperor insisted that he should be put to
death. This could not be, because there was no time
for letters to pass and repass between Brussels and
London, in the interval between the sentence and
the execution; but Renard says distinctly that Mary
did desire to pardon him, and that he was himself
obliged to exert his influence to prevent it.]

It was decided at last that he should die; and a priest was assigned
him to prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom
Cranmer long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of
Palmer and the rest--to them, {p.042} as rough soldiers, spiritual
consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.

The executions were fixed originally for Monday, the 21st; but the
duke's conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important
not to be dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick,
Andrew Dudley, or Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be
respited, and, as all alike availed themselves of the services of a
confessor and the forms of the Catholic faith, their compliance could
be made an instrument of a public and edifying lesson. The lives of
those who were to suffer were prolonged for twenty-four hours. On
Monday morning "certain of the citizens of London"