ruel to the
political prisoners. Gardiner, though eager as Renard to kill
Elizabeth, would buy the privilege of working his will upon the
Protestants by sparing Courtenay and Courtenay's friends. Mary
listened to the worst counsels of each, and her distempered humour
settled into a confused ferocity. So unwholesome appeared the aspect
of things in the middle of March that, notwithstanding the formal
contract, Renard almost advised the emperor to relinquish the thought
of committing his son among so wild a people.[279]

[Footnote 276: Establir forme d'Inquisition contre
les heretiques.--Renard to Charles V.: _Rolls House
MSS._]

[Footnote 277: Ibid.]

[Footnote 278: La chaleur exhorbitante.--Charles V.
to Renard: _Granvelle Papers_, vol. iv. p. 229.]

[Footnote 279: Pour estre la plus part des Angloys
sans foy, sans loy, confuz en la religion, doubles,
inconstans, et de nature jaloux et abhorrissans
estrangiers.--_Rolls House MSS._]

As opposition to extreme measures was anticipated in the House of
Lords, as well as among the Commons, it was important to strengthen
the bench of bishops. The pope had granted permission without
difficulty to fill the vacant sees; and on the 1st of April six new
prelates were consecrated at St. Mary Overies, while Sir John Brydges
and Sir John Williams of Thame were raised to the peerage.

The Protestants, it must be admitted, had exerted themselves to make
Gardiner's work easy to him. On the 14th of March the wall of a house
in Aldgate became suddenly vocal, and seventeen thousand persons were
collected to hear a message from Heaven pronounced by an angel. When
the people said "God save Queen Mary," the wall was silent; when they
said "God save Queen Elizabeth," the wall said "Amen!" When {p.120}
they asked, "What is the mass?" the wall said, "It is idolatry." As
the nation was holding its peace, the stones, it seemed, were crying
out against the reaction. But the angel, on examination, turned out to
be a girl concealed behind the plaster. Shortly after, the inhabitants
of Cheapside, on opening their shop windows in the morning, beheld on
a gallows, among the bodies of the hanged insurgents, a cat in
priestly robes, with crown shaven, the fore-paws tied over her head,
and a piece of paper clipped