[Footnote 510: Ce soit ung argument plus grand que
tout aultre pour faire entrer ceulx cy a la guerre
ouverte; estant ceste nation comme ung chascung
scait fort ennemie de sadict Sainctite.--Noailles
to Montmorency: _Ambassades_, vol. v. p. 188.]

A calamity of a more real kind was also approaching Mary. She was on
the point of losing the only able minister on whose attachment she
could rely. Gardiner's career on earth was about to end.

On the 6th of October, Noailles described the Bishop of Winchester as
sinking rapidly, and certain to die before Christmas,[511] yet still
eager and energetic, perfectly aware of his condition, yet determined
to work till the last.

[Footnote 511: Same to the same.--Ibid. p. 150.]

Noailles himself had two hours' conversation with him on business:
when he took his leave, the chancellor conducted him through the
crowded ante-chamber to the door, leaning heavily on his arm. "The
people thought he was dead," he said, "but there was some life in him
yet."

Notwithstanding his condition, he roused himself for the meeting of
parliament on the 21st; he even spoke at the opening, and he was in
his place in the House of Lords on the second day of the session; but
his remaining strength broke down immediately after, and he died at
Whitehall Palace on the 13th of November. The Protestants, who
believed that he was the author of the persecution, expected that it
would cease with his end; they were deceived in their hopes, for their
sufferings continued unabated. In their opinion of his conduct they
were right, yet right but partially.

Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was the pupil of Wolsey, and
had inherited undiminished the pride of the ecclesiastical order. If
he went with Henry in his separation from the papacy, he intended that
the English Church should retain, notwithstanding, unimpaired
authority and undiminished privileges. The humiliations heaped upon
the clergy by the king had not discouraged him, for the Catholic
doctrine was maintained unshaken, and so long as the priesthood was
regarded as a peculiar order, gifted with supernatural powers, so long
as the sacraments were held essential conditions of {p.238}
salvation, and the priesthood alone could administer them, he could
feel assured that, sooner or later, their temporal position would be
restored to them.

Thus, while