loyal to the royal supremacy, the Bishop of Winchester had
hated heresy, and hated all who protected heresy with a deadly hatred.
He passed the Six Articles Bill; he destroyed Cromwell; he laboured
with all his might to destroy Cranmer; and, at length, when Henry was
about to die, he lent himself, though too prudently to be detected, to
the schemes of Surrey and the Catholics upon the regency. The failure
of those schemes, and the five years of arbitrary imprisonment under
Edward, had not softened feelings already more than violent. He
returned to power exasperated by personal injury; and justified, as he
might easily believe himself to be, in his opinion of the tendencies
of heresy, by the scandals of the Protestant administration, he
obtained, by unremitting assiduity, the re-enactment of the
persecuting laws, which he himself launched into operation with
imperious cruelty.

Yet there was something in Gardiner's character which was not wholly
execrable. For thirty years he worked unweariedly in the service of
the public; his judgment as a member of council was generally
excellent; and Somerset, had he listened to his remonstrances, might
have saved both his life and credit. He was vindictive, ruthless,
treacherous, but his courage was indomitable. He resisted Cromwell
till it became a question which of the two should die, and the lot was
as likely to have fallen to him as to his rival. He would have
murdered Elizabeth with the forms of law or without, but Elizabeth was
the hope of all that he most detested. He was no dreamer, no
high-flown enthusiast, but he was a man of clear eye and hard heart,
who had a purpose in his life which he pursued with unflagging energy.
Living as he did in revolutionary times, his hand was never slow to
strike when an enemy was in his power; yet in general when Gardiner
struck, he stooped, like an eagle, at the nobler game, leaving the
linen-drapers and apprentices to "the mousing owls." His demerits were
vast; his merits were small, yet something.

"Well, well," as some one said, winding up his epitaph, "Mortuus est,
et sepultus est, et descendit ad inferos; let us say no more about
him."[512]

[Footnote 512: Special Grace appointed to have been
said at York on the Accession of
Elizabeth.--_Tanner MSS._, Bodleian Library.]

To return to the parliament. On the 23rd of October a bull {p.239}
of Paul IV, confirming the dispensat