suspected him of aiming at the recovery of the Protectorate. They determined to thwart him, therefore, in his attempt to undo his own early injustice; or if Gardiner was to be at large, he should be fettered with other conditions beyond a mere consent to the Prayerbook.
A month was allowed to pass. July 8.At the end of it, on the 8th of July, Warwick, Ridley, and Sir William Herbert carried to the Tower a set of articles for the Bishop's signature, in which he was required to admit the right of the council to exercise, during a minority, the powers of the head of the Church; in which he was to approve the repeal of the Six Articles Bill, with the disuse of fasting; and further, to confess that he had broken faith with the Government, had offended the law, and deserved his punishment.[1]
- ↑ 'Whereas I, Stephen Gardiner, have been suspected as one too much favouring the Bishop of Rome's decrees and ordinances, and as one that did not allow the King's Majesty's proceedings in alteration of certain rites in religion, and was convented before the King's Highness's council and admonished thereof: and having certain things appointed for me to do and preach, have not done as I ought to do, although I promised to do the same, whereby I have not only incurred the King's Majesty's indignation, but also divers of his Highness's subjects have by my example taken
my Lord's Grace (of Somerset). His whole nature was vehemently troubled with his Grace's proceedings of late. Sundry times overcome with the full remembrance thereof, he showed the inward grief of his heart with not a few tears.
' The sum of all was, that my Lord's Grace hath so unadvisedly attempted the enlargement and delivery of the Bishop of Winchester and the Arundels, as also his Grace's late conference, as he taketh it, with my Lord of Arundel, it pleased him, I say, to be so plain with me as he letted not to say the whole council doth much dislike his late attempts.'—Whalley to Cecil: June 26, 1550; misdated by Tytler, June 26, 1551. MS. Domestic, Edward VI. State Paper Office.
