zeal and ability with which he discharged his functions. Here his
perfect familiarity with the canon law gave him a great advantage.
He was instructed to procure from the pope a decretal commission,
laying down principles of law by which Wolsey and
Campeggio might hear and determine the cause without appeal.
The demand, though supported by plausible pretexts, was not
only unusual but clearly inadmissible. Clement VII. was then at
Orvieto, and had just recently escaped from captivity at St
Angelo at the hands of the imperialists. But fear of offending
the emperor could not have induced him to refuse a really
legitimate request from a king like Henry. He naturally referred
the question to the cardinals about him; with whom Gardiner
held long arguments, enforced, it would seem, by not a little
browbeating of the College. What was to be thought, he said, of
a spiritual guide, who either could not or would not show the
wanderer his way? The king and lords of England would be
driven to think that God had taken away from the Holy See the
key of knowledge, and that pontifical laws which were not clear
to the pope himself might as well be committed to the flames.
This ingenious pleading, however, did not serve, and he was obliged to be content with a general commission for Campeggio and Wolsey to try the cause in England. This, as Wolsey saw, was quite inadequate for the purpose in view; and he again instructed Gardiner, while thanking the pope for the commission actually granted, to press him once more by very urgent pleas, to send the desired decretal on, even if the latter was only to be shown to the king and himself and then destroyed. Otherwise, he wrote, he would lose his credit with the king, who might even be tempted to throw off his allegiance to Rome altogether. At last the pope—to his own bitter regret afterwards—gave what was desired on the express conditions named, that Campeggio was to show it to the king and Wolsey and no one else, and then destroy it, the two legates holding their court under the general commission. After obtaining this Gardiner returned home; but early in the following year, 1529, when proceedings were delayed on information of the brief in Spain, he was sent once more to Rome. This time, however, his efforts were unavailing. The pope would make no further concessions, and would not even promise not to revoke the cause to Rome, as he did very shortly after.
Gardiner’s services, however, were fully appreciated. He was appointed the king’s secretary. He had been already some years archdeacon of Taunton, and the archdeaconry of Norfolk was added to it in March 1529, which two years later he resigned for that of Leicester. In 1530 he was sent to Cambridge to procure the decision of the university as to the unlawfulness of marriage with a deceased brother’s wife, in accordance with the new plan devised for settling the question without the pope’s intervention. In this he succeeded, though not without a good deal of artifice, more creditable to his ingenuity than to his virtue. In November 1531 the king rewarded him for his services with the bishopric of Winchester, vacant by Wolsey’s death. The promotion was unexpected, and was accompanied by expressions from the king which made it still more honourable, as showing that if he had been in some things too subservient, it was from no abject, self-seeking policy of his own. Gardiner had, in fact, ere this remonstrated boldly with his sovereign on some points, and Henry now reminded him of the fact. “I have often squared with you, Gardiner,” he said familiarly, “but I love you never the worse, as the bishopric I give will convince you.” In 1532, nevertheless, he excited some displeasure in the king by the part he took in the preparation of the famous “Answer of the Ordinaries” to the complaints brought against them in the House of Commons. On this subject he wrote a very manly letter to the king in his own defence.
His next important action was not so creditable; for he was, not exactly, as is often said, one of Cranmer’s assessors, but, according to Cranmer’s own expression, “assistant” to him as counsel for the king, when the archbishop, in the absence of Queen Catherine, pronounced her marriage with Henry null and void on the 23rd of May 1533. Immediately afterwards he was sent over to Marseilles, where an interview between the pope and Francis I. took place in September, of which event Henry stood in great suspicion, as Francis was ostensibly his most cordial ally, and had hitherto maintained the justice of his cause in the matter of the divorce. It was at this interview that Bonner intimated the appeal of Henry VIII. to a general council in case the pope should venture to proceed to sentence against him. This appeal, and also one on behalf of Cranmer presented with it, were of Gardiner’s drawing up. In 1535 he and other bishops were called upon to vindicate the king’s new title of “Supreme Head of the Church of England.” The result was his celebrated treatise De vera obedientia, the ablest, certainly, of all the vindications of royal supremacy. In the same year he had an unpleasant dispute with Cranmer about the visitation of his diocese. He was also employed to answer the pope’s brief threatening to deprive Henry of his kingdom.
During the next few years he was engaged in various embassies in France and Germany. He was indeed so much abroad that he had little influence upon the king’s councils. But in 1539 he took part in the enactment of the severe statute of the Six Articles, which led to the resignation of Bishops Latimer and Shaxton and the persecution of the Protestant party. In 1540, on the death of Cromwell, earl of Essex, he was elected chancellor of the university of Cambridge. A few years later he attempted, in concert with others, to fasten a charge of heresy upon Archbishop Cranmer in connexion with the Act of the Six Articles; and but for the personal intervention of the king he would probably have succeeded. He was, in fact, though he had supported the royal supremacy, a thorough opponent of the Reformation in a doctrinal point of view, and it was suspected that he even repented his advocacy of the royal supremacy. He certainly had not approved of Henry’s general treatment of the church, especially during the ascendancy of Cromwell, and he was frequently visited with storms of royal indignation, which he schooled himself to bear with patience. In 1544 a relation of his own, named German Gardiner, whom he employed as his secretary, was put to death for treason in reference to the king’s supremacy, and his enemies insinuated to the king that he himself was of his secretary’s way of thinking. But in truth the king had need of him quite as much as he had of Cranmer; for it was Gardiner, who even under royal supremacy, was anxious to prove that England had not fallen away from the faith, while Cranmer’s authority as primate was necessary to upholding that supremacy. Thus Gardiner and the archbishop maintained opposite sides of the king’s church policy; and though Gardiner was encouraged by the king to put up articles against the archbishop himself for heresy, the archbishop could always rely on the king’s protection in the end. Heresy was gaining ground in high places, especially after the king’s marriage with Catherine Parr; and there seems to be some truth in the story that the queen herself was nearly committed for it at one time, when Gardiner, with the king’s approbation, censured some of her expressions in conversation. In fact, just after her marriage, four men of the Court were condemned at Windsor and three of them were burned. The fourth, who was the musician Marbeck, was pardoned by Gardiner’s procurement.
Great as Gardiner’s influence had been with Henry VIII., his name was omitted at the last in the king’s will, though Henry was believed to have intended making him one of his executors. Under Edward VI. he was completely opposed to the policy of the dominant party both in ecclesiastical and in civil matters. The religious changes he objected to both on principle and on the ground of their being moved during the king’s minority, and he resisted Cranmer’s project of a general visitation. His remonstrances, however, were met by his own committal to the Fleet, and the visitation of his diocese was held during his imprisonment. Though soon afterwards released, it was not long before he was called before the council, and, refusing to give them satisfaction on some points, was thrown into the Tower, where he continued during the whole remainder of the reign, a period slightly over five years. During this time he in vain demanded his liberty, and to be called before parliament as a peer of the realm. His bishopric was taken from him and given to Dr
