if not the whole, of Henry's reign, Gardiner had been fully as much her enemy, and fully as much her father's tool, as Cranmer had been, and with her mother's divorce he had to the full as much to do. He had been sent to Rome, as one of Henry's ambassadors on the subject, long before Cranmer had any concern with it. He was Henry's principal counsel at the famous trial before the two legates; and he sat with Cranmer, and concurred in his judgment, at the final conclusion before the Court at Dunstable.[1] Cranmer, therefore, could not easily, on this ground, be more obnoxious to her than Gardiner was; and, on the other hand, Burnet tells us, though again without giving his authority, that at a time when her father was much incensed against her, Cranmer ventured upon the not altogether safe office of interceding for her, when Gardiner himself and the Duke of Norfolk stood aside and left her to her fate.[2] From the very beginning of the divorce negotiations Gardiner had been one of the j)rime agents of the King, and had continued to be so to the very end of them; and up to and beyond the passing of the Supremacy Act—indeed, till after the death of Katherine of Arragon—Cranmer and Gardiner had acted together; nor is there any evidence that the former had acted more rigorously against the Queen than the latter—indeed, the supposition is negatived by the character of the two men. The first indication of any divergence between their views appears in the discussions preceding the Act of Six Articles. It was, in fact, doubtless Cromwell's reduction of the bishops to mere State officers, after the Supremacy Act, which first inclined Gardiner to a reactionary course; and it was the fact
