remained, indeed, only a short time, while the commissioners introduced a new order of things in his diocese. Two years later, in 1649, he incurred a reprimand from the council for neglecting to enforce the use of the new prayer-book, and was ordered to preach at Paul's Cross on Sunday, 1 Sept., with express instructions as to the substance of what he was to say. He obeyed on all points but one. He was instructed to set forth among other things that the king's authority was as great during the minority as if he were thirty or forty years old; but this topic he passed over in silence. An information was laid against him on this account by Hooper and Latimer, and he was examined at great length on seven different days before Cranmer. In the end he was deprived of his bishopric on 1 Oct. and committed to the Marshalsea prison. This sentence was confirmed by the council 'which sat in the Starchamber at Westminster' on 7 Feb. following, when he was fetched out of prison merely to have his disobedience more fully proved against him, and he was further adjudged ' to remain in perpetual prison at the king's pleasure, and to lose all his spiritual promotions and dignities for ever' (Wriothesley's Chronicle, ii. 34).
He accordingly remained in the Marshalsea prison till the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, when most of the acts doneby the council during Edward VI's minority once reversed as being, in fact, unconstitutional. He was liberated on 5 Aug. in that year, and took possession of his see again, Ridley, who had been made bishop of London in his place, being regarded as an intruder, Ridley, indeed, who was implicated in a charge of treason by his advocacy of the pretensions of Lady Jane Grey, had already been taken prisoner before Bonner's liberation. Foxe, in his extreme desire to make out charges of cruelty against Bonner, says that, although Ridley had been kind to Bonner's mother, and allowed her to remain at Fulham during his imprisonment, Bonner declined to allow Ridley's sister and some other persons the benefit of certain leases granted to them by Ridley as bishop of London. Of course he could not recognise the validity of such leases without admitting that Ridley had been the lawful bishop of London; but whether he was ungrateful to Ridley or not we have no means of judging. That he was unpopular in London — at least with a considerable part of the population — even before the great persecution, is very probable. London was the great centre of what was afterwards called Puritanism, and disrespect towards bishops was the cardinal principle of the new religion. In 1654, on a Sunday morning in April, a dead cat with a shaven crown, and with a piece of paper, ' like a singing-cake ' or sacramental wafer, tied between its fore-paws, was found at daybreak hanging on the post of the gallows in Cheap. It was taken down and carried to Bonner, who caused it to be exhibited that day during the sermon at Paul's Cross. The lord mayor and corporation offered a reward for the discovery of the author of the outrage, and various persons were imprisoned on suspicion, but the true offender could not be detected.
In September 1554 Bonner visited his diocese, revived processions, restored crucifixes, images, and the like, and caused the texts of scripture painted on church walls during the preceding reign to be erased. He also drew up a book of 'profitable and necessary doctrine,' and a set of homilies, on which Bale, after the accession of Queen Elizabeth, published a weak and spiteful comment. Next year, after the reconciliation of the kingdom to Rome, began the great persecution, in which Bonner's agency, together with the highly coloured statements of Foxe, have brought his name into peculiar obloquy. And so strongly has the character clung to him of a fierce, inhuman persecutor, that even biographers who tell us, almost in one breath, from Foxe, that he undertook the burning of heretics cheerfully, and, from the surer testimony of documents, that he was admonished by letter from the king and queen not to dismiss the heretics brought before him so lightly as he and his brother bishops had done, seem unconscious that the two statements require to be brought into harmony. The truth is, that Mary's ill-starred marriage, against which her best friends in England remonstrated, and others broke out into rebellion, really handed over the government of England to Philip of Spain, and a severity towards heretics like that of the Spanish inquisition was the natural result.
The first of these martyrs, John Rogers, a priest, was examined and sentenced by the council. Bonner only degraded him from the priesthood before his execution. Nor does he appear to have meddled much with heretics, even when sent up to him by the sheriffs and justices, till he received the admonition above referred to from the king and queen, which was dated 24 May. Next day he and the lord mayor sat together in consistory in St. Paul's, and pronounced sentence on some men for their opinions on the sacrament. During the remainder of that year and nearly the whole of the three years following, condemnations and burnings of heretics were of appalling frequency all over England, and most frequent, as might have
