exiles about the use of the English liturgy. On the death of Queen Mary, Grindal returned to England in January 1559.
He was at once recognised as a man of rank among the protestant divines, and was appointed one of the commissioners for the revision of the liturgy, and was also one of the disputants in the conference held at Westminster for the purpose of silencing the Roman divines. When the revised prayer-book was brought into use in May, Grindal was the preacher selected to explain what had been done. On 19 July he was appointed one of the royal commissioners for the visitation of the clergy. Honours and emoluments were now showered upon him. On 20 July Dr. Young, master of Pembroke Hall, was ejected from his office because he refused the oath of supremacy. Grindal was elected master in his stead. The refusal of the Marian bishops to submit to the new state of things in the church was all but universal. They were ejected, and their places were difficult to fill. On 26 July Grindal was elected to take the place of Bonner as bishop of London.
Grindal did not accept this office without some scruples of conscience, and he consulted Peter Martyr on the lawfulness of wearing vestments and receiving impropriations of tithes. Martyr advised him not to decline a bishopric on such slender grounds, and Grindal had himself come to the same conclusion, for he accepted his office before Martyr's answer reached him. However, he eased his conscience by joining Parker and other bishops elect in protesting against Elizabeth's measure for exchanging impropriate tithes for lands belonging to their sees. The protest was unavailing, and Grindal felt justified in joining in the prevailing scramble for good things by retaining his mastership of Pembroke Hall for three years, without ever setting foot inside its walls. On 21 Dec. he was consecrated at Lambeth, and on 23 Dec. was enthroned in St. Paul's.
As bishop of London Grindal did not fulfil the expectations of Archbishop Parker, who had selected him for the post. He was too infirm of purpose and not sufficiently sure of his own position to hold any clear principles for building up the shattered fabric of the English church. The question was, How could a religious system be best maintained which, without any formal breach with the past, should be able to contain and direct the national life, which had been profoundly affected by new ideas alike in theology and politics? Grindal's sympathies were with the ideas of Calvin, and he did not cordially approve of the retention of so much of the forms of the ancient liturgy. He did not help much in establishing the Anglican system in his diocese. Like all weak men he was subject to panics, in which he acted with a harshness contrary to his real gentleness of nature. Sometimes it was the Romanists, sometimes the puritans, who were exposed to his sudden severity. As an instance of this may be mentioned the search for popish papers made among the books of Stow the antiquary, whom Grindal denounced to the council as a fautor of papistry (Strype, Grindal, p. 124). Grindal was kept busy by many formal duties. He was the superintendent of the foreign congregations in London, and a member of the court of high commission; he was one of the commissioners who in 1561 revised the lectionary, and in 1562 was a commissioner to examine into the alleged marriage between the Earl of Hertford and Lady Catharine Grey. On 4 June 1561 St. Paul's Cathedral was burnt, and Grindal had to devise means for its restoration. The laity were not open-handed, and the money for the rebuilding was mostly raised by a tax upon the benefices of the diocese. Grindal wished to take the lead from the decaying parish church of St. Bartholomew, but was prevented by the opposition of Sir Walter Mildmay. It is said that he himself contributed 1,200l.
In 1562 Grindal took a prominent part in the proceedings of convocation, which revised the articles of religion and framed rules for discipline. On 15 April 1564 he was admitted to the degree of D.D. at Cambridge, and on 3 Oct. preached a funeral sermon at St. Paul's in honour of the Emperor Ferdinand, which was published, and was translated by Foxe into Latin. He found, however, his position increasingly difficult, as he sympathised with the puritan clergy, whom the queen and Archbishop Parker wished to bring into obedience to the Act of Uniformity. The diocese of London was the chief centre of puritanism, and Grindal was not the man to cope with it. Perhaps he felt happier in dealing with Romanists who were committed to his custody and lived at Fulham, among them Feckenham, abbot of Westminster, Watson, the deprived bishop of Lincoln, and Marshall, formerly dean of Christchurch. He found it hard to justify his position to his friends abroad, and in 1566-7 was engaged in a correspondence with Bullinger on the subject (Zurich Letters, i. 68, 175, 182, 357). It was extremely distasteful to Grindal to order his clergy to wear the surplice, but Elizabeth commanded him to do so, and he obeyed half-heartedly. In 1567 a separatist meeting was discovered at Plummer's Hall, and fifteen were brought before Grindal, who weakly endeavoured to
