printing press; John Bale, the noisiest, the most profane, the most indecent of the movement party, had been pouring out pamphlets and plays.[1] Gardiner wrote in protest to Somerset against the toleration by the Government of the insolence and brutality of him and others like him. He remonstrated also against the sudden alteration of doctrine contemplated in the homilies; and three weeks before the visitors were coming to Winchester, he was invited, at his own earnest request, to state his views to the council. 'If he could have written with the blood of his heart,' he told the Protector, 'he would have done it, to have stayed the thing till it had been more maturely digested.'[2] The whole proceedings on the visitation, he said, were illegal. No royal commission could have place against an Act of Parliament;[3] and even in the late King's
- ↑ The character of which, and the writer's character, may he judged from the following specimen. In one of his farces a priest is introduced, who, on the stage, offers the following prayer:—'Omnipotens et sempiterne Deus, qui in usum nostrum formasti laicos, concede quaesumus ut eorum uxoribns et filiabus—' The reader must imagine, or had better not imagine, the rest.
- ↑ Gardiner to the Protector: MS. Harleian, 417. Printed by Foxe, vol. vi.
- ↑ It is to be remembered that, throughout the correspondence, Gardiner speaks as if the Protector was being dragged on by Cranmer against his will. The Protector had once, he said, promised him that 'he would suffer no innovations.' According to Gardiner, it was not the Protector who caused the deposition of Wriothesley: 'Your Grace,' he said, 'showed so much favour to him that all the world commended your gentleness.' 'For the visitation,' he added, 'I saw a determination to do all things suddenly at one time, whereunto, although your Grace agreed, yet of your wisdom I conjectured ye had rather had it tarry till your return if ye had not been pressed. That word 'pressed,' I noted in your letter to me, when ye wrote ye were pressed on both sides; and methought if, by bringing my-
