# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gardiner, Stephen

1904 Errata appended.
​GARDINER, STEPHEN (1483?–1555), bishop of Winchester, was the reputed son of John Gardiner, a clothworker of Bury St. Edmunds, where he was born between 1483 and 1490. In Betham's ‘Genealogical Tables’ (tab. dcx.) he appears as the son of one William Gardener and Helen, sister of Henry VII. The story that he was a natural son of Lionel Woodville, bishop of Salisbury, the younger son of Richard Woodville, earl Rivers, first appears in the pages of the ‘Sceletos Cantab.’ of Richard Parker, who wrote in the early part of the seventeenth century. The fact that no reference is made to the story by his personal enemies during his lifetime would seem sufficiently to discredit the assertion, which rests mainly on his being frequently called ‘Mister Stevens’ during the earlier part of his official career. This Parker supposed to be his mother's name, but it is really his christian name (from Stephanus), and secretaries in those days were frequently designated by their christian name only, as ‘Master Peter’ for Peter Vannes.
Gardiner was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and was subsequently elected a fellow of that society. He proceeded doctor of the civil law in 1520, and of the canon law in the following year. In both these branches of the legal profession he attained rapidly to eminence. In 1524 he was appointed one of Sir Robert Rede's lecturers in the university, and about the same year was made tutor to a son of the Duke of Norfolk, to whose family he remained firmly attached throughout his life. Through Norfolk's good offices he was introduced to Wolsey, to whom he became private secretary. In this capacity we find him as early as 1526 taking part in proceedings against heretics. In 1525 he was elected master of Trinity Hall, an office which he continued to hold until his ejectment in 1549. In the months of July and August 1527 he was with Wolsey in France, and the latter in a letter dated from Amiens proposes to King Henry to send Gardiner to him to receive his secret instructions, ‘he being,’ says the writer, ‘the only instrument I have for the purpose.’ Either in this year, or at some earlier time, he was in Paris, and there made the acquaintance of Erasmus, whom we find writing to him on 3 Sept. 1527, and recalling their pleasant meeting and also expressing his gratification at learning that Gardiner stands so high in the favour of their common patron, Wolsey. In the following year he was sent, together with Edward Fox, as ambassador to the pope, with instructions to visit France on their way. In a letter to Sir Gregory Casale, Wolsey says that the two ambassadors will show that the ‘king's cause’ (i.e. the proposed divorce) is founded both ‘on human and divine law.’ Wolsey himself suggested that in their official capacity Fox, as the royal councillor and first named in the king's letters, should have the precedence, and Gardiner ‘the speech and utterance.’ It was, however, agreed between the two that the latter should have the pre-eminence ‘both of place, speech, and utterance … without altercation or varyaunce, as our old amity and fast friendship doth require’ (Pocock, Records of the Reformation, i. 74). Their joint decision was justified by the sequel, for the tact and boldness of Gardiner working upon the fears and hesitating temperament of Clement VII ultimately wrung from the pontiff his consent to a second commission; on their return to England Henry expressed himself as highly pleased with the manner in which Gardiner had discharged his errand.
In July 1528 he appears as one of a commission appointed by Wolsey to revise the statutes which he had given for his colleges at Ipswich and Oxford, and in the following January on a royal commission designed to arrange, in conjunction with Francis I, a peace ‘for the tranquillity of Italy and the defence of the pope's person.’ On 1 March 1528–9 he was admitted archdeacon of Norfolk. In the following April Anne Boleyn writes to thank him for his ‘willing and faithful mind.’ Gardiner was at this time again in Italy, whither he had gone in January on the divorce business; but on 4 May he writes to Henry to say that though they have done their best to obtain from the pope the accomplishment of the royal desires they have not prevailed. A few days after he was recalled, and left Rome on 1 June, arriving in London with Sir Francis Bryan on the evening of the 22nd. On 28 July 1529, writing to Vannes, he says that he is going to court that day to enter upon his duties as secretary for the first time. From this date he is frequently referred to in the official correspondence as ‘Mr. Stevens.’ His influence with the king now began to increase rapidly. In the following year his former patron, Wolsey, was fain again and again to entreat his intercession with the king to procure some alleviation of his own lot. At a later period Gardiner professed to consider that Wolsey merited his fate (Harleian MS. 417), but he appears at this time ​really to have done his best in his behalf. He pleaded also warmly, though unsuccessfully, that the foundation at Ipswich might be spared, while Christ Church probably owes its existence to his efforts. In February 1530 he visited Cambridge, and took a leading part in the endeavours that were being made to win over the university to conclusions favourable to the divorce. His efforts, however, were strongly opposed by a large section of the academic body, and his servant Christopher was maltreated. The royal appreciation of his services was shown in the following July by a grant of the arable lands and rents of the honour of Hanworth. In 1531 he was collated to the archdeaconry of Leicester, and in October of the same year was incorporated LL.D. of Oxford. Although in relation to the divorce he still advocated ‘a middle course,’ he appears by this time to have altogether lost Catherine's confidence, and he was the compiler of the reply to the allegations made by her counsel in Rome. Henry now again evinced his sense of his desert by urging Clement to promote him to the see of Winchester. Gardiner was consecrated to the office on 27 Nov. 1531. Although, according to his own statement, he received 1,300l. less from the bishopric than his predecessor, Richard Fox, had done, he paid a fine of 366l. 13s. 4d. for his temporalities (Letters and Papers Henry VIII, v. 507). On 29 Dec. he again proceeded as ambassador to the court of France. He had now become so useful to his royal employer that Henry declared that in his secretary's absence he felt as though he had lost his right hand. Gardiner's conduct of the business entrusted to him gave entire satisfaction to Henry, and on 7 March 1531–2 he returned to England. Shortly after his return his skill as a canonist led to his services being again called into requisition in the preparation of the notable reply of the ordinaries to the address of the House of Commons to King Henry. Gardiner took up, as he generally did throughout his career, very high ground in defence of the privileges of his order, and maintained the right claimed by the bishops to make such laws as they might deem fit for ‘the weal of men's souls.’ Even Henry appears to have shown his displeasure at the tone of the document. Gardiner was present at Greenwich when, on 5 June, Henry transferred the great seal from Sir Thomas More to Sir Thomas Audley. There is some ground for supposing that he was at this time contemplating a less subservient line of action. He displayed remarkable assiduity in preaching in his diocese, and Volusenus, the Scottish scholar, who in 1532 dedicated to him his commentary on Psalm 1., takes occasion to praise in glowing terms the energy he thus exhibited and the example he was setting to the other bishops. In September of the same year Clement told the imperial ambassador in Rome that Gardiner had changed his mind on the whole question of the divorce, and had consequently left the English court (ib. v. 561). It is, however, in perfect keeping with that reputation for double dealing which he bore throughout his career, that in the same month he accompanied Henry to Calais with a personal following of twenty-four men; that in the following April Fisher on being placed under confinement was confided to his custody; that he was one of the assessors in the court which in the following month pronounced Catherine's marriage null and void; and that at the coronation of Anne Boleyn (8 June) he, along with the Bishop of London, ‘bore up the laps of her robe’ (Harl. MS. 41, fol. 2). He was one of those before whom Frith, the martyr, was summoned to appear at St. Paul's (20 June 1533); Frith had once been Gardiner's pupil at Cambridge, and the latter seems to have done his best to save him from his fate (Grenville MS. 11990; Letters and Papers, vi. 600).
On 3 Sept. he was again sent into France on the divorce business, proceeding first to Nice and then to Marseilles, and returning before the close of the year. In April 1534 he acted as one of the adjudicators to settle a dispute between the clergy and the parishioners of London respecting tithes. In the same month he resigned his post as secretary to King Henry, and was permitted to retire to his diocese. He was, however, shortly after again summoned to court, and the report was prevalent in London that his committal to the Tower was imminent. There seems to be no doubt that his position at this time was one of a considerable difficulty. Henry regarded him with suspicion, imputing to him a ‘colored doubleness’ in his conduct with respect to the visitation of the monasteries, while he appears to have become obnoxious both to Cromwell and to Cranmer. At length, on 10 Feb. 1534–5, Gardiner took the decisive step and signed his renunciation of the jurisdiction of the see of Rome (Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 780); and shortly after (not in 1534, as Strype and others) published his famous oration, ‘De vera Obedientia.’ To the policy therein indicated he adhered with consistency almost to the close of his career. His arguments were devoted to establishing the following three main conclusions: (1) ‘That human tradition ought to be regarded as inferior to divine precept. (2) That the Roman pontiff has no legitimate power or jurisdic​tion over other churches. (3) That kings, princes, and Christian magistrates are each entitled to supremacy in their respective churches, and are bound to make religion their first care.’ Although Reginald Pole declared that the treatise contained nothing which a man of average intelligence would not be able to refute, it was generally accepted as a very able statement of the argument in the royal defence. Cromwell caused copies to be circulated on the continent, where it was hailed with delight by the protestant party, and in 1537 the Swiss reformers, Capito, Hedio, and Bucer, reprinted it at Strasburg, with a preface in which they strongly recommended the volume as an exposition of the true theory of the privileges and duties of the primitive bishop. Apprehensive, however, of the displeasure of the pope, Gardiner (or his friends) caused the report to be circulated among the Roman party that he had written the treatise under compulsion and in fear of death in case of refusal (Calendar of State Papers, x. No. 570).
It is certain that Gardiner's manifesto brought about no better understanding between himself and Cranmer, whom he continued to do his best to thwart and counteract. When the latter visited, as metropolitan, the diocese of Winchester, the bishop challenged his jurisdiction, maintaining that inasmuch as the archbishop had relinquished the title of legate of the holy see, he could no longer justly claim that of ‘Primas totius Angliæ,’ this being derogatory to the king's authority as ‘head of the church’ (Cleopatra, F. i. 260). In common with the majority of the bishops, however, Gardiner seems to have faithfully performed his share in the new translation of the New Testament which Cranmer had projected in 1533, for we find him writing (10 June 1535) to Cromwell, and stating that having finished the translation of SS. Luke and John, and being much exhausted by his severe labours, he intends to abstain altogether for a time from books and writing (State Papers Henry VIII, i. 430).
In the meantime the signal service which he had rendered to the royal cause had completely regained for him Henry's favour. In September 1535 the king's ‘experience of his wisdom and moderation’ induced him again to appoint him ambassador to the French court, with instructions ‘to negotiate such articles in the treaty as shall be for the interest of the two crowns.’ Gardiner arrived in Paris on 3 Nov., and his general conduct of the business gave Henry so much satisfaction that he directed Cromwell to intimate to him that, whatever might be the result of the negotiations he might be assured that the royal favour towards him would remain unaffected. In his answer to the petition of the rebels in 1536 Henry names Gardiner, along with Fox of Hereford and Bishop Sampson, as the three spiritual advisers whom he considers deserving of being called ‘noble.’ During Gardiner's stay in Paris he was consulted by Henry with respect to the proposals put forward by the protestants of Germany for the formation of a protestant league with England; and in February 1535–6 he forwarded a paper to Cromwell giving it as his opinion that Henry in his realm was ‘emperor and head of the church of England,’ but that, should he enter into the proposed league, he would become ‘bound to the church of Germany, and would be able to do nothing without their consent’ (Strype, Mem. i. i. 236). His policy continued, however, to be characterised by a certain disingenuousness; for while Campeggio, when contemplating his journey to England, mentions Gardiner as one of those on whose support he chiefly relies, the latter in the same year (1536) drew up a scheme whereby Henry might be enabled for the future altogether to ignore the bishop of Rome, suggesting that the substance of any bulls which the king might desire to retain in force should be reissued in the royal name without mention of the Roman pontiff.
But notwithstanding his compliant spirit and undoubted ability, Gardiner appears shortly after this again to have incurred Henry's suspicion. He was suspected of favouring the imperial interests, and Cromwell regarded him both with mistrust and dislike. In 1538 he was accordingly superseded as ambassador in Paris by Bonner. He retired to his diocese in a dejected and resentful frame of mind. In November of the same year he took part, however, in the trial of John Lambert for heresy at Westminster. His qualifications, both as a canonist and a diplomatist, were indeed too valuable to permit of his long remaining unemployed by the state. In 1539 he was again sent on an embassy to Germany. His intercourse with the protestant divines brought about no modification of his doctrinal views; and the six articles, which were promulgated soon after his return, were generally believed to have been mainly his work. Their reactionary character completed the breach between himself and Cromwell, and each felt that the overthrow of his adversary was now essential to his own safety. In the privy council Gardiner challenged the appointment by Cromwell of Barnes (‘defamed for heresy’) as commissioner to Germany. Cromwell's influence was still sufficiently powerful to procure Gardiner's dis​missal from the council. But it was his last triumph, and in the following year his own fall and execution left his rival in almost undisputed possession of the royal favour and of supreme political influence. In the university of Cambridge Gardiner was also elected as his former opponent's successor in the chancellorship. Apart from his power to aid and protect the academic community, his election was recommended by his high attainments as a scholar and the discernment which he had already evinced as a judicious patron of rising merit among men of letters. He was, however, alarmed at the progress which the Reformation doctrines were making in the university, and his policy was chiefly retrograde. In May 1542 he issued an arbitrary edict forbidding the continuance of the new method of pronouncing Greek which had been introduced by Thomas Smith and Cheke. As regards the abstract merits of the question his view was probably the right one; but the measure had a disastrous effect in the manner in which it chilled the enthusiasm which those two eminent scholars had succeeded in arousing in connection with the revived study of the language.
In 1541 he was once more sent on an embassy to Germany. On his way he stayed at Louvain, and was hospitably entertained by the university, but these feelings of cordiality were soon changed when his hosts found leisure to make themselves acquainted with the drift of his treatise, ‘De vera Obedientia’ (copies of which he appears to have distributed among them), and he was not permitted to celebrate mass in the city.
In March 1542 the project of a new translation of the New Testament was again brought forward, at Cranmer's suggestion and with the royal sanction, in convocation, and the several books were once more portioned out to the different translators. Various writers, misled chiefly by Burnet, have represented the failure of the undertaking as arising partly from Gardiner's jealousy of Cranmer and partly from his real dislike to the project. ‘His design,’ says Burnet, ‘was that if a translation must be made it should be so daubed all through with Latin words that the people should not understand it much the better for its being in English’ (Burnet, ed. Pocock, i. 455, 498). But although it is true that Gardiner drew up a list of Latin words which he considered it would be safer to retain in their Latin form, it seems more just to interpret his anxiety in this respect as dictated by nothing more than those considerations which would naturally suggest themselves to the classical scholar and well-read theologian. He perceived the difficulty, not to say the danger, of attempting to supply exact English equivalents for words which learned divines had found it necessary to define with laborious and painful precision, and to whose definitions the decisions of the church had given the highest doctrinal importance. That Gardiner, by merely exhibiting the above list, should have alarmed Cranmer and brought the whole enterprise to an untimely end, would seem, to say the least, highly improbable. Mr. Dixon more reasonably represents Henry's interference, and the proposal to relegate the whole task to the two universities, as the result simply of the royal caprice (Hist. of the Church of England, ii. 285–9).
In September 1542 Gardiner, in conjunction with Tunstal, conducted the negotiations with the imperial ambassador in London. In the following year an event of a peculiarly painful character inspired his enemies with fresh hope. His private secretary was his own nephew, a young priest named Germayne Gardiner. He was now, along with three other clerics, brought to trial on the charge of denying the royal supremacy. The other three were acquitted, but Gardiner's nephew suffered the death of a traitor (Burnet, ed. Pocock, i. 567). That the event afforded an opportunity for aspersions on Gardiner's own loyalty is sufficiently probable. But the assertion of Strype that ‘after this he never had favour or regard of the king more,’ is altogether at variance with the evidence. Not less so is the story which exhibits Gardiner as the chief actor in a plot designed to bring about the disgrace of Catherine Parr, and falling himself under the royal displeasure in consequence. This rests on no contemporary authority, and is probably a protestant invention. It is discredited chiefly by the fact that at no subsequent period of his life, and especially in the proceedings at his deprivation, is any reference made to any such conduct on his part by his enemies (see Maitland, Essays on the Reformation, Nos. xv. and xvii.; Froude, Hist. of England, c. xxvii.) The evidence which convicts him of having been accessory to the plot of the prebendaries in 1543 for Cranmer's overthrow is better attested, but it is remarkable that, although somewhat under a cloud in 1546 for resisting an exchange of lands with the king, he appears to have retained the royal favour to the last. It is, however, undeniable that by the doctrinal reformers he was at this time looked upon as their chief enemy in England, although the complaint of Latimer that Gardiner had sought to deprive him of his bishopric was repudiated by the latter with considerable warmth, and apparently with truth. ​In the funeral obsequies at Henry's interment Gardiner assumed the leading part, and was the chief celebrant at the mass. It appeared, however, that in the royal will—a document to which considerable suspicion attaches—he was unnamed. According to Fuller (Church Hist. bk. v. 254) Henry had made the omission purposely, and when his attention was drawn to it replied that ‘he knew Gardiner's temper well enough, and though he could govern him, yet none of them would be able to do it.’ On Edward's accession Gardiner was excluded from the council of state, and also removed from the chancellorship of the university of Cambridge.
To the innovations in matters of religious doctrine and practice which followed on the assumption of the supreme authority by the council, Gardiner offered a consistent and uncompromising resistance; and on 25 Sept. 1547 was committed to the Fleet on the charge of having ‘spoken to others impertinent things of the King's Majesty's Visitations, and refused to set forth and receive the Injunctions and Homilies’ (MS. Privy Council Book, p. 229). After a fortnight Cranmer sent for him and endeavoured to prevail upon him to accept the homilies, hinting at the same time that if conformable in this respect he might hope again to become a privy councillor. Gardiner, however, continued contumacious. He was notwithstanding treated with considerable leniency, and after the proclamation of the general amnesty (24 Dec.) was permitted to return to his diocese. Amid the numerous changes which Somerset was now seeking to carry into effect he was especially anxious to have the formal concurrence of the episcopal order, and especially of Gardiner. The latter, although he alleged ill-health, was accordingly summoned to London (May 1548), and called upon to satisfy the council with respect to his views by the delivery of a public sermon. With this command he complied in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross (29 June), in which, however, while professing his readiness to yield a general obedience to the new legislation, he stoutly maintained the doctrine of the real presence, and omitted altogether to recognise the authority of the council. He was thereupon sent to the Tower, where he was detained in close confinement for a year.
On the fall of Somerset his hopes of regaining his freedom were destined to cruel disappointment. His repeated protests to the council against the illegality of his confinement were disregarded, and a petition to parliament which he drew up was not suffered to reach its destination. But at length the lords intimated a willingness to consider his case. Commissioners were sent to interrogate him and to procure his signature to certain articles. As, however, these involved not only a recognition of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the council, but also a repudiation of the six articles, together with an admission of the justice of his own punishment, Gardiner refused to make so humiliating a submission. The council accordingly proceeded to sequestrate the fruits of his bishopric, while the conditions of his confinement were made still more rigorous. Burnet himself admits that Gardiner's treatment was now ‘much censured, as being contrary to the liberties of Englishmen and the forms of all legal proceedings.’ In December 1551 he was brought to Lambeth for formal trial by a court presided over by Cranmer. Among the charges brought against him was that of having armed his household when resident in his diocese, a measure which he fully justified by pointing out that it was a precaution warranted by the disordered state of the neighbourhood at that time. From the other charges he vindicated himself by a general oath of compurgation, and it is deserving of special note that he expressly attributed the omission of his name from the late king's will to the machinations of his enemies. On 18 April 1552, however, he was deprived of his bishopric and sent back to the Tower, where he remained until the following reign. His successor in his see was Poynet, with Bale for his secretary. He had already (about February 1549) been deprived of the mastership of Trinity Hall.
On Mary's accession he was among the prisoners who knelt before her on her visit to the Tower, and was at once set at liberty. On 23 Aug. 1553 he was made lord high chancellor of the realm, and in this capacity placed the crown on her head at her coronation (1 Oct.), and presided at the opening of parliament (5 Oct.) In the same year he was re-elected to the chancellorship at Cambridge and to the mastership of Trinity Hall. For the severities put in force against the protestants in the earlier part of Mary's reign, Gardiner, in conjunction with Bonner, has generally been represented as mainly responsible. But it is certain that he sought (whatever may have been his motives) to save Cranmer's life, and also that of one with far less claims to mercy, Northumberland. Thomas Smith, who had been secretary to King Edward, was shielded by him from persecution, and even allowed 100l. per annum for his support; while Roger Ascham was continued in office as secretary and his salary increased. Gardiner also honourably interposed to prevent the committal of Peter Martyr to prison, and furnished him with the funds necessary to ​enable him to return in safety to his own country. The attitude which he assumed in relation to the question of Mary's marriage, advocating the selection of a British subject, was also both statesmanlike and patriotic. On the other hand, he took a leading part in bringing back the country to that Roman allegiance against which he had written so forcibly and which he had so long repudiated; while his advocacy of the enactment of a declaration by parliament of the validity of Henry's first marriage and Elizabeth's consequent illegitimacy was an act of singular effrontery. His whole treatment of Elizabeth [see Elizabeth] remains, indeed, one of the most sinister features in his later career, and it is asserted that after Wyatt's conspiracy he meditated her removal by foul means. His policy during the last two years of his life was partly determined by his jealousy of Reginald Pole, by whose accession to the archbishopric of Canterbury he foresaw that his own power in matters ecclesiastical would be rendered no longer paramount. He aimed at the restoration of the ecclesiastical courts and of episcopal jurisdiction with all their former, and even with augmented, powers; he procured in December 1554 the re-enactment of the statute ‘De Hæretico Comburendo;’ and he took a leading part in the proceedings which resulted in the burning of John Bradford and Rogers. He died of the gout at Whitehall on 12 Nov. 1555. On the account of the passion of our Lord being read to him in his last hours he exclaimed, when the reader reached the passage recording Peter's denial of his master, ‘Negavi cum Petro, exivi cum Petro, sed nondum flevi cum Petro,’ an ejaculation which can be interpreted only as an expression of his dying remorse for his repudiation of the Roman supremacy.
His bowels were buried before the high altar of St. Mary Overies in Southwark, where his exequies were celebrated on 21 Nov. His body was afterwards interred in his cathedral at Winchester, where his chantry chapel, a notable specimen of the Renaissance style, still exists.
There are portraits of him at Trinity Hall and in the picture gallery at Oxford. A picture alleged to be by Jan Matsys and to represent Gardiner was sold at the sale of the Secrétan collection in Paris (July 1889) for thirty thousand francs, and passed to the museum at Berlin. But there is no good evidence that it is a portrait of Gardiner.
The following is a list of Gardiner's printed works: 1. ‘De vera Obedientia Oratio,’ of which there are the following editions: (i) that of 1535, small quarto, 36 pp., Roman type, with the colophon ‘Londini in Ædibus Tho. Bertheleti Regii Impressoris excusa. An. M.D.XXXV. cum Privilegio’ (this is probably the first edition); (ii) ‘Stephani Wintoniensis Episcopi de vera Obedientia Oratio. Una cum Præfatione Edmundi Boneri Archidiaconi Leycestrensis sereniss. Regiæ ma. Angliæ in Dania legati, capita notabiliora dictæ orationis complectente. In qua etiam ostenditur caussam controversiæ quæ inter ipsam sereniss. Regiam Maiestatem & Episcopum Romanum existit, longe aliter ac diversius se habere, q; hactenus a vulgo putatum sit. Hamburgi ex officina Francisci Rhodi. Mense Ianuario 1536.’ The treatise was reprinted in 1612 by Goldastus in his ‘Monarchia S. Rom. Imp.,’ i. 716, and by Brown (Edw.), 1690, in his ‘Fasciculus Rerum expetend.’ ii. 800, this latter with Bonner's preface. In 1553 there appeared the following: ‘De vera Obediencia. An oration made in Latine by the ryghte Reuerend father in God Stephan, B. of Winchestre, nowe lord Chancellour of england, with the preface of Edmunde Boner, sometime Archedeacon of Leicestre, and the Kinges maiesties embassadour in Denmarke, & sithence B. of London, touchinge true Obedience. Printed at Hamburgh in Latine. In officina Francisci Rhodi. Mense Ia. M.D.xxxvi. And nowe translated into english and printed by Michal Wood: with the Preface and conclusion of the traunslator. From Roane, xxvi. of Octobre M.D.liii.’ A second edition of this English version followed in the same year, purporting to be ‘printed eftsones, in Rome, before the castle of S. Angel, at the signe of S. Peter. In novembre, Anno do. M.D.Liii.’ Of this second (?) edition a scandalously inaccurate reprint was given in 1832 by Mr. William Stevens in an appendix to his ‘Life of Bradford.’ The original translation is characterised by Dr. Maitland as ‘one of the most barbarous versions of Latin into a sort of English that was ever perpetrated.’ 2. ‘Conquestio ad M. Bucerum de impudenti ejusdem pseudologia. Lovanii, 1544. 3. ‘A Detection of the Devil's Sophistrie, wherewith he robbeth the unlearned people of the true byleef in the most blessed sacrament of the Aulter,’ 12mo, London, 1546. 4. ‘Epistola ad M. Bucerum, qua cessantem hactenus & cunctantem, ac frustratoria responsionis pollicitatione, orbis de se judicia callide sustinentem, urget ad respondendum de impudentissima ejusdem pseudologia justissimæ conquestioni ante annum æditæ. Louanii. Ex officina Seruatii Zasseni. Anno M.D.XLVI. Men. Martio. Cum Privilegio Cæsareo.’ 5. ‘A Declaration of those Articles G. Joy hath gone about to confute,’ London, 4to, 1546. 6. ‘An Explanation and ​Assertion of the true Catholick Faith, touching the most blessed Sacrament of the Aulter; with a Confutation of a Book written against the same,’ Rouen, 12mo, 1551; also, with Archbishop Cranmer's answer, fol. London, 1551. 7. ‘Palinodia Libri de Vera Obedientia; Confutatio cavillationum quibus Eucharistiæ sacramentum ab impiis Capharnaitis impeti solet,’ Paris, 4to, 1552; also Lovanii, 1554. 8. ‘Contra Convitia Martini Buceri,’ Lovanii, 1554. 9. ‘Exetasis Testimoniorum quæ M. Bucerus minus genuine e S. patribus non sancte edidit de Cœlibatus dono,’ 4to, Lovanii, 1554. 10. ‘Epistolæ ad J. Checum de Pronuntiatione Linguæ Græcæ,’ 8vo, Basel, 1555. 11. Sermon preached before Edward VI, 29 June 1548. In English in Foxe's ‘Acts and Monuments.’
The library of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge also contains the following manuscripts (in the Parker collection), most of which are still unprinted: Vol. cxiii. No. 34, tractate against Bucer, maintaining the assertion ‘Contemptum humanæ legis justa autoritate latæ gravius et severius vindicandum quam divinæ legis qualemcunque transgressionem.’ Vol. cxxvii. (entitled ‘Quæ concernunt Gardinerum’) contains (No. 5) his sermon before King Edward (29 June 1548), giving his opinion on the state of religion in England, maintaining the doctrines of the real presence and clerical celibacy, but approving the renunciation of the papal power and the dissolution of the monasteries; (9) examination of witnesses in articles exhibited against him; (11) articles exhibited by him in his own defence before the judges delegate; (12) his ‘Protestatio’ against the authority of the same judges; (16, pp. 167–249) his ‘Exercitationes,’ or metrical Latin compositions, with which he is said to have beguiled the tedium of his confinement in the Tower. In Lambeth Library there is a manuscript in his hand, ‘Annotationes in dialogum Johannis Œcolampadii cum suo Nathanaele de Mysterio Eucharistico disceptantis.’
J. B. M.
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.131 N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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