series of instructions which she placed in the hands of Pole. But the bill when it came down to the Commons at once gave rise to a warm discussion, and was eventually carried against an ominous minority of 126. Six days later (December 9), Mary dissolved Parliament; and two years elapsed before it met again.
In the meantime the royal purpose was becoming more inexorable and pronounced. In the communications to Pole, above referred to, Mary gave it as her opinion that it would "be well to inflict punishment" on those "who choose by their false doctrine to deceive simple persons." It was, however, her express desire that no one should be burnt in London "save in the presence of some member of the Council, "and that during such executions some" good and pious sermons should be preached." It was prodably under the belief that Pole's better nature would exert a certain influence, that Philip, when he departed for the Low Countries, had advised Mary to take the Cardinal for her chief counsellor. But firmness was never one of Pole's virtues, and when confronted by a stronger will, in conjunction with that more practical knowledge of men and affairs in which he was notoriously deficient, he deferred to the judgment of others and reluctantly acquiesced in a policy which he himself would never have originated. But he still at times vacillated; and, as we have already noted, would recommend the Bishops to have recourse to gentle methods in their endeavours to reclaim heretics; while in August, 1556, he succeeded in setting free no less than twenty prisoners whom Bonner had condemned to the stake. It was possibly in anticipation of his resignation of the office of legatus a latere that Pole aspired to succeed Gardiner as Privy Seal, for the incompatibility of the two offices was obvious; the seal was ultimately, at Philip's suggestion, bestowed on Lord Paget, who, as a Jayman and a statesman of known tolerance in religious questions, succeeded on January 29, 1556. The Chancellorship was not bestowed on Thirlby, now Bishop of Ely,—who had been discharging its duties as deputy and whose claims were favoured by Mary-his known Catholic sympathies rendering it inadvisable, even in the eyes of Philip, to continue him in the office; and on January 1, the Great Seal was conferred on Heath, Archbishop of York. Pole, however, succeeded Gardiner as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and on March 22, 1556, the day after Cranmer was burnt at Oxford, he was consecrated to the Archbishopric of Canterbury.
Under his auspices, and with the aid of the royal munificence, several of the foundations which had been swept away by Mary's father in his anger at their contumacious resistance to his arbitrary decrees now rose again. The Grey Friars reappeared at Greenwich, the Carthusians gathered once more in their splendid monastery at Sheen, the Brigettines reassembled at Sion; while Feckenham, abandoning his deanery at St Paul's, made his solemn entry into Westminster as Abbot of a body
