he probably thought that a very few executions would be sufficient to check the zeal of the Protestants, and when he found that he was mistaken he did not care to go on. It is true that two important factors may have contributed to diminish Gardiner's zeal, viz. the fact that Pole arrived in England only a few weeks before the outbreak of the persecution, and that Gardiner's own health began to fail very shortly after this; for he died on November 13, 1555, exactly a year after Pole left Brussels on his journey to England, and had been ill probably for some months before.[1] The other principal agent in the persecutions, Bishop Bonner, seems to have received rather hard measure both from his contemporaries and from posterity. That he was a man of coarse mind and brutal manners there is no room for doubt; and, having chosen his party from whatever reasons, he went all lengths with it, with little pity and no scrupples, and often with a malignant satisfaction in paying off old scores upon his personal enemies with somewhat large usury. Such a man is likely to be, and often is, popularly accepted as the embodiment of the system of which he is the expression, when, in fact, his part is that rather of the executioner than of the judge. But we all recognise the fact that Jack Ketch is not a popular character, albeit he may deserve his unpopularity far less than the Judge Jeffreys who calls his services into requisition; and Bonner, who was the hand rather than the head or heart of the persecution, probably obtained a larger share of its unpopularity than fairly belonged to him. His return to his see, at the commencement of Mary's reign, seems to have been popular; and we know at
- ↑ De Noailles to the Queen of Scots, Sept. 9, 1555.—Ambassades de M. M. de Noailles, vol. v. p. 127.
