Stephen Gardiner was a Cambridge lawyer who served as Wolsey’s secretary and became Bishop of Winchester in 1531. He supported Henry VIII’s break with Rome, even defending the royal supremacy in his book On True Obedience (1535), but he was the leader of the conservative party in doctrine. He helped secure the Act of Six Articles in 1539, which made denial of transubstantiation punishable by burning, and he was Archbishop Cranmer’s most persistent enemy.¹

Under Edward VI Gardiner was deprived and imprisoned in the Tower. When Mary came to the throne in 1553 she released him and made him Lord Chancellor. He oversaw the restoration of the old religion and the revival of the heresy laws by Parliament in the winter of 1554–1555, and he presided over the first trials of the Protestant leaders, including John Rogers and John Hooper. Bishop J. C. Ryle recorded his strategy:

He would have the axe laid at the root of the tree: the Bishops and most powerful preachers ought certainly to die.² Stephen Gardineras reported by J. C. Ryle

Gardiner may have expected that a few burnings would break the Protestant cause. Instead the courage of the martyrs strengthened it. He died on November 12, 1555, less than a month after Latimer and Ridley went to the fire at Oxford.

Catholic Opponents