GARDINER, STEPHEN: Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England; b. at Bury St. Edmunds (60 m. n.e. of London), Suffolk, between 1483 and 1490; d. at Whitehall, London, Nov. 12, 1555. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he later became fellow (Doctor of Civil Law, 1520; Doctor of Canon Law, 1521), and in 1524 was made a lecturer in the university, shortly before his appointment as tutor to a son of the Duke of Norfolk. He now became secretary to Wolsey, and from 1525 to 1549 was master of Trinity Hall. He visited France with Wolsey in 1527, and in 1528 he and Edward Fox were sent as ambassadors to the pope in the interests of the divorce from Catherine of Aragon desired by the king. It was Gardiner's tact and determination which induced Clement VIII. to assent to a commission to try the case in England. Gardiner was made archdeacon of Norfolk on Mar. 1, 1529, and early in the following year again went to Italy in an unsuccessful endeavor to secure the king's divorce. He was appointed secretary to the king, and in Feb., 1530, visited Cambridge in a vain effort to induce the university to decide in favor of the divorce. In 1531 he was collated to the archdeaconry of Leicester, and on Nov. 27, 1531, he was consecrated bishop of Winchester. From December to March he was once more in France as an ambassador, in Apr., 1532, he was appointed custodian of John Fisher (q.v.), and in May was one of the assessors of the court which annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine, while at the coronation of Anne Boleyn on June 8 he and the bishop of London bore her train. He was again in France on business connected with the divorce in September, but his resistance to Henry's claim of spiritual supremacy led him to resign his secretaryship and retire to his diocese. He was soon summoned to court, but on Feb. 10, 1535, formally renounced the jurisdiction of the pope and published his De verd obedientia (London, 1535). Thus regaining the favor of the king, Gardiner was again appointed ambassador to France, and during this time dissuaded Henry from making a league with the Continental Protestants. The suspicions entertained concerning him, however, caused him to be superseded as ambassador at Paris by Bonner, but in the following year he was sent as ambassador to Germany.

With the downfall of his rival Cromwell in 1540, Gardiner became supreme, and was even elected chancellor of Cambridge as successor to Cromwell. In 1541 he was once more in Germany as royal

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ambassador, and in 1542 he was one of those who conducted the negotiations with the imperial ambassador in London. He enjoyed the favor of Henry to the last, but with the accession of Edward VI. he was removed from the Council of State and from the chancellorship of the university. In consequence of his opposition to the religious innovations of the new council, Gardiner was committed to the Fleet on Sept. 25, 1547, but was allowed to return to his diocese the following December. Summoned to London in May, 1548, he still refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the council and maintained the doctrine of the real presence, for which he was imprisoned in the Tower for a year. In Dec., 1550, he was tried before Cranmer, and on Feb. 15, 1551, was deprived of his bishopric and confined to the Tower until the death of Edward in 1553.

With the accession of Mary, Gardiner was released and restored to office. As lord high chancellor he crowned the queen Oct. 1, 1553, and prided at the opening of Parliament four days later, in addition to being reelected chancellor of Cambridge and master of Trinity Hall. He advocated rigorous measures against those who refused obedience to the Roman Catholic Church, but the severity popularly ascribed to him is doubtless exaggerated. He also strove to restore England to the papal allegiance, and even sought to have Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon declared valid, thus implying the illegitimacy of Elizabeth. He was likewise obliged to work in favor of Mary's marriage to Philip II., although in reality he was opposed to it. He sought to restore the ecclesiastical courts and the episcopal jurisdiction, and one of his last official acts was the reenforcement of the statute De hteretico combauendo. The chief works of Gardiner were: De vera obedien tia (London, 1535; Eng. tmnsl. by M. Wood, Geneva [?], .1553); Conquestio ad M. Bucerum de ejusdem pseudologia (Louvain, 1544); A Detection of the Devil's Sophistry (London, 1546); An Ex planation and Assertion of the True Catholic Faith, Touching the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar (Rouen, 1551); Palinodia libri de vera obedientia (Paris, 1552); and Epistolee ad J. Cheeum de pro nuntiatione l ingutr Greecce (Basel, 1555). A few minor works also exist in manuscript.

Bibliography: Sources are: Calendars of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.; ed. Brewer and Gairdner, 2 vols., London, 1884. Consult: C. H. and T. Cooper, Agenar Cantabripienses, i. 139-140, ib. 1858; J. B. Mullinger, Hitt. of Unioerenty of Cambridge, ii. 58-83, ib. 1888; S. R. Maitland, Essays on Subjects Connected with the Reformation, ib. 1899; DNB, xx. 419-425 (careful and authoritative).