A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



church, and was installed by proxy. His fall was close at hand, and the 

 beginning of his disgrace occasioned his residence for some months in 

 Surrey. On 19 October, 1529, he gave up the Great Seal, and 

 retired by the king's orders to the episcopal manor house of Esher, suf- 

 fering considerable privations and sickening with an attack of dropsy. 

 He left Esher in the spring of 1530, being ordered to withdraw to his 

 northern diocese, and in November of the same year he died. 



Just a year after the death of Wolsey, at the end of November, 

 1531, that shrewd and able statesman, Stephen Gardiner, for some time 

 secretary to the cardinal, was consecrated to the see of Winchester. He was 

 learned in civil and canon law, but owed his original advancement to the fact 

 of being Cardinal Wolsey 's private secretary. During his remarkable epis- 

 copate, the king's divorces and the general flux of the Reformation changes 

 absorbed more of his talents and industry than the more prosaic affairs 

 of diocesan administration. Nevertheless the diocese was by no means 

 neglected, and we have the evidence of the Scotch scholar, Volusenus, 

 that at the beginning of his episcopal career Gardiner was most assiduous 

 in visiting and preaching throughout the parishes of Hampshire and 

 Surrey. 1 With the singular intermediate position that Gardiner took up 

 on matters affecting the Reformation, and his remarkable treatise, De Vera 

 Obedientia t repudiating Roman domination, we have here no concern ; but 

 mention should be made of his dispute with Cranmer as to a visitation 

 of Winchester diocese, as this must have caused some considerable heart- 

 burning and no little bewilderment to many of the incumbents of Hamp- 

 shire. 



The archbishop insisted on his right to hold a provincial visitation, 

 a course which had, perhaps naturally, been always unpopular with the 

 suffragans of Canterbury, and which was peculiarly trying at this 

 crisis. Irrespective of other reasons, the matter of fees made such a 

 progress a heavy burden on all concerned, whilst materially enriching 

 the archiepiscopal officials. Moreover it was only five years since 

 Archbishop Wareham had made a metropolitical visitation of Winchester 

 diocese, so if any diocese of the southern province ought to have been 

 exempted or left to the last, Gardiner's was the one. Nevertheless 

 Cranmer decided on beginning with Winchester, and this to say the 

 least was a specially unfortunate selection, as there had already been 

 bickerings and jealousy between the two prelates. Gardiner resolutely 

 opposed the visitation, an action that was doubtless acceptable to his 

 clergy. He urged against it the recent costly visitation of Wareham, 

 and the new and heavy imposition of the tenths, but chiefly contended 

 that, as the archbishop had abandoned the ancient title of legate of the 

 apostolic see as being in contradiction to the royal prerogative, he had 

 no right to the title of Primate of all England, by virtue of which the 

 visitation was to be held. To all this Cranmer wrote a clever reply to 



1 Volusenus dedicated his commentary on Psalm li., published in 1532, to Gardiner, and, for his 

 energy, holds him up as an example to other bishops. 



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