GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
diocese. In 1559 he was again suspended for refusing to take the 
oath to Elizabeth. This time he was not committed to the state 
prison, but to the kindly guardianship at Lambeth, of Matthew 
Parker, the Archbishop at whose consecration he had refused to 
assist. Tunsdall was respected by all parties. ‘“‘ He showed 
mercy,” said Thomas Fuller, in his ‘“‘ Worthies of England,” 
“and found it in his adversity, having nothing but the name of 
prisoner, in which condition he died on 18th of November, 1559, 
aged eighty-five, and was buried at Lambeth.” 
Tunsdall was a distinguished scholar, educated at Oxford, Cam- 
bridge, and Padua. Erasmus bore witness to his attainments 
when he said ‘‘ he was comparable to any of the ancients ;” and 
Fuller tells us that ‘‘ he was one of the politest scholars of the age.” 
It speaks well for the Romish bishop that so convinced a Protestant 
as the author of ‘‘ Church and State” and of the ‘“‘ History of the 
Worthies of England,” has only high praise for both his character 
and his learning. But then Fuller, in the opinion of Coleridge, 
‘““ was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great 
man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men ’’—namely, the 
middle of the sixteenth century. 
In the annals of the Bishops of London the truculent and relent- 
less Bonner for some dozen years plays a leading part. He was 
the successor, though not the immediate successor, of Tunsdall 
in the See of London—but in disposition and principles he differed 
widely from that excellent prelate, in whom Fuller could find no 
other fault than his religion. Bonner has earned an unenviable 
notoriety by his cruel persecution of the Reformers, and by his 
vindictive treatment of his fallen opponent, Cranmer. 
Supposed to be the natural son of a priest who was himself 
illegitimate, Bonner first rose to power by attracting the attention 
of Thomas Cromwell, and _ later, by playing into the hands of 
Henry VIII. in the matter of the royal supremacy, and the divorce 
of Katherine of Arragon. In 1529 he was Wolsey’s chaplain, and 
he was with him at the time of his fall, after which, probably 
through the influence of Cromwell, he was transferred to the 
King’s service. Sent to Rome to further Henry’s cause, he greatly 
incensed the Pope by the unmannerly violence of his denunciation 
of the tyranny of the Holy See; but there seems to be no real 
ground for the story that the Pontiff threatened to throw him into 
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