FULHAM PALACE 
a cauldron of molten lead—a fate that it is said he only escaped 
by flight. Violence also distinguished his conduct when on an 
embassy to Paris, about 1538. On that occasion, owing to his 
behaviour, Francis I. threatened him with a hundred strokes 
from the halberd. 
In 1539 he became Bishop of London, but, up to the close of 
Henry’s reign, he not only failed to protest against the drastic 
changes introduced by the King, but was an active agent in intro- 
ducing them. 
On the accession of the boy Edward, however, both he and 
Gardner, Bishop of Winchester, began to see. whither these changes, 
in the hands of a Protestant Council, might lead. Bonner opposed 
the Act of Uniformity, and he refused to enforce the use of the new 
Book of Common Prayer, nor would he consent to preach at 
Paul’s Cross in support of the young King’s supremacy. For this 
he cannot be blamed ; he was acting a more manly part than when 
he obsequiously supported Henry VIII. in actions of which he could 
not have conscientiously approved. He was deprived of his 
bishopric, and was further condemned to perpetual imprisonment, 
and Ridley, Bishop of Rochester, was translated to London in his 
place. 
But alas! too soon for the Reformers came the reversal of all 
this, and Bonner’s hour of triumph! The young King died, and 
his half-sister Mary ascended the throne; and Bonner, making 
no difficulty about submitting again to the papal authority that he 
had forsworn, took active measures to restore Roman Catholicism 
in his diocese, in which he had been reinstated, and in 1555, began 
that terrible persecution of heresy to which he owes his undesirable 
fame. : 
On the accession of Elizabeth, Bonner refused to take the oath 
of supremacy, and was committed to the Marshalsea, where some 
years later he died. He was interred at midnight, because, owing 
to his unpopularity, the authorities feared that there would be a 
disturbance of the peace were his obsequies performed in daylight. 
It is said, in mitigation of his offences, that he did not go out of 
his way to persecute, and “ that many of his victims were forced 
upon him by the Council, which sometimes thought that he had not 
been severe enough. So completely had the State dominated the 
Church, that religious persecutions had become State persecutions, 
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