At last, more than thirteen months after his appointment, the way was open for his coming to England. He landed at Dover (Nov. 20th, 1554), went on to Gravesend, and there found waiting him an Act of Parliament revers ing his attainder. It had been introduced into the Lords, passed in the Upper House in two days, was read three times in the Commons in one day, and received the Royal Assent immediately thereafter (Nov. 27th, 1554). Tunstall, the Bishop of Durham, brought him letters patent, empowering him to exercise his office of Legate in England. He embarked in a royal barge with his silver cross in the prow, sailed up the Thames on a favouring tide, landed at Whitehall, and was welcomed by Mary and Philip. On the following day the two Houses of Parliament were invited to the Palace to meet him, and he explained his commission. The day after, the question was put in both Houses of Parliament whether the nation should return to the papal obedience, and was answered affirmatively. Whereupon Lords and Commons joined in a supplication to the Queen "that they might receive absolution, and be received into the body of the Holy Catholic Church, under the Pope, the Supreme Head thereof." The Supplication was presented on the 30th, and in its terms the Queen besought the Legate to absolve the realm for its disobedience and schism. Then, while the whole assembly knelt, King and Queen on their knees with the others, the Legate pronounced the absolution, and received the kingdom "again into the unity of our Mother the Holy Church." It now remained to Parliament to pass the laws which the change required. In one comprehensive statute all the anti-papal legislation of the reigns of Henry VIII. and of Edward VI. was rescinded, and England was, so far as laws could make it,[500] what it had been in the reign of Henry VII. Two days later (Dec. 2nd, 1554), on the first Sunday in Advent, Philip and Mary, with the Legate, attended divine service in St. Paul's, and after Mass listened to an eloquent sermon from Bishop Gardiner, in the course of which he publicly abjured the teaching of his book _De vera obedientia_.[501] Convocation received a special absolution from the Legate. To show how thoroughly England had reconciled itself to Mother Church, Parliament proceeded to revive the old Acts against heresy which had been originally passed for the suppression of Lollardy, among them the notorious _De hæretico comburendo_, and England had again the privilege of burning Evangelical Christians secured to it by Act of Parliament.[502]