For a few years, on the death of Edward VI, Mary restored the old religion; the papal supremacy and jurisdiction was again acknowledged; the altars were once more set up; the ancient liturgy of the Mass was read again from the old missals; priests were again ordained according to the rite in the Catholic Pontifical, and the ordinations of those who had received orders under the Edwardine Ordinal were rejected. I pass over the reign of Queen Mary, which came to an end with her death in November, 1558. I am dealing with Catholic beliefs contrasted with the principles of the Reformation, and in this brief reign of Queen Mary the country returned to union with Rome, and all that this implied. Of this reign, however, I may be allowed perhaps to add the verdict of the late Dr. James Gairdner, a non-Catholic historian, than whom no one has a greater right to speak with authority. "History has been cruel to her (Mary's) memory. The horrid epithet 'bloody,' bestowed so unscrupulously alike on her and on Bonner and Gardiner and the bishops generally, had at least a plausible justification in her case from the severities to which she gave her sanction. . . . Among the victims, no doubt, there were many true heroes and really honest men, but many of them also would have been persecutors if they had had their way. Most of them retained the belief in a Catholic Church but rejected the Mass and held by the services authorised in Edward VI.'s reign. But of course this meant complete rejection of an older authority--higher according to the time-honoured theory than that of any king or Parliament--which had never been openly set aside until that generation." With Queen Mary's premature death religious difficulties revived. At first it was not generally known whether her successor, Elizabeth, would remain staunch to the old religion or favour the new, although there were suspicions that she was inclined to the latter. She was welcomed as sovereign by all parties, Catholic as well as Protestant, and no one now I believe credits the silly story that she was forced into the arms of the Reformers by the refusal of the Pope to recognise her as lawful Queen. Almost from the first it was easy to conjecture which way lay her inclination. By the advice of Cecil, her chief adviser, she formed a secret cabinet within a cabinet, which occupied itself with a project for "the alteration of religion," as it is called in the document still extant. Those "now in the Pope's religion" were to be got rid of, and by process of law all were to be made to "abjure the Pope of Rome and conform themselves to the new alterations." What these "alterations" in the form of religion signified is not doubtful. They meant the reintroduction of the liturgical reforms of Edward's reign, including the abolition of the Catholic missal and Ordinal.