Tortured by jealous love, unblessed with children, the unhappy Mary turned with increased fervour to religion as her only solace. Convinced, as she was, that the Church alone could afford relief to her sorrows, the bigotry of her nature and education demanded the holocaust of thousands of victims to appease the anger of an offended Deity. Violent and obstinate, her Ministers, even had they wished to oppose her, could not, without peril to themselves, have resisted her stubborn resolution to have her way. Unhappily then for England, her Ministers were both yielding and unscrupulous. Not only was the Queen relentless in her resolve to exterminate heresy, but if the Bishop of Winchester relaxed in zeal, Bishop Bonner, and William, Marquis of Winchester (who for a time held the Great Seal), were eager to show their love for their Church by the torture they inflicted on her enemies. Gardiner, whatever may have been his personal wishes, also yielded to the pressure put upon him; and by his dexterity and brilliant talents made himself of inestimable value to the Queen, and by so doing secured for himself supremacy in the Council, and also kept away other pretendants, especially Cardinal Pole, who was a formidable rival. But if, as the writers who view him favourably assert, the Bishop of Winchester was thus impelled by the temper of his Royal mistress, and by a series of circumstances beyond his control, to acquiesce in actions of which he disapproved, what must be thought of the conscience of a man, who as statesman and Churchman permitted tortures to be inflicted, and executions to take place, that have made the reign of Mary a by-word of bloodshed and cruelty, and have covered the memories of this monarch and her Ministers with indelible disgrace? The land was deluged in blood. The smoke of burning human beings darkened the air, as it rose in hideous sacrifice to the Almighty Father, and the shrieks of tortured victims, the prayers of martyrs at the stake, ascended daily to heaven in one great agonised cry for mercy--and for vengeance. For a time England seemed as one stunned by the frequency of such unusual and horrible spectacles, but by degrees the mighty spirit of the nation was roused. Laymen and Churchmen alike shook off their lethargy. The degrading cruelties of the reign of Catholic Mary placed Protestant Elizabeth more firmly on the throne; and when James II. struggled vainly to restore his Church to England, it was doubtless the remembrance of such scenes that induced many staunch Englishmen to welcome with enthusiasm the advent of the foreign Prince of Orange, and his English wife. Fox, who describes Gardiner as a monster delighting in torture and blood, declares that the Bishop was stricken down by dreadful and deadly disease, the very day on which he had consigned Bishops Latimer and Ridley to the flames at Oxford.