[Sidenote: An attempt to destroy Gardiner.] [Sidenote: Gardiner escapes;] [Sidenote: But, with the Bishop of Chichester, is dismissed from the Privy Council.] [Sidenote: Cromwell's position is not benefited, however.] Weighted as he was with faults, which his high purposes but partially excuse, he fought his battle bravely--alone--against the world. The German marriage did not pass without a struggle at the council board. Cromwell had long recognised his strongest and most dangerous enemy in the person of Stephen Gardiner. So much he dreaded the subtle bishop, that he had made an effort once to entangle him under the Supremacy Act;[527] but Gardiner had glided under the shadow of the act, and had escaped its grasp. Smooth, treacherous, and plausible, he had held his way along the outer edge of the permitted course, never committing himself, commanding the sympathy of English conservatism, the patron of those suspected of Romanism on one side, as Cromwell was the patron of heretics; but self-possessed and clear-headed, watching the times, knowing that the reaction must have its day at last, and only careful to avoid the precipitancy, in future, into which he had blundered after the Six Articles Bill. His rival's counter-move had checked him, but he waited his opportunity; and when Barnes was sent as commissioner into Germany, Gardiner challenged openly before the council the appointment, for such a purpose, of a man who was "defamed of heresy." He was supported, apparently, by the Bishop of Chichester, or the latter ventured to thwart the privy seal in some other manner. Cromwell for the moment was strong enough to bear his opponents down. They were both dismissed from the Privy Council.[528] But this arbitrary act was treated as a breach of the tacit compact by which the opposing parties endured each other's presence. If the Bishop of Durham's chaplain spoke the truth, an attempt was made, in which even Lord Southampton bore a share, to bring Tunstall forward in Gardiner's place.[529] And though this scheme failed, through the caution of the principal persons interested, the grievances remained, embittered by a forced submission: a fresh debt had been contracted, bearing interest till it was paid. [Sidenote: Protestant imprudence.] [Sidenote: Persecution of a Catholic preacher in London,]