and placed in the Tower with the others who had supported him. All this happened in the last week of March. It was perfectly obvious to those who had any real knowledge of the trend things were taking, that Gardiner had made his complaint far more with the idea of harming Cromwell, than of injuring Barnes himself, and the fact that the minister had not been able to rescue his friend a second time led many to predict his speedy downfall[694]. But Cromwell managed to stave off the ultimately inevitable catastrophe for two months more, and to maintain his ascendancy until the end of May. He certainly had no delusions as to the gravity of the situation in which he found himself, and he fully realized that his best chance of safety lay in making a humble acknowledgement of his error in favouring the Lutheran preacher. Though there is no actual record that he apologized to the Bishop of Winchester, there is every internal evidence of it. That at least a temporary reconciliation took place between him and Gardiner is proved by a letter of Sir John Wallop which informs us that on March 30 the Bishop of Winchester dined at London with the Lord Privy Seal, and that they ‘were more than iiij hour_es_ and opened theyre hart_es_ and so concluded that and therbe truthe or honesty in them not only all displeasures be forgotton, but also in thayre hert_es_ be now perfight intier frend_es_[695].’ It would have been hardly possible to bring about even a temporary truce between these two men without an apology on one side or the other, and it is not likely that Gardiner, backed as he was by the King, would have been the one to make it. In order to maintain his very precarious position, Cromwell had been forced to grovel before a man, whom two years before he could have ordered about to his heart’s content.