The Duke of Northumberland, who since that time had lived very emphatically without God in the world, had not lived without religion. He had affected religion, talked about religion, played with religion, till fools and flatterers had told him that he was a saint; and now, in his extreme need, he found that he had trifled with forms and words, till they had grown into a hideous hypocrisy. The Infinite of death was opening at his feet, and he had no faith, no hope, no conviction, but only a blank and awful horror, and perhaps he felt that there was nothing left for him but to fling himself back in agony into the open arms of superstition. He had asked to speak with some member of the council; he had asked for a confessor. In Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, he found both. After the sentence Gardiner visited him in the Tower, where he poured out his miserable story; he was a Catholic, he said, he always had been a Catholic; he had believed nothing of all the doctrines for which he had pretended to be so zealous under Edward. "Alas!" he cried, "is there no help for me?" "Let me live but a little longer to do penance for my many sins." Gardiner's heart was softened at the humiliating spectacle; he would speak to the queen, he said, and he did speak, not wholly without success; he may have judged rightly, that the living penitence of the Joshua of the Protestants would have been more useful to the church than his death.[94] Already Mary had expressed a wish that, if possible, the wretched man should be spared; and he would have been allowed to live, except for the reiterated protests of Renard in his own name and in the emperor's. [Footnote 94: The authority for this story is Parsons the Jesuit, who learnt it from one of the council who was present at the interview. Parsons says, indeed, that Mary would have spared the duke; but that some one wrote to the emperor, and that the emperor insisted that he should be put to death. This could not be, because there was no time for letters to pass and repass between Brussels and London, in the interval between the sentence and the execution; but Renard says distinctly that Mary did desire to pardon him, and that he was himself obliged to exert his influence to prevent it.] It was decided at last that he should die; and a priest was assigned him to prepare his soul. Doctor Watts or Watson, the same man whom Cranmer long ago had set in the stocks at Canterbury, took charge of Palmer and the rest--to them, {p.042} as rough soldiers, spiritual consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.