Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/262

242 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. 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.

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, as rough soldiers, spiritual consolation from a priest of any decent creed was welcome.

The executions were fixed originally for Monday the 21st; but the Duke's conversion was a triumph to the Catholic cause too important not to be dwelt upon a little longer. Neither Northampton, Warwick, Andrew Dudley, nor Sir Henry Gates were aware that they were to be respited, and, as all alike