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Historical person

Stephen Gardiner

1483–1555

Stephen Gardiner was bishop of Winchester, diplomat and a leading conservative churchman during the English Reformation. He initially served Henry VIII and defended royal supremacy while resisting further Protestant doctrine.

Imprisoned under Edward VI, Gardiner returned to power under Mary I as lord chancellor and helped restore Catholic worship and papal authority. He took part in the government that persecuted Protestant heretics and died in 1555. Stephen Gardiner was born in Bury St Edmunds and died in London.

Alison Weir’s Katharine Parr places Stephen Gardiner among the conservative forces at Henry VIII’s court that make the queen’s reformist interests dangerous. Katharine’s patronage of evangelical scholarship and her own published religious writing bring her close to investigation, and Gardiner’s opposition helps turn theological disagreement into the possibility of arrest for heresy. In the novel he therefore represents the institutional threat behind the queen’s precarious position: a bishop and councillor able to use orthodoxy, court access and the king’s changing suspicions against a woman whose status as Henry’s wife offers protection only so long as the king chooses to give it.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Stephen Gardiner (1 series)

Six Tudor Queens in Order

by Alison Weir 21 books 4.2(79,643)

The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…

All books in this series