Editing Edmund Bonner (section)

==Realignment with Catholicism==
{{Marshalsea}}

===Under Edward VI===
Bonner resisted the visitation of August 1547, and was committed to the [[Fleet Prison]]; but he withdrew his opposition, and was released in time to take an active part against the government in the parliament of November 1547. In the next session, November 1548-March 1549, he was a leading opponent of the first [[Act of Uniformity 1549|Act of Uniformity]] and [[Book of Common Prayer]]. When these became law, he neglected to enforce them, and on 1 September 1549 he was required by the council to maintain at [[St Paul's Cross]] that the royal authority was as great as if the king were forty years of age.{{sfn|Pollard|1911|p=210}}

He did so, but with such significant omissions in the matter which had been prescribed touching the king's authority, that after a seven days' trial he was deprived of his bishopric by an ecclesiastical court over which [[Thomas Cranmer|Cranmer]] presided, and sent as a prisoner to the [[Marshalsea]]. The fall of Somerset in the following month raised Bonner's hopes, and he appealed from Cranmer to the council. After a struggle the Protestant faction gained the upper hand, and on 7 February 1550 Bonner's deprivation was confirmed by the council sitting in the Star Chamber, and he was further condemned to perpetual imprisonment, where he remained until the accession of [[Mary I of England|Mary]] in 1553.{{sfn|Pollard|1911|p=210}}

===Under Mary I===
Bonner was at once restored to his see, his deprivation being regarded as invalid and [[Nicholas Ridley (martyr)|Ridley]] as an intruder. He vigorously restored [[Catholicism]] in his diocese, made no difficulty about submitting to the papal jurisdiction which he had foresworn.{{sfn|Pollard|1911|p=210}} During 1554 Bonner carried out a visitation of his diocese, restoring the Mass and the manifold practices and emblems of Catholic life, but the work was carried out slowly and with difficulty. To help in the work, Bonner published a list of thirty-seven "Articles to be enquired of", but these led to such disturbances that they were temporarily withdrawn.

Mary's administration thought that religious dissidents would best be dealt with by ecclesiastical tribunals rather than by the civil power. As Bonner was Bishop of London, the chief burden of stamping out religious dissent fell to him. Therefore, in 1555, he began the persecution to which he owes his notoriety among his detractors as "Bloody Bonner." He was appointed to degrade Cranmer at [[Oxford]] in February 1556. The part he took in these affairs gave rise to intense hatred on the part of the rebels. [[John Foxe]] in his ''Book of Martyrs'' summed up this view in two lines:

:"This cannibal in three years space three hundred martyrs slew
:They were his food, he loved so blood, he sparèd none he knew."

His apologists, including defenders of Catholicism in England, claim his actions were merely "official", and that "he had no control" over the fate of the accused "once they were declared to be irreclaimable heretics and handed over to the secular power; but he always strove by gentle suasion first to reconcile them to the Church"; the ''[[Catholic Encyclopedia]]'' asserts the number of persons executed as heretics in his jurisdiction as about 120, rather than 300. Many of his victims were forced upon him by the king and queen in Council, which at one point addressed a letter to Bonner on the express ground that he was not proceeding with sufficient severity. So completely had the state dominated the church that religious persecutions had become state persecutions, and Bonner was acting as an ecclesiastical sheriff in the most refractory district of the realm. Even [[John Foxe]] records instances in which Bonner failed to persecute those authorised for persecution.{{sfn|Pollard|1911|pp=210–211}}
[[File:Edmund Bonner punishing a heretic.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Bishop Bonner punishing a heretic from [[Foxe's Book of Martyrs]] (1563)]]
Bonner's detractors, beginning with his Protestant contemporaries John Foxe and [[John Bale]] and continuing through most English historiography of the period, paint a different picture. Bonner, they point out, was one of those who brought it to pass that the condemnation of heretics to the fire should be part of his ordinary official duties, and he was represented as hounding men and women to death with merciless vindictiveness. Bale, formerly a friar and ex-[[Bishop of Ossory]], published from his place of exile at [[Basel]] in 1554 an attack on the bishop, in which he speaks of him as among other things, "the bloody sheep-bite of London" and "bloody Bonner".

Bonner's most important writings date from this time. They include ''Responsum et Exhortatio in laudem Sacerdotii'' (1553); ''Articles to be enquired of in the General Visitation of Edmund Bishop of London'' (1554); and ''{{Proper name|Homelies sette forth by Eddmune Byshop of London, ... to be read within his diocese of London of all Parsons, vycars and curates, unto their parishioners upon Sondayes and holy days}}'' (1555), as well as a [[catechism]], probably written by his chaplains, [[Nicholas Harpsfield]] and [[Henry Pendleton]], entitled "A profitable and necessary doctrine" (1554, 2d ed. 1555).