Note 136 — THE PROLOGUE. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Doctor Stephen Gardiner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, at this time in great estimation with Wolsey. In letters and other documents of this period he is often called Doctor Stevens. Mr. Grainger in the third vol. of Bishop Burnet’s Hist. of the Reformation, p. 385, Appendix, intimates that this was a colloquial vulgarism; “vulgarly, as Stephen Gardiner was Mr. Stevyns, in Wolsey’s Letter.” But it is questionable, I think, whether this is the true account of that name. The bishop himself, in his Declaration of his Articles against George Joye, A. D. 1546, fol. 3. b. of the 4to edition, thus speaks of it, “a booke, wherein he wrote, how Doctor Stevens (by whiche name I was then called) had deceyved him.”
In Doctor Barnes’ account of his examination before the bishops at Westminster, he calls Gardiner “Doctor Stephen then secretary.”