But his rule was of brief duration.

After a reign of scarcely six years, he died a youth of the age of sixteen years, and his sister Mary, called the Catholic, ascended the throne.

Her first act was to release Gardiner, who under Edward's reign had been confined as a prisoner in the Tower, and to appoint him her minister, and later, to the place of lord chancellor.

He was one of the most furious persecutors of the Reformers.

Once he said at a council in the presence of the bigoted queen; "These heretics have a soul so black that it can be washed clean only in their own blood." He it was, too, who urged the queen to such severe and odious measures against the Princess Elizabeth, and caused her to be a second time declared a bastard and unworthy of succeeding to the throne.