combination was formed against him by the Earl of Warwick, assisted by
the leaders of the Catholic party. He was arrested, found guilty, and
deprived of all his offices (Dec. 1549), and the Earl of Warwick,
created later Duke of Northumberland, secured the principal share in
the new government.

Cranmer and his foreign assistants were filled with alarm for the
future of their cause. They feared that the new administration would
be controlled by Wriothesley, ex-Chancellor, the Arundels, Southwell
and other prominent Catholics, that Gardiner and Bonner might be
released from imprisonment, and that the demands of many of the
insurgents for the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer and the
restoration of the Mass might be conceded. The Catholic party were
filled with new hope; in Oxford and throughout the country the old
missals and vestments that had been hidden away were brought forth
again, and the offices and Mass were sung as they had been for
centuries.[60] But Warwick soon showed that the change of rulers meant
no change in the religious policy of the government. Gardiner and
Bonner were still kept in confinement; Wriothesley was dismissed from
the council; many of the other Catholic noblemen were imprisoned, and
Somerset who was supposed to have fallen a victim to the hatred of the
Catholics was released from his prison and re-admitted to the privy
council (1550). By the inglorious war with France and by the still
more inglorious peace of Boulogne the government felt itself free to
devote its energies to the religious situation at home. Warwick went
over completely to the camp of the reforming party and determined in
consultation with them to push forward the anti-Catholic campaign.

The Parliament that assembled in November 1549 was distinctly radical
in its tendencies. In the House of Lords the bishops complained that