Bonner had had nothing whatever to do with the revival of the statute De Heresia, but good or bad, it was the law of the land, and he could no more help sitting on the bench in his own diocese to examine offences against it, than could any other judge refuse to sit in any court over which he had jurisdiction.  Of the two hundred who were condemned on this statute during Mary’s reign, about one hundred and twenty were sent to Bonner’s court for judgment, the city of London being the centre and hot-bed of the new, revolutionary doctrines.  Thus, Foxe’s assertion that “this cannibal three hundred martyrs slew,” must be reduced to nearly onethird of that number.  His supposed thirst for blood was also as much a lie as that other figment of the martyrologist’s brain which represented both Gardiner and Bonner as having a violent personal grudge against those who were brought before them for examination.  Bonner, as well as Gardiner, laboured, and not unsuccessfully in many instances, in causing heretics to recant, upon which they were restored to liberty.

A striking yet dispassionate portrait of Edmund Bonner, from the pen of the late Dr. S. R. Maitland, one of the most scholarly and painstaking historians of the last century, forms a vivid contrast to Foxe’s caricature of the Bishop of London.

“Setting aside declamation, and looking at the details of facts left by those who may be called, if people please, Bonner’s victims and their friends, we find very consistently maintained the character of a man, straightforward and hearty, familiar and humorous, sometimes rough, perhaps coarse, naturally hot-tempered, but obviously [by the testimony of his enemies] placable and easily entreated, capable of bearing most patiently intemperate and violent language, much reviling and low abuse directed against himself personally, against his order, and against those peculiar doctrines and practices of his church, for maintaining which he had himself suffered the loss of all things, and borne long imprisonment.  At the same time, not incapable of being provoked into saying harsh and passionate things, but much more frequently meaning nothing by the threatenings and slaughter which he breathed out, than to intimidate those on whose ignorance and simplicity, argument seemed to be thrown away; in short, we can scarcely read with attention any one of the cases detailed by those who were no friends of Bonner, without seeing in him a judge who [even if we grant that he was dispensing bad laws badly] was obviously desirous to save the prisoner’s life."*

* Essays on Subjects connected with the Reformation, by S. R. Maitland, D.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., sometime librarian and keeper of the MSS. at Lambeth, p. 423.