The bishop was standing when he entered, "in a bay window, with a great company about him; among them Sir Anthony St. Leger, reappointed Lord Deputy of Ireland."
"Thou heretic," the Bishop began; "how darest thou be so bold as to use that schismatical service still, seeing God hath sent us a Catholic queen. There is such an abominable company of you, as is able to poison a whole realm with heresies."
"My lord," Mountain replied, "I am no heretic, for in that way you count heresy, so worship we the living God."
"God's passion," said the Bishop, "did I not tell you, my Lord Deputy, how you should know a heretic. He is up with his living God as though there was a dead God. They have nothing in their mouths, these heretics, but the Lord liveth; the living God; the Lord! the Lord! and nothing but the Lord."
"Here," says Mountain, "he chafed like a bishop; and as his manner was, many times he put off his cap, and rubbed to and fro up and down the forepart of his head, where a lock of hair was always standing up."
"My good Lord Chancellor," St. Leger said to him, "trouble not yourself with this heretic; I think all the world is full of them; God bless me from them. But, as your Lordship said, having a Christian queen reigning over us, I trust there will shortly be a reformation and an order taken with these heretics." "Submit yourself unto my lord," he said to Mountain, "and you shall find favour."
"Thank you, sir," Mountain answered, "ply your own suit, and let me alone."
A bystander then put in that the parson of St. Michael's was a traitor as well as a heretic. He had been in the field with the duke against the queen.
"Is it even so?" cried Gardiner; "these be always linked together, treason and heresy. Off with him to the Marshalsea; this is one of our new broached brethren that speaketh against good works; your fraternity was, is, and ever will be unprofitable in all ages, and good for nothing but the fire."—Troubles of Thomas Mountain: printed by Strype.
The portraits of Gardiner represent a fine, vehement-looking man. The following description of him, by Ponet, his rival in the See of Winchester, gives the image as it was reflected in Ponet's antipathies.