Stephen Gardiner was born in the last years of the fifteenth century at Bury St. Edmonds. After a brilliant academic career, in which he earned doctorates in both canon and civil law and drew praise from John Leland for reforming the study of law at Cambridge, he entered Wolsey's service in 1524, and from there was drawn into the service of the king, representing him in negotiations with Clement VII concerning the divorce in 1528. The following year he was appointed principal secretary and in 1531, after Wolsey's fall, was promoted to Wolsey's second See of Winchester. As a churchman, Gardiner's instincts were conservative, so that in the years 1532–4, as Henry's conflict with Rome deepened and his incursions upon the powers of the English church grew more serious, Gardiner fell into disfavor because of his resistance to change. But whereas Pole fled to exile and More and Fisher were executed, Gardiner capitulated entirely on the momentous issue of the king's supremacy and in 1535 published his Devera obedientia, a polished oration in favor of the claim to supreme headship over the church in England and a classic exposition of the doctrines of nonresistance and the sacredness of kings that then became and were to remain central tenets of official ideology throughout the sixteenth century. After Cromwell's fall, Gardiner was perhaps Henry's most influential minister and was closely associated with the turn toward orthodoxy in this last phase of Henry's reign, taking a large part in the framing of the Six Articles and in the composition of the “King's” Book. In the reign of Edward VI, he resisted the introduction of the Prayer Book and other departures from the Henrician religious settlement, and was ultimately deprived and imprisoned in the Tower (1548–53) for his failure to conform.