In defending the evangelical ferment of Edward VI's reign, Foxe proclaims that “Preachers, Printers, & Players … be set up of God, as a triple bulwarke agaynst the triple crown of the Pope, to bring him down.” He aligns printing houses with pulpits and stages as venues for the dissemination of Protestant ideology. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, contests this claim by mocking Protestants for idolizing the printing of books. Punning on the “graving” (i.e., engraving) of matrices for the casting of type, the conservative prelate facetiously declares that they violate the Second Commandment: “Thou shalt make no graven images, leste thou worshipe them, whiche (I here) is newly written in the newe churche.” Foxe's scornful gloss is unamused: “If ye did see any printer yet to do worship to his graven letters, then might you well seke … a knotte in a rushe” (1563, p. 752). Even if he and his coreligionists did not idolize printing, they did idealize it as a potent tool for reform of both church and state. The retrospective experience of the reign of Mary I demonstrates that Roman Catholics harbored no aversion to exploiting the printing press for propagandistic purposes. Indeed, a high literacy rate “was not a necessary effect of Protestantism.” Nevertheless, Gardiner's forceful protest against the Protestant monopoly on printing and publication in England during the reign of Edward VI assumes that print culture was essential to the dissemination and survival of reformist ideas.