The lord admiral, who had found it difficult to keep out of danger during the life of his wife, partly through his own rash ambition, and partly through the malice of his near relatives, soon fell into it after her death. In July of 1548, he had been called before the Council on the charge of having endeavoured to prevail on the king to write a letter, complaining of the arbitrary conduct of the Protector and of the restraint in which he was kept by him. Seymour was seeking, in fact, to supersede the Protector, and was threatened with imprisonment in the Tower; but the matter for that time was made up, and the Protector added £800 per annum to his income, by way of conciliating him.

But with Catherine departed his good genius. He gave a free play to his ambitious desires, and renewed his endeavours to compass a clandestine marriage with the Princess Elizabeth, as he had done with Catherine. Finding, however, that such a marriage would annul the claims of Elizabeth to the throne, he next devised means to extort from the Council a consent, which he was well aware it would never yield voluntarily. For this purpose he is said to have courted the friendship of the discontented section of the nobility, and made such a display of his wealth and retainers as was calculated to alarm the Protector and his party. The Protector now resolved to get rid of so dangerous an enemy, though he was his own brother. Sharrington, master of the mint at Bristol being accused of gross peculation by clipping the coin, issuing testoons, or shilling pieces, of a false value, and making fraudulent entries in his books, was boldly defended by the admiral, who owed him £3,000. But Sharrington, to save his life, ungratefully betrayed that of his advocate. He confessed that he had promised to coin money for the admiral, who could reckon on the services of 10,000 men, with whose aid he meant to carry off the king and change the government. This charge, made, no doubt, solely to save his own life, was enough for Somerset. Seymour was arrested on the 16th of January, 1549, on a charge of high treason, and committed to the Tower.

There was no lack of charges against him, true or false. It was stated that he had resolved to seize the king's person, and carry him to his castle of Holt, in Denbighshire, which had come to him in one of the royal grants; that he had confederated for this purpose with various noblemen and others, and had laid in large stores of provisions and a mass of money at that castle. He was also charged with having abused his authority as lord admiral, and encouraged piracy and smuggling, and with having circulated reports against the Lord Protector and Council too vile to be repeated. But the most remarkable were the charges against him of endeavouring, both before and after his marriage with the queen-dowager, to compass a marriage with the king's sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor to the Crown, to the peril of the king's person and danger to the throne. A Bill of Attainder was brought in against him; he was condemned without a hearing and executed on the 27th of March.

The Protector no sooner had put his brother out of his path into a bloody grave, than he was called upon to contend with a whole host of enemies. A variety of causes had reduced the common people to a condition of deep distress and discontent. The depreciation of the coinage by Henry VIII. had produced its certain consequence—the proportionate advance of the price of all purchasable articles. But with the rise in price of food and clothing, there had been no rise in the price of labour. The dissolution of the monasteries had thrown a vast number of people on the public without any resource. Besides the large number of monks and nuns who, instead of affording alms, were now obliged to seek a subsistence of some kind, the hundreds of thousands who had received daily assistance at the doors of convents and monasteries were obliged to beg, work, or starve. But the new proprietors who had obtained the abbey and chantry lands, found wool so much in demand, that instead of cultivating the land, and thus at once employing the people and growing corn for them, they threw their fields out of tillage, and made great enclosures where their profitable flocks could range without even the superintendence of a shepherd.

The people thus driven to starvation were still more exasperated by the change in the religion of the country, by the destruction of their images, and the desecration of the shrines of their saints. Their whole public life had been changed by the change of their religion. Their oldest and most sacred associations were broken. Their pageants, their processions, their pilgrimages were all rudely swept away as superstitious rubbish; their gay holidays had become a gloomy blank. What their fathers and their pastors had taught them as peculiarly holy and essential to their spiritual well-being, their rulers had now pronounced to be damnable doctrines and the delusions of priest-craft; and whilst smarting under this abrupt privation of their bodily and spiritual support, they beheld the new lords of the ancient church lands greedily cutting off not only the old streams of benevolence, but the means of livelihood by labour, and showing not the slightest regard for their sufferings. The priests, the monks, the remaining heads of the Papist party did not fail to point assiduously at all these things, and to fan the fires of the popular discontent.

The timidity of the Protector forced the ferment to a climax by the very means which he resorted to in order to mitigate it. He ordered all the new enclosures to be thrown open by a certain day. The people rejoiced at this, believing that now they had the Government on their side. But they waited in vain to see the Protector's order obeyed. The Royal proclamation fully bore out the complaints of the populace. It declared that many villages, in which from one hundred to two hundred people had lived, were entirely destroyed; that one shepherd now dwelt where numerous industrious families dwelt before; and that the realm was injured by turning arable land into pasture, and letting houses and families decay and lie waste. Hales, the commissioner, stated that the laws which forbade any one to keep more than 2,000 sheep, and which commanded the owners of church lands to keep household on the same, were disobeyed, the result being that numbers of the king's subjects had diminished. But though the Government admitted all this, it took no measures to make its proclamation effective; the landowners disregarded it, and the people, believing that they were only seconding the law, assembled in great numbers, chose their captains or leaders, broke down the enclosures, killed the deer in the parks, and began to spoil and waste, according to Holinshed, after the manner of an open rebellion. The day approached when the use of the old liturgy was to cease, and instead of the music, the spectacle, and all the imposing ceremonies of high Mass, they would be called on to listen to a plain sermon. Goaded to desperation by these grievances, the people rose in almost every part of the country.

In Wiltshire, Sir William Herbert raised a body of troops and dispersed the insurgents, killing some, and executing others according to martial law. The same was done in other quarters by the resident gentry. The Protector, alarmed, sent out commissioners to hear and decide all causes about enclosures, highways, and cottages. These commissioners were armed with great powers, the exercise of which produced as much dissatisfaction amongst the nobility and gentry as the enclosures had done amongst the people. The spirit of remonstrance entered into the very Council, and the Protector was checked in his proceedings; whereupon the people, not finding the redress they expected, again rose in rebellion.

In Devonshire the religious phase of the movement appeared first, and rapidly assumed a very formidable air. The new liturgy was read for the first time in the church of Sampford Courtenay, on Whit Sunday, and the next day the people compelled the clergyman to perform the ancient service. Having once resisted the law, the insurgents rapidly spread. Humphrey Arundel, the governor of St. Michael's Mount, took the lead, and a few days brought ten thousand men to his standard. As the other risings had been easily dispersed, the Government were rather dilatory in dealing with this; but finding that it steadily increased, Lord Russell was despatched with a small force against the malcontents, accompanied by three preachers, Gregory, Reynolds, and Coverdale, who were licensed to preach in such public places as Lord Russell should appoint.

The rebels had sat down before Exeter when Russell came up with them; but conscious of the great inferiority of his force, and expecting no miracles from the eloquence of his preachers, he adopted the plan of the Duke of Norfolk in the late reign, and offered to negotiate. Upon this, Arundel and his adherents drew up and presented fifteen articles, which went, indeed, to restore everything of the old faith and ritual that had been taken away. The Statute of the Six Articles was to be put in force, the Mass to be in Latin, the Sacrament to be again hung up and worshipped, all such as refused it homage were to be treated as heretics, souls in purgatory should be prayed for, images again be set up, the Bible be called in, and Cardinal Pole was to be of the king's Council. Half of the Church lands were to be restored to two of the chief abbeys in each county; in a word, Popery was to be restored and Protestantism abolished.

All this time Lord Russell lay at Honiton, not venturing to attack, the Government sending him instead of troops only proclamations, by one of which a free pardon was offered to all who would submit; by another, the lands, goods, and chattels of the insurgents were given to any who chose to take them; by a third, punishment of death by martial law was ordered for all taken in arms; and by a fourth, the commissioners were commanded to break down all illegal enclosures. None of these produced the least effect. Lord Russell had sent Sir Peter Carew to urge the Protector and Council to expedite reinforcements; but the Protector and Rich charged Sir Peter with having been the original cause of the outbreak. The bold baronet resented this imputation so stoutly, and charged home the Protector in a style so unaccustomed in courts, with his own neglect, that men and money were promised. Nothing, however, but the proclamations just mentioned arrived, and at length the rebels despatched a force to dislodge Russell from his position at Honiton. To prevent this, he advanced to Feniton Bridge, where he encountered the rebel detachment and defeated it. Soon after Lord Grey arrived with 300 German and Italian infantry, with which assistance he marched on Exeter, and again defeated the rebels. They rallied on Clifton Downs, and Lord Grey coming suddenly upon them and fearing they might overpower him, he ordered his men to despatch all the prisoners they had in their hands, and a sanguinary slaughter took place. A third and last encounter at Bridgewater completed the reduction of the Rising of the West.

But the most formidable demonstration was made by the rebels in Norfolk. It commenced at Aldborough, and appeared at first too insignificant for notice. But the rumours of what had been done in Kent, where the new enclosures had been broken down, gradually infected the people far and wide. They did not trouble themselves about the religious questions, but they expressed a particular rancour against gentlemen, for their insatiable avarice and their grasping at all land, their extortionate rents, and oppressions of the people. They declared that it was high time that not only the enclosure mania should be put a stop to, but abundance of other evils should be reformed.

On the 6th of July, at Wymondham, a few miles from Norwich, on occasion of a play which was annually performed there, the people, stimulated by what was being done elsewhere, began to throw down the dykes, as they were called, or fences round enclosures, and they found a leader in one Robert Ket, a tanner. Under an oak tree, called the Tree of Reformation, which stood on Mousehold Hill, near Norwich, Ket erected his throne, and established courts of chancery, king's bench, and common pleas, as in Westminster Hall; and, with a liberality which shamed the Government of that and of most succeeding times, he allowed not only the orators of his own but of the opposite party to harangue them from this tree. Ket, it is clear, was a man far beyond his times, sincerely seeking the reform of abuses, and not destruction of the constituted authority. The tree was used as a rostrum, and all who had anything to say climbed into it. Into the tree mounted frequently Master Aldrich, the mayor of Norwich, and others, who used all possible persuasions to the insurgents to desist from spoliation and disorderly courses. Clergymen of both persuasions preached to them from the oak, and Matthew Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, one day ascended it, and addressed them in the plainest possible terms on the unwisdom of their attempt, and the ruin it was certain to bring upon them.

At length on the 31st of July, a Royal herald appeared in the camp, "and, standing before the Tree of Reformation, apparelled in his coat-of-arms, pronounced there, before all the multitude, with loud voice, a free pardon to all that would depart to their houses and, laying aside their armour, give over their traitorous enterprise." Some of the insurgents, who were already weary of the affair, and only wanted a good excuse for drawing off safely, took the offered pardon and disappeared; but Ket and the chief part of the people held their ground, saying they wanted no pardon, for they had done nothing but what was incumbent on true subjects.

Expecting that now some attack would soon be made upon them, they marched into Norwich to seize on all the artillery and ammunition they could, and carry it to their camp. The herald made another proclamation to them in the market-place, repeating the offer of pardon, but threatening death to all who did not immediately accept it. They bade him begone, for they wanted no such manner of mercy. From that day the number of Ket's followers grew again rapidly, for he seemed above the Government; and the herald returning to town, dissipated at Court any hope of the rebels dispersing of themselves. A troop of 1,500 horse, under the Marquis of Northampton, accompanied by a small force of mounted Italians, under Malatesta, were, therefore, sent down to Norwich, of which they took possession. But the next day Ket and his host descended from their hill, found their way into the city, engaged, defeated, and drove out the king's troops, killing Lord Sheffield and many gentlemen, and, their blood being up, set fire to the town, and plundered it as it burnt.

Northampton retreated ignominiously to town, where the Protector now saw that the affair was of a character that demanded vigorous suppression. An army of 8,000 men, 2,000 of whom were Germans, under the Earl of Warwick, about to proceed against Scotland, was directed to march to Norwich and disperse the rebels. Warwick arriving, made an entrance, after some resistance, into the city. But there he was assailed on every side with such impetuosity, that he found it all that he could do to defend himself, being deficient in ammunition. On the 26th of August, however, arrived a reinforcement of 1,400 lansquenets, with store of powder and ball, and the next day he marched out, and the enemy having imprudently left their strong position on the hill, he attacked them in the valley of Dussingdale, and at the first charge broke their ranks. They fled, their leader, Ket, galloping off before them. They were pursued for three or four miles, and the troopers cut them down all the way with such ruthless vengeance, that 3,500 of them were said to have perished. The rest, however, managed to surround themselves by a line of waggons, and, hastily forming a rampart of a trench and a bank fortified with stakes, resolved to stand their ground. Warwick, perceiving the strength of the place, and apprehensive of a great slaughter of his men, offered them a pardon; but they replied that they did not trust to the offer; they knew the fate that awaited them, and they preferred to die with arms in their hands rather than on the gallows. Warwick renewed his offer, and went himself to assure them of his sincerity, on which they laid down their arms, or retired with them in their hands. Ket alone was hanged on the walls of Norwich Castle, his brother on the steeple of Wymondham Church, and nine of the ringleaders on the Oak of Reformation.

Circumstances were now fast environing the Protector with danger. The feebleness of his government, his total want of success, both in Scotland and France, with which country he had become involved in an undeclared war, emboldened his enemies, who had become numerous and determined from the arrogance of his manners and his endeavours to check the enclosures of the aristocracy. Henry VIII. had never drawn any signal advantages from his hostile expeditions; but the forces which he collected and the determined character of the man impressed his foreign foes with a dread of him. It was evident that the neighbouring nations had learned Somerset's weakness, and therefore despised him. He had driven the Queen of Scots into the hands of the French, and they had driven him out of the country. He was on the very verge of losing Boulogne, which Henry had prided himself so much on conquering. At home the whole country had been thrown into a state of anarchy and insubordination by the reforms in religion, of which he was the avowed patron, and in the meantime he had allowed another to reap the honour of restoring order.

It was intended that the Protector himself should have proceeded against the rebels; but probably he thought that the man who had encouraged them to pull down the enclosures would appear with a very bad grace to punish them for doing it. Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was, therefore, selected for this office—a man quite as ambitious, quite as unprincipled, and far more daring than Somerset. He returned from Norfolk like a victor, and his reputation rose remarkably from that moment. He was looked up to as the able and successful man, and his ambitious views were warmly seconded by the wily old ex-Chancellor, Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who hated Somerset for having dismissed him from office, and for having banished him from the Council. He now took up Warwick as a promising instrument for his revenge. He flattered him with the idea that he was the only man to restore the credit and peace of the nation.

Nor was it Warwick only whom Southampton stimulated to enmity against Somerset. He had arguments adapted to all; and where he found any seemingly resolved to stand by the Protector, he would significantly ask what friendship they hoped from a man who had murdered his own brother. Little art was needed to influence the old nobility against Somerset, and his hostility to the enclosures had raised up a host of enemies amongst the new, who should have been his natural friends. The people he had lost favour with, from his total want of success against the enemies of the country, and if there were any whom all these causes had not alienated, these were disgusted with his insolence and rapacity. He had bargained for large slices from the manors of bishoprics and cathedrals as the price of promotion to the clergy. He had obtained from the puppet king in his hands, grants of extensive Church lands for his services in Scotland, services which now were worse than null; and in the patent which invested him with these lands, drawn up under his own eye, he had himself styled "Duke of Somerset, by the grace of God," as if he were a king. He was accused of having sold many of the chantry lands to his friends at nominal prices, because he obtained a heavy premium upon the transaction; but what more than all shocked the public sense of religious decorum was that he had erected for himself a splendid palace in the Strand, where the one called from him Somerset House now stands, and had spared no outrage upon public rights and decencies in its erection. Not only private houses, but public buildings, and those of the most sacred character, had been displaced to make room for his proud mansion. To clear the ground for its site and to procure materials for its building, he pulled down three episcopal houses and two churches on the spot, St. Mary's and a church of St. John of Jerusalem, also a chapel, a cloister, and a charnel-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, and he carted away the remains of the dead by whole loads, and threw them into a pit in Bloomsbury. When he attempted to pull down St. Margaret's Church in Westminster, for the stones, the parishioners rose in tumult and drove his men away. Whatever profession of Reformed religion he might make, such proceedings as these stamped it as a pretence, hollow and even impious, in the minds of the public.

The feeling (which originated out of doors) had now made its way into the heart of the Council. Somerset's friends were silenced. His enemies spoke out boldly. During September there were great contentions in the Council; and by the beginning of October the two parties were ranged in hostile attitudes under their chiefs. Warwick and his followers met at Ely Place; the Protector was at Hampton Court, where he had the king. On the 5th of October, Somerset, in the king's name, sent the Secretary of the Council to know why the lords were assembling themselves in that manner, and commanding them, if they had anything to lay before him, to come before him peaceably and loyally. When this message was despatched, Somerset, fearful of the spirit in which this summons might be complied with, ordered the armour to be brought down out of the armoury at Hampton Court, sufficient for 500 men, to arm his followers, and had the doors barricaded, and people fetched in for the defence. But, instead of coming, Warwick and his party ordered the Lieutenant of the Tower, and the Lord Mayor and aldermen, to be summoned, who duly attended and proffered their obedience. They then despatched letters to the nobility and gentry in different parts of the kingdom, informing them of their doings and the motives for them. Alarmed at the aspect of affairs, Somerset conveyed the king to Windsor, under escort of 500 men; Cranmer and Sir William Paget alone, of all the Council, accompanying them. Finding himself rapidly deserted by his friends, Somerset judiciously submitted and signed a confession of his guilt, his presumption, and incapacity. Having signed this, he was promised his life, on condition that he should forfeit all his appointments, his goods and chattels, and so much of his estates as amounted to £2,000 a year. A bill to this effect passed both Houses of Parliament in January, 1550. Somerset remonstrated against the extent of this forfeiture, but the Council replied to him with so much sternness that the abject-spirited man shrank in terror, and on the 2nd of February signed a still more ignominious submission, disclaiming all idea of justifying himself, and expressing his gratitude to the king and Council for sparing his life and being content with a fine. On the 6th of February he was discharged from the Tower, and ten days after received a formal pardon. His officers and servants, who had been imprisoned, also recovered their liberty, but were heavily fined.

Warwick had humbled Somerset, but he could not prevent the country from being humbled with him. His party had blamed the Protector for proposing to surrender Boulogne, but they were now compelled, by the exhausted and disordered state of the nation, to accept even more disgraceful terms. During the winter the French had cut off all communication between Boulogne and Calais, and the Earl of Huntingdon found himself unable to re-open it, though he led against the enemy all his bands of mercenaries and 3,000 English veterans. His treasury and his storehouses were empty, and the French calculated confidently on taking the place at spring. Unable to send the necessary aid, a fresh proposal was made to the Emperor to occupy it, and this not tempting him, the Council next offered to cede it to him in full sovereignty, on condition that it should never be surrendered to France. Charles declined, and as a last resource a Florentine merchant, Antonio Guidotti, was employed to make the French aware that England was not averse from a peace. The French embraced the offer, but under such circumstances they were not likely to be very modest in their terms of accommodation.

The conference between the ambassadors was opened on the 21st of January, and the English proposed that, as an equivalent for the surrender of Boulogne, Mary of Scotland should be contracted to Edward. To this the French bluntly replied that that was impossible, as Henry had already agreed to marry her to the Dauphin. The next proposition was that the arrears of money due from the Crown of France should be paid up, and the payment of the fixed pension continued. To this the ambassadors of Henry replied, in a very different tone to that which English monarchs had been accustomed to hear from those of France, that their king would never condescend to pay tribute to any foreign Crown; that Henry VIII. had been enabled by the necessities of France to extort a pension from Francis; and that they would now avail themselves of the present difficulties of England to compel Edward to renounce it. The English envoys appeared, on this bold declaration, highly indignant, and as if they would break off the conference; but every day they receded more and more from their pretensions, and they ended by subscribing, on the 24th of March, to all the demands of their opponents.

These conditions were that there should be peace and union between the two countries, not merely for the lives of the present monarchs, but to the end of time; that Boulogne should be surrendered to the King of France with all its stores and ordnance; and that, in return for the money expended on the fortifications, they should pay to Edward 200,000 crowns on the delivery of the place, and 200,000 more in five months. But the English were previously to surrender Douglas and Lauder to the Queen of Scots, or, if they were already in the hands of the Scots, to raze the fortresses of Eyemouth and Roxburgh to the ground. Scotland was to be comprehended in the treaty if the queen desired it, and Edward bound himself not to make war on Scotland unless some new provocation were given.

So disgraceful was this treaty, such a surrender was it of the nation's dignity, that the people regarded it as an eternal opprobrium to the country; and from that hour the boastful claims of England on the French Crown were no more heard of, except in the ridiculous retention of the title of King of France by our sovereigns.

Freed from the embarrassments of foreign politics, the Council now proceeded with the work of Church reform; and during 1550 and part of 1551 was busily engaged checking on the one hand the opposition of the Romanist clergy, and on the other the latitudinarian tendencies of the Protestants. Bonner and Gardiner were the most considerable of the uncomplying prelates, and they were first brought under notice. Bonner had been called before the Council in August of 1549, for not complying with the requisitions of the Court in matters of religion; and in April, 1550, he was deprived of his see of London, and remanded to the Marshalsea, where he remained till the king's death. Ridley was appointed to the bishopric of London. Gardiner and Heath, Bishop of Worcester, were also imprisoned.

From the bishops, the reforming Council proceeded to higher game. The Princess Mary, the king's eldest sister, from the first had expressed her firm resolution of not adopting the new faith or ritual. She had, moreover, declared to Somerset, that during Edward's minority things ought to remain as the king her father had left them. Somerset replied that, on the contrary, he was only carrying out the plans which Henry had already settled in his own mind, but had not had time to complete. On the introduction of the new liturgy, she received in June, 1549, an intimation that she must conform to the provisions of the statute. Mary replied with spirit, that her conscience would not permit her to lay aside the practice of the religion that she believed in, and reminded the lords of the Council that they were bound by their oaths to maintain the Church as left by her father; adding, that they could not, with any decency, refuse liberty of worship to the daughter of the king who had raised them to what they were. The appeal to the liberality, the consciences, or the gratitude of these statesmen producing no effect, she next applied to a more influential person, the Emperor, Charles V., her great relative. He intervened on her behalf with such vigour that war between England and Germany seemed at one time inevitable, and the Council gave way. The persecutions were shortly afterwards renewed, but Mary remained firm, and finally was completely victorious.

The ungenerous conduct of the Warwick party towards Mary, and the disgraceful conditions of the peace with France, naturally caused a considerable revival of Somerset's influence at Court, and the remainder of the summer was spent by him in intriguing for the increase of his favour. He surrounded himself with a strong body of armed men; there were secret debates among his friends on the possibility of raising the City in his behalf, and he did not hesitate to drop hints that assassination only could free him from his implacable enemies. But whilst the irresolute Somerset plotted, Warwick acted. He secured for himself the appointment of warden of the Scottish marches, thus cutting off the danger which had lately appeared of Somerset's retreat thither. Armed with the preponderating influence which that office conferred in the northern districts, on the 27th of September or the 17th of October he was announced as Duke of Northumberland, a title venerated by the Border people, and which had been extinct since the attainder of Earl Percy in 1527. In this formidable position of power and dignity he was strengthened by his friends and partisans being at the same time elevated in the peerage. The Marquis of Dorset was created Duke of Suffolk, the Earl of Wiltshire, Marquis of Winchester, and Sir William Herbert, Baron of Cardiff and Earl of Pembroke. Cecil, Cheke, Sidney, and Nevil received the honour of knighthood.

This movement in favour of Warwick was followed by consequences of still more startling character to the Duke of Somerset. His enemies now felt safe, and on the 16th of October, 1551, the news flew through London that he was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and high treason, and committed to the Tower. He had been apprised that depositions of a serious character had been made against him by Sir Thomas Palmer, a partisan of Warwick's, whereupon he sent for Palmer, and strictly interrogated him, but on his positive denial, let him go. Not satisfied, however, he wrote to Cecil, telling him that he suspected something was in agitation against him. Cecil replied with his characteristic astuteness, that if he were innocent he could have nothing to fear; if he were guilty, he could only lament his misfortune. Piqued at this reply, he sent a letter of defiance, but took no means for the security of his person. Palmer, notwithstanding his denial, had, however, it seems, really lodged this charge against him on the 7th of the month with Warwick:—That in a conference with Somerset in April last, in his garden, the duke assured him that at the time that the solemn declaration of Sir William Herbert had prevented him from going northward, he had sent Lord Grey to raise their friends there; that after that he had formed the design of inviting Warwick, Northampton, and the chiefs of that party, and of assassinating them, either there, or on their return home; that at this very moment he was planning to raise an insurrection in London, to destroy his enemy, and to seize the direction of Government; that Sir Miles Partridge was to call out the apprentices of the City, kill the City guard, and get possession of the Great Seal; and that Sir Thomas Arundel had secured the Tower, and Sir Ralph Vane had a force of 2,000 men ready to support them.

Probably this was a mixture of some truth with a much larger portion of convenient falsehood. The duke was accordingly arrested, and the next day the duchess, with her favourites, Mr. and Mrs. Crane, Sir Miles Partridge, Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Thomas Holcroft, Sir Michael Stanhope, and others of the duke's friends, were also arrested, and committed to the Tower. The king was already brought up from Hampton Court to Westminster for greater security and convenience during the trials of the conspirators. A message was sent in the king's name to the Lord Mayor and Corporation, informing them that the conspirators had agreed to seize the Tower, kill the guards of the City, seize the Great Seal, set fire to the town, and depart for the Isle of Wight; and they were, therefore, ordered to keep the gates well, and maintain a strong patrol in the streets.

The trial of the duke, such as it was, took place on the 1st of December, in Westminster Hall. Twenty-seven peers were summoned to sit as his judges, the Marquis of Winchester being appointed Lord High Steward, to preside. On that morning Somerset was brought from the Tower, with the axe borne before him; whilst a great number of men carrying bills, glaives, halberds, and poll-axes, guarded him. A new platform was raised in the hall, on which the lords, his judges, sat; and above them was the Lord High Steward, on a raised seat ascended by three steps, and over it a canopy of State. The judges consisted almost wholly of the duke's enemies, and conspicuous amongst them were Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke. The witnesses against him were not produced, but merely their depositions read. Somerset denied the whole of the charges respecting his intention to raise the City of London, declaring that the idea of killing the City guard was worthy only of a madman. As to the accusation of proposing to assassinate the Duke of Northumberland and others, he admitted that he had thought of it, and even talked of it, but on mature consideration had abandoned it for ever.

On this confession the judges declared him guilty of felony without benefit of clergy. They were desirous to adjudge it treason, but this Northumberland himself overruled. When this sentence was pronounced, Somerset fell on his knees, and thanked the lords for the fair trial they had given him, and implored pardon from Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, for his design against their lives, entreating them to pray the king's mercy to him and his grace towards his wife, his children, and his servants. On the sentence being pronounced only felony, the axe of the Tower was withdrawn; and the people, seeing him returning without that fatal instrument, imagined that he was acquitted, and gave such shouts, that they were heard from Charing Cross to the hall. According to Holinshed, the Duke of Somerset landed from the river "at the crane of the Vine-tree, and so passed through London, where were both acclamations—the one cried for joy that he was acquitted, the other cried that he was condemned."

Six weeks after his sentence, the warrant for his execution was signed. The chronicler quaintly remarks that "Christmas being thus passed and spent with much mirth and pastime, it was thought now good to proceed to the execution of the judgment against the Duke of Somerset." The day of execution was the 22nd of January, 1552. To prevent the vast concourse which, from the popularity of his character among the common people, from his opposition to enclosures during his Protectorship, was sure to take place, the Council had issued a precept to the Lord Mayor, commanding him to take all necessary measures for restraining the rush towards Tower Hill. The constables in every ward had, therefore, strictly charged every one not to leave their houses before ten o'clock that morning. But, by the very dawn, Tower Hill was one mass of heads, assembled more in expectation of the duke's reprieve than of his execution. At eight o'clock he was delivered to the sheriffs of London, who led him out to the scaffold on Tower Hill. He died calmly and nobly.

Parliament met the day after the execution of Somerset; and as it had been originally summoned by him, it appeared to act as inspired with a spirit which resented his treatment and his death; and this spirit tended greatly during this session to revive that ancient independence which Henry VIII. had so completely quelled during his life. Most deserving of notice was the enactment which ordered the churchwardens in every parish to collect contributions for the support of the poor. This, though it appeared at first sight a voluntary contribution under the sanction of Government, was in reality a compulsory one, for the bishop of the diocese had authority to proceed against such as refused to subscribe. From this germ grew the English poor-law, with all its machinery and consequences.

The Crown attempted to re-enact some of the most arbitrary and oppressive laws of Henry VIII., though they had been repealed in the first Parliament of this reign. A bill was sent to the Lords, making it treason to call the king, or any of his heirs, a heretic, schismatic, tyrant, or usurper. The Lords passed it without hesitation, for it most probably proceeded from Warwick, and the Lords were strongly devoted to him; but the Commons drew the same line which had been drawn regarding the deniers of the supremacy. They would admit the offence to be treason only when it was done by "writing, printing, carving, or graving," which indicated deliberate purpose; but what was spoken, as it might result from indiscretion or sudden passion, they decreed to be only a minor offence, punishable by fine or forfeiture, and only rendered treasonable by a third repetition. The Commons also added a most invaluable clause, the necessity of which had been constantly pressing on the public attention, and had just been strikingly demonstrated by the trial of Somerset. It was now enacted that no person should be arraigned, indicted, convicted, or attainted of any manner of treason unless on the oath of two lawful accusers, who should be brought before him at the time of his arraignment, and there should openly maintain their charges against him.

But in prosecuting the reforms of the Church, the Parliament proceeded with a far more arbitrary spirit. The Common Prayer Book underwent much revision, and an Act was passed by which the bishops were empowered to compel attendance on the amended form of service by spiritual censures, and the magistrates to punish corporally all who used any other. Any one daring to attend any other form of worship was liable to six months' imprisonment for the first offence, twelve months for the second, and confinement for life for the third. So little did our Church reformers of that day understand of the rights of conscience. In the same spirit Cranmer proceeded to frame a collection of the articles of religion, and a code of ecclesiastical constitutions.

Parliament, proving too independent, was dissolved, and in preparing for a new Parliament, Northumberland took such measures as showed that his own power and aggrandisement were the first things in his thoughts, the Constitution of the kingdom the last. Letters were sent in the king's name to all the sheriffs, directing them, in the most straightforward manner, to abuse their powers in order to return a Parliament completely subservient to the Government.

The only object which the Duke of Northumberland had in view in calling the new Parliament together was to procure liberal supplies. The appropriation of the monastic and chartered lands had left the Crown nearly as poor as it had found it. Such portions of these lands as still remained in its possession were totally inadequate to meet the annual demands of the Government. Northumberland, therefore, asked for two-tenths and two-fifteenths; but even with his care to pack the Commons he found it no easy task to obtain supplies, and the friends of Somerset again assembled in considerable force in the House, resenting in strong terms the pretence thrown out in the preamble to the bill that it was owing to the extravagance and improvidence of the late Duke of Somerset, to his involving the country in needless wars, debasing the coin, and occasioning a terrible rebellion.

But the king's health was fast failing, and it was high time for Northumberland to make sure his position and fortune. The constitution of Edward had long betrayed symptoms of frailty. In the early spring of the past year he was successively attacked by measles and small-pox. In the autumn, through incautious exposure to cold, he was attacked by inflammation of the lungs, and so enfeebled was he become by the meeting of Parliament on the 1st of March, 1553, that he was obliged to receive the two Houses at his palace of Whitehall. He was greatly exhausted by the exertion, being evidently far gone in a consumption, and harassed with a troublesome cough.

Northumberland, from the day on which he rose into the ascendant at Court, had shown that he was the true son of the old licensed extortioner. He had laboured assiduously not only to surround himself by interested adherents, but to add estate to estate. He inherited a large property, the accumulations of oppression and crimes of the blackest dye. But during the three years in which he had enjoyed all but kingly power, he had been diligently at work creating a kingly demesne. He was become the Steward of the East Riding of Yorkshire, and likewise of all the Royal manors in the five northern counties. He had obtained Tynemouth and Alnwick in Northumberland, Barnard Castle in Durham, and immense estates in Warwick, Worcester, and Somerset shires. The more he saw the king fail, the more anxious he was to place his brother, his sons, his relatives, and most devoted partisans in places of honour and profit around him at Court. This done, he advanced to bolder measures, to which these were only the stepping-stones. Lady Jane Grey was the daughter of Frances, Duchess of Suffolk, whose mother was Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. Mary first married Louis XII. of France, by whom she had no children, and next, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, by whom she had two daughters. The younger of these married Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, but the elder, Frances, whose claim came first, had by the Marquis of Dorset (afterwards Duke of Suffolk) three daughters, Jane, Catherine, and Mary.

Northumberland, casting his eye over the descendants of Henry VIII., saw the only son, King Edward, dying, and the two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, bastardised by Acts of Parliament still unrepealed. A daring scheme seized his ambitious mind—a scheme to set aside these two princesses, the elder of whom, and immediate heir to the throne, was especially dangerous to the permanence of the newly-established Protestantism. It was true that Margaret of Scotland, the sister of Henry VIII., was older than his sister Mary, and her grand-daughter, Mary Queen of Scots, would have taken precedence of the descendants of Mary, but she and her issue had been entirely passed over in the will of Henry. Leaving out, then, this line, and setting aside the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth as legally illegitimate, Lady Jane Grey would become heir to the throne. Northumberland resolved, therefore, to secure Lady Jane in marriage for his son Lord Guilford Dudley; to obtain Lady Jane's sister, Catherine, for Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, who owed title, estates, and everything to the favour of Northumberland; and to marry his own daughter Catherine to the eldest son of the Earl of Huntingdon. The marriages were celebrated at Durham House, the Duke of Northumberland's new residence in the Strand.

Northumberland's next step was to induce the king to bequeath the crown to Lady Jane. The dying prince listened with a mind which had long been under the influence of the more powerful will of Dudley, and saw nothing but the most patriotic objects in his recommendations. He no doubt considered it a great kingly duty to decide the succession by will as his father had done; and that the whole responsibility might rest on himself, and not on Northumberland, who had so much at stake, he was easily induced to sketch the form of his devise of the Crown with his own pen. In this rough draft he entailed the succession on "the Lady Frances's heirs masles," next on "Lady Jane's heirs masles," and then on the heirs male of her sisters. This, however, did not accord with the plans of Northumberland, for none of the ladies named had any heirs male; and, therefore, on the death of Edward, the Crown would have passed over the whole family, and would go to the next of kin. A slight alteration was accordingly made. The letter "s" at the end of "Jane's" was scored out, the words "and her" inserted, and thus the bequest stood "to the Lady Jane and her heirs masles." Northumberland then compelled the judges to draw out letters patent under the Great Seal confirming the disposition of the Crown.

But Northumberland, not satisfied with the will of the king and the act of the Crown lawyer, produced another document, to which he required the signatures of the members of the Council and of the legal advisers of the Crown, who pledged, to the number of four-and-twenty, their oaths and honour to support this arrangement. The legal instrument, being prepared, was engrossed on parchment, and was authenticated by the Great Seal. Northumberland was preparing to secure his position by force of arms, when the poor young king, whose mind had been overtaxed by his advisers, died on the 6th of July, 1553.

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QUEEN MARY AND THE STATE PRISONERS IN THE TOWER. (See p. 223.)