I dangers that one man, the Duke, than for the execution of his CHAP Majesty's laws, "we must make other account of you than we trust we shall have cause. They add their A.D. 1549 assurance that the dangers which are imminent are known to the Archbishop and Sir William Paget. It Imminent is probable that the dangers were known, as alleged; referred to for the Archbishop, Paget, and Sir Thomas Smith wrote at once to the Councillors in London, desiring to know "whether the King's Majesty shall come forthwith thither, or remain still here, and that some of your Lordships would take pain to come hither forthwith." This resolution was doubtless hastened also by a letter which the Council wrote to the King himself from the "house of Mr. Yorke, Sheriff of London," in which they declare that, with one or two exceptions, they are the whole Council to whom the Will of his father committed the care of himself and the kingdom; and that, if the Duke of Somerset has any regard to his duty as a subject and an executor, he will restore them to the King's presence, submit himself to the Council and the laws, and dismiss his forces. In another entry in their book the Council Alleged assert that they had received credible information of Somerset Somerset having said that, if the Lords intended his contemdeath, the King should die before him; and that, if death of they meant to famish him, they should famish his Majesty. They thought it necessary, therefore, to communicate with the two Princesses, and to declare their proceedings to the whole nation. On October 11th the Council went to Windsor, having ordered the Duke, who had already been Pocock's Ed. 6 Strype's Life of Cranmer, ii. net's Hist. Ref., V. 273-282, 567-577. Eccl. Hist. Soc. Ed. Ellis' Orig. Lett., II. ii. 166. Bur that plated the Edward I His Protectorate comes to an end 8 CHAP sequestered from the King" by Cranmer and Paget, to await their coming. The next day, being Sunday, A.D. 1549 they sent Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Michael Stanhope, Sir John Thynne, Edward Wolf, and William Gray to the Tower, as the chief abettors and adherents of Somerset. On the 13th, the Duke himself, who had been proclaimed a traitor on the 7th,' was sent for and committed to the Tower, and thus his Protectorate or Regency came to an end. On December 28, 1549, an Act of Parliament was passed condemning him to imprisonment during the King's pleasure. He was enlarged on his recognizance of £10,000, on February 6, 1550, a special condition of his release being that he should reside at Shene or at Syon, and not go more Partly in than four miles from either house. On April 10th he a time still was restored in some degree to his position, there being an entry in the Council Book, "This day was the Duke of Somerset sworn and admitted one of the King's Majesty's Privy Council;" but by that time the power of the Earl of Warwick was firmly established, although he did not take the title of Duke of Northumberland until the autumn of the following year, when Somerset was again apprehended, and in three months afterwards sent to his doom. favour for The Protectorate of Somerset was an eventful period in the history of the Reformation; for it was during the two years and a half of his power that Convocation 7 Grey Friars' Chron., Camd. whole Council," the signatures, Soc., page 14. By his own desire headed by "T. Cant.," following. he was taken by St. Giles'-in-theFields, says the chronicler, that he might not pass by the churches he had ruined in the Strand. 8 A copy of this Act is inserted in the Harleian MS., 353, fol. 78; and, at the end, there is a "Memorandum that this Act was signed by the King, and subscribed by the The Grey Friars Chronicle [page 66] says that the Duke came out of the Tower on February 6th "to the Savoy," from which it seems evident that at present his new house in the Strand was looked upon as an extension of the Savoy Palace. I and Parliament carried out and enforced the revision CHAP of the devotional system of the Church of England which had been contemplated and prepared for during A.D. 1550 the reign of Henry VIII. Towards the close of his rule, in 1549, the "First Prayer Book of Edward VI.," that which may for convenience be called the High Church Prayer Book, was brought into use under the authority of the Act of Uniformity; and this is the great ecclesiastical monument of his Protectorate. But He supit does not appear that the Duke of Somerset exercised Cranmer any personal influence over the work of the Reforma- in his tion, the chief direction of it at that time being in the hands of Archbishop Cranmer, who had not yet succumbed to the counsels of Presbyterian and Puritan foreigners. No doubt the Archbishop received the authoritative support of the Protector, but, beyond this, the latter does not seem to have interfered in ecclesiastical affairs.1 § 2. GOVERNMENT UNDER THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND [Oct. 13, 1549-July 6, 1553] Although the names of many of the Privy Councillors were subscribed to A lengthy correspondence between Bishop Gardiner and the Protector is preserved by Foxe; but the style of the letters to which the name of Somerset is subscribed makes it all but certain that his replies to the Bishop were written by Craniner. Calvin wrote five letters to the Duke of Somerset between 1549 and 1551, in the first of which he exhorts the Protector to reform the new Prayer Book, by doing away with the Commemoration of the the documents connected Departed at the Eucharist, with ported reforms I Duke of CHAP with the deposition of the Duke of Somerset from the Protectorate, his fall was in reality brought about by A.D. 1550 Dudley, Earl of Warwick, best known in history as the Duke of Northumberland, and as the father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey, the " nine days' Queen." He had Rise of the been sent into Norfolk to suppress the rebellion raised Northum- there by Robert Kett; and, having defeated the insurrectionary forces at the end of August, he soon afterwards returned to London, where he drew the majority of the Privy Council to his side, and having taken possession of the Tower, and secured the City, was soon able, as has already been narrated, to bring Somerset and Cranmer to terms, and to obtain possession of the young King's person. berland The conduct of this most ambitious and unscrupulous man leads to the inference that a deliberate plan His design for the seizure of the Crown, either on his own account,2 upon the Crown or, if that could not be accomplished, on behalf of one of his family, occupied his mind from the moment when he had succeeded in overthrowing his rival. With this object in view he secured the person of the 2 About the time of the Duke of Somerset's second arrest and execution the Privy Council Register contains very frequent charges against persons who declared that they had seen coins with a bear and ragged staff, the badge of the Earl of Warwick, upon them. One such case occurs the very day after Somerset's death, when Thomas Long of Bath, baker, deposed that Matthew Colthurst had made bonfires, and caused the bells of the Abbey to be rung on December 3rd, for the Duke's supposed acquittal. "Further, that Thomas Holland showed him a shilling alleged to have a ragged staff on it, which this deponent could not perceive to be other than a lion, and so told him; whereupon Holland replied, "Tush, tush! hold thy peace, fool, thou shalt see another world ere Candlemas; the Duke of Somerset shall come forth of the Tower, and the Duke of Northumberland shall go in." On January 28, 1552, a few days later, there is a Council order, "Nicolas Route to be pilloried, and lose an ear for lewd words about a sixpence." The Grey Friars Chronicle also contains a note that, "Item, the xvi. day was a proclamation for the new qwyne, that no man should speak ill of it, for because that pepulle sayd dyvers that ther was the ragyd staff." [Grey Friars' Chron., page 72.] 3 I obstacles young King, filled the great offices of State with his CHAP friends, gained complete authority over the members of the Privy Council by working on their fears, and A.D. 1551 thrust out of the way all who were likely to oppose his scheme. Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, the uncompromising supporter of the young King's rights, Sweeping and of the dispositions made by Henry VIII. for the out of his government of the country during his minority, was way kept safely in the Tower without pen, ink, or paper, during the whole of Northumberland's reign. The Duke of Somerset became harmless for a time by his captivity in the Tower, and the submission which accompanied his subsequent release. But when he began again to become dangerous through his popularity, he was once more arrested-on October 16, 1551; accused of treason against the King, and of a felonious intention to imprison Northumberland; and having been condemned to be hanged as a felon, the high treason not being proved against him, was finally got rid of by decapitation on January 22, 1552. The Princesses Mary and Elizabeth were only recognised as illegitimate daughters of Henry VIII., who had no claims to the Crown; but vigorous attempts were made to bring the former within reach of the law, that she might be destroyed, and the latter it was endeavoured to expatriate by arranging for her marriage with the Prince of Denmark. At last the time came when the Duke of Northumberland saw his way to the final accomplishment of his plans, or at least of the first part of them. A Marriage great-granddaughter of Henry VII., Lady Jane Grey, into the who was fifth in the line of succession-coming in line of after the two Princesses, the Queen of Scots and her 3 See chap. v. of his son succession |