duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower-hill, between eight and nine o'clock in the morning." Before his execution the duke addressed the people in a short speech, concluding with :-"And I pray you now let us pray together for the king's majesty, to whose grace I have been always a faithful, true, and most loving subject, desirous always of his most prosperous success in all his affairs; and ever glad of the furtherance and helping forwards of the commonwealth of this realm.' At which words the people answered 'Yea, yea, yea,' and some said with a loud voice, 'that is found now too true.' 'To whose grace I beseech God to send and grant to reign most prosperously to the pleasure of God.'"* Sir Ralph Vane, sir Thomas Arundel, sir Miles Partridge, and sir Michael Stanhope, were subsequently tried and executed, on a charge of having instigated the duke of Somerset to treason and felony. In the great work of the Reformation tot easy to determine the particular merit of each labourer; but we incline to that Somerset was sincere and consistent in his attempts to establish the new doctrines upon a broad foundation of charitable principle. England was the, as it has been in many later periods, the home of foreigners fleeing from opression, religious or political. It was the merit of the Protector's government to receive these strangers; and Somerset encouraged them, both by his public support and his private liberality.

A peace was concluded with France, in March, 1550. By this treaty, it was agreed that Boulogne should be restored to France, upon the payment of one-fifth of the sum which Francis I. had agreed to pay on the expiration of eight years. The demand arising out of the treaty of marriage between Edward and Mary of Scotland was abandoned. The pension which Henry VIII. had accepted for the surrender of his claim to the crowi of France was virtually set aside.

In the parliament of 1552, it was enacted that no person should be arraigned or convicted of treasonable offences, except by the testimony of two witnesses, to be produced at the time of his arraignment. The duke of Northumberland, though invested with no special power as that of protector or governor of the king, was now the directing authority of the realm. He obtained the most lavish grants of estates from the crown, and was proceeding in a career of high-handed despotism. A new parliament was called in 1553, and especial care was taken that the sheriffs should attend, in their returns, to the nominations of the crown, and the recommendations of the privy counsellors. In the beginning of the year the king became seriously ill; and when the parliament met on the 1st of March, the two houses were assembled at Whitehall, his weakness preventing him opening the session except in his own palace. The policy of Northumberland now assumed a bolder shape. The king partially recovered in May; and at that period Northumberland's fourth son, lord Guilford Dudley, was married to the lady Jane Grey; the lady Catherine Grey was betrothed to lord Herbert, the son of the earl of Pembroke, who was Northumberland's devoted adherent; and his daughter, Catherine Dudley, was united to lord Hastings, eldest son of the earl of Huntingdon. By the will of

Ellis, Second Series, vol. ii., p. 216.

A.D. 1552.

DEATH OF EDWARD VI.

231

Henry VIII. the crown was to devolve-1, on his son Edward; 2, on his own heir (if any) by Catherine Parr, or other queen; 3, on his daughter Mary; 4, on his daughter Elizabeth; 5, on the heirs of the lady Frances, his niece; 6, on those of her sister, the lady Eleanor. By this will the descendants of his sister, Margaret, the queen of Scotland, were passed over. On the 11th of June, the lord chief justice Montague, with other law officers, was commanded to attend upon the king at Greenwich. Edward, in presence of some members of the council, then declared to them that he had prepared notes of an intended new settlement of the crown; and that he desired they should be reduced into letters-patent. These notes were in effect to set aside the devise of Henry to his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and to give the crown to the heirs of the lady Frances, who was the living duchess of Suffolk, but who was herself passed over. The lady Jane Grey was the eldest of her three daughters. She had no male heir. The judge hesitated; but Northumberland's threats finally prevailed, and on the 14th fifteen lords of the council, nine judges, and other officers, signed a paper agreeing to maintain the succession as contained in the king's notes, delivered to the judges. King Edward died on the 6th of July. The dying boy was no doubt worked upon to this unjust exclusion of his sisters from the throne by the influence of Northumberland, who appears to have possessed an extraordinary control over his actions. Though during the short reign of Edward VI., his nonage precluded him from much share in the direction of public affairs, the disposition, the abilities, and the acquire. ments of this youth, who died before he had completed his sixteenth year, could not be without some effect upon the opinions of the time. The "Journal," written with his own hand, which is preserved in the Cotton Library, is very remarkable. It is in the form of a diary from the 24th of March, 1549, till the 30th of November, 1552. Of his earlier life it presents only a short summary. A very competent judge has said, "It is perhaps somewhat brief and dry for so young an author; but the adoption of such a plan, and the accuracy with which it is written, bear marks of an untainted taste and of a considerate mind." * Edward's dying prayer is a proof of his earnest and abiding love for the faith which had made such rapid progress during his brief reign: "O Lord God, save thy chosen people of England. O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain thy true religion."

She

On the 8th of July the council sent for the lord mayor and six aldermen and other citizens of London, and made them swear to abide by the letterspatent. The princess Mary was at Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire. hastily took horse for her manor of Kenninghall, from which place she addressed a letter to the council, dated the 9th, in which she called upon them, on their allegiance, immediately to proclaim her right and title to the crown. Having answered the letter of Mary, declaring that Jane was invested with the true title to the crown, and recommending to the princess to be "quiet and obedient," the Council caused Queen Jane to be proclaimed on the 10th. On the 12th the Council, who surrounded the lady Jane in the Tower, received intelligence that Mary had been joined at

Sir J. Mackintosh, "History," vol. ii., p. 249.

Kenninghall by the earl of Bath, and other leading men; and that the earl of Sussex and his son were marching to her aid. Northumberland received from Queen Jane the commission for the lieutenantship of the army, "sealed," and, after a strong appeal to the fidelity of the Council, he departed, with six hundred men, for the eastern counties. Northumberland was to have received succour at Northampton, but the promised aid of men and munition never arrived. Meanwhile the cause of Mary was prospering in every quarter, and Queen Jane's supposed friends were fast deserting her. The termination of the march of Northumberland is a pitiable exhibition of the unhonoured fall of inordinate ambition. He had retreated to Cambridge with his small army. Letters of discomfort had reached him. On the 19th, at night, he heard that Queen Mary had been proclaimed in London. "The next morning he called for a herald and proclaimed her himself." The mayor of Cambridge arrested him after the proclamation, but upon his remonstrance let him go free. He stayed at Cambridge one night. The next morning he was arrested by the earl of Arundel.

Queen Mary arrived triumphantly in London, at the head of a great band of friends, on the 3rd of August. Her sister Elizabeth had joined her on her progress. The duke of Northumberland and his son the earl of Warwick, the earl of Northampton, sir Andrew Dudley, sir John Gates, sir Henry Gates, and sir Thomas Palmer were tried and convicted of hightreason on the 18th and 19th of August. On the 22nd, Northumberland, sir John Gates, and sir Thomas Palmer were executed. The day previous the duke of Northumberland had heard mass and received the sacrament "according to the old accustomed manner," solemnly asserting his belief that "this is the very right and true way."

The news of Mary's accession was received in Rome with exultation; and the pope resolved to send Cardinal Pole as legate to England. That measure was determined in a consistory as early as the 5th of August. Mary her. self received a secret agent of Rome, Francis Commendone; and to him she professed her attachment to the Romish Church, and her desire to bring back its worship. But she implored him to be cautious, for much was still unsettled. The coronation of Mary took place on the 1st of October. Her first parliament met on the 5th. The session was a very short one, and the only public Act was that for repealing certain treasons and felonies, and all offences within the case of premunire. The object of this Act was to sweep away the penalties for denying the king's supremacy, and especially to relieve Cardinal Pole from his dangers under the laws of Henry VIII. Latimer was committed to the Tower on the 13th of November, and Cranmer on the 14th, and the deprived bishops were restored to their sees. The second parliamentary session commenced on the 24th of October. The anti-reformers now went more boldly to work. An Act was passed declaring void so much of the statute of Henry VIII. as illegitimated Queen Mary, and confirming the illegitimacy of the princess Elizabeth. Mary had resolved on marriage with Philip, the son of Charles V., and she flattered herself that with a Catholic husband, and with successors to be bred up in the ancient faith, the nation would soon abandon its heresies. The second Act of this session, "for the repeal of certain statutes made

A.D. 1553.

CAREW AND WYAT'S REBELLION.

233

in the time of the reign of King Edward the Sixth," deals in a very summary manner with the labours of the preceding six years. But something connected with the Reformation was retained. Divine service was to be performed as in the last year of Henry VIII. The queen still retained the title of Supreme Head of the Church; the name of the Pope was carefully kept out of view. In a very short time the people began to be stirred about the Spanish marriage. The Commons petitioned the queen that she would marry, but that she would select one of her own nation. Mary dismissed them with a short answer, saying that she should only look to God for counsel in a matter so important; and the ambassador of Charles soothed many scruples by a liberal distribution of eloquent gold. But the people were not so easily satisfied. They abhorred the notion of a Spanish alliance. The terms of the marriage treaty, which were assiduously promulgated, were in some degree calculated to diminish this public jealousy; and Charles V. resolved the doubts of the Lords and Commons with a million, two hundred thousand crowns. But still the nation would not be satisfied.

In January, 1554, sir Thomas Carew and a band of friends". were up in Devonshire, resisting the king of Spain's coming." Carew failed in his demonstration, and fled to France. The precipitancy of Carew forced his confederate, sir Thomas Wyat, to take the field without full preparation. On the news arriving in London on the 25th of January, that Wyat was up in Kent, the duke of Suffolk fled from his house at Sheen; and in Leicester and in other places, caused proclamation to be made against the queen's match. He was betrayed by his own park-keeper at Astley, near Coventry, and conducted to London as a prisoner. Wyat was in arms in the neighbourhood of Rochester when the duke of Norfolk was sent against him, with the queen's guard, and a band of five hundred men hastily raised in London, of whom one Alexander Brett was the captain. Norfolk was about to attack the rebels, when Brett, and his men, and three-fourths of the duke's retinue, declared in their favour. The duke and the earl of Ormond, and the captain of the guards, fled. On the 1st of February, Wyat reached Deptford; and the same day the queen, who strikingly exhibited the self-command and determination of her race, went to the Guildhall, and demanded the assistance of the city in a spirited speech, which produced a stirring effect. The next day the householders of London were in armour in the streets. On the 3rd of February, Wyat marched from Deptford with two thousand men. At Southwark the rebels were favourably received; and bands from the country, raised by lord William Howard, took part with them. Wyat lingered in Southwark till the 6th, finding it impossible to gain a passage at London Bridge. He then marched to Kingston, when he crossed in boats. It was broad day when the Kentishmen reached the west end of what we now call Piccadilly. The earl of Pembroke, with a troop of horsemen, hovered about them, but made no bold attempt to stop their march. Great ordnance were fired on both sides with little damage. Onwards the rebels went towards the city, by the highway of the Strand. The queen seems to have been the only person of the whole court endowed with sense and courage. At Ludgate, Wyat was refused admittance by lord William Howard. He rested

awhile at the Bell-Savage gate; and then turned back, purposeless. After a skirmish at Temple Bar, a herald persuaded him to yield; and sir Maurice Berkeley received his submission, and carried him behind him on his horse to court. From Whitehall to the Tower was his last journey.

CHAPTER XVIII.

IT was the 7th of February when the insurrection of Wyat thus completely failed. Prisoner after prisoner continued to arrive at the Tower; and on Saturday, the 10th, the duke of Suffolk and lord John Grey were brought thither from Coventry. The lady Jane Grey, her husband, and his two brothers had been tried by a special commission on the 13th of November. Another Dudley had been arraigned in January. They all pleaded "guilty." The hope of mercy in thus pleading had probably been held out to all. But the insurrection of Wyat determined their fate. On Monday, the 12th of February, lord Guilford Dudley, the young husband of lady Jane Grey, was led out of his prison walls to die on Tower Hill at ten o'clock. Out of the window of a house in the Tower did Jane, whose own hour of final release was fast approaching, see him walk to his execution. On the green against the White Tower a scaffold had been erected, on which the lady Jane was to die. She went forth to her death at eleven o'clock on that "black Monday," as Strype calls the day, "her counte nance nothing abashed, neither her eyes anything moistened with tears." And in her hand she held a book, whereon she prayed all the way till she came to the scaffold. Four days before, she had boldly said to the priest sent to examine her, "I ground my faith upon God's Word, and not upon the Church. For if the Church be a good Church, the faith of the Church must be tried by God's Word, and not God's Word by the Church." At the last: "She tied the kercher about her eyes; then, feeling for the block said, 'What shall I do? Where is it? One of the standers-by guiding her thereto, she laid her head down upon the block, and stretched forth her body, and said, 'Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' And so she ended."+

On the day that Guilford and Jane Dudley were beheaded, the gallows was set up at every gate, and in every great thoroughfare of London. There is a brief catalogue of the use to which these machines were applied on the 13th, when, from Billingsgate to Hyde-park Corner, there were forty-eight men hanged at nineteen public places. On the 17th, certain captains, and twenty-two of the common rebels, were sent into Kent to suffer death. Such executions were made under martial law; although

"Queen Jane and Queen Mary," Camden Society, p. 56.

"Communication between the Lady Jane and Master Feckenham," Harleiar Misc., vol. i., p. 369, cd. 1808.

Queen Jane and Queen Mary," p. 59.