In his youth, the beauty of his person, the accomplishAwaking in about an hour from his sleep and feeling ment of his mind, and the taste for gaiety and magnificence himself going, he sent for Cranmer; but the primate, in his Court, prognosticated something very different from who had attended three successive days in the House of the fierce, gloomy, and bloody scene into which it rapidly Lords to give his vote for the iniquitous bill of attainder, degenerated. He was in his better days as active and had retired to his house at Croydon, and when he arrived exemplary in the discharge of the duties of his exalted the king was unable to speak. Cranmer entreated him station, as he was joyous, and disposed to pleasure and to give some sign of his hope in the saving mercy of parade. He attended diligently at the council board,` Christ, and Henry, looking steadily at him for a moment, consulted with his ministers, who were selected for their pressed his hand and expired. Thévet says that he mani- great talents, read himself and directed despatches, corfested strong remorse for the murder of Anne Boleyn, responded with his various ambassadors and commanders, and for his other crimes, and the terrors of awakening and would himself see into everything. He was not only conscience seem to have peopled his presence with the a poet and musician of no mean order, but prided himself victims of his injustice. He cast wild looks into a gloomy | on his achievements as an author, and judge of faiths and

CHAPTER XI.

REIGN OF EDWARD VI.

systems. His regard for literature was evinced by his liberality to learned men both at home and abroad. But under all this shining surface lay qualities of the most Hertford is made Duke of Somerset and Protector-His War with extraordinary and dangerous character. His vanity was of that kind that it made him believe himself the greatest man and wisest king that ever lived. No flattery could overtop the height of his egotism. He drank in adulation as a whale sucks in whole seas, and the intense love of power combined with this egregious self-estimation, and based on an unparalleled strength of fiery passions, made him soon impatient of contradiction, and, like a tornado, ready to crush everything around him that dared to stand in his way. It is remarkable that the same man who commenced by an admiration of learning and literature, put to death the three most celebrated men of letters of his Court-Sir Thomas More, the Viscount Rochford, and Surrey. As he advanced in years, he waded deeper and deeper in the noblest blood of the kingdom, sparing neither learning, genius, age, piety, man nor woman.

The circumstances of the times favoured his exercise of arbitrary power, and there is no record of this or any other country which exhibits a prince so thoroughly trampling down every liberty of the subject, every safeguard of life, and even of self-respect in his most exalted subjects.

But the Wars of the Roses had laid the aristocracy at his feet; the breach with Rome laid the Church there too. The Protestants and Romanists became pretty equally divided, courted with abject jealousy his smiles, to give them the ascendency, and, holding the balance, he made this the means of his most marvellous dominance. Other monarchs sought to reign without Parliaments, but Henry, by the terror of the axe and the gibbet, awed his Parliament into such slavish obedience, that he was enabled to commit his worst actions under a show of constitution and law. If it be difficult for us now to realise such monstrous deeds of political murder, such wholesale scenes of national rapine, as perpetrated on English ground, it is equally so to conceive the scene of base adulation which the Court and Parliament then presented. Rich assured him that he was a Solomon in wisdom, a Samson in strength and courage, an Absalom in beauty and grace of manners; and Audeley, his chancellor, declared that God had anointed him with the oil of gladness above his fellows, and that he exceeded all kings in wisdom, all generals in victory, that he had prostrated the Roman Goliath, and given thirty years of peace and blessings to his realm, such as no country at any time had ever enjoyed. Whenever, during this harangue, the words "Most Sacred Majesty" occurred, or any similar term of homage, the whole of the lords arose, and they and the entire assembly bowed profoundly towards the throned demigod. The clergy in Convocation echoed this disgusting hypocrisy, declaring that he was the image of God upon earth; that to disobey him was as heinous as to disobey God himself; to limit his authority was not merely an offence to him, but to God as well. The fumigated idol drank all in, and believed it so true that he treated his worshippers as they well deserved; took their money at will, trod upon them at pleasure, put them to death without jury and without form of law, like miserable reptiles as they made themselves, and left them to reap in coming years a rich harvest of humiliations and sufferings.

Scotland-The Battle of Pinkie-Innovations in the ChurchGardiner imprisoned-The Ministers help themselves to Titles and Charity Lands-Sir Thomas Seymour, the Lord-Admiral, marries Queen Catherine Parr-Endeavours to secure the Person of the Young King-Catherine Parr dies-Seymour aspires to the Hand of the Princess Elizabeth-Is arrested and beheaded by order of his brother the Protector-War in Scotland-Queen Mary carried to France, and married to the Dauphin-Insurrections at HomeKet, the Farmer, of Norfolk-Insurgents put down-France declares War-Party of Sir John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, against the Protector-Ambition of Somerset-Sent to the Tower, but released-Deprivation of Bonner and Gardiner-The Princess Mary harassed on account of her Religion-Joan Bouchier and Van Paris put to death as Heretics-Duke of Somerset again arrested, condemned and executed, with four of his alleged Accomplices-Warwick in the Ascendant-Made Duke of Northumberland-Marries his Son to Lady Jane Grey, and induces the King to nominate her his Heir to the Crown-Death of the King.

THE country was doomed once more to experience the inconveniences of a regal minority, of that evil so forcibly enunciated by the sacred Scriptures: "Woe to the country whose king is a child." It was doomed once more to witness the struggles, incapacities, and manifold mischiefs of ambitious nobles, whilst the hand of the king was too feeble to keep them in restraint. The execution of Surrey, and the imprisonment and attainder of the great Duke of Norfolk, left the Seymours completely in the ascendant; and having recently risen into note and power, they very soon showed all the inflated ambition of such parvenus. The Earl of Hertford, as uncle of the king, was in reality the man now in the possession of the chief power. The king was but a few months more than nine years of age; and Henry, his father, acting on the discretion given him by an Act of Parliament of the twenty-eighth year of his reign, had by will settled the crown on his son, and had appointed sixteen individuals as his executors, who should constitute also the Privy Council, and exercise the authority of the Crown till the young monarch was eighteen years of age. To enable these executors, or rather, to enable Hertford to secure the person of the king, and take other measures for the establishment of their position, the death of Henry was kept secret for four days. He died on the morning of Friday, the 28th of January, and Parliament, which was virtually dissolved by his death, according to the then existing laws, met on the 29th, and proceeded to business as usual, so that any Acts passed under these circumstances would have clearly become null.

On the 31st of the month, the Chancellor Wriothesley announced to the assembled Parliament of both Houses, the decease of the king, and the appointment of the council to conduct the Government, in the name of the young Sovereign, Edward VI. The members of both Houses professed to be overwhelmed with grief at the news of their loss. It might have been supposed that Henry VIII., of blessed memory, had been one of the most mild and endearing men that ever lived. Th Romanists and the Protestants, whom he chastised ani tyrannised over with a pretty equal hand, were, according to their own account, sunk in sorrow, and the tenderhearted Wriothesley, who had never before shown any feeling except for himself, was so choked by his tears as scarcely to be able to announce the sad event. In fact the servility of the Ministry and Parliament during the

king's life, were only equalled by their hypocrisy at his death.

The boy king, however, soon engrossed all their powers of political joy and flattery. He was represented as the greatest prodigy of learning and virtue that ever lived. William Thomas, who became one of the clerks of the council-as who can wonder-in a work called the "Pilgrim," thus describes him: "If ye knew the towardness of that young prince, your hearts would melt to hear him named, and your stomach abhor the malice of them that would him ill; the beautifullest creature that liveth under the sun; the wittiest, the most amiable, and the gentlest thing of all the world. Such a spirit of capacity, learning the things taught him by his schoolmaster, that it is a wonder to hear say. And finally, he hath such a grace of posture and gesture in gravity, when he comes into a presence, that it should seem he were already a father, and passeth he not the age of ten years. A thing undoubtedly much rather to be seen than believed."

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of the horse, proceeded, and, bringing him as far as Enfield, where his sister Elizabeth was, they first announced to them the death of their father, by which they are said by Hayward to have been greatly affected. On the 31st of January, the same day the announcement had been made to Parliament of Henry's decease, and whilst this and his own accession was being proclaimed in London, Edward, escorted by Hertford, Sir Anthony Browne, and a body of horse, entered the capital, and was conducted straightway to the Tower, amidst a vast concourse of applauding people. At his approach to that ancient bastile, where young princes had before been led by their uncles, with results which might have made the little king shrink, "there was," says Strype, "great shooting of ordnance in all parts thereabouts, as well from the houses as from the ships, whereat the king took great pleasure. Being there arrived, he was welcomed by the nobles, and conducted by them to his lodging within the Tower, being richly hung and garnished with rich cloth of Arras, and cloth of estate agreeable to such a Royal guest. And so were all his nobles lodged and placed, some in the Tower and some in the City. His council lodged for the most part about his highness, who every day kept the council-chamber, for determination of main causes, as well about the interment of the king's father, as for the expedition of his own coronation."

Edward appears, indeed, to have been a very amiable and clever lad, but probably suffered severely in his health by the over-working of his brain whilst so young, a circumstance which is supposed also to have injured the constitution and cheerfulness of temper of his sister Mary. He kept a journal, which still remains, in his own hand, in the British Museum, and in this he tells us On the day after his arrival at the Tower, that is, on many things of his life and short reign. From this we February 1st, 1547, the greater part of the nobility and learn that till he was six years old he was brought up the prelates were summoned, and assembled there about much "amongst the women." We know that his step- three o'clock in the afternoon, in the presence-chamber, mother, Catherine Parr, bestowed much pains on the where they all successively knelt and kissed his majesty's education of both himself and his sisters Mary and hand, saying every one of them, "God save your grace!" Elizabeth. He was next placed under the tuition of Then Wriothesley, the chancellor, produced the king's Sir Anthony Cook, "famous for his five learned will, and announced from it that the following sixteen daughters," of Mr. Cheke, and Dr. Cox. These gentle-persons were appointed to be his late majesty's executors, men were to educate him in "learning of tongues, of and to hold the office of governors of the present king the Scripture, of philosophy, and all liberal sciences." and of the kingdom till he was eighteen years of age:Cox, in particular, was "to be his preceptor for his manners, and the knowledge of philosophy and divinity; the other for the tongues and mathematics." He had masters for French and other accomplishments; and Bishop Burnet says that "he was so forward in his learning, that before he was eight years old, he wrote Latin letters to his father, who was a prince of that stern severity that one can hardly think that those about his son durst cheat him by making letters for him."

Henry VIII., in fact, does not seem to have examined very closely into what was going on in the education of his son; the queen appears to have had that very much left to her, and she had contrived so that all who were about him were of the reformed opinions; indeed, of such opinions, that, had Henry known it, he would sooner have had them at the stake than at the teaching of his heir. These men most thoroughly imbued him with their own views, and he showed himself through his brief life a steadfast maintainer of the new faith. Had he been allowed more play and exercise during his early boyhood, instead of being drilled so unremittingly in his educational labour, he might have lived longer, and proved none the less accomplished in the end.

At the time of his father's death he was residing at Hertford, in the house of his uncle, the Earl of Hertford. Thither Hertford and Sir Anthony Browne, the master

Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury; Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor; William Paulet, Baron St. John, Master of the Household; John Russell, Baron Russell, Lord Privy Seal; Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, Lord Great Chamberlain; John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, Lord Admiral; Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham; Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse; Sir William Paget, Secretary of State; Sir Edward North, Chancellor of the Court of Augmentations; Sir Edward Montague, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Thomas Bromley, one of the Justices of the King's Bench; Sir Anthony Denny and Sir John Herbert, Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber; Sir Edward Wotton, Treasurer of Calais; and Dr. Nicholas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury. To these were added twelve others, who were to aid them in any case of difficulty by their advice:-Henry Fitzallan, Earl of Arundel; William Parr, Earl of Essex; Sir Thomas Cheney, Treasurer of the Household; Sir John Gage, Comptroller; Sir Anthony Wingfield, Vice-Chamberlain; Sir William Petre, Secretary of State; Sir Richard Rich, Sir John Baker, Sir Ralph Sadler, Sir Thomas Seymour, Sir Richard Southwell, and Sir Edmund Peckham. Yet, although these formed a second council, it was totally destitute of any real authority, and could only tender advice when asked.

The announcement of these names excited much ani

PRETENDED LEGACIES OF THE KING.

and a treasurership should be instead of two of the six prebends."

This extraordinary statement of Paget's was fully confirmed by Denny and Herbert, who said that, on Paget quitting the room, the king related to them what had passed, and made Denny thereupon write it down; and Herbert observing that Paget, the secretary, had remembered every one but himself, the king ordered them to write down £400 a year for him.

Of the persons mentioned for promotion, Paget said, some, on being spoken to, desired to remain in their pre- Perhaps this is the most barefaced example on record of sent estate, the land which the king proposed to give being a set of executors helping themselves out of the estate of insufficient for the rank to be attached to them. After the testator, on the mere assertion that he promised them many consultations, the king had settled it thus:-" The these good things, without a word of such particulars in

Rearing the Fire Cross for the Assembly of the Highland Clans, before the Battle of Pinkie.