this time (1548) that the Protector entrusted to Cranmer, and other eminent divines, the compilation of the English Liturgy. This important work, which was the basis of our present admirable church service, was ordered to be used in all parishes, and a permission for priests to marry was at the same time issued. The popularity which these measures obtained for Somerset among the Reformers was, however, by no means general throughout the nation. The nobles, headed by the ambitious Warwick, regarded him as too favourable to the discontents of the lower classes, in respect to the grievance of enclosures, and the substitution of grazing for tillage, by which thousands were thrown out of employ. On the other hand, the agricultural population laid to his charge the suppression of the monasteries, in whose occupants they had found indulgent landlords, and charitable patrons in times of want and distress.

The chief abettor of faction among the nobles was the Protector's brother, lately created Lord Seymour, who had married Queen Catherine Parr, with more haste than decency, after Henry VIII.'s death. As the Princess Elizabeth was then residing with the Dowager Queen, Seymour had taken advantage of that circumstance to ingratiate himself with the young Princess, and even to venture on familiarities, which were, not without reason, supposed to have ultimate and dangerous objects. The death of the Queen, his wife, seemed to favour his views, while at the same time he lost no occasion of paying his court to the young King, secretly supplying him with money, and suggesting that he was now of an age to

govern the kingdom himself. Advice of these proceedings being given to the Protector and Council, a bill of attainder was prepared and hurried through the Lords and Commons, thus depriving the prisoner of the right of being heard in his defence, or of disproving the charges by evidence. His doom was, in fact, fixed beforehand; and the warrant for his execution being signed by the Council, the Protector himself, as well as Cranmer, affixing their names, Seymour was executed on Tower Hill on the 20th of March, 1549. Of the guilty ambition of the Admiral, no one appeared to doubt, and it is on record that Latimer, in a sermon preached at the time, declared of his own personal knowledge that Seymour had merited his fate. He said "As touching the manner of his death, whether he be saved or no I refer that to the Almighty. In the twinkling of an eye, He may save a man and turn his heart. And when a man hath two strokes of the axe, who can tell but between the two he may repent. It is hard to judge; but this I will say, if I am asked what I think of his death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely, and horribly. He was a wicked man, and the realm is well rid of him."

Whether Seymour had relied on the general discontent throughout the country to carry his objects, may be a question; but certainly great disaffection prevailed, on the grounds before mentioned. Insurrections broke out in the west and also in Norfolk, and though the rebels were defeated by Lord Russell and the Earl of Warwick, and great numbers hanged, yet the power and popularity of the Protector were visibly declining.

Sir William Paget wrote a remarkable letter of advice to the Protector. "In Germany," he said, referring to the insurrections of the peasants, "when tumult like this began first, it might have been appeased with the loss of twenty men, and after that with a loss of one or two hundred, but it was thought nothing. And some spiced consciences, taking pity of the poor, who indeed knew not what pity was, nor who were the poor, thought it a sore matter to lose so many Christians, saying they were simple folk, and knew not what the matter meant, and were of a godly knowledge, and after this sort suffered the matter to go so far as it cost, ere it was appeased, some say 100,000 men ! but I know by credible report of some that were at it, not less than 60,000 lives. By St. Mary! better go than not; therefore, sir, go to it betimes. Send for all the Council, and because there are so many of the best absent, call to your Grace six of the gravest and most experimented men of the realm, and consider what is best to be done, and follow their advice. Send for your Almayn horsemen. Send for Lord Ferrys and Sir W. Herbert, to bring you as many horsemen as they dare trust out of Wales. Let the Earl of Shrewsbury bring the like out of Shropshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Staffordshire, of his servants and keepers of forests and parks. Go yourself, accom panied with the said noblemen and their companies, and appoint the Chief Justices of England, three or four of them, to resort, with commission of Oyer and Terminer, to that good town which shall be nighest to the place where your Grace shall be minded to remain. Attach

to the number of twenty or thirty of the rankest knaves of the shire. Let six of the ripest of them be hanged; the rest to remain in prison. And thus, sir, make a progress in this hot weather, till you have perused all those shires that have offended. Your Grace may say you shall lose the hearts of the people of the good people you will not; of the ill, it maketh no matter."

In London the Protector excited great indignation by his arbitrary clearance of a large space in the Strand, on which he had begun to build a palace. The church of St. Mary and three mansions of bishops, with a churchyard south of St. Paul's, were pulled to the ground to make room for Somerset House. Warwick was not slow to see his advantage; and secretly convening the majority of the Council, articles were drawn up against the Protector, who was surprised in his house and after being committed to the Tower, only escaped a trial for treason, by the humblest submission to his enemies. He was known to have amassed great riches, and one of the conditions of reconciliation made by Warwick, was the union of his son Lord Lisle, with Lady Anne Seymour, the Duke's daughter. Their dissensions being apparently thus amicably settled, the Protector once more took his place at the Council. It was by his influence that some further steps were at this time taken for the improvement of the Liturgy; Bucer and Peter Martyr, two eminent Lutherans, being called in to assist the English prelates in the completion of their work. Warwick, though not believed to be in earnest in the cause of the Reformation, went readily with the stream, ingratiating himself with the

young King as well as with the Londoners by so doing -at the same time he obtained from Edward the Dukedom of Northumberland, and the estates of the late Earl of that name, who had died without issue.

It is not easy to discover why he should have determined on Somerset's ruin so soon after a reconciliation cemented by the marriage of their children, but he appears never to have laid aside his old animosity, and to have planned a series of petty insults and provocations in order to entrap the Protector into language in the presence of spies and treacherous dependents, which might be construed into treason.

Accusations were prepared and evidence collected in this unworthy manner, and in October (1551) Somerset was a second time arrested and brought to trial. A state trial under such circumstances was a mere mockery; no witnesses were examined, but depositions were read to the effect that the Duke had spoken of deposing the King; of levying forces on his own account; and of the assassination of Northumberland. Somerset denied all these allegations. He owned that he was present when an attempt on the Duke's life had been mentioned; but he protested that he had rejected the suggestion with the horror it deserved.

On an impartial review of Somerset's government, it must be admitted that, with many great and noble qualities, he had ill-succeeded in the administration of his high office. He had shown prudence as well as courage in the field, but his wars had been expensive and useless; he had plunged the country into debt; he had debased