which was then issued summoning him to appear before them. When they passed a resolution, however, that he should be sent to the Tower, and deprived of all his offices, he deemed it prudent to make his submission; and, for the present, the affair ended by a seemingly perfect reconciliation being effected between the two brothers. In the course of the following year, as we have seen, the Admiral was gratified by a grant of a large addition to his revenues from the crown.

But neither this bribe nor the escape he had made drew Seymour from the path of his restless ambition. We have seen, that before the end of this same year he had again begun to practise upon the king and the persons about his majesty by secret gifts of money. For some time, however, he restrained his bold and haughty temper so far as not to commit himself in any direct attempt to upset his brother's power. While he was thus lying in wait for what the course of events might produce, his wife, the Queen-dowager Catherine, died, after giving birth to a daughter, on the last day of September, 1548. From some expressions that fell from her in her last hours, a suspicion arose that she had been poisoned or otherwise made away with by the act of her husband; but we are not entitled, from anything that is known of Seymour, to think it probable that he could be guilty of so black a crime as this; and the circumstances, as far as they have come down to us, do not lend any countenance to a surmise which the partiality of some modern writers to the memory of the one brother seems chiefly to have inclined them to adopt against the other. Among the documents respecting the affair of the Lord Admiral printed in the Burghley Papers is the "Confession" of Elizabeth Lady Tyrwhit, who relates a scene at which she was present in Catherine's bed-chamber two days before her death. "At my coming to her in the morning," says this witness," she asked me where I had been so long, and said unto me she did fear such things in herself that she was sure she could not live; whereunto I answered, as I thought, that I saw no likelihood of death in her. She then, having my Lord Admiral by the hand, and divers others standing by, spoke these words, partly, as I took it, idly: My Lady Tyrwhit, I am not well handled, for those that be about me careth not for me, but standeth laughing at my grief; and the more good I will to them, the less good they will to me.' Whereunto my Lord Admiral answered, 'Why, sweetheart, I would you no hurt.' And she said to him again aloud, 'No, my lord, I think so;' and immediately she said to him in his ear, 'But, my lord, you have given me many shrewd taunts.' Those words I perceived she spake with good memory, and very sharply and earnestly, for her mind was sore unquieted." Her husband afterwards laid himself down by her on the bed "to look if he could pacify her unquietness with gentle communication;" but he had not spoken more than three or four words to her,

when she answered him "very roundly and shortly," saying that she would have given a thousand marks if she could have had her full talk with "Hewyke" the day of her delivery; "but I durst not," she added, "for fear of displeasing of you." In this way she continued to talk for about an hour, Lady Tyrwhit and others remaining in the room. There is nothing here like any charge of foul play made against the Admiral by his wife; she evidently complains of some neglect or mismanagement at the time of her delivery, probably several days before; nor was her death sudden, as if she had been poisoned or otherwise made away with. This account, however, sufficiently proves that Queen Catherine was not more happy with her third husband, whom she married for love, than she had been with her second, whose hand she had accepted from vanity; and it will appear that she had abundant cause for feeling what she expressed on her death-bed-that those who were about her cared but little for her.

The

"It is objected and laid unto your charge," say the council, in one of their articles exhibited against the Lord Admiral, "that you have not only, before you married the queen, attempted and gone about to marry the king's majesty's sister, the Lady Elizabeth, second inheritor in remainder to the crown, but also, being then let (hindered) by the Lord Protector and others of the council, sithence that time, both in the life of the queen continued your old labour and love, and after her death, by secret and crafty means, practised to achieve the said purpose of marrying the said Lady Elizabeth, to the danger of the king's majesty's person, and peril of the state of the same." evidence contained in the Burghley Papers, if it does not completely sustain this charge, at least supplies a very interesting and remarkable chapter in the biography of the great Elizabeth. It should appear that Seymour, whatever were his designs upon the princess, had in his interest, or, at any rate, as favourably disposed to him as he could desire, no less convenient a personage than her highness's governess, a Mrs. Catherine Ashley. Thomas Parry, the cofferer of the princess's household, relates a conversation he had with this lady, in which she admitted to him that even the Duchess of Somerset had found great fault with her" for my Lady Elizabeth's going in a night in a barge upon Thames, and for other light parts," and had told her, in consequence, that she was not worthy to have the governance of a king's daughter. On the subject of the court paid by the Admiral to the princess, "I do remember also,' says Parry, "she told me that the Admiral loved her but too well, and had so done a good while, and that the queen was jealous on her and him, in so much that one time the queen, suspecting the often access of the Admiral to the Lady Elizabeth's grace, came suddenly upon them when they were all alone, he having her in his arms, wherefore the queen fell out both with the Lord Admiral and with her grace also. And hereupon

the queen called Mrs. Ashley to her, and told her faucy in that matter; and of this was much displeasure." At this time, it appears, the princess was living with the queen; but, immediately after the above incident, she either removed of her own accord, or was sent away. But Mrs. Ashley may be allowed to speak for herself, at least in so far as her somewhat naïvely expressed details will bear to be quoted. In her " Confession," in which of course she confesses as little as possible against herself, she states that, at Chelsea, immediately after he was married to the queen, the Admiral used frequently to come into the Lady Elizabeth's chamber before she was ready, and sometimes before she was out of bed. If she were up, he would slap her familiarly on the back or on the hips; and if she were in her bed, he would put open the curtains and bid her good morrow, and make as though he would come at her; and she would go further in the bed, so that he could not come at her. And one morning he strave to have kissed her in her bed." At this last and some other instances of boldness Mrs. Ashley professes to have been duly shocked, and to have rebuked the Admiral as he deserved. Sometimes, if she may be believed, the queen took part with her husband in these boisterous freedoms. On two mornings, at Hanworth, they came together into the chamber of the princess before she was up, when both fell to tickling her as she lay in bed, Mrs. Ashley being with her. "Another time at Hanworth in the garden, he wrated (wrestled) with her, and cut her gown in an hundred pieces, being black cloth; and when she came up this examinate chid with her; and her grace answered, she could not do with all, for the queen held her while the Lord Admiral cut it. Another time, at Chelsea, the Lady Elizabeth, hearing the private lock undo, knowing that he would come in, ran out of her bed to her maidens, and then went behind the curtain of the bed, the maidens being there; and my lord tarried to have her come outshe cannot tell how long." Other instances of the Admiral's audacity are given, but these may serve as sufficient specimens. Mrs. Ashley admits she had reason to suppose that the Queen was jealous of the familiarity betwixt her husband and the princess; and " she saith also, that Mr. Ashley, her husband, hath divers times given this examinate warning to take heed, for he did fear that the Lady Elizabeth did bear some affection to my Lord Admiral; she seemed to be well pleased therewith; and sometimes she would blush when he were spoken of.” Elizabeth also makes her "Confession" among the rest; but it relates merely to what had passed between her and Mrs. Ashley after the queen's death, on the subject of the Lord Admiral's wish to marry her, and, as might be expected, contains nothing to her own disadvantage. She maintains that Mrs. Ashley never advised the marriage except on condition it should prove agreeable to the Protector and the council. In a letter, however, which she wrote

from Hatfield to the Protector in January, 1549, while the proceedings against Seymour were in progress, she mentions a circumstance which we should not otherwise have known-namely, that rumours had got abroad that she was "in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral." These imputations she declares to be "shameful slanders," and requests that, to put them down, she may be allowed to come immediately to court, "that I may show myself there," she says, "as I am." It appears, however, that all these examinations gave her no little disturbance and alarm, though, young as she was-only entering upon her sixteenth year-she bore herself, in the delicate and difficult position in which she was thereby placed, with a wonderful deal of the courage and politic management that she evinced on so many occasions in her after life. Sir Robert Tyrwhit (the husband of the Lady Tyrwhit already mentioned), who had been sent to Hatfield by Somerset to watch her, and try what he could get out of her, relates in one of his dispatches to the Protector, that when she was first informed of Ashley and Parry having been sent to the Tower," she was marvellous abashed, and did weep very tenderly a long time, demanding of my Lady Browne whether they had confessed anything or not." When Tyrwhit, however, afterwards went to her, and having pointed out to her what sort of characters Mrs. Ashley and the others were, would have had her " open all things herself;" assuring her that, if she did so, "all the evil and shame should be ascribed to them, and her youth considered, both with the king's majesty, your grace, and the whole council," she would confess nothing; "and yet," adds the writer, " do I see it in her face that she is guilty." The next day Tyrwhit writes that he had asked her if she would have married the Lord Admiral, had the council given their consent; to which she instantly replied, with a spirit," that she would not tell him what her mind was therein," and demanded" what he meant, and who bade him ask that question." "She hath a very good wit," concludes the baffled interrogator," and nothing is gotten of her but by great policy." A few days afterwards the confessions of Parry and Ashley were put into her hands. "At the reading of Mrs. Ashley's letter," writes Tyrwhit to his employer, "she was much abashed, and half breathless or she could read it to an end, and perused all their names perfectly, and knew both Mrs. Ashley's hand and the cofferer's hand with half a sight; so that fully she thinketh they have both confessed all they know." It is remarkable that, not long after this, we find her highness interesting herself-evidently with more anxiety than she cares to avow-in behalf of her governess, who was still detained a prisoner in the Tower. A letter is extant, written by her to Somerset in March, in which she entreats that his lordship and the rest of the council will be "good unto her" (Mrs. Ashley)-grounding her request upon three reasons, which she states with most

elaborate formality. "First," she begins, "because that she hath been with me a long time and many years, and hath taken great labour and pain in bringing of me up in learning and honesty;" and this reason is piously illustrated and fortified by a long quotation from St. Gregory. "The second," she proceeds, "is because that whatsoever she hath done in my Lord Admiral's matter, as concerning the marriage of me, she did it because, knowing him to be one of the council, she thought he would not go about any such thing without he had the council's consent thereunto; for I have heard her many times say that she would never have me marry in any place without your grace's and the council's consent." Thirdly, she says, people, seeing that one she loved so well is in such a place, will, and do think that she is not clear of guilt herself, but that it is pardoned in her. It is difficult not to suspect that there lay concealed some other reasons behind these which are set forth in such ostentatious array.

The Lord Admiral's renewal of his pretensions to the hand of Elizabeth after the death of his queen, seems to have at once brought matters to another open quarrel between him and his brother. The Marquess of Northampton, one of the persons whom he had sought to seduce to a participation in his designs, relates in his examination, or confession, that Seymour had told him " he was credibly informed that my Lord Protector had said he would clap him in the Tower if he went to my Lady Elizabeth." These threats, and the obstacle that presented itself to his schemes in the clause of the late king's will which provided that if either of the princesses should marry without the consent of the council, she should forfeit her right of succession, roused all the natural impetuosity and violence of his temper, and drove him again to intrigues and plots, and other measures of desperation. One Wightman, who held an office in his establishment, stated to the council that he and others of his friends had earnestly dissuaded him "from writing of such sharp and unsavoury letters to my Lord Protector's grace," but without effect; "for, if he had once conceived opinion by his own persuasions, neither lawyer nor other could turn him." It is asserted, that seeing he could not otherwise achieve his object, he resolved to seize the king's person, and to carry him away to his castle of Holt, in Denbighshire, one of the properties he had acquired by the late royal grant; that, for the furtherance of this and his ulterior designs, he had confederated with various noblemen and others,-had taken measures to secure the support of "the head yeomen and ringleaders of certain counties,"-had surrounded himself with a much more numerous array of retainers than was either permitted by the laws, or necessary or convenient for his service, place, or estate; that he had so travailed in the matter as to have put himself in a condition to raise an army of ten thousand men out of his own tenantry and

Ellis's Letters, 1st Ser. ii. 155.

as

other immediate adherents, in addition to the forces of his friends; and that he had got ready money enough to pay and maintain the said ten thousand men for a month.* "It is further objected and laid to your charge," say the council," that your deputy steward and other your ministers of the Holt, in the county of Denbigh, have now, against Christmas last past, at the said Holt, made such provision of wheat, malt, beef, and other such things as be necessary for the sustenance of a great number of men, making also, by all the means possible, a great mass of money; insomuch that all the country doth greatly marvel at it, and the more because your servants have spread rumours abroad that the king's majesty was dead; whereupon the country is in a great maze, doubt, and expectation, looking for some broil, and would have been more, if, at this present by your apprehension, it had not been stayed." He is also charged with having, in various ways, abused his authority and powers as Lord Admiral, and of having actually taken part with pirates against the lawful trader, though," says one of the articles, "you were authorised to be the chief pirate, and to have had all the advantage they could bring unto you." All these proceedings, it is affirmed, were "to none other end and purpose but, after a title gotten to the crown, and your party made strong both by sea and land, with furniture of men and money sufficient, to have aspired to the dignity royal by some heinous enterprise against the king's Majesty's person."§ The council do not venture to include in their indictment what Burnet has set down as one of the Lord Admiral's chief crimes, his having "openly complained that his brother intended to enslave the nation, and make himself master of all;" as a glaring proof of which he particularly pointed to a force of German lansquenets which the Protector had brought over and kept in his pay. Strype affirms that "he spread abroad sundry slanders touching the king's person, the Lord Protector, and the whole state of the council; and they so vile as not fit to be repeated." It appears, from the Burghley Papers, that the immediate occasion of proceedings being taken against Seymour was a confession made to the council by Sir William Sharington, master of the mint at Bristol, who had been taken up and examined on a charge of clipping, coining base money, and other frauds. Sharington had been, in the first instance, defended by the Admiral, who, it appears, was his debtor to a considerable amount; but he eventually admitted his guilt, and informed the council, in addition, that he had been in league with the Admiral to supply him with money for the designs that have just been recounted. There can be no doubt that Sharington made this confession to save his own life; in point of fact, he was, after a short time, not only pardoned, but restored to his former appointment. But the Admiral was instantly (19th January, 1549) sent so the Tower. Burnet re* Articles of High Treason, &c., 12-18. Ibid. 29.

+ Ibid. 33.

§ Ibid. 22.

mour,

marks that the warrant was signed by the Earl of Southampton as well as by all the other members of the privy council, so that that lord was now, in outward appearance, reconciled to the Protector." The ex-chancellor, however, as we shall find, was not thus induced to forget his ejection from office two years before. As for Seyhe had now no chance of escape. Abandoned by every friend on earth, he lay passive and helpless in his prison-house, while, " many complaints," as Burnet observes, "being usually brought against a sinking man," all who sought to make their own positions more secure, or to advance themselves in court favour, hastened to add their contribution to the charges or the evidence by which he was to be destroyed. Attempts were made to persuade him to submit himself, by working both upon his fears and his hopes; but he would confess no part of the treasonable designs imputed to him. There is, indeed, no proof or probability whatever that his views extended to anything beyond the supplanting of Somerset; it was a struggle for ascendancy between the two brothers, and nothing more. The proceedings taken against the accused were, from the beginning to the end, a flagrant violation of all law and justice.

After he had been several times secretly examined, without anything material being extracted from him, by deputations of the privy council, on the 23rd of February the whole council proceeded in a body to the Tower, with the charges against him drawn out in thirty-three articles, to endeavour to bring him to submission. But to all their threats and persuasions he insisted, as he had all along done, upon an open trial, and being brought face to face with his accusers. At last he so far yielded to their importunities as to say that, if they would leave the articles with him, he would consider of them; but even with this proposal they refused to comply. The next day, "after dinner," the lord chancellor, in the presence of the other councillors," opened the matter to the king, and delivered his opinion for leaving it to the parliament." It is pretended that this was the first time the subject had been mentioned at least at the council-board-to Edward; and, therefore, the greater admiration was called forth by the prompt judgment of the youthful sovereign, and the equanimity with which he consented to sacrifice his uncle to the public weal. After each of the other councillors had expressed his approbation of the course recommended by the chancellor, and, last of all, the Protector, who protested "this was a most sorrowful business to him, but, were it son or brother, he must prefer his majesty's safety to them, for he weighed his allegiance more than his blood," his majesty answered, perceive that there are great things objected and laid to my Lord Admiral, my uncle, and they tend to treason; and we perceive that you require but justice to be done; we think it reasonable, and we will that you proceed according to your request.' "Which words," as it is expressed in the entry in

We

the council-book quoted by Burnet," coming so suddenly from his grace's mouth, of his own motion, as the lords might well perceive, they were marvellously rejoiced, and gave the king most hearty praise and thanks." The very next day, a bill of attainder against the Lord Admiral was brought into the House of Lords; all the judges and the king's counsel gave it as their opinion that the articles amounted to treason; various lords, who had already made depositions against the accused, repeated their evidence; and the bill was at last passed without a division. Somerset himself was present at each reading. On the same day (the 27th) it was sent down to the Commons. But here it encountered at first considerable opposition. "Many argued against attainders in absence, and thought it an odd way, that some peers should rise up in their places in their own house, and relate somewhat to the slander of another, and that he should be thereupon attainted; therefore it was pressed that it might be done by a trial, and that the Admiral should be brought to the bar, and be heard plead for himself." This hesitation was at first attempted to be met by a message from the other House, repeating, what had been intimated when the bill was first sent down, that the lords who were acquainted with the facts would, if required, repeat their evidence before the Commons. But it was not deemed requisite even to go through this formality. On the 4th of March a message came from the king, which stated that " he thought it was not necessary to send for the Admiral;" and thereupon the bill was agreed to, in a House of about four hundred members, not more than ten or twelve voting in the negative.† The parliament having been prorogued on the 14th-on which day the royal assent was given to the bill-on the 17th the council issued the warrant for the Admiral's execution. Burnet notices it as a little odd" that this order of blood should be signed by Cranmer―a thing which he says was contrary to the canon law; but he makes no remark upon what will appear to most persons a still stranger indecorum, and a violation almost of the law of nature that the first name attached to it should be that of the condemned man's own brother! The Bishop of Ely was immediately sent to convey to Seymour the determination of the government, and " to instruct and teach him the best he could to the quiet and patient suffering of justice." The bishop reported to the council that the prisoner required Mr. Latimer to come to him; the day of execution to be deferred; certain of his servants to be with him; his daughter to be with my Lady Duchess of Suffolk to be brought up; and such like.§ To these requests the council in

66

structed their secretary to write "their resolute answer to the said Lord Admiral;" by which appears to be meant that they put their negative upon most of them. The execution took place on Wednesday, the 20th, on Tower Hill, when Seymour died protesting that he had never committed or meant any treason against the king or the realm.* It should appear that he was attended, as he had requested, in his last moments by Latimer, whose zeal transported him to indulge in a very extraordinary strain of remark, both on his death and his life, in a sermon he preached before the king a few days after. It was commonly observed, it seems, that the Admiral had died very boldly, and that "he would not have done so, had he not been in a just quarrel." This Latimer declares to be "a deceivable argument." "This I will say," he proceeds, "if they ask me what I think of his death, that he died very dangerously, irksomely, horribly." And then he relates the following story: "The man, being in the Tower, wrote certain papers, which I saw myself. They were two little ones, one to my Lady Mary's grace, and another to my Lady Elizabeth's grace, tending to this end, that they should conspire against my Lord Protector's grace." As he was about to lay his head on the block, he was overheard desiring the servant of the lieutenant of the Tower to bid his own servant speed the thing that he wot of. "His servant confessed these two papers, and they were found in a shoe of his. They were so sewen between the soles of a velved shoe. He made his ink so craftily, and with such workmanship, as the like hath not been seen." "I was a prisoner in the Tower myself," exclaims the preacher, quite excited by this wonderful ink, " and I could never invent to make ink so. It is a wonder to hear of his subtility. He made his pen of the aiglet of a point that he plucked from his hose. What would he have done, if he had lived still, that went about this gear when he laid his head on the block, at the end of his life?" The servant, it seems, was also executed, and, to the last, adhered to what he had said about the letters, which, indeed, was unnecessary, if the letters, as is affirmed, were actually found in the shoe. But copies of them would have been more satisfactory evidence as to the writer's intentions than honest Latimer's perhaps somewhat prejudiced description of their contents. He goes on to admit that Seymour, before he died, "had commendations to the king, and spake many words of his majesty." But this, he says, hath been the common wont of all traitors. He had often heard much of the wicked course of the unfortunate man's life: one reported instance of his profligacy he relates, from the time of first hearing which, he says, "I looked ever what would be his end-what would become of him." "He was," concludes the zealous orator, summing up his judgment in a way in which the facts he alleges certainly do not bear him out, "a

• Stow,

man farthest from the fear of God that ever I knew or heard of in England. . . . I have heard say he was of the opinion that he believed not the immortality of the soul,-that he was not right in the matter."* Some additional touches are given to the picture in another sermon :-" I have heard say, when that good Queen (Catherine Parr) that is gone had ordained in her house daily prayer both before noon and after noon, the Admiral gets him out of the way, like a mole digging in the earth. He shall be Lot's wife to me as long as I live. He was a covetous man, an horrible covetous man; I would there were no mo in England. He was an ambitious man; I would there were no mo in England. He was a seditious man, a contemner of Common Prayer; I would there were no mo in England. He is gone; I would he had left none behind him." In ambition and covetousness, if not in contempt of the Common Prayer, Seymour, it is to be feared, did leave at least one man behind him who was fully his match. His daughter, of whom Queen Catherine had died in childbed, was an infant of scarce six months old when she lost her second parent; soon! after which event she was, as her father had requested, committed to the charge of the Duchess of Suffolk. As the child was utterly pennyless, as well as an orphan, her uncle, the wealthy and powerful Lord Protector, in thus consigning her to the hands of strangers, promised that an annual sum should be allowed for her maintenance, and that a quantity of plate and other furniture which she had had in her nursery should be sent along with her to the house of the Duchess of Suffolk. It will hardly be believed that neither the allowance in money nor even the plate and other articles could be got for many months out of the hard gripe of Somerset and his duchess: indeed, it is more than probable they never were obtained. Strype has printed a letter written in the end of August of this year by the Duchess of Suffolk to Cecil, who held the office of master of requests to the Protector, earnestly repeating a solicitation, which she appears to have frequently urged before, that the engagements the Protector had made might be performed. The charge of the child and her attendants bore hard on the resources of the duchess, whose income was but limited, and was subjected, it seems, at this time to the pressure of other unusual demands. There is no evidence that her appeals had any effect; but if Somerset ever did make any allowance for the support of his niece, he was very soon delivered from the burden, for in a few months more the poor child followed its parents to the grave.

The tragedy of the Lord Admiral was followed by a summer of popular tumult and confusion, such as had not been known in England since the rebellion of Jack Cade, almost exactly a hundred years before. Several causes of various kinds concurred at this crisis to throw the peasantry in

Latimer's Fourth Sermon, in the first edition of his sermons, 8vo. The passage is erased in subsequent editions.