as executors of the will. Fifth only in the list came the Earl of Hertford, but this placing had no meaning. On the 31st of January the councillors met in the Tower and almost unanimously nominated Hertford as Protector. Wriothesley alone raised objection, but deferred his will to that of the majority, and announced the nomination to the king. The minutes of the proceeding ran thus :-' We... by oone hole assent, concorde and agrement, uppon mature consideration of the tendrenes and proximitie of bludde between our Soveraigne Lorde that now is and the Erle of Hertforde, being his uncle, and of the grete experience which he hath in all affayres of this realme and all other the Kinges Maiesties realms, dominions and cuntreys have gevin unto him the furste and chief place amonges us, and also the name and the title of the Protectour of all the realmes and dominions of the Kinges Majestie that nowe is and of the Governour of his most royal persone: with this special and expresse condicion that he shall not do any Acte but with thadvise and consent of the reste of the coexecutors in such maner, ordre and fourme as in the said wille of our said late Souveraigne Lorde and moste Gracious Maister is apoynted and prescribed.' On Sunday, the 6th of February, Paget announced the honours that were to be conferred on the executors, and among them Hertford himself was made Duke of Somerset, and was given the barony of Seymour of Hache, and the Duke of Norfolk's offices of Lord High Treasurer and Earl Marshal. His brother, Sir Thomas, who was one of those appointed to assist the executors, was created Lord High Admiral and Baron Seymour of Sudeley.

The preliminaries over and his position so far assured, Somerset, within a fortnight of his promotion, turned to clear away from his path the only rival he, for the moment, feared. Wriothesley, as Lord Chancellor and as a convinced Romanist, would inevitably oppose every attempted reform, both social and religious, and would endanger all Somerset's

ambitious schemes. He well knew of Wriothesley what Sir Richard Morison wrote of him at a later date, that he was ' an earnest follower of whatsoever he took in hand, and did very seldom miss where either wit or travail were able to bring his purpose to pass.' Hence Somerset was ready to seize the first opportunity of attack on so dangerous a foe. The opportunity came quickly. Before the end of February Wriothesley, as Lord Chancellor, had empowered four civilians to hear cases in Chancery in his absence. Complaints were immediately made to the Council by divers students of the Common Lawes,' the question was referred to the judges, and Wriothesley was sentenced to lose his office and incur such penalty and fine as the king should be pleased to inflict, and imprisonment at the king's will. His offence, as stated by the Protector, was not only that he had 6 menassed divers of the said lerned men and others for their service to the King's Majesty in this behalfe but also used unfitting wourdes to me, the said Protectour, to the prejudice of the Kinges estate and thindrance of His Majesties affayres.' When Wriothesley's power was thus crippled Somerset was content. His foot had been on his rival's throat; he did not wish to kill. Wriothesley was paid the legacy left him by Henry VIII., and soon afterwards was admitted to the new Privy Council, and Somerset was commended by the world for 'gentleness.' 1

Wriothesley's fall accomplished, Somerset was able to influence the Council to change the status both of his powers and of their own. The young king was persuaded to 'moste graciously condescend and graunte' a commission stating the powers of the Protector to execute all and every other thing' which should belong to the office of a 'Governour

1 See Gardiner's letter to Somerset (Foxe, vol. vi.): 'Your grace showed so much favour to him (Wriothesley) that all the world commended your gentleness.'

of a king,' and to procure and execute all and every other thing and thinges, acte and actes of what qualitie or effecte soever they be or shalbe concerning our affayres... both private and public . . . in such like maner and fourme as shalbe thought by his wisedome and discrecion to be for the honour, suretie, prosperitie, good order, wealth and comodite of us.' Moreover, the king nominated twenty-six councillors, breaking up the appointment by Henry VIII.'s will, and gave the Protector full power to summon 'suche and so many as he from tyme to tyme to thyncke convenient,' or to add new members at his will.

The diffi

Somerset was now at the height of his power. culty of the task before him cannot be overestimated. The results of the social and religious changes of the reign of Henry VIII. were now ripening in full force, and were involving England in a dangerous policy abroad, and in an economic and religious dislocation at home. It is not necessary or in place to enter into any actual account of Somerset's methods of government. That has been done often enough elsewhere. It is enough here to make some attempt to summarise the character of the man himself as shown by his work during his brief authority, and to suggest how the policy which he inaugurated might have made the reign of Mary an impossibility if it had been less rashly hurried forward and less hurriedly brought to a close on personal

motives.

It is not easy to gather any clear idea of the growth of Somerset's religious views, or to come to any conclusion as to the part they played in his life apart from their political and financial meaning. However, by the end of the last reign he had been looked upon as an ardent Reformer, and the leader of those who were in favour of 'getting rid of the bishops.' Certainly the early events of the Protectorate bore out this assertion. Cranmer, with Somerset's support, embarked on a rapid succession of sweeping

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reforms, culminating in the Communion service in the English tongue and the first Book of Common Prayer. Added to this doctrinal change came the confiscation of the chantries and the tearing down of images. Pamphlets expressing the views of the extremists flooded the country while the Romanist point of view was everywhere suppressed.

The effect on the country population, still buried deep in the old religion, can be imagined. The agrarian discontent already stirred up in the last reign by the policy of enclosures and by the dissolution of the monasteries was aggravated by the confiscation of chantry lands, and by the excessive greed and aggrandisement of the already rich. Somerset himself, one of the most rapacious of a generation of property thieves, among other things seized on a vast amount of ecclesiastical property, and pulled down a parish church to build his palace, the original Somerset House, where the modern building now stands. The gap between rich and poor was being steadily widened, and at this moment Somerset chose to substitute for the accustomed time-honoured service what to the unlearned seemed a Christmas game.' He, doubtless, saw the mummery of the old Latin service, and, seeing that the future would bring the ordinary man to the reformers' standpoint, seems to have little expected the opposition of the western counties. But here, as always, he showed his unwisdom in acting according to his own impulse, without keeping his finger on the pulse of the nation, as the Tudor genius for government might have taught him to do. The unwisdom of forcing extreme and unwelcome reform at the moment when social discontent was brewing everywhere was to preclude even his most biassed admirers from counting Somerset a statesman. Yet he has been praised for placing a stone in the temple raised in the honour of Liberty because of his attempted social and economic

reforms, and his opposition to enclosures, and because of his repeal of the statute giving proclamations the force of law, and of the new felonies and treasons acts. In the abstract bis ideal may have been liberty, but in the practical the liberty he allowed was the liberty he enforced, that is to say, liberty, granted obedience to him. This, at any rate, was presumably, without the justification of being a religious fanatic, the result of his extremist reform policy.

His foreign policy as the issue of his religion was of necessity opposition to Spain; and his rash, impatient warfare in Scotland ruined every possibility of a union between England and Scotland, and instead drove Scotland once more into the arms of France, already England's enemy on account of the constant bickerings about the fortifications of Boulogne.

Yet it was not his policy, religious, economic, or foreign, that brought Somerset to the scaffold. It was rather the ambition and greed for power that made it impossible for him to share his authority with any other, and the arrogant impatience with which he thrust a policy which he knew to be ultimately acceptable on a nation whose instinct is to receive reform only if it comes imperceptibly and, as it were, by accident. There was yet another element in his character, a contrast to all the rest, but as sure a factor in his fall; a limitation and yet a strength in so far that, although failure is written across his life, it has won and still wins him a certain popularity. It was a peculiar sensitiveness that kept him, with but one exception, from the unscrupulousness of a Napoleon, and won him the title of 'verie gentle and pitifull.'

It was a strange mixture, this arrogant monarchic instinct which made the man the enemy of his equals, and of none more than his own brother; this sensitiveness which made him the friend of the people, the poore commynaltie of Englande' and a seeker after popular support. Had he