impartial enough to allow some rather tiresome public speakers to
get up into this Tree of Reformation, and point out their errors to
them, in long discourses, while they lay listening (not always
without some grumbling and growling) in the shade below. At last,
one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and
proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors, unless from that moment
they dispersed and went home: in which case they were to receive a
pardon. But, Ket and his men made light of the herald and became
stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick went after them with
a sufficient force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged,
drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into
various country places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them
were hanged upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation; and
so, for the time, that tree may be said to have withered away.
The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion for the real
distresses of the common people, and a sincere desire to help them.
But he was too proud and too high in degree to hold even their
favour steadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated
him, because they were as proud and not as high as he. He was at
this time building a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone
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for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder, and pulled
down bishops’ houses: thus making himself still more disliked. At
length, his principal enemy, the Earl of Warwick – Dudley by name,
and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with
Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh – joined with seven other
members of the Council against him, formed a separate Council; and,
becoming stronger in a few days, sent him to the Tower under
twenty-nine articles of accusation. After being sentenced by the
Council to the forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was
liberated and pardoned, on making a very humble submission. He was
even taken back into the Council again, after having suffered this
fall, and married his daughter, LADY ANNE SEYMOUR, to Warwick’s
eldest son. But such a reconciliation was little likely to last,
and did not outlive a year. Warwick, having got himself made Duke
of Northumberland, and having advanced the more important of his
friends, then finished the history by causing the Duke of Somerset
and his friend LORD GREY, and others, to be arrested for treason,
in having conspired to seize and dethrone the King. They were also
accused of having intended to seize the new Duke of Northumberland,
with his friends LORD NORTHAMPTON and LORD PEMBROKE; to murder them
if they found need; and to raise the City to revolt. All this the
fallen Protector positively denied; except that he confessed to
having spoken of the murder of those three noblemen, but having
never designed it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, and
found guilty of the other charges; so when the people – who
remembered his having been their friend, now that he was disgraced
and in danger, saw him come out from his trial with the axe turned
from him – they thought he was altogether acquitted, and sent up a
loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on Tower Hill,
at eight o’clock in the morning, and proclamations were issued
bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten. They filled the
streets, however, and crowded the place of execution as soon as it
was light; and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once
powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the
dreadful block. While he was yet saying his last words to them
with manly courage, and telling them, in particular, how it
comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted in reforming the
national religion, a member of the Council was seen riding up on
horseback. They again thought that the Duke was saved by his