appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring
them to have his will made out according to law. They were much
against it at first, and told the King so; but the Duke of
Northumberland – being so violent about it that the lawyers even
expected him to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped to
his shirt, he would fight any man in such a quarrel – they yielded.
Cranmer, also, at first hesitated; pleading that he had sworn to
maintain the succession of the Crown to the Princess Mary; but, he
was a weak man in his resolutions, and afterwards signed the
document with the rest of the council.
It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now sinking in a
rapid decline; and, by way of making him better, they handed him
over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be able to cure it. He
speedily got worse. On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand
five hundred and fifty-three, he died, very peaceably and piously,
praying God, with his last breath, to protect the reformed
religion.
This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh
of his reign. It is difficult to judge what the character of one
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so young might afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious,
quarrelling nobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very good
abilities, and had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his
disposition – which in the son of such a father is rather
surprising.
CHAPTER XXX – ENGLAND UNDER MARY
THE Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep the young
King’s death a secret, in order that he might get the two
Princesses into his power. But, the Princess Mary, being informed
of that event as she was on her way to London to see her sick
brother, turned her horse’s head, and rode away into Norfolk. The
Earl of Arundel was her friend, and it was he who sent her warning
of what had happened.
As the secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and the
council sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of the aldermen,
and made a merit of telling it to them. Then, they made it known
to the people, and set off to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to
be Queen.
She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned,
and clever. When the lords who came to her, fell on their knees
before her, and told her what tidings they brought, she was so
astonished that she fainted. On recovering, she expressed her
sorrow for the young King’s death, and said that she knew she was
unfit to govern the kingdom; but that if she must be Queen, she
prayed God to direct her. She was then at Sion House, near
Brentford; and the lords took her down the river in state to the
Tower, that she might remain there (as the custom was) until she
was crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to Lady
Jane, considering that the right to be Queen was Mary’s, and
greatly disliking the Duke of Northumberland. They were not put
into a better humour by the Duke’s causing a vintner’s servant, one
Gabriel Pot, to be taken up for expressing his dissatisfaction
among the crowd, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory, and
cut off. Some powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary’s
side. They raised troops to support her cause, had her proclaimed
Queen at Norwich, and gathered around her at the castle of
Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. For, she was
not considered so safe as yet, but that it was best to keep her in
a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if
necessary.
The Council would have despatched Lady Jane’s father, the Duke of
Suffolk, as the general of the army against this force; but, as
Lady Jane implored that her father might remain with her, and as he
was known to be but a weak man, they told the Duke of