the earl of Warwick, was formed against him. He soon saw himself deserted by all except by Cranmer, and by Paget, his secretary; and, sinking into despondency, he resigned the protectorship. He was then committed to the Tower, and after a few weeks' imprisonment was heavily fined, deprived of all his offices, and then restored to liberty. A new council of regency was appointed, and the earl of Warwick placed at the head of it. Warwick, not satisfied with the degradation of Somerset, determined on his death, and accused him, in 1551, of a plot to raise a rebellion, and to assassinate himself and other privy counsellors. On these charges he was tried, condemned, and executed, to the sincere grief of the people, to whom his goodness of heart had much endeared him. When he was beheaded, many rushed on the scaffold to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood, and these they kept as memorials of him.

The work of the Reformation was still continued, but with more intemperance, under Warwick, than had been ever visible while the affairs of the nation were conducted by the milder counsels of Somerset. Gardiner was deprived of his bishopric and thrown into prison. Bonner, bishop of London, was also committed to the Tower, and many of the clergy were obliged to have recourse to the trades of tailors, carpenters, and ale-house keepers, for a maintenance, being reduced to poverty by the greedy courtiers, who seized on a large portion of the

revenues of the church. The good archbishop used his utmost efforts to preserve to the popish clergy the scanty provision that still remained to them; but his integrity was no match for the avarice of their spoilers, whose rapacity nothing escaped. Under pretence of searching for missals, and other forbidden books, the libraries at Oxford and that at Westminster were rummaged, and all books with gold or silver ornaments on their bindings were seized as being superstitious relics, and thus many valuable works were destroyed.

The earldom of Northumberland having some years since become extinct, Warwick, a short time before the death of Somerset, had prevailed with Edward to make him duke of Northumberland, and to bestow on him the estates, which had belonged to the earldom, and which had been forfeited to the crown. He had no sooner obtained these great possessions than he coveted more, and particularly some of the estates belonging to the bishopric of Durham. But to obtain them it was necessary to get rid of the bishop, who at that time was Tonstall, a man of such unimpeachable character that the parliament refused to bring in a bill of attainder against him. Northumberland, therefore, dissolved that parliament, and had another elected which was more subservient to his wishes, and Tonstall was soon deprived of his bishopric.

The young king was now entirely in the power

of Northumberland, who placed his son, Robert Dudley, about his person. It was observed that Edward's health declined from that time, and it is certain that Northumberland had formed the extraordinary project of raising one of his own sons to the throne. He began by persuading Edward, that as both his sisters had been declared illegitimate, they could not possibly succeed to the crown, and that, therefore, by virtue of his father's will, the succession devolved on the children of Mary, the dowager queen of France, by her second husband the duke of Suffolk, whose sons having died of the sweating sickness, her eldest daughter, the duchess of Dorset, was the undoubted heir to the crown. The duchess, who had no son, was willing to resign her claim to her eldest daughter, lady Jane Grey, and Northumberland married her to his son, Guildford Dudley.

Edward felt no scruple about depriving his sister Mary of her birthright, fearing that her bigotry would be hurtful to the Protestant cause. But he felt many regrets in regard to the princess Elizabeth, whom he affectionately loved, and used to call "his dear sister Temperance." He, however, consented to settle the succession on lady Jane Grey. When the patent of settlement was to be signed by all the great officers of state, and some of them hesitated to do so, Northumberland violently declared that he would fight any man, in his shirt, in so just a cause as that of lady Jane's succession. Sir James

Hales and Cranmer made resolute opposition to this settlement, and yielded solely in compliance with the pathetic entreaties of the king.

The settlement was at last made. The king, who had been for many months in a very delicate state of health, grew rapidly worse. Northumberland affected an anxious concern for him, attended on him with the most assiduous zeal, and dismissing all the physicians from their attendance, put him under the care of an ignorant woman, who pretended to have a specific for his disease: but Edward was so far from receiving benefit from her nostrums that he soon after died, on the 6th of July, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age and seventh of his reign. His illness had the appearance of a consumption, brought on by cold after the measles; but the suspicions of the people attributed it to a slow poison given him by the Dudleys. His person is said to have been very beautiful, and he had a remarkable brilliancy in his eyes.

Though during this reign the country was in a distracted and divided state on the score of religion, and though the officers of the state were not less divided and distracted by their own private jealousies and cabals, still there never had been any former time when the commerce of England flourished so much. That commerce, as I have already observed, had heretofore been chiefly carried on by foreign merchants, who, from the place where they had at

one time been accustomed to carry on their business, were called merchants of the Steel Yard. But in the reign of Edward VI. many of the privileges of these merchants were taken from them, and the native English were encouraged to enter into trade. The discovery also of America occasioned a greater demand for ships, and an increase of commerce. During this reign there arose also an unusual demand for woollen cloth, which gave great encouragement to the English manufacturers, and first brought Wakefield and Leeds into notice as manufacturing

towns.

An expedition, consisting of two ships and a bark, was sent out by Edward VI. under the command of sir Hugh Willoughby, for the discovery of a northeast passage to India; but the attempt failed, and sir Hugh, and all the people both of his own ship and of the bark which kept company with him, were frozen to death in a harbour of Lapland. Richard Chancellour, the captain of the other vessel, was more fortunate, and returned home after wintering at Archangel. This voyage first led the way to a lucrative trade with Russia.

St. Stephen's chapel was in this reign given to the commons to hold their sittings in. They had for some time been accustomed to sit in the Chapter house at Westminster.

A code of articles having been thought advisable, the better to bring the people to a conformity in