gency.

The most important event, of a political character, was a war with
Scotland, growing out of the attempts of the late king to unite both
nations under one government. In consequence, Scotland was invaded by
the Duke of Somerset, at the head of eighteen thousand men. A great
battle was fought, in which ten thousand of the Scots were slain. But
the protector was compelled to return to England, without following up
the fruits of victory, in consequence of cabals at court. His brother,
Lord Seymour, a man of reckless ambition, had married the queen
dowager, and openly aspired to the government of the kingdom. He
endeavored to seduce the youthful king, and he had provided arms for
ten thousand men.

The protector sought to win his brother from his treasonable designs
by kindness and favors; but, all his measures proving ineffectual, he
was arrested, tried, and executed, for high treason.

[Sidenote: Rebellions and Discontents.]

But Somerset had a more dangerous enemy than his brother; and this was
the Earl of Warwick, who obtained great popularity by his suppression
of a dangerous insurrection, the greatest the country had witnessed
since Jack Cade's rebellion, one hundred years before. The discontent
of the people appears to have arisen from their actual suffering. Coin
had depreciated, without a corresponding rise of wages, and labor was
cheap, because tillage lands were converted to pasturage. The popular
discontent was aggravated by the changes which the reformers
introduced, and which the peasantry were the last to appreciate. The
priests and ejected monks increased the discontent, until it broke out
into a flame.

The protector made himself unpopular with the council by a law which
he caused to be passed against enclosures; and, as he lost influence,
his great rival, Warwick, gained power. Somerset, at last, was obliged
to resign his protectorship; and Warwick, who had suppressed the
rebellion, formed the chief of a new council of regency. He was a man
of greater talents than Somerset, and equal ambition, and more fitted
for stormy times.

As soon as his power was established, and the country was at peace,
and he had gained friends, he began to execute those projects of
ambition which he had long formed. The earldom of Northumberland
having reverted to the crown, Warwick aspired to the extinct title and
the estates, and procured for himself a grant of the same, with the
title of duke. But there still re