he gave audience alone. He erected
in his house a Court of Requests,[147] which encroached not a little
on the business of Chancery. The palace in the Strand, which still
bears his name, was to be a memorial of his power; not merely houses
and gardens, but also churches which occupied the ground, or from
which he wished to collect his building materials, were destroyed with
reckless arbitrary power. Great historical associations are
indissolubly linked with this house. For it was Somerset after all,
who through personal zeal opened a free path for the Protestant
tendency which had originated under Henry VIII but had been repressed,
and gave the English government a Protestant character. He connected
with this not merely the Union of Scotland and England, but a yet
further idea of great importance for England itself. He wished to free
the change of religion from the antipathy of the peasantry which was
at that time so prominent. In the above-mentioned dissensions he took
open part for the demands of the commons: he condemned the progress of
the enclosures and gave his opinion that the people could not be
blamed so heavily for their rebellion, as their choice lay only
between death by hunger and insurrection. It seemed as though he
wished in the next Parliament by means of his influence to carry
through a legal measure in favour of the commons.

But by this he necessarily awakened the ill will of the aristocracy.
He was charged with having instigated the troubles themselves by
proclamations which he issued in opposition to the Privy Council; and
with not merely having done nothing to suppress them but with having
on the contrary supported the ringleaders and taken them under his
protection.[148] No doubt this was the reason why the campaign against
the rebels in Norfolk was not entrusted to him, as he wished, but
(after some vacillation) to his rival, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick.
The victory gained by him, with the active sympathy of the nobility,
which was defending its own interests, was a defeat for Somerset. Even
those who did not believe that he had any personal share in the
movement, nevertheless reproached him with having allowed conditions
to be prescribed to himself and his government by the people; the
common man would be King. Financial difficulties arising from an
alteration in the coinage, and ill success in the war against France,
contributed to give his opponents the ascendancy in the Privy Council.
Somer