set once entertained the idea of setting the masses in movement
on his own behalf: one day he collected numerous bands of people at
Hampton Court, under cover of summoning them to defend the King, by
whose side his enemies wished to set up a regency. But this pretext
had little foundation, it was only himself whom his rivals would no
longer see at the head of affairs: after a short fluctuation in the
relations between the main personages he was forced to submit. He
saved his life for that time: after an interval he was released from
prison and again entered the Privy Council: then he once more made an
attempt to recover the supreme power by help of the people, but thus
drew his fate on himself. The masses who regarded him as their
champion showed him loud and heartfelt sympathy at his execution.

On Somerset's first fall it was said that the Emperor Charles V had a
share in bringing it about, and this is very conceivable; for what
result could be more displeasing to this sovereign than that
Protestantism, which he was putting down in Germany, should have
gained at the same moment a strong position in England: it is certain
that the change of administration was greeted with joy by the court at
Brussels.[149]

But it brought the Emperor no advantage. At the moment the new
government assumed a hostile attitude towards France: but soon
afterwards the Earl of Warwick, who now took the lead of affairs as
Duke of Northumberland, found himself driven to the necessity of
making a peace with that power, by which Boulogne was given up and
Scotland abandoned to French influence. One article of the treaty
contains indirectly a renunciation of the proposed marriage between
the King of England and the Queen of Scotland. And this treaty was
greatly to the Emperor's disadvantage, since it now set the French
free to renew the hostility against him which had been broken off some
years before by an agreement all in his favour. They allied themselves
for this purpose with the German princes who found the Emperor's yoke
intolerable. These princes had even applied to the English government:
and Edward would personally have been much inclined to lend an ear to
their proposals. If the fear of being involved in war with the Emperor
on this account withheld him from open sympathy, yet it is certain
that his general political attitude essentially contributed to enable
them to take up arms and break the Emperor's ascendancy.

Among the determini