at manhood,
and take the government completely into his own hands, and conduct it
in the sense he had hitherto foreshadowed--not merely carrying out the
Reformation thoroughly at home, but assuming the leadership of the
Protestant world, symptoms appeared in him of the malady to which his
half-brother Richmond had succumbed at an early age. But how then if
the same fate befell him? According to Henry VIII's arrangement Mary
was then to ascend the throne who, through her descent from Queen
Catharine and from an inborn disposition which had become all the more
confirmed by her opposition to her father and brother, represented the
Catholic and Spanish interest. Nothing else could be expected but that
she would employ the whole power of the State in support of her own
views, would, so far as it could possibly be done, bring back the
church to its earlier form, would depress the men who had hitherto
played a great part by the side of the King and subject them to the
opposite faction. But were they quietly to acquiesce in their fate?

The ambition of the Duke of Northumberland associated itself with the
great interests of religion, to prevent the threatening ruin. He
persuaded the young King that it lay in his power to alter his
father's settlement of the succession, as in itself not conformable to
law, neither Mary nor the younger sister Elizabeth being entitled to
the throne, as the two marriages from which they sprang had been
declared illegal, and a bastard could not be made capable of wearing
the English crown by any act of Parliament. Henry VIII had in his
settlement of the succession passed over the descendants of his elder
sister, married in Scotland, as foreigners, but acknowledged those of
the younger, Mary of Suffolk, as the next heirs after his own
children. Mary's elder daughter Frances had married Henry Grey of
Dorset, who had already obtained the title of Suffolk, and had three
daughters, the eldest of whom was Jane Grey. It was to her, whom the
Duke of Northumberland married to one of his sons, that he now
directed the King's attention, and induced him to prefer her to his
sisters. Yet it was not so much to herself in person as to her male
issue that Edward's attention was originally directed. Never yet had a
Queen ruled in England in her own right, and even now there was a wish
to avoid it. Edward arranged that, if he himself died without male
heirs, the male heirs of Lady Frances, and if she too left none,