the only effective obstacle to
his future greatness. Surrey's talk of his royal blood, the Duke's
quartering of the royal arms to mark his Plantagenet descent, and some
secret interviews with the French ambassador, were adroitly used to wake
Henry's jealousy of the dangers which might beset the throne of his
child. Norfolk and his son were alike committed to the Tower at the
close of 1546. A month later Surrey was condemned and sent to the block,
and his father was only saved by the sudden death of Henry the Eighth in
January, 1547.

[Sidenote: Hertford made Protector.]

By an Act passed in the Parliament of 1544 it had been provided that the
crown should pass to Henry's son Edward, and on Edward's death without
issue to his sister Mary. Should Mary prove childless it was to go to
Elizabeth, the child of Anne Boleyn. Beyond this point the Houses would
make no provision, but power was given to the king to make further
dispositions by will. At his death it was found that Henry had passed
over the line of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and named as next in
the succession to Elizabeth the daughters of his younger sister Mary by
her marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. As Edward was but
nine years old Henry had appointed a carefully-balanced Council of
Regency; but the will fell into Hertford's keeping, and when the list of
regents was at last disclosed Gardiner, who had till now been the
leading minister, was declared to have been excluded from the number of
executors. Whether the exclusion was Henry's act or the act of the men
who used his name, the absence of the bishop with the imprisonment of
Norfolk threw the balance of power on the side of the "new men" who were
represented by Hertford and Lisle. Their chief opponent, the Chancellor
Wriothesley, struggled in vain against their next step towards
supremacy, the modification of Henry's will by the nomination of
Hertford as Protector of the realm and governor of Edward's person.
Alleged directions from the dying king served as pretexts for the
elevation of the whole party to higher rank in the state. It was to
repair "the decay of the old English nobility" that Hertford raised
himself to the dukedom of Somerset and his brother to the barony of
Seymour, the queen's brother Lord Parr to the marquisate of Northampton,
Lisle to the earldom of Warwick, Russell to that of Bedford, Wriothesley
to that of Southampton. Ten of their partizans became barons, and as the