d almost
certainly have forced on a religious strife as bitter and disastrous as
the strife which broke the strength of Germany and France. From this
calamity the country was saved by his waning health. Edward was now
fifteen, but in the opening of 1553 the signs of coming death became too
clear for Northumberland and his fellows to mistake them. By the Statute
of the Succession the death of the young king would bring Mary to the
throne; and as Mary was known to have refused acceptance of all changes
in her father's system, and was looked on as anxious only to restore it,
her accession became a subject of national hope. But to Northumberland
and his fellows her succession was fatal. They had personally outraged
Mary by their attempts to force her into compliance with their system.
Her first act would be to free Norfolk and the bishops whom they held
prisoners in the Tower, and to set these bitter enemies in power. With
ruin before them the Protestant lords were ready for a fresh revolution;
and the bigotry of the young king fell in with their plans.

[Sidenote: Edward's Will.]

In his zeal for "the religion," and in his absolute faith in his royal
autocracy, Edward was ready to override will and statute and to set
Mary's rights aside. In such a case the crown fell legally to Elizabeth,
the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who had been placed by the Act next in
succession to Mary, and whose training under Catharine Parr and the
Seymours gave good hopes of her Protestant sympathies. The cause of
Elizabeth would have united the whole of the "new men" in its defence,
and might have proved a formidable difficulty in Mary's way. But for the
maintenance of his personal power Northumberland could as little count
on Elizabeth as on Mary; and in Edward's death the Duke saw a chance of
raising, if not himself, at any rate his own blood to the throne. He
persuaded the young king that he possessed as great a right as his
father to settle the succession of the Crown by will. Henry had passed
by the children of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and had placed next
to Elizabeth in the succession the children of his younger sister Mary,
the wife of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. Frances, Mary's child
by this marriage, was still living, the mother of three daughters by her
marriage with Grey, Lord Dorset, a hot partizan of the religious
changes, who had been raised under the Protectorate to the Dukedom of
Suffolk. Frances was a woman of t