th his conduct, had sent over Hertford to command in his
place; and Surrey was so imprudent as to drop some menacing expressions
against the ministers, on account of this affront which was put upon
him. And as he had refused to marry Hertford's daughter, and even waived
every other proposal of marriage, Henry imagined that he had entertained
views of espousing the lady Mary; and he was instantly determined to
repress, by the most severe expedients, so dangerous an ambition.

Actuated by all these motives, and perhaps influenced by that old
disgust with which the ill conduct of Catharine Howard had inspired him
against her whole family, he gave private orders to arrest Norfolk and
Surrey; and they were on the same day confined in the Tower. Surrey
being a commoner, his trial was the more expeditious; and as to proofs,
neither parliaments nor juries seem ever to have given the least
attention to them in any cause of the crown during this whole reign.

{1547.} He was accused of entertaining in his family some Italians
who were suspected to be spies; a servant of his had paid a visit
to Cardinal Pole in Italy, whence he was suspected of holding a
correspondence with that obnoxious prelate; he had quartered the arms
of Edward the Confessor on his scutcheon, which made him be suspected
of aspiring to the crown, though both he and his ancestors had openly,
during the course of many years, maintained that practice, and the
heralds had even justified it by their authority. These were the crimes
for which a jury, notwithstanding his eloquent and spirited defence,
condemned the earl of Surrey for high treason; and their sentence was
soon after executed upon him.

The innocence of the duke of Norfolk was still, if possible, more
apparent than that of his son; and his services to the crown had been
greater. His duchess, with whom he lived on bad terms, had been so base
as to carry intelligence to his enemies of all she knew against him:
Elizabeth Holland, a mistress of his, had been equally subservient to
the designs of the court; yet with all these advantages, his accusers
discovered no greater crime than his once saying, that the king was
sickly, and could not hold out long; and the kingdom was likely to fall
into disorders, through the diversity of religious opinions. He wrote a
pathetic letter to the king, pleading his past services and protesting
his innocence: soon after, he embraced a more proper expedient for
appeasing Hen