out many menacing expressions, and rashly threatened that,
if he were thwarted in his attempt, he would make this parliament the
blackest that ever sat in England.[**] The council sent for him to
answer for his conduct; but he refused to attend: they then began to
threaten in their turn, and informed him that the king's letter, instead
of availing him any thing to the execution of his views, would be
imputed to him as a criminal enterprise, and be construed as a design to
disturb the government, by forming a separate interest with a child and
minor. They even let fall some menaces of sending him to the Tower for
his temerity; and the admiral, finding himself prevented in his design,
was obliged to submit, and to desire a reconciliation with his brother.

The mild and moderate temper of Somerset made him willing to forget
these enterprises of the admiral; but the ambition of that turbulent
spirit could not be so easily appeased. His spouse, the queen dowager,
died in childbed; but so far from regarding this event as a check to
his aspiring views, he founded on it the scheme of a more extraordinary
elevation. He made his addresses to the lady Elizabeth, then in the
sixteenth year of her age; and that princess, whom even the hurry of
business and the pursuits of ambition could not, in her more advanced
years, disengage entirely from the tender passions, seems to have
listened to the insinuations of a man who possessed every talent proper
to captivate the affections of the fair.[***]

* Haynes, p. 82, 90.

** Haynes, p. 75.

*** Haynes, p. 95, 96, 102, 108.

But as Henry VIII. had excluded his daughters from all hopes of
succession if they married without the consent of his executors, which
Seymour could never hope to obtain, it was concluded that he meant to
effect his purpose by expedients still more rash and more criminal. All
the other measures of the admiral tended to confirm this suspicion. He
continued to attack, by presents, the fidelity of those who had more
immediate access to the king's person: he endeavored to seduce the
young prince into his interest, he found means of holding a private
correspondence with him; he openly decried his brother's administration;
and asserted that, by enlisting Germans and other foreigners he intended
to form a mercenary army, which might endanger the king's authority, and
the liberty of the people: by promises and persuasion he brought over to
his party many of