wasting his treasure, engaging him in much debt, embasing
the coin, and giving occasion for a most terrible rebellion."[*]

The debts of the crown were at this time considerable. The king
had received from France four hundred thousand crowns on delivering
Boulogne; he had reaped profit from the sale of some chantry lands; the
churches had been spoiled of all their plate and rich ornaments, which,
by a decree of council, without any pretence of law or equity, had been
converted to the king's use: [**] yet such had been the rapacity of the
courtiers, that the crown owed about three hundred thousand pounds: and
great dilapidations were at the same time made of the royal demesnes.
The young prince showed, among other virtues, a disposition to
frugality, which, had he lived, would soon have retrieved these losses;
but as his health was declining very fast, the present emptiness of the
exchequer was a sensible obstacle to the execution of those projects
which the ambition of Northumberland had founded on the prospect of
Edward's approaching end.

* 7 Edward VI. cap. 12., Heylin, p. 95, 132.

** Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii. p. 344.

That nobleman represented to the prince, whom youth and an infirm state
of health made susceptible of any impression, that his two sisters, Mary
and Elizabeth, had both of them been declared illegitimate by act of
parliament; and though Henry by his will had restored them to a place
in the succession, the nation would never submit to see the throne of
England filled by a bastard: that they were the king's sisters by the
half blood only; and even if they were legitimate, could not enjoy
the crown as his heirs and successors: that the queen of Scots stood
excluded by the late king's will; and being an alien, had lost by law
all right of inheriting; not to mention that, as she was betrothed to
the dauphin, she would, by her succession, render England, as she
had already done Scotland, a province to France: that the certain
consequence of his sister Mary's succession, or that of the queen of
Scots was the abolition of the Protestant religion, and the repeal of
the laws enacted in favor of the reformation, and the reestabishment of
the usurpation and idolatry of the church of Rome, that, fortunately for
England, the same order of succession which justice required, was also
the most conformable to public interest; and there was not on any
side any just ground for doubt or deli