by
scheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, for
this least bloody of all English ministers in that century, had
executed his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious man
rightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.

Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the class of mere
adventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and the
worst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only be
deposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiated
himself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council.
Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name of
royalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At his
command Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote:
Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis of
Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, again
using the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.

The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward lived
and was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visibly
declining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alter
the succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick had
been a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's will
appointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1)
Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who had
married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there had
been born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married Henry
Grey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriage
were three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, was
picked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to
{317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was now
appealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter the
succession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but his
lukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant Lady
Jane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession to
the crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting to
do this.

[1] See A. L. Lowell: _Public Opinion and Popular Government_, 1914.

SECTION 3. THE CATHOLIC REACTION UNDER MARY. 1553-58

[Sidenote: Proclamation of Queen Jane, July 10, 1