nd Ridley. He always
viewed it with horror; and when he fell into a sickly condition, after
having been very ill, first of the measles and then of the small-pox, he
was greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and she, the next
heir to the throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set
up again.

This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was not slow to encourage:
for, if the Princess Mary came to the throne, he, who had taken part with
the Protestants, was sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk
was descended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if she resigned what
little or no right she had, in favour of her daughter LADY JANE GREY,
that would be the succession to promote the Duke's greatness; because
LORD GUILFORD DUDLEY, one of his sons, was, at this very time, newly
married to her. So, he worked upon the King's fears, and persuaded him
to set aside both the Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and
assert his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly the young King
handed to the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over by
himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring
them to have his will made out according to law. They were much against
it at first, and told the King so; but the Duke of Northumberland--being
so violent about it that the lawyers even expected him to beat them, and
hotly declaring that, stripped to his shirt, he would fight any man in
such a quarrel--they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated;
pleading that he had sworn to maintain the succession of the Crown to the
Princess Mary; but, he was a weak man in his resolutions, and afterwards
signed the document with the rest of the council.

It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now sinking in a rapid
decline; and, by way of making him better, they handed him over to a
woman-doctor who pretended to be able to cure it. He speedily got worse.
On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand five hundred and fifty-
three, he died, very peaceably and piously, praying God, with his last
breath, to protect the reformed religion.

This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh of
his reign. It is difficult to judge what the character of one so young
might afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling
nobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had
nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition