he following terms:--

[7] The Duchess of Suffolk, and the Countess of Cumberland,
daughter of Charles Brandon and Mary, Queen Dowager of
France.

[8] Burnet, Hist. Ref. vol. i. p. 565.

'As our most dear uncle Edward, Duke of Somerset, by the advice
of the Lords, we have named ... to be governor of our person and
protector of our realm ... during our minority, hath no such
place appropriated and appointed to him in our High Court of
Parliament, as is convenient and necessary, as well as in
proximity of blood unto us, being our uncle ... as well as for
the better maintaining and conducting of our affairs. We have,
therefore, as well by the consent of our said uncle, as by the
advice of other the Lords and the rest of the Privy Council,
willed, ordained, and appointed, that our said uncle shall sit
alone, and be placed at all times ... in our said Court of
Parliament, upon the bench or stole standing next our seat royal,
in our Parliament Chamber.... And further, that he do enjoy all
such other privileges, pre-eminences, &c. &c. _The statute
concerning the placing of the Lords in the Parliament Chamber and
other assemblies of council, made in the thirty-first year of our
most dear father, of famous memory, King Henry VIII.;
notwithstanding_.'[9]

[9] Rymer 15.--Collins' Peerage.

This instrument must, under the circumstances, be taken as the
act of Somerset himself; and it is inconceivable that he should
have had the audacity to attempt in his own behalf, that for
which the plenitude of Henry VIII.'s power had been deemed
insufficient, or to have perpetrated in the name of a minor king,
a direct and useless violation of a recent statute--more
especially when the same object might have been as easily
accomplished by the authority of Parliament, where the
Protector's popularity would have ensured a ready compliance with
his wishes. This view of the case receives confirmation from the
total absence of any allusion to this grant in the charges which
were soon afterwards urged against him--everything that malice
could devise was raked together for the purpose of swelling the
articles of impeachment; but neither when he was degraded from
the Protectorate, nor afterwards when he was deprived of life,
was any accusation brought against him, tending to show that
these letters patent were considered illegal or unconstitutional.
Nearly a century later, Lord Coke lays it down that no Ac