magnificence, combined to render one of
the principal ornaments of the court, while his political talents and
experience of affairs qualified him to assume a leading station in the
cabinet. The loyalty and prudence of the Fitzalans must have been
conspicuous for ages, since no attainder, during so long a period of
greatness, had stained the honor of the race; and the moderation or
subserviency of the present earl had been shown by his perfect
acquiescence in all the measures of Henry, notwithstanding his private
preference of the ancient faith: to crown his merits, his blood appears
to have been unmingled with that of the Plantagenets. Notwithstanding
all this, the king had thought fit to name him only a counsellor, not an
executor. Arundel deeply felt the injury; and impatience of the
insignificance to which he was thus consigned, joined to his
disapprobation of the measures of the regency with respect to religion,
threw him into intrigues which contributed not a little to the
turbulence of this disastrous period.

It was doubtless the intention of Henry, that the religion of the
country, at least during the minority of his son, should be left
vibrating on the same nice balance between protestantism and popery on
which it had cost him so much pains to fix it; and with a view to this
object he had originally composed the regency with a pretty equal
distribution of power between the adherents of the two communions. But
the suspicion, or disgust, which afterwards caused him to erase the name
of Gardiner from the list, destroyed the equipoise, and rendered the
scale of reformation decidedly preponderant. In vain did Wriothesley, a
man of vigorous talents and aspiring mind, struggle with Hertford for
the highest place in the administration; in vain did Tunstal bishop of
Durham,--no bigot, but a firm papist,--check with all the authority that
he could venture to exert, the bold career of innovation on which he
beheld Cranmer full of eagerness to enter; in vain did the catholics
invoke to their aid the active interference of Dudley; he suffered them
to imagine that his heart was with them, and that he watched an
opportunity to interpose with effect in their behalf, whilst, in fact,
he was only waiting till the fall of one of the Seymours by the hand of
the other should enable him to crush the survivor, and rise to
uncontrolled authority on the ruins of both.

The first attempt of the protestant party in the regency showed t