heir
intentions; its success proved their strength, and silenced for the
present all opposition. It was proposed, and carried by a majority of
the executors, that the earl of Hertford should be declared protector of
the realm, and governor of the king's person; and the new dictator soon
after procured the ratification of this appointment, which overturned
some of the most important clauses of the late king's will, by causing a
patent to be drawn and sanctioned by the two houses which invested him,
during the minority, with all the prerogatives ever assumed by the most
arbitrary of the English sovereigns, and many more than were ever
recognised by the constitution.

As if in compensation for any disrespect shown to the memory of the
deceased monarch by these proceedings, the executors next declared their
intention of fulfilling certain promises made by him in his last
illness, and which death alone had prevented him from carrying into
effect. On this plea, they bestowed upon themselves and their adherents
various titles of honor, and a number of valuable church preferments,
now first conferred upon laymen, the protector himself unblushingly
assuming the title of duke of Somerset, and taking possession of
benefices and impropriations to a vast amount. Viscount Lisle was
created earl of Warwick, and Wriothesley became earl of Southampton;--an
empty dignity, which afforded him little consolation for seeing himself
soon after, on pretence of some irregular proceedings in his office,
stripped of the post of chancellor, deprived of his place amongst the
other executors of the king, who now formed a privy council to the
protector, and consigned to obscurity and insignificance for the short
remnant of his days. Sir Thomas Seymour ought to have been consoled by
the share allotted him in this splendid distribution, for the
mortification of having been named a counsellor only, and not an
executor. He was made lord Seymour of Sudley, and soon after, lord
high-admiral--preferments greatly exceeding any expectations which his
birth or his services to the state could properly authorize. But he
measured his claims by his nearness to the king; he compared these
inferior dignities with the state and power usurped by his brother, and
his arrogant spirit disdained as a meanness the thought of resting
satisfied or appeased. Circumstances soon arose which converted this
general feeling of discontent in the mind of Thomas Seymour into a more