did not live to complete.

The splendid French embassy which arrived in England during the year
1550 to make arrangements respecting the dower of the princess, and to
confer on her intended spouse the order of St. Michael, was received
with high honors, but found the court-festivities damped by a visitation
of that strange and terrific malady the sweating sickness.

This pestilence, first brought into the island by the foreign
mercenaries who composed the army of the earl of Richmond, afterwards
Henry VII., now made its appearance for the fourth and last time in our
annals. It seized principally, it is said, on males, on such as were in
the prime of their age, and rather on the higher than the lower classes:
within the space of twenty-four hours the fate of the sufferer was
decided for life or death. Its ravages were prodigious; and the general
consternation was augmented by a superstitious idea which went forth,
that Englishmen alone, were the destined victims of this mysterious
minister of fate, which tracked their steps, with the malice and
sagacity of an evil spirit, into every distant country of the earth
whither they might have wandered, whilst it left unassailed all
foreigners in their own.

Two of the king's servants died of this disease, and he in consequence
removed to Hampton Court in haste and with very few attendants. The duke
of Suffolk and his brother, students at Cambridge, were seized with it
at the same time, sleeping in the same bed, and expired within two hours
of each other. They were the children of Charles Brandon by his last
wife, who was in her own right baroness Willoughby of Eresby. This lady
had already made herself conspicuous by that earnest profession of the
protestant faith for which, in the reign of Mary, she underwent many
perils and a long exile. She was a munificent patroness of the learned
and zealous divines of her own persuasion, whether natives or
foreigners; and the untimely loss of these illustrious youths, who seem
to have inherited both her religious principles and her love of letters,
was publicly bewailed by the principal members of the university.

But by the earl of Warwick the melancholy event was rendered doubly
conducive to the purposes of his ambition. In the first place it enabled
him to bind to his interests the marquis of Dorset married to the
half-sister of the young duke of Suffolk, by procuring a renewal of the
ducal title in his behalf, and next authorized h