Catherine, and the eldest
son of his able but mean-spirited and time-serving associate, the earl
of Pembroke; and a third between his own daughter Catherine and lord
Hastings, son of the earl of Huntingdon by the eldest daughter and
co-heir of Henry Pole lord Montacute; in whom the claims of the line of
Clarence now vested.

These nuptials were all celebrated on one day, and with an ostentation
of magnificence and festivity which the people exclaimed against as
highly indecorous in the present dangerous state of the king's health.
But it was not on _their_ good will that Northumberland founded his
hopes, and their clamors were braved or disregarded.

His next measure was to prevail upon the dying king to dispose of the
crown by will in favor of the lady Jane. The animosity against his
sister Mary, to which their equal bigotry in opposite modes of faith had
given birth in the mind of Edward, would naturally induce him to lend a
willing ear to such specious arguments as might be produced in
justification of her exclusion: but that he could be brought with equal
facility to disinherit also Elizabeth, a sister whom he loved, a
princess judged in all respects worthy of a crown, and one with whose
religious profession he had every reason to be perfectly satisfied,
appears an indication of a character equally cold and feeble. Much
allowance, however, may be made for the extreme youth of Edward; the
weakness of his sinking frame; his affection for the pious and amiable
Jane, his near relation and the frequent companion of his childhood; and
above all, for the importunities, the artifices, of the practised
intriguers by whom his dying couch was surrounded.

The partisans of Northumberland did not fail to urge, that if one of the
princesses were set aside on account of the nullification of her
mother's marriage, the same ground of exclusion was valid against the
other. If, on the contrary, the testamentary dispositions of the late
king were to be adhered to, the lady Mary must necessarily precede her
sister, and the cause of religious reformation was lost, perhaps for
ever.

With regard to the other claimants who might still be interposed between
Jane and the English throne, it was pretended that the Scottish branch
of the royal family was put out of the question by that clause of
Henry's will which placed the Suffolk line next in order to his own
immediate descendants; as if an instrument which was set aside as to
several