of its most important provisions was necessarily to be held
binding in all the rest. Even admitting this, the duchess of Suffolk
herself stood before her daughter in order of succession; but a
renunciation obtained from this lady by the authority of Northumberland,
not only of her own title but of that of any future son who might be
born to her, was supposed to obviate this objection.

The right of the king, even if he had attained the age of majority, to
dispose of the crown by will without the concurrence of parliament, was
absolutely denied by the first law authorities: but the power and
violence of Northumberland overruled all objections, and in the end the
new settlement received the signature of all the privy council, and the
whole bench of judges, with the exception of justice Hales, and perhaps
of Cecil, then secretary of state, who afterwards affirmed that he put
his name to this instrument only as a witness to the signature of the
king. Cranmer resisted for some time, but was at length won to
compliance by the tears and entreaties of Edward.

Notwithstanding this general concurrence, it is probable that very few
of the council either expected or desired that this act should be
sanctioned by the acquiescence of the nation: they signed it merely as a
protection from the present effects of the anger of Northumberland, whom
most of them hated as well as feared; each privately hoping that he
should find opportunity to disavow the act of the body in time to obtain
the forgiveness of Mary, should her cause be found finally to prevail.
The selfish meanness and political profligacy of such a conduct it is
needless to stigmatize; but this was not the age of public virtue in
England.

A just detestation of the character of Northumberland had rendered very
prevalent an idea, that the constitution of the king was undermined by
slow poisons of his administering; and it was significantly remarked,
that his health had begun to decline from the period of lord Robert
Dudley's being placed about him as gentleman of the bed-chamber.
Nothing, however, could be more destitute both of truth and probability
than such a suspicion. Besides the satisfactory evidence that Edward's
disease was a pulmonary consumption, such as no poison could produce, it
has been well remarked, that if Northumberland were a sound politician,
there could be no man in England more sincerely desirous, for his own
sake, of the continuance of the life and rei