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being no better in a manner (by reason of the late act of parliament) "than tenant at will of their great landlords. And upon this he sets "his workmen on the tenth of April, takes it all down, converts the stone, timber, lead and iron, to the use of his intended palace, and "leaves the bones of the dead bodies to be buried in the fields in un"hallowed ground. But all this not sufficing to complete the work, "the steeple, and most parts of the church of St. John of Jerusalem, "not far from Smithfield, most beautifully built not long before by "Dockwray, a late prior thereof, was blown up with gunpowder, and "all the stone thereof imployed to that purpose also. Such was the ground, and such were the materials of the duke's new palace, called "Somerset-house; which either he lived not to finish, or else it must ❝ be very strange, that having pulled down two churches, two chapels, "and three episcopal houses, (each of which may be probably supposed, to have had their oratories) to find materials for this fabric, there "should be no room purposely erected for religious offices."

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This sacrilegious destruction of so many sacred edifices was the prelude to the protector's fall. From this time he met with nothing but disasters and disquietude. The death of his brother was looked upon as a great blot in his character. While he was building his costly palace the exchequer was empty, and the people rose in rebellion. Next followed the misfortunes in Scotland and the loss of Boulogne, which fell into the hands of the French; all which circumstances conjoined raised up a strong party against him in the cabinet, headed by Dudley earl of Warwick, afterwards made duke of Northumberland, and the lord protector found himself a prisoner in the Tower, under the accusation of high crimes and misdemeanours.

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We must here notice some proceedings in the parliament which met after the arrest of Somerset. An act was passed, the purport of which was to make it felony for any persons to assemble to the number of twelve or more for the purpose of abating the rents of farms or the price of provisions, or of destroying houses or parks, or of asserting a right to ways or commons, if they continued together one hour after they had been warned to disperse by proclamation from a magistrate, sheriff or bailiff; and raising the offence to high treason, when the object of the meeting should be to alter the laws, or to kill or imprison any member of the king's council. Another act was passed, subjecting every individual, either clerk or layman, who should keep in his possession any book containing any portion of the ancient service of the church, to a fine for the first and second offence, and to imprisonment during the king's pleasure for the third. A proclamation had been issued previous to the passing of this act, ordering all such books to be delivered up, that they might be burned or destroyed. Thus it will be › seen that the era which is called the dawn of liberty was in fact the birth of slavery in this formerly free and happy country; and that the rejection of the pope's spiritual authority led to the tyranny of an oligarchical faction far more oppressive than what had ever been felt even under the most odious of the former sovereigns of the country. From this period to the present day, laws have been passed infringing on the rights of the people, and the six acts which were passed in 1819, to counteract the proceedings of the reformers of that day remind us

strongly of the laws passed in Edward's parliament. It was never dreamed of by our Catholic legislators to make it high treason to kill or imprison a member of the king's council; and it was reserved for our own days to pass a law to banish a man for using words that may be construed into a tendency to bring the members of the king's council into contempt.

But we must leave this digression and return to Somerset. Though his behaviour was of the most haughty nature when in the plenitude of his power, in his fall he was as abject and crawling. He was told, if he hoped for pardon he must acknowledge his guilt, The condition, at which the noble mind would have spurned, was accepted with gratitude. He confessed his presumption on his knees, subscribed to the charges produced against him, and implored mercy. Life was promised him on condition that he should forfeit all his offices, his goods and chattels. A bill of pains and penalties was introduced, and, after some opposition, was passed and received the royal assent. In the mean time Somerset plucked up a little courage and remonstrated against the severity of his punishment; the council reprimanded him, and drew from him another and still more degrading submission. He was then pardoned and set at liberty, and his goods and lands were restored to him by the king's favour.

The downfall of Somerset was the prelude to the advancement and aggrandizement of his enemies. The earl of Warwick was now the greatest man at court, and highest in honours. He was preferred to the office of Lord Great Master, and lord high admiral; a sycophant of his, William lord St. John, was made earl of Wiltshire, and others of his creatures were placed in office or raised in title. But titles without estates were considered in those days, as in these, but empty honours. Now, when a poor peer is made, he is furnished, with a pension out of the taxes of the labouring people; then they cast their eyes on the property of the church, out of which the poor, the sick, and the lame were supported. To shew how the poor were robbed in those days, s, and how some of the present noble families obtained their riches, we will give the following extract from Dr. Heylin's History of the Reformation, "Furnished with offices and honours," says the doctor, "it is to be pre"sumed, that they would find some way to provide themselves of suffi"cient means to maintain their dignities. The lord Wentworth, being "a younger branch of the Wentworths of Yorkshire, had brought some estate with him to the court; though not enough to keep him: in equipage, with so great a title. The want whereof was supplied. "in part, by the office of lord chamberlain, now conferred upon him; "but more by the goodly manors of Stebuneth (commonly called Step"ney) and Hackney, bestowed upon him by the king, in consideration "of the good and faithful services before performed. For so it happened, that the dean and chapter of St. Paul's laying at the mercy of "the times, as before was said, conveyed over to the king the said two manors, on the twelfth day after Christmas now last past, with all "the members and appurtenances thereunto belonging. Of which, the "last named was valued at the yearly rent of 411. 9s. 4d. The other "at 140l. 8s. 11d. ob. And, being thus vested in the king, they were by letters patents, being dated the sixteenth of April then next follow

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ing, (1550) transferred upon the said lord Wentworth. By means "whereof he was possessed of a goodly territory, extending on the "Thames from St. Katharine's, near the Tower of London, to the bor"ders of Essex, near Blackwall; from thence along the river Lea, to "Stratford le Bow: and fetching a great compass on that side of the "city, contains in all no fewer than six and twenty townships, streets, od hamlets; besides such rows of building, as have since been added in n these latter times. The like provision was made by the new lord Paget, a Londoner by birth, but by good fortune mixed with merit, "preferred by degrees, to one of the principal secretaries to the late king Henry; by whom he was employed in many embassies, and ne"gociations. Being thus raised, and able to set up for himself, he had his share in the division of the lands of chantry, free chapels, &c, "and got into his hands the episcopal house belonging to the bishop "of Exeter, by him enlarged and beautified, and called Paget's house; sold afterwards to Robert earl of Leicester: from whom it came to the late earls of Essex, and from them took the name of Essex house, by which it is now best known. But being a great house is not able to keep itself; 1 played his game so well, that he got into his posression the manor of Beaudesart (of which he was created baron) and many other fair estates in the county of Stafford, belonging partly to the bishop, and partly to the dean and chapter of Lichfield neither of which was able to contend with so great a courtier, who held the see, and had the ear of the protector, and the king's to boot. What other **Course he took to improve his fortunes, we shall see hereafter, when "We come to the last part of the tragedy of the duke of Somerset." We will here remind the reader that the modern editors, on conclud first book of Fox's work, make some" remarks on the Vengeance of God towards the persecutors of the Christians," in which they

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́end, as a punishment for their eruelty, and that the Jews, for their obstinacy and wickedness, were annihilated as a nation, and became the scorn and reproach of every people on the earth. (See our first volume of this work p. 117, &c.) With equal force do these observations apply to the principal actors in the dismal and destructive tragedy of England's Reformation. Of the first promoter of the sacrilegious drama, Henry VIII. we have before spoken. From the time he rejected the spiritual authority of the pope, under which England was free in her domestic affairs and renowned among the nations abroad, the kingdom became a prey to faction and misery, and the life of Harry was one continued scene of suspicion, caprice, cruelty, and injustice. He spared neither woman in his lust nor man in his anger; his wives were sent to the block with as little ceremony as cattle are sent to the slaughter-house; his chief motive for seeking a divorce from his virtuous queen Catharine was that he might have a male heir to succeed him, and secure the crown of England to his family, but in this he was doomed to disappointment. He had a son, it is true, but that son succeeded him when he was incapable of ruling himself, and was therefore a tool in the hands of the most impious and unprincipled men that ever cursed an unfortunate country. We have seen that this unhappy youth was constrained to sign the death warrant of a fanatical old woman for heresy at the insti

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gation of Tom Cranmer, who afterwards met the same fate himself; we have seen the same Cranmer signing, in conjunction with the brother of the culprit, the sentence of death against an uncle of the king, who had to sign the death warrant himself, and we have now to shew the untimely fate of this unnatural brother himself, after having escaped for a short period, through the basest and most servile submission to the dictation of his enemies. Before, however, this act of the tragedy was performed, Dr. Heylin says there were several presages occurred in the year 1551, which were looked upon as prognosticating the concussions which afterwards happened in the court, which led to the fall of Somerset and several other noted performers, and ended in the death of the king. The first of these prognostics was a terrible earthquake which happened on the 25th of May at Croydon, and some villages adjoining in Surrey; another was the appearance of six dolphins in the Thames, three of which were taken at Queenborough, and three near Greenwich; but the most extraordinary and calamitous scourge was the breaking out of a disease called the Sweating Sickness; "appearing "first," writes Dr. Heylin," at Shrewsbury on the 15th of April, and, " after spreading by degrees over all the kingdom, ending its progress "in the north, about the beginning of October. Described by a very "learned man to be a new, strange, and violent disease; wherewith if any man were attacked, he died or escaped within nine hours, often at most; if he slept (as most men desired to do) he died within six "hours; if he took cold, he died in three. It was observed to rage "chiefly amongst men of strongest constitution and years: few aged "men or women, or young children, being either subject to it, or dying "of it. Of which last sort, those of most eminent rank were two of the sons of Charles Brandon; both dying at Cambridge, both dukes of "Suffolk, (as their father had been before,) but the youngest following " his dead brother so close at the heels, that he only out-lived him long "enough to enjoy that title. And that which was yet most strange of "all, no foreigner, which was then in England, (four hundred French "attending here, in the hottest of it, on that king's ambassadors) did "perish by it. The English being singled out, tainted, and dying of it "in all other countries, without any danger to the natives; called therefore, in most Latin writers, by the name of Sudor Anglicus, or The "English Sweat. First known amongst us in the beginning of the reign "of king Henry the seventh; and then beheld as a presage of that "troublesome and laborious reign which after followed: the king being "for the most part in continual action; and the subjects either sweating " out their blood or treasure. Not then so violent and extreme, as it was at the present; such infinite multitudes being at this day swept away by it, that there died eight hundred in one week in London only." The singularity of this disease being confined exclusively to Englishmen, must carry conviction to the mind of every sensible reader that it was a mark of God's judgment on the nation, for the many impieties and abominable outrages which had been committed by the pretended reformers against his justice and religion.

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While the nation was thus suffering by religious quarrels, fomented by imperious demagogues, and the awful visitations of God's anger, the court was thrown into confusion by a new quarrel between Somerset

and Warwick. The former had recovered somewhat of his influence over the king, and aspired again to the office of protector, which it was, of course, the interest of the latter to prevent. Accordingly a renewal of the previous jealousies and dissensions between these two ambitious men and their partisans took place, and conspiracies and cabals became the order of the day. Each party beset the other with spies and informers, and both were deceived and inflamed by false friends and interested advisers. Warwick, however possessed the advantage over his adversary in the council, and to strengthen his interest a new promotion of titles and places was made in favour of his friends. He w He was himself created duke of Northumberland, the marquess of Dorset was made duke of Suffolk, the earl of Wiltshire marquess of Winchester, sir sir Wm. Herbert, baron of Cardiff and earl of Pembroke, and others had the honour of knighthood conferred upon them. These proceedings alarmed Somerset, and he began to suspect that some designs were in agitation against his person. These suspicions he soon found confirmed, for on the 16th of October, as he was going to court at Westminster, he was arrested with lord Gray and sent to the Tower. The day following his duchess and her favourites, Mr. and Mrs. Crane, sir Thomas Holcroft, sir Michael Stanhope, sir Thomas Arundel,' sir Miles Partridge, with two others of the Seymours, and Hammond, and Newdigate, were committed to the same prison. Soon after they were followed by the lord Paget, the earl of Arundel, and lord Dacres of the north. Preparations were soon made for the trial of the prisoners, and we e must not here forget inscrutable designs of Divine Providence. The late lord protector, with unnatural cruelty, refused his unfortunute brother a trial trial by his peers, was present in the house of lords when the bill of attainder was in progress against him, and signed the order of council for his death, Now, when arraigned himself, among other charges, for attempting the life of Northumberland, under the act just passed, (see page 323) he found Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, his known enemies, among his judges. Dr. Heylin observes, that these "being "parties to the charge, ought in all honesty and honour to have excused "themselves from sitting in judgment on him at the time of his trial.” This is very true, but the same remark will apply to Somerset himself in his conduct towards his brother, and clearly shews that there was neither honesty nor honour in the transactions of those days. Another proof of this may be found in the mode of Seymour's trial. Although he was brought before his judges (twenty-seven peers, with the new marquess of Wiltshire as lord steward) yet he was not confronted with the witnesses: only their depositions were produced against him, which had been taken the day preceding the trial. His judges deliberated some time on their verdict, and at length pronounced him guilty of felony, for which he was sentenced to be hanged, but in consideration of his rank, the sentence was changed to that of beheading. As soon as the sentence was pronounced, this once proud and haughty courtier again fell on his knees, thanked the lords for their impartial conduct during the trial, though he had requested to have the witnesses confronted with him and was denied, asked pardon of Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, whose lives he acknowledged he had sought to have taken, begged them to solicit the king for mercy in his behalf, and re

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