and steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood,
as a mark of their affection. He had, indeed,
been capable of many good acts, and one of
them was discovered after he was no more.
The Bishop of Durham, a very good man,
had been informed against to the Council
when the Duke was in power, as having
answered a treacherous letter proposing a
rebellion against the reformed religion. As
the answer could not be found, he could not
be declared guilty; but it was now discovered,
hidden by the Duke himself among some
private papers, in his regard for that good man.
The Bishop lost his office, and was deprived
of his possessions.

It is not very pleasant to know that while
his uncle lay in prison under sentence of
death, the young King was being vastly
entertained by plays, and dances, and sham
fights; but there is no doubt of it, for he kept
a journal himself. It is pleasanter to know that
not a single Roman Catholic was burnt in this
reign for holding that religion, though two
wretched victims suffered for heresy. One,
a woman named JOAN BOCHER, for professing
some opinions that even she could
only explain in unintelligible jargon. The
other, a Dutchman, named VON PARIS, who
practised as a surgeon in London. Edward
was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to
sign the warrant for the woman's execution:
shedding tears before he did so, and telling
Cranmer, who urged him to it (though Cranmer
really would have spared the woman at
first, but for her own determined obstinacy)
that the guilt was not his, but that of the
man who so strongly urged the dreadful act.
We shall see too soon, whether the time ever
came when Cranmer is likely to have
remembered this with sorrow and remorse.

Cranmer and RIDLEY (at first Bishop of
Rochester, and afterwards Bishop of London)
were the most powerful of the clergy of this
reign. Others were imprisoned and deprived
of their property for still adhering to the
unreformed religion; the most important among
whom were GARDINER, Bishop of Winchester,
HEATH, Bishop of Worcester, DAY, Bishop of
Chichester, and BONNER, that Bishop of
London who was superseded by Ridley. The
Princess Mary, who inherited her mother's
gloomy temper, and hated the reformed
religion as connected with her mother's
wrongs and sorrows—she knew nothing else
about it, always refusing to read a single book
in which it was truly described—held by the
unreformed religion too; and was the only
person in the kingdom for whom the old
Mass was allowed to be performed; nor
would the young King have made that
exception even in her favour; but for the strong
persuasions of Cranmer and Ridley. He
always viewed it with horror; and when he
fell into a sickly condition, after having been
very ill, first of the measles and then of the
small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind
to think that if he died and she the next heir
to the throne succeeded, the Roman Catholic
religion would be set up again.

This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland
was not slow to encourage: for, if the
Princess Mary came to the throne, he who
had taken part with the Protestants was sure
to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolk
was descended from King Henry the
Seventh, and if she resigned what little or no
right she had, in favour of her daughter,
LADY JANE GREY, that would be the succession
to promote the Duke's greatness; because
LORD GUILFORD DUDLEY, one of his sons,
was, at this very time, newly married to her.
So, he worked upon the King's fears, and
persuaded him to set aside both the Princess
Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert
his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly
the young King handed to the Crown
lawyers a writing signed half-a-dozen times
over by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to
succeed to the Crown, and requiring them to
have his will made out according to law. They
were much against it at first and told the
King so; but the Duke of Northumberland
being so violent about it that the lawyers even
expected him to beat them, and hotly
declaring that stripped to his shirt he-would
fight any man in such a quarrel, they
yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated,
pleading that he had sworn to maintain the
succession of the Crown to the Princess Mary
but, he was a weak man in his resolutions,
and soon signed the document with the rest
of the council.

It was completed none too soon, for Edward
was now sinking in a rapid decline, and by
way of making him better, they handed him
over to a woman-doctor who pretended to be
able to cure it. He soon got worse. On
the sixth of July, in the year one thousand
five hundred and fifty-three, he died, very
peaceably and piously; praying God, with
his last breath, to protect the reformed
religion.

This King died in the sixteenth year of his
age, and in the seventh of his reign. It is
difficult to judge what the character of one so
young might afterwards have become, among
so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles.
But, he was an amiable boy, of very good
abilities, and had nothing coarse or cruel
or brutal in his disposition—which in the
son of such a father is rather surprising.

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