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 by the Catholic lords and Somerset's party were distributed among Warwick's friends. St John became Earl of Wiltshire and Lord High Treasurer; Warwick succeeded him as Lord Great Master of the Household and President of the Council; and Northampton succeeded Warwick as Great Chamberlain of England. Arundel's office of Chamberlain of the Household was conferred on Wentworth, and Paget's Comptrollership on Wingfield; Russell was created Earl of Bedford, and Herbert was made President of the Council of Wales.

The new government now felt firm in the saddle, and it proceeded to turn its attention to foreign affairs. His failure abroad had been the chief ostensible reason for Somerset's downfall; but his successors had done nothing to redeem their implied promise of amendment. In spite of the fact that the agrarian insurrections-the immediate cause of the Protector's reverses in France and Scotland-had been suppressed, and large bodies of troops thus set free for service elsewhere, not a place had been recaptured in France, and in Scotland nearly all the English strongholds fell during the winter into the enemy's hands. The Council preferred peace to an attempt to retrieve their fortunes by war; and early in 1550 Warwick made secret overtures to Henry II. The French pushed their advantage to the uttermost; and the peace concluded in March was the most ignominious treaty signed by England during the century.

Boulogne, which was to have been restored four years later for 800, 000 crowns, was surrendered for half that sum. All English strongholds in Scotland were to be given up without compensation; England bound itself to make no war on that country unless fresh grounds of offence were given, and condoned the marriage of Mary to the Dauphin of France. The net result was the abandonment of the whole Tudor policy towards Scotland, the destruction of English influence across the Border, and the establishment of French control in Edinburgh. Henry II began to speak of himself as King of Scotland; it was as much subject to him, he said, as France itself; and he boasted that by this peace he had now added to these two realms a third, namely England, of whose King, subjects, and resources he had such absolute disposal that the three might be reckoned as one kingdom of which he was King. To make himself yet more secure, he began a policy of active, though secret, intervention in Ireland. Had he succeeded in this, he would really have held England in the hollow of his hand; had a son been born to Mary Stewart and Francis II, England might even have become a French province. Fortunately, the accession of Mary Tudor broke the French ring which girt England round about; but it was certainly not Warwick's merit that England was delivered from perhaps the most pressing foreign danger with which she was ever threatened.

While, however, the policy which Warwick adopted involved a reversal of the time-honoured Burgundian alliance and a criminal