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 endeavouring to procure his release, and in September, 1550, he had been sworn one of the two Secretaries of State; a year later (October 4, 1551) he occurs among the list of Warwick's supporters marked out for promotion. Warwick himself was created Duke of Northumberland; Grey, Marquis of Dorset, became Duke of Suffolk; Wiltshire Marquis of Winchester; Herbert Earl of Pembroke; while knighthoods were bestowed on Cecil, Sidney (Warwick's son-in-law), Henry Dudley (his kinsman), and Henry Neville. On the 16th Somerset and his friends, including Lord Grey de Wilton, the Earl of Arundel, and a dozen others, were arrested and sent to the Tower; Paget had been sequestered a fortnight earlier, to get him out of the way.

The real cause and occasion of this sudden coup (Tetat are still obscure. It is probable that foreign affairs had more to do with the matter than appears on the surface. The Constable of France, when informed of it, suggested that Charles V and the Princess Mary were probably at Somerset's back, and offered to send French troops to Northumberland's aid; it is quite as likely that Henry II was at the bottom of Northumberland's action. Somerset had, since the days when he served in the Emperor's suite, been an imperialist; and Charles V, who still professed a personal friendship for him, would have welcomed his return to power in place of the Francophil administration, which had just (June, 1551) put the seal on its foreign policy by negotiating a marriage between Edward VI and Henry II's daughter, Elizabeth. The dispute with the Emperor concerning the treatment of the Princess Mary was at its height; and it is possible that plot and counterplot were in essence a struggle between French and Imperial influence in England. In any case the stories told to the young King and published abroad were obviously false; Edward was informed that his uncle had plotted the murder of Northumberland, Northampton, and Pembroke, the seizure of the Crown and other measures against himself, to which the young King's knowledge of the fate of Edward V would give a sinister interpretation; the people of London were informed that he meant to destroy the city.

The plot was said to have been hatched in April, 1551; but the first hint of its existence was conveyed to the government in a private conversation between Northumberland and Sir Thomas Palmer on October 4, long after the conspiracy, if it ever was real, had been abandoned. Palmer, who was one of the accomplices, was nevertheless left at liberty for a fortnight; he was never put upon his trial, and, when Somerset was finally disposed of, he became Northumberland's right-hand man; finally, he confessed before his death that his accusation had been invented at Northumberland's instigation. The Earl of Arundel, who, according to Northumberland's theory, had been the principal accomplice in Somerset's felony, was subsequently readmitted to the Council, became Lord Steward of the Household to Mary and to Elizabeth, and