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 out three years before; but he had been guilty of a more serious offence, for the commission had been issued without a warrant and without consulting his fellow executors. The question was submitted to the judges and law officers of the crown, and they unanimously declared that the lord chancellor had ‘by common law’ forfeited his office and rendered himself liable to such fine and imprisonment as the king should impose. Southampton aggravated his offence by threatening the judges and abusing the Protector; on 5 March the great seal was taken from him, he was ordered to confine himself to his house in Ely Place, and bound over in four thousand pounds (Acts P.C. 1547–50, pp. 48–57; Harleian MS. 284, art. 7). He was not, strictly speaking, expelled from the council, but his name was not included in the council when it was reconstituted a few days later on Edward VI's authority instead of on that of Henry VIII.

Southampton's fall removed an obstacle from Somerset's path, but the inference that it was due to the Protector's animosity is hardly warranted. ‘Your Grace,’ wrote the chancellor's ally Gardiner, ‘showed so much favour to him that all the world commended your gentleness,’ and a few weeks later the French ambassador observed Southampton and Somerset in friendly and confidential conversation (Corr. Pol. de Odet de Selve, p. 147). He was soon at liberty, the fine imposed appears to have been remitted, and in 1548, if not earlier, he was re-admitted to the council board. Southampton, however, nursed his grievance against the Protector, and it is significant that the first occasion on which he again comes prominently forward was when he joined Warwick and other enemies of the Protector in the proceedings against his brother Thomas Seymour, baron Seymour of Sudeley [q. v.], in January and February 1548–9. He was no less prominent in the intrigues which led to the fall of the Protector himself in the following October. In September, when the king moved to Hampton Court, Southampton remained in London, and at his house in Ely Place many of the secret meetings of the councillors were held; Burnet, indeed, represents Southampton as the prime mover in the conspiracy, and Warwick as merely his accomplice or even his tool. Personal motives as well as antipathy to the Protector's religious and social policy dictated his action. He was present at all the meetings of the council in London from 6 to 11 Oct., and accompanied the majority of the councillors to Windsor to arrest Somerset. He was then appointed one of the lords to be in special attendance upon the young king, and for a time he seemed to have regained all his former influence. Rumours were everywhere current that the mass was to be restored and the progress of the Reformation stopped. But Southampton was soon undeceived; after the end of October he ceased to attend the meetings of the privy council, and on 2 Feb. 1549–50 he was struck off the list of councillors and confined to his house. It may be true, as Burnet states, that, disappointed at not being restored to the lord chancellorship or made lord great master, Southampton began to intrigue against Warwick, but his second fall is explicable on other grounds. He had served Warwick's purpose and was now discarded, a similar fate attending his associates the Earls of Shrewsbury and Arundel, Sir Thomas Arundell and Sir Richard Southwell. So chagrined was Southampton at this failure of his hopes that, according to Bishop Ponet, ‘fearing lest he should come to some open shameful end, he poisoned himself or pined away for thought.’ He died on 30 July 1550 ‘at his place in Holborne, called Lincolnes Place … and the 3 of August in the forenone he was buryed in St. Andrewes church in Holborne at the right hand of the high aulter, Mr. Hooper, Bishopp of Glocester, preachinge there at the buryall’ (, Chron. ii. 41;, Diary, pp. 1, 313). His body was afterwards removed to Titchfield, where a sumptuous monument erected to his memory is still extant. A full description with engravings is given in Mr. B. W. Greenfield's ‘Wriothesley Tomb, Titchfield,’ reprinted from the ‘Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club.’ His portrait, painted by Holbein, belongs to Major-General F. E. Sotheby; the inscription is erroneously given as ‘ætatis suæ 51, 1545’ (Cat. Tudor Exhib. No. 77). A portrait ‘after Holbein’ belongs to the Duke of Queensberry, and was engraved by Harding in 1794 for John Chamberlaine's ‘Imitations of Original Drawings,’ 1792–1800; another engraving is given in Doyle's ‘Official Baronage.’ His executors were his widow, Sir Edmund Peckham [q. v.], Sir Thomas Pope [q. v.], (Sir) William Stanford [q. v.], and Walter Pye; his will, dated 21 July 1550, was proved on 14 May 1551. It is extant in British Museum Addit. MS. 24936, is printed in the ‘Trevelyan Papers’ (Camden Soc.), i. 206–16, and gives details of his large estates, which are supplemented by the ‘inquisitio post mortem’ taken on 12 Sept. 1550 (4 Edward VI, vol. 92, No. 78; a transcript is extant in Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 813 ff. 119–26). The most interesting of his possessions besides Titchfield (for which see