Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/233

1546.] But time was soon to exist no more for Henry. Well done or ill, his work on earth, was nearly finished. In a few more weeks he was to die. It was evident to himself and to all about him that the end was near. The wound in his leg had deepened and spread: he could no longer walk or stand, but he reclined upon a couch and was wheeled from room to room. His death might easily be close at hand. It could not be distant. Under such circumstances what were the prospects of the kingdom? The prince was but nine years old; and the saying 'Woe to the land where the king is a child,' was at that moment signally illustrated in the misery of Scotland. The baby-queen was a plaything, as Henry described it, 'among a sort of wolves'—was that to be the fortune of the boy for whom he and his country had so passionately longed? The Earl of Hertford was the person on whose natural affection he could most surely calculate; and Hertford was true to the Reformation. But a protectorate in the hands of a leader of one of two great parties regarding each other with the animosity which only religion could inspire, was a precarious experiment, and there were personal objections to the choice of no inconsiderable magnitude.

Hertford was hated as a parvenu by the old nobility, and by the smaller landowners, who with feudal deference accepted their opinions from the aristocracy; he