Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/264



T has been said that, in the selection of his executors, Henry VIII. was guided by the desire to leave a Government behind him in which the parties of reaction and of progress should alike be represented, and should form a check one upon the other. No individual among them was given precedence over another, because no one could be trusted with supreme power. On both sides names were omitted which might naturally have been looked for. Gardiner was struck from the list as violent and dangerous; Lord Parr the Queen's brother, Lord Dorset who had married Henry's niece, were passed over as sectarian or imprudent; and, whatever further changes the King might himself have contemplated, he may be presumed to have desired that the existing order of things in Church and State should be maintained as he had left it till Edward's minority should expire.

In anticipation of the contingency which had now arrived, an Act of Parliament had been passed several years before, empowering sovereigns who might succeed