Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/265

1547.] to the crown while under age, to repeal by letters patent all measures which might have been passed in their names; and this Act, without doubt, was designed to prohibit regents, or councils of regency, from meddling with serious questions. But the King did not leave the world without expressing his own views with elaborate explicitness. He spent the day before his death in conversation with Lord Hertford and Sir William Paget on the condition of the country. He urged them to follow out the Scottish marriage to the union of the Crowns, and by separate and earnest messages he commended Edward to the care both of Charles V. and of Francis I. So much they communicated to the world; with respect to the rest they kept their secret. It is known only that the King continued his directions to them as long as he could speak, and they were with him when he died.

Whatever he said, however, the Earl of Hertford never afterwards dared to appeal to the verbal instructions of Henry as a justification of the course which he intended to follow. He had formed other schemes, and he had determined in his own mind that he was wiser than his master. The Earl of Hertford, ardent, generous, and enthusiastic, the popular successful general, the uncle of Edward, was ill satisfied with the limited powers and the narrow sphere of action which had been assigned him. He saw England, as he believed, ripe