Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/267

1547.] him. In returning it, he recommended that for the present some caution should be used in communicating the contents to the world. The world should experience the benefit of the alterations before it was made aware of the nature of them.

In the afternoon of Monday the 3ist he arrived at the Tower with Edward. The death of Henry had been formally made known only in the morning of that day. The council was in session, and Paget had already proposed a protectorate. Lord Wriothesley, the chancellor, spoke earnestly in opposition. Protectorates, especially when they had been held by the uncles of kings, had been occasions of disaster and crime; the Protector in the minority of Henry VI. had ruined the finances and lost France; Edward V. had been murdered by the Duke of Gloucester. But Paget's influence was stronger than Wriothesley's, and the chancellor reluctantly acquiescing, the form of Government as disposed by Henry, was modified on Hertford's appearance in the following instrument.

'We, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Lord Wriothesley, Chancellor of England, William Lord St John, John Lord Russell, Edward Earl of Hertford, John Viscount Lisle, Cuthbert Bishop of Durham, Anthony Browne, William Paget, Edward North, Edward Montague, Anthony Denny, and William Herbert, being all assembled together in the Tower of London the last day of January, have reverently and diligently