Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/489

1549.] Peckham, and Lord Arundel: members all of them of the council, which had been also appointed by the will of the late King.

The lords in London, as Warwick and the rest were called, had dined twice together for a private conference, when the Protector learnt from some quarter that there was a design of interfering with him, and, with injudicious irritation, he resolved to treat them as traitors. The young King was persuaded that there was a conspiracy, nominally against the Protector, but really against himself. A paper was written, printed, and scattered about the streets of London, in which the privy council was described as 'but late from the dunghill,' 'a sort of them more meet to keep swine than to occupy the offices which they do occupy,' conspiring to the impoverishing and undoing of all the commons in the realm;' 'they had murdered the King's subjects,' and fearing that the Protector would compel a redress of the injuries under which the people suffered, had conspired to kill him first and then the King, and 'to plant again the doctrine of the devil and Antichrist of Home.' Somerset himself sent his son Lord Edward Seymour with letters in the King's name to Russell and Herbert,