Page:The Queens of England.djvu/392

 352 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Lady Jane had made powerful enemies by her faith and her too candid tongue ; but the worst enemy which she had was Dudley. This man was clearing his way of obstacles in his designs on the throne, and he now resolved to root up and destroy the most formidable of them all. This was the Duke of Somerset, the king's uncle. Somerset had resigned his protectorship three years before ; but while he lived and had access to the king, there could be no success for Dudley's ulterior views. At his instigation, therefore, Somerset was arrested in October, 1542, tried and condemned on charges of high treason in December, and on January 22, 1553, he was executed on Tower-hill. Dudley had done all in his power to steel the heart of Edward against his uncle, and spite of all natural relentings of the weak youth, and of the lively grief of the people, he had accomplished his object. The constitution of the king was now fast giving way. He had been attacked both by measles and smallpox, and while suffering under the debilitv they occasioned, he took a severe cold at the commencement of the year 1553, that is, im- mediately on the death of his uncle Somerset. No time was to be lost. Dudley now proposed a match between his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, and Lady Jane. This effected, he immedi- ately began to play on Edward's weakness and his anxiety for the preservation of the protestant cause. Henry the Eighth had left the crown to Edward, and failing issue, to Mary, and after her, in case she died without issue, to Elizabeth. Dudley now represented the certain destruction of protestantism should Mary ascend the throne ; and succeeded with the king in set- ting her aside. Elizabeth was protestant, and here lay Dudley's grand difficulty ; but he represented to the dying king, that to pass over Mary, and to adopt Elizabeth, would to the people have such an air of injustice as would make the change odious, and probably endanger its success altogether. Dudley, there- fore, proposed to revive the statutes of Henry the Eighth, which had declared both Mary and Elizabeth illegitimate, and pass on to the next heir. This, he represented, was his true protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey. This was not the truth ; for the next heir to the crown would, in case of the disqualifi- cation of the two princesses, have been Mary, Queen of Scots, the descendant of the eldest sister of Henry the Eighth. But the dying king was in no condition to weigh carefully points of genealogv. His great concern was for protestantism, and that Dudley assured him was bound up with the succes-