After this settlement was made, with so many inauspicious circumstances, Edward visibly declined every day, and small hopes were entertained of his recovery. To make matters worse, his physicians were dismissed by Northumberland’s advice, and by an order of council; and he was put into the hands of an ignorant woman, who undertook in a little time to restore him to his former state of health. After the use of her medicines, all the bad symptoms increased to the most violent degree: he felt a difficulty of speech and breathing; his pulse failed, his legs swelled, his color became livid, and many other symptoms appeared of his approaching end. He expired at Greenwich, in the sixteenth year of his age, and the seventh of his reign.
All the English historians dwell with pleasure on the excellent qualities of this young prince; whom the flattering promises of hope, joined to many real virtues, had made an object of tender affection to the public. He possessed mildness of disposition, application to study and business, a capacity to learn and judge, and an attachment to equity and justice. He seems only to have contracted, from his education, and from the genius of the age in which he lived, too much of a narrow prepossession in matters of religion, which made him incline somewhat to bigotry and persecution: but as the bigotry of Protestants, less governed by priests, lies under more restraints than that of Catholics, the effects of this malignant quality were the less to be apprehended if a longer life had been granted to young Edward.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
![[ENLARGE]](#3163749619227016323_1_432_mary.jpg.id-7522163546929992190.wrap-0.html.html){kind=link}
MARY.
1553.
The title of the princess Mary, after the demise of her brother, was not exposed to any considerable difficulty; and the objections started by the lady Jane’s partisans were new and unheard of by the nation. Though all the Protestants, and even many of the Catholics, believed the marriage of Henry VIII. with Catharine of Arragon to be unlawful and invalid; yet, as it had been contracted by the parties without any criminal intention, had been avowed by their parents, recognized by the nation, and seemingly founded on those principles of law and religion which then prevailed, few imagined that their issue ought on that account to be regarded as illegitimate. A declaration to that purpose had indeed been extorted from parliament by the usual violence and caprice of Henry; but as that monarch had afterwards been induced to restore his daughter to the right of succession, her title was now become as legal and parliamentary as it was ever esteemed just and natural. The public had long been familiarized to these sentiments: during all the reign of Edward, the princess was regarded as his lawful successor; and though the Protestants dreaded the effects of her prejudices, the extreme hatred universally entertained against the Dudleys,[*] who, men foresaw, would, under the name of Jane, be the real sovereigns, was more than sufficient to counterbalance, even with that party, the attachment to religion.