One of the most prominent ringleaders in the revolt was a tanner of Norfolk, named Robert Ket, of whom it was vulgarly said that such a bob was as good as two tanners; "and hence, perhaps," says my Lord Herbert, or someone else, "two tanners, or sixpences, came to be called in the vernacular equivalent to one bob, or a shilling." Ket had been cruelly provoked in having the mob set upon one of his inclosures by a gentleman who had suffered from the destruction of one of his own hedges; but the tanner retaliated by administering such a leathering to his assailants as they would have remembered to this hour had any one of them been left alive to indulge in such reminiscences. It was found necessary to send over to Scotland for Warwick to go and settle Ket, which was very speedily done, for, finding himself unable to keep upon his legs, he laid down his arms, after having run for his life, and crept into a barn among some corn to avoid an immediate thrashing. He was taken to Norwich and lodged in the castle, whence he wrote to a friend, saying, "I shall be hanging out for the present at the above address;" and his words were soon verified, for he was hanged out on the top of the building a few days afterwards.
Poor Somerset was now about to take the most formidable somerset in the whole of his career—namely, a fall from the extreme of power to the depths of disgrace, chiefly by the rivalry of Warwick. The Protector found it high time to think about protecting himself, and tried to muster his friends, to many of whom he wrote; but verbal answers of "Not at home," "Mr. So-and-So will send," and similar evasive replies convinced poor Somerset that there was very little hope for him. In the meantime, Warwick and party were meeting daily at Ely Place, Holbom, where they were settling, in that very legal neighbourhood, the draft of a set of charges against the Protector, who was accused among other things of having pulled down a church in the Strand to build Somerset House, and having spent in bricks and mortar the money intrusted him to keep up the wooden walls of old England, by paying the sailors and soldiers their respective salaries. A bill of pains and penalties was issued from Ely Place, which is to this day famous for its art in making out bills, and twenty-eight charges were brought against Somerset, who thought it better to confess every one of them, on a promise that he should be leniently dealt with. This leniency consisted in taking away almost everything he possessed, which caused him to remonstrate on the heaviness of the fine; but, on being told snappishly he might consider himself lucky in having got off with his life, he shrunk back in an attitude of the utmost humility. He was set at liberty and pardoned, but we shall have him at mischief and in trouble again before the end of this chapter.
Though a mere child was on the throne, the atrocities committed at Smithfield, in the burning of what were called heretics, went on as briskly as ever, the fires being stirred by Cranmer and Ridley in the most savage manner. Mary, the king's eldest sister, gave considerable trouble by insisting on the celebration of mass in her own household; and, though told by the council she mustn't, the truly feminine reply that "she should see if she shouldn't," and that "she would, though; they'd see if she wouldn't," was all that she condescended to say in answer to the requisition.
Somerset, since his liberation, had been still hanging about the Court, and had apparently become reconciled to Warwick, whose eldest son, Lord Lisle, had been married to Lady Ann, one of the daughters of the ex-Protector. Nevertheless, on Friday, the 16th of October, 1551, Somerset found himself once more in the "lock-up," on a charge of treason. He was accused of an intention to run about London crying out "Liberty! Liberty!" and, if that had not succeeded, he was to have gone to the Isle of Wight to try on the same game in that direction. If that had not succeeded there is no knowing what he would have done; but at all events, orders were sent to the Tower to set a watch upon the Great Seal, because Somerset wanted to run away with it. If he had made off with the seal, he might, perhaps, have taken the watch also; but this did not occur to the council. His trial took place at Westminster, on the 1st of December, 1551, at the sittings after Michaelmas term, when he denied everything, and was found guilty of just enough to get a judgment—with speedy execution—against him. His politeness was quite marvellous, for he thanked the Lords who had tried him, ana he threw as much grace as he could into the bow he was compelled to make on submitting his head to the axe of the executioner. "This," says Fox, on the authority of a nobleman who was present, "came off on Friday, the 22nd of January, 1552," and it is a curious fact, that of every execution that occurred in his reign the boy king had preserved the heads in his private journal.
Warwick, who had got himself promoted to the dukedom of Northumberland, seemed desirous of making government a business for the benefit of himself and family. He took the motto of "anything for peace and quiet," though he had blamed his predecessor, Somerset, for having done the same thing, and he bought off the hostility of France and Scotland by selling Boulogne regularly up, placing a carpet on the lighthouse, dividing the upper and lower town into lots, declaring that he wanted money down on the nail, and to hit the right one on the head he must resort to the hammer. He made excellent marriages for his children, and allied his son, Guildford Dudley, with the royal family of France by wedding him to Lady Jane Grey, a daughter of a son of the old original Mary Tudor of France, to whose descendants the English crown would fall in the event of a failure of a more direct succession.
The young King Edward, who had not yet passed through the ordinary routine of infantile complaints, now took the measles—or, rather, the measles took him—and he had scarcely recovered from this complaint when the small-pox placed him under indentures which seemed much too strong to be cancelled within any reasonable period. He was serving his time to this malady, when another latent illness that had hitherto been playing at hide-and-seek, set up a cry of "whoop," and his youthful majesty was in for the whooping-cough. Northumberland, taking advantage of the king's weak state, advised him not to leave the crown to his big and bigoted sister Mary. "True," said Edward, "but how about poor little Bet?"
"Why, she," replied the Protector, "is very little better." With such weak sophistry as this, he persuaded the poor invalid king to draw up a settlement of the crown on Lady Jane Grey, and the judges, with all the law officers, were summoned to approve the document. Sir Edward Montague, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, with Sir Thomas Bromley, one of his puisnes, came accompanied by the attorney and solicitor-generals, to say that the deed was illegal, and that they, one and all, would have nothing to do with it. Upon this, Northumberland rushed into the room, called Montague a traitor, * banged the door, threatened to bang the judges, and offered to fight in his shirt-sleeves any one of them.
* Burnet he had studied the business of the mint; but it may
fairly be replied, that merely looking at the process of
coining does not make a sovereign. He is said to have known
all the harbours in Scotland, England and France, with the
amount of water they were capable of containing—and though
this may prove the depth of his research, it is no
particular mark of his ability. He took notes of everything
he heard; but as sovereigns hear a great deal of thorough
trash, the collection must have been rather tedious and
elaborate than instructive or entertaining.