such a suicidal theory; and the Council had constitutional right on its side when it insisted that the authority of the King, whether in ecclesiastical or civil matters, was the same whatever his age might be, and refused to consider the minority as a bar to further prosecution of the Reformation.
No doubt, they were led in the same direction, some by conviction and some by the desire, as Sir William Petre expressed it, "to fish again in the tempestuous seas of this world for gain and wicked mammon." But there was also popular pressure behind them. Zeal and energy, if not numbers, were on the side of religious change, and the Council found it necessary to restrain rather than stimulate the ardour of the Reformers. One of its first acts was to bind over the wardens and curate of St Martin's, Ironmonger Lane, to restore images which they had " contrary to the King's doctrine and order" removed from their church. Six months later the Council was only prevented from directing a general replacement of images illegally destroyed by a fear of the controversy such a step would arouse; and it had no hesitation in punishing the destroyers. In November, 1547, it sought by Proclamation to stay the rough treatment which priests suffered at the hands of London serving-men and apprentices, and sent round commissioners to take an inventory of church goods in order to prevent the extensive embezzlement practised by local magnates. Early in the following year Proclamations were issued denouncing unauthorised innovations, silencing preachers who urged them, and prohibiting flesh-eating in Lent. In April, 1548, the ecclesiastical authorities were straitly charged to take legal proceedings against those who, encouraged by the lax views prevalent on marriage, were guilty of such " insolent and unlawful acts " as putting away one wife and marrying another. The Marquis of Northampton was himself summoned before the Council and summarily ordered to separate from the lady he called his second wife. Similarly the first Statute of the reign was directed not against the Catholics, but against reckless Reformers; it sought to restrain all who impugned or spoke unreverently of the Sacrament of the altar; the right of the clergy to tithe was reaffirmed, and the Canon Law as to precontracts and sanctuary, abolished by Henry VIII, was restored. It was no wonder that the clergy thought the moment opportune for the recovery of their position as an Estate of the realm, and petitioned that ecclesiastical laws should be submitted to their approval, or that they should be readmitted to their lost representation in the House of Commons.
These measures illustrate alike the practical conservatism of Somerset's government and the impracticability of the theoretical toleration to which he inclined. His dislike of coercion occasionally got the better of his regard for his own proclamations, as when he released Thomas Hancock from his sureties taken for unlicensed preaching. But he soon realised that the government could not abdicate its ecclesiastical functions, least
