was disposed to settle on the banners of Somerset wherever displayed, he himself was making all speed homewards. On the 19th he reached Hume Castle, which Lady Hume consented to surrender on being allowed to retire with the garrison, and whatever they could carry with them. He halted also a few days at Roxburgh, where he threw up some fortifications amid the ruins of the old castle, and having received the submission of the neighbouring country, on the 29th he crossed the Tweed. All this time he was followed by Arran with a body of horse, whom he did not attempt to check or chastise, and on entering England, he made the best of his way to London, the whole term of his absence having been only about six weeks.
Somerset entered the capital like a great conqueror. The mayor and corporation met him in their robes in Finsbury, and accompanied him as far as the Pound in Smithfield, where they parted, and he went on that night to his house at Sheen, and the next day to the king at Hampton Court. Edward received him joyfully, and made him an additional grant of lands to the value of £500 a year; in other words, Somerset awarded these to himself. A Parliament was then summoned, and the Protector proceeded to carry forward the contemplated reform in the Church, now that he was covered with useless and worse, most mischievous military honours, as the country was soon to learn.
The Duke of Somerset. From a Painting by Holbein.
If Henry VIII. could now have seen the proceedings of his son and his ministers, the astonishment of his soul must have been great. Those very men, at least the majority of them, who had been the obsequious creatures of his will, had already cut away the whole plan of civil government as fixed by himself, and they now proceeded to sweep off those religious rites and ceremonies, of which he had been still more tenacious, and for the slightest contempt of which he had put numbers to death. During his lifetime, and under his own eyes, they had deceived him by educating his heir in a deep and conscientious persuasion that the system of worship which he so rigorously upheld was utterly idolatrous. Cranmer, the prelate, in whom he had most faith, who trembled and dissembled before him, now, as Burnet says, "being delivered from that too awful subjection that he had been held under by King Henry, resolved to go on more vigorously in purging out abuses." But though both the young king and the protector went fully along with him,
