it is uncertain how his suit might have eventually ended His object was to anticipate objections by the same expedient of a secret marriage, which had answered before, and Elizabeth's resolution might have possibly yielded before the persuasion of her friends,[1] had not the many-sided schemes of the Admiral revealed themselves in time.
While intriguing with the household at Hatfield, he was preparing for the movement for which the next session of Parliament was to give the occasion. The failures in Scotland, and the religious discontent which was commencing, had already shaken the Protector's authority. Lord Seymour intended to take his brother's place. He had arranged with Sharington for money sufficient to keep ten thousand men in the field for a month. Dorset was devoted to him, and Catherine Parr's brother, Lord Northampton, was well inclined.[2] He had fortified and provisioned Holt Castle. He had a cannon foundry in the country, and another at Southwark, where he had thirty workmen in constant employ, and twenty-four cannon, with thirteen tons of shot, ready prepared for immediate service.
Such was the aspect of England when the first
- ↑ In the tone in which she spoke of him to Mrs Ashley, a kind of regard seemed to be struggling with contempt 'In love with him,' to use the language of some historians on the matter, she certainly never was, but it might have come to that with time and opportunity.
- ↑ See the depositions in Haynes.
mour's courtship of Elizabeth, in the examinations of witnesses, printed by Haynes in the first volume of the Burleigh Papers, and in the supplementary collection, in the sixth volume of the Domestic MSS. of the reign of Edward VI., in the State Paper Office.
