1549.]
FALL OF THE PROTECTOR.
465
The motives which determined them they expressed for themselves in a memorandum which they thought well to lay before the Emperor.
October.'The late King,' they said, 'did constitute and appoint sixteen of his Highness's councillors, whom he especially trusted, his executors, and willed that those sixteen, using the advice of certain others appointed to assist them, should not only have the government of the King's Majesty's person during his tender years, but also the rule of the whole realm and the managing of all his Majesty's weighty affairs during the same time; which will, after the death of our said late master, was accepted and sworn unto by all the executors. The Duke of Somerset nevertheless, then Earl of Hertford, not contented with the place of Councillor whereunto he was called, sought by all the ways and means he could devise to rule, and in the end, for that he was one of the executors, uncle also to the King's Majesty by the mother's side, by much labour and such other means as he used, obtained to have the highest place in council,[1] and to have the title and name of Governor of his Majesty's most royal person and Protector of his Highness's realm and dominions—with this condition notwithstanding, that he should do nothing touching the- ↑ In a rough draft of this memorandum among the council records, Somerset's election to the Protectorate is ascribed less absolutely to his own exertions. 'The Lords considering that it should be expedient to have one, as it were, a mouth for the rest, to whom all such as had to do with the whole body of the council might resort, after some consultation, chose by their common agreement the Duke of Somerset.'—MS. Domestic, Edward VI. vol. ix. State Paper Office.
