Certain only it is that Somerset, and Somerset's party, were become dangerous to him. He felt, perhaps with reason, that, if once in their power, he would find as little mercy at their hands as he intended that they should receive at his own; and inasmuch as the truth, if only the truth was known, might not ensure a conviction, inasmuch as the mere attempt at the overthrow of a faction might seem, in the eyes of the Lords who must try Somerset, rather a virtue than a crime—some additional atrocity had to be invented—something on which the law spoke too plainly for evasion, and which might diminish a sympathy otherwise likely to be troublesome.
Palmer's revelations were kept profoundly secret, except, it may be, from Herbert and Northampton, and from Edward, who, duped by the plausible zeal of Warwick for the Protestant gospel, hearing only from the fanatic enthusiasts who surrounded him adulation of the Earl as a champion of the Lord, and suspicious of his uncle as a backslider and apostate, listened and believed with the simplicity of a boy.[1] Though nothing definite transpired, however, there were movements in the State which created in Somerset a vague feeling of uneasiness: a report reached him that Palmer had been closeted with Warwick. Parliament, which was to
- ↑ The frigid hardness with which Edward relates in his Journal and one of his letters the proceedings against Somerset has been commented on with some sharpness. His age—he was but fourteen—and the miserable influences around him might excuse a greater crime. He believed that Somerset was guilty in the worst sense of the word, and with such a conviction the cold tone was natural and right.
