his shows that he wished some of the contents of the will to be suppressed. These were not those relating to the succession or to the government during Edward's minority, for, as we have seen, these were read out to Parliament on the Monday succeeding the Friday on which the king died. I have no doubt but what the provisions of the will which were distasteful to the earl were those which, by directing perpetual masses for the king's soul, stamped with the dead monarch's authority a system which Hertford wished to abolish. Again the will assigned to Hertford a position lower than he was contented with, and one which on the very Monday on which the late king's will was read to Parliament, he exchanged, with the almost unanimous assent of the Council, for the higher post of Protector of the Realm and Guardian of the young king's person. And as the will came from Hertford's custody he must have been privy to the forgery if it existed. But then, supposing the contents to have represented Was there the king's wishes, was the execution of the will forgery? defeated by an inability of the king to execute it,

and was the deficiency supplied by forgery of the king's hand? I can only say that I do not believe Hertford to have been either daring or wicked enough to have done such an act. Indeed, seeing the ease with which he attained the protectorship, he must surely have known that it would be

better for him that the king should have died Conwithout a will. How, then, can the supposition jectures. that the will now existing was signed by the king with his own hand be reconciled with the entry in Clerc's schedule? I can only conjecture that the existing will may have been executed subsequently to that noticed by Clerc. We know that after the arrest of Norfolk and Surrey the king struck out of the list of his executors Norfolk, Gardiner, and Thirlby. But did he strike them all out at the same time? Is it not possible that the will entered in Clerc's schedule removed Norfolk only, and that a subsequent will omitted Gardiner and Thirlby also, but that the 30th of December, the date of a will removing Norfolk, was retained as the date of a new will in order to hide the date of the omission of Gardiner and Thirlby; perhaps, also, not to startle executors who may have known themselves appointed by a will dated the 30th of December, and been ignorant of any subsequent change? It appears from Clerc's schedule that the will noticed there, though dated the 30th of December, was not actually executed until January. Again, it is possible that between the execution of the scheduled will and Henry's death the question of the sufficiency of a stamped signature had been started, and avoided by the execution of a fresh will, which may have been a mere copy of the former, but signed with the king's

M

own hand. If so, why was not the commission touching the Bill against Norfolk so signed? Incapacity to sign may have supervened, and the king may for this once have wrested the law to his authority in order, as he thought, to secure his boy's throne. And the knowledge of those facts may have been the reason why Edward's council did not execute Norfolk.

The existing will, though dated on the 30th of December, was certainly not executed until January, and is supposed not to have been so until a day or two before the king's death. Yet it seems to have been prepared in haste. I should think the calligraphers of Henry's court might have produced a better specimen of writing for a king's will than the existing document. It contains some important, but unauthenticated interlineations, notably one after the limitation of the crown to the Lady Mary of the important words" and the heirs of her body." But the contents of the will could not have been prepared in a hurry. The expressions of Henry's personal feelings seem to have been carefully weighed. The nice clauses by which the crown is shifted from Mary and Elizabeth, in default of compliance with their father's conditions as to their marriage, are skilfully prepared. This seems to point to a copy hurriedly made of an existing will. But a will prepared on the 30th of December, and not

executed until some three weeks afterwards, could, even if written in a hurry, have been fair copied in the interval. I attach little importance to the fact that the signatures to the will are, perhaps, better than could have been expected from a dying man. Cordials and a determination to effect validly such an important act may have produced that "lightning before death" which has often been observed in dying men. I throw out these conjectures merely as hints which may possibly be suggestive to persons more competent than I to investigate the question. If the instruments entered in Clerc's list, the mention of which closely precedes that of Henry's will, can be traced, they may throw some light on the subject. question will in due course be subjected to the practised skill of the Record Office, and doubtless be elucidated as clearly as existing materials will permit. For the present subject it is sufficient Effect of to treat the instrument as it appeared to our ment on forefathers in connection with the succession to English history. the throne. Its authenticity, or at least, its validity, was questioned. If genuine, it shifted the succession from the descendants of the elder of Henry's sisters to those of the younger. Thus it hung like a cloud over the prospect of the succession to the crown during the whole of Elizabeth's reign, and even after the accession of the Stuart line, when it had been treated as a piece of waste

The

the docu

Edward VI.

A.D. 1547,

20.

Peculiari

Excuses

paper, it affected powerfully and fatally the policy of the new dynasty.

Edward VI. was proclaimed on the Monday proclaimed, following his father's death, and was crowned on January 31. the 20th of February next. At his coronation he Crowned February 'was acknowledged as king before he took his oaths as king, and the customary oath was much modified, ties of his Instead of swearing to maintain the Church, as in coronation. the days of his namesake the Confessor, he only swore "To the Church and the people to keep peace and concord." There was an excuse for the and reasons inversion of the order of the king's oath and his recognition in the fact that the Succession Act might be held to be equivalent to the popular recognition. But the real reason for the innovation appears, from Cranmer's discourse at the coronation, to have been the apprehension that the profession of the Protestant religion, in which the young king was to be trained, might be treated as a violation of his coronation oath and as an excuse for his deposition.

for them.

of 1 Edward VI.

In the first year of Edward VI.'s reign, the succession established by Parliament and Henry Treason Act was recognised by an Act, which, while it swept away, amongst many other treasons, those constituted by Henry's Succession Acts, guarded by the penalties of high treason the parliamentary limitation of the crown. "And be it enacted by "the authority aforesaid, that if any of the heirs