He represented to his friends, that formerly, during a minority, the office of protector of the kingdom had been kept separate from that of governor of the king's person; and that the present union of these two important trusts conferred on Somerset an authority which could not safely be lodged in any subject.[*] The young king was even prevailed on to write a letter to the parliament desiring that Seymour might be appointed his governor; and that nobleman had formed a party in the two houses, by which he hoped to effect his purpose.

The design was discovered before its execution; and some common friends were sent to remonstrate with him, but had so little influence, that he threw out many menacing expressions, and rashly threatened that, if he were thwarted in his attempt, he would make this parliament the blackest that ever sat in England.[**] The council sent for him to answer for his conduct; but he refused to attend: they then began to threaten in their turn, and informed him that the king's letter, instead of availing him any thing to the execution of his views, would be imputed to him as a criminal enterprise, and be construed as a design to disturb the government, by forming a separate interest with a child and minor.

They even let fall some menaces of sending him to the Tower for his temerity; and the admiral, finding himself prevented in his design, was obliged to submit, and to desire a reconciliation with his brother.
The mild and moderate temper of Somerset made him willing to forget these enterprises of the admiral; but the ambition of that turbulent spirit could not be so easily appeased.

His spouse, the queen dowager, died in childbed; but so far from regarding this event as a check to his aspiring views, he founded on it the scheme of a more extraordinary elevation.

He made his addresses to the lady Elizabeth, then in the sixteenth year of her age; and that princess, whom even the hurry of business and the pursuits of ambition could not, in her more advanced years, disengage entirely from the tender passions, seems to have listened to the insinuations of a man who possessed every talent proper to captivate the affections of the fair.[***] * Haynes, p.