Reflecting that it was better to (p.

050) be a Tudor official at Court than a baronial magnate in prison, he submitted to the King and was set up as a beacon to draw his peers from their feudal ways.

The rest of the council were men of little distinction.

Shrewsbury, the Lord High Steward, was a pale reflex of Surrey, and illustrious in nought but descent.

Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert, who was Chamberlain and afterwards Earl of Worcester, was a Beaufort bastard,[93] and may have derived some little influence from his harmless kinship with Henry VIII.