straining their utmost to anticipate the Marian persecution, there is little to regret if the King saw no reason to look leniently on the insolent ambition which would have ruined a great cause, and filled England with the blood of innocents.
A paper of considerations, written partly by Henry himself,[1] implies a belief that Surrey had even thought of setting the Prince of Wales aside and seizing the throne. 'If a man coming of the collateral line to the heir of the crown, who ought not to bear the arms of England but on the second quarter, with the difference of their ancestry, do presume to change his right place, and bear them on the first quarter, leaving out the true difference of the ancestry, and in the lieu thereof uses the very place only of the heir-apparent, how this man's intent is to be judged, and whether this impute any danger, peril, or slander to the title of the prince, and how it weigheth in our laws?
'If a man presume to take into his arms an old coat of the crown, which his ancestors never bare, nor he of right ought to bear, and use it without a difference, whether it may be to the peril or slander of the very heir of the crown, or be taken to tend to his disturbance in the same, and in what peril they be that consent that he should do so?
'If a man compassing with himself to govern the realm do actually go about to rule the King, and should for that purpose advise his daughter or his sister to become
- ↑ The words in italics are the King's. They are alterations made by him in the original draft. The writing is tremulous and irregular.
