if the King's Highness was so pleased, they said that they would proceed without further troubling or molesting either his Highness or the Lord Protector.'[1]
Somerset would still have interfered; and it was found necessary to prevent an interview between the brothers if the sentence was to be executed.[2] From the first he had endeavoured to overcome the Admiral's jealousy by kindness. He maintained the same tenderness to the end, while the Admiral's last action showed that he too was equally unchanged. On the 17th of March, the Bishop of Ely brought notice to Seymour to prepare for death. He employed his last days in writing to Elizabeth and Mary, urging them to conspire against his brother; that the letters might not miss their destination, he concealed them in the sole of a shoe; and when before the block, and about to kneel for the stroke of the axe, his last words were a charge to his servant to remember to deliver them.[3] For the rest, cowardice was not among his faults: he died without flinching; not, it would seem, at the first blow.
'As touching the kind of his death, whether he be saved or no,' said Latimer, 'I refer that to God. In the twinkling of an eye He may save a man, and turn
- ↑ Privy Council Records, MS.
- ↑ 'I heard my Lord of Somerset say, that if his brother had been suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered, but great persuasion was made to him.'—Elizabeth to Queen Mary: Ellis, second series, vol. ii. p. 256.
- ↑ The words were overheard. The servant was examined, and the letters were found. They had been written with great ingenuity. 'He made his ink so craftily and with such workmanship as the like has not been seen. He made his pen of the aglet of a point that he plucked from his hose.'—Latimer's Sermons, p. 162.
