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LADY JANE GREY. 353 sion of Lady Jane. He gained his point with the expiring Edward, but not so easily with the lords of the council. To them the aim of Dudley was so apparent, and the procedure, as it regarded their own sanction, so perilous, that they pro- tested boldly and vehemently against the measure. Dudley was compelled to use both menaces and flattery. Sir Edward Montague, the chief justice of the cdmmon pleas; Sir Thomas Baker, Sir Thomas Bromley, two of the other judges ; and the attorney and solicitor-general, being summoned before the council and commanded to draw up the intended instrument in the form of letters patent, declined so responsible an act. They stated truly, that the settlement as arranged by Henry the Eighth was confirmed by act of parliament, that nothing but parliament could reverse it, and advised an immediate sum- mons of that assembly. This, however, would have ill suited Dudley's plans ; and the judges remaining obstinate, he is re- ported to have called Montague a traitor, and declared that he would fight any man in his shirt, in so just a cause as the suc- cession of Lady Jane. Montague then proposed that the king and council should by special commission require the judges to draw up a patent for the new settlement of the crown, ac- companied by a pardon for any offense they might have com- mitted by obeying the mandate. This satisfied the council and some of the judges; but the chancellor refused to affix the great seal to the instrument till the judges had previously signed it. All, under the effect of promises or menaces, signed it, but Judge Hales, who, though a protestant, steadily re- fused. Still the chancellor refused to affix the great seal until all the privy-councillors had signed it ; and this, too, Northum- berland was able to accomplish. Such were the difficulties through which Dudley had to force this obnoxious act. Nothing could in its nature be more op- posed to the pure and virtuous character of Lady Jane Grey : nothing could be more revolting than to see so noble and un- worldly a character thus involved in the ambitious schemes of a bold bad man like Dudley. When, therefore, he an- nounced to her on the king's decease that she was Queen of England, so far from being elated, she received the news with the greatest sorrow. She resolutely refused the proffered dig- nity, urging with no less sense than justice, the rights of her cousins, Mary and Elizabeth. She declared, as Heylin says, half-drowned in tears, that the laws of the kingdom, and natural right, standing for the king's sister, she would beware