his half-sisters of their inheritance, and to endeavour to set up Lady Jane Dudley as his successor on the throne. All this may be read elsewhere in greater or less detail. The one point in it which interests us here is the conduct of Cranmer. Cranmer had floated on the full tide of prosperity during Edward's reign. On the whole, his conduct had been good. He may have been somewhat inclined to harshness in his treatment of Gardiner and Bonner, but his chastisements had been but with whips as compared with the scorpions which they themselves dealt out to their opponents both before and after. But at the last moment a real trial came upon him, and then he showed, as he did all his life, a want of that element of hardness, that backbone as it is sometimes called, which is an indispensable constituent in a really great man in troublous times. Northumberland, as we have seen, had all but completed his scheme by gaining over the young King himself, as well as the most important members of his Council. The King himself, in his zeal for what he called 'the religion,' became impatient for the completion of the arrangement which he had made for its maintenance. He was manifestly dying, and after having by his own personal urgency almost compelled the' judges, in spite of their remonstrances, to draw up the letters patent, he turned to the Archbishop, whose name was still wanting, and expressed his hope that he alone would not 'be more repugnant to his will than all the rest of the Council.'
Cranmer's case was a hard one, that is undeniable. Edward was his sovereign, and that in an age when to be a king was to be a demigod: he was also as dear to him as his own son. He had answered for him at the font in his infancy, and had been his father's favoured
