When it was seen that Henry could not live much longer, two parties became visible in the country as well as at court, one of which, however much it disguised it, was without doubt aiming at the restoration of the Pope's supremacy, while the other was aiming at a fuller development of the Protestant principle. Henry had settled the succession so that first his son Edward, then his elder daughter (by his Spanish wife), then the younger (by Anne Boleyn), were to succeed. As the first, the sovereign who should succeed next, was a boy of nine, it was of infinite importance to settle who during the time of his minority should stand at the helm. The nearest claim was possessed by the boy's uncle on the mother's side, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, who had begun to play a leading part in Henry's court and army, was in close alliance with Queen Catharine Parr, and like her cherished Protestant sympathies. But the Norfolks with their Catholic sympathies who had previously so long exercised a leading influence on the government, would not give way to him. Norfolk's son, the Earl of Surrey, adopted the immoral plan of ensnaring the King, who though dying was yet supposed to be still susceptible to woman's charms, by means of his sister, in order to draw him back to the side of his family and the strict Catholics: a plot which failed at once when his sister refused to play such a part. The ambitious announcements into which he allowed himself to be hurried away could only bring about the opposite result: he himself was executed, his father thrown into prison, and the man who could have done most in the Catholic direction, Bishop Gardiner, was struck out of the list of those who, after the King's death, were to form the Privy Council.[139] Immediately afterwards, January 1547, Henry died. He had composed the Privy Council of men of both tendencies in the hope, as it appears, that in this way his system would be most surely upheld. But men were too much accustomed to see the highest power represented in one leading personage, for it to continue long in the hands of a Board of Councillors. From the first sittings of the Privy Council Edward VI's uncle, the Earl of Hertford, came forth as Duke of Somerset and Protector of the realm. In him the reforming tendency won the upper hand.