In his zeal for "the religion," and in his absolute faith in his royal autocracy, Edward was ready to override will and statute and to set Mary's rights aside. In such a case the crown fell legally to Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, who had been placed by the Act next in succession to Mary, and whose training under Catharine Parr and the Seymours gave good hopes of her Protestant sympathies. The cause of Elizabeth would have united the whole of the "new men" in its defence, and might have proved a formidable difficulty in Mary's way. But for the maintenance of his personal power Northumberland could as little count on Elizabeth as on Mary; and in Edward's death the Duke saw a chance of raising, if not himself, at any rate his own blood to the throne. He persuaded the young king that he possessed as great a right as his father to settle the succession of the Crown by will. Henry had passed by the children of his sister Margaret of Scotland, and had placed next to Elizabeth in the succession the children of his younger sister Mary, the wife of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. Frances, Mary's child by this marriage, was still living, the mother of three daughters by her marriage with Grey, Lord Dorset, a hot partizan of the religious changes, who had been raised under the Protectorate to the Dukedom of Suffolk. Frances was a woman of thirty-seven; but her accession to the Crown squared as little with Northumberland's plans as that of Mary or Elizabeth. In the will therefore which the young king drew up Edward was brought to pass over Frances, and to name as his successor her eldest daughter, the Lady Jane Grey. The marriage of Jane Grey with Guildford Dudley, the fourth son of Northumberland, was all that was needed to complete the unscrupulous plot. It was the celebration of this marriage in May which first woke a public suspicion of the existence of such designs, and the general murmur which followed on the suspicion might have warned the Duke of his danger. But the secret was closely kept, and it was only in June that Edward's "plan" was laid in the same strict secrecy before Northumberland's colleagues. A project which raised the Duke into a virtual sovereignty over the realm could hardly fail to stir resistance in the Council. The king however was resolute, and his will was used to set aside all scruples. The judges who represented that letters patent could not override a positive statute were forced into signing their assent by Edward's express command. To their signatures were added those of the whole Council with Cranmer at its head. The primate indeed remonstrated, but his remonstrances proved as fruitless as those of his fellow-councillors. [Sidenote: Fall of Northumberland.]