At the beginning of December, 1546, Sir Richard Southwell, who was afterwards a member of the privy council under Queen Mary, gave the king a warning that the powerful family of the Howards would expose his son to great danger. Before the birth of Edward, Norfolk had been designated as one of the claimants of the crown. His eldest son was a young man of great intelligence, high spirit and indomitable courage, and excelled in military exercises. To these qualifications he added the polish of a courtier, fine taste and an ardent love for the fine arts; his contemporaries were charmed by his poems; and he was looked upon as the flower of the English nobility. These brilliant endowments formed a snare for him. 'His head,' people said to the king, 'is filled with ambitious projects.' He had borne the arms of Edward the Confessor in the first quarter, which the king alone had the right to do; if, it was added, he has refused the hand of the daughter of the earl of Hertford, it is because he aspires to that of the princess Mary; and if he should marry her after the death of the king, prince Edward will lose the crown. The king ordered his chancellor to investigate the charges against the duke of Norfolk and his son, the earl of Surrey; and Wriothesley ere long presented to him a paper, in the form of questions, in his (Wriothesley's) own handwriting. The king read it attentively, pen in hand, hardly able to repress his anger, and underlined with a trembling hand those passages which appeared to him the most important. The following sentences are specimens of what he read:-- 'If a man coming _of the collateral line to the heir of the crown_, who ought not to bear the arms of England but on the second quarter ... _do presume_ ... to bear them in the first quarter, ... _how this man's intent is to be judged_.... 'If a man compassing _with himself to govern the realm do actually go about to rule the king_, and should for that purpose advise his daughter or sister to become his harlot, thinking thereby to bring it to pass ... what this importeth. 'If a man say these words,--If the king die, who should have the rule of the prince but my father or I? what it importeth.'[468] [Sidenote: THE ARREST.]