of common prudence on the conservative side. The signs of the times, which were watched by all men with extreme anxiety, were seen to be in their favour. The Princess Mary was a rallying point for the partisans of the Church of Rome during the whole of Edward’s reign, more suited to the office than a much cleverer woman less firm of purpose. Her brother had reluctantly winked at the use of the mass in her own chapel when it was forbidden elsewhere, hoping to win her to a different mind, till the permission being abused, was at length withdrawn, not, however, abruptly, for the affair was pending, out of delicacy to her scruples, from June, 1549, to September, 1551; when the council at length wrote to her, that her Grace’s example “hindered the good weal of the realm, _which thing they thought was not unknown to her_.”[413] But the spirits of the Romanists were not to be thus broken down. For the three last years of Edward’s reign their confidence was perpetually on the increase. The life of the Princess was seen to be of fairer promise than the King’s, and an eye to the character of the next in the succession is a striking political feature of the times of which we are treating, when the balance between contending factions was as yet scarcely struck either way. The nobles who espoused the cause of the Reformers were at strife amongst themselves; Somerset contending with his brother, the admiral, even to the death; himself beheaded in his turn, and succeeded as Protector by the Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland, a man unpopular and suspected. The adversaries of the Reformation were not slow to take advantage of the disorder. Whilst the government was united, many leading persons amongst them had recanted, and even Bonner and Gardiner “began to condescend,” as Fox expresses it, “to good conformity;” but they now took heart, turned about, and braved a persecution which was likely to be short, and which was sure to recommend them to the future sovereign.