So far as Edward was allowed to entertain any warmth of affection, he was, it may be said, sincerely attached to both his sisters, but he was entirely a puppet in the hands of his uncles the Seymours. He was nine years old at the time of his accession, and but for them might have regarded Mary something in the light of a mother. She was in fact his godmother, and had watched over him as well as circumstances would allow, from his birth, but those who surrounded him were careful that her interest in her young brother should not assume a more definite shape than the bestowal of countless presents, and the constant providing of juvenile amusements. One of his letters to her shortly before his father’s death contains a pretty passage: “_Amo te, sicut frater debet amare charissimam sororem, quæ habet omnia ornamenta virtutis et honestatis in se_”.[252] In May 1546, he told her that God had given her the wisdom of Esther, and that he looked up to her virtues with admiration.[253] But scarcely was he on the throne, when his uncles made him the mouthpiece of the narrow Puritan views to which they were committed, and we find him writing to Katharine Parr, to entreat her “to preserve his dear sister Mary from the enchantments of the Evil One, by beseeching her to attend no longer to foreign dances and merriments, which do not become a Christian princess”. When left to himself, however, he showed her simple, child-like affection.[254] The rapid decline of Henry’s health had been a signal to the Seymours to seize what extra power they could. They even went so far as to amend the King’s will, a few days before his death, conferring on themselves more authority than had been already decreed. Henry had refused to sign the amendment, but they, disguising the fact that it did not bear the royal sign manual, carried matters with so high a hand that their powers were taken for granted. The supreme authority had originally been vested in sixteen executors, but the two Seymours claimed the entire guardianship of the boy-king. Henry had had little regard for his brothers-in-law. He knew them to be ambitious, and had been sparing of his favours towards them. He suspected them moreover of a secret fondness for the new doctrines, to which he was again strenuously opposed, but as there was no kinsman of the blood royal to whom he could confide his son, he was obliged to accept the inevitable.