Although the Puritans had set the fashion of sober colours and rigid simplicity of dress, which was followed by most people during Edward’s reign, the Princess and her friends continued to assume a considerable amount of state in their retinue and attire. Strype[285] records that on her going to court in 1550, Mary rode through London with fifty knights and gentlemen in velvet coats and chains of gold before her, while following her were fourscore gentlemen and ladies. On her arrival, the Comptroller of the King’s Household received her, and many lords and knights escorted her through the hall to the presence chamber, where she remained two hours “being treated at a goodly banquet”. But when she visited the King at Greenwich in 1552, it was observed that her company was only half the number which a nobleman chose to come with a week afterwards.[286] Edward had always been a delicate boy, and his weak constitution was still further debilitated in 1552, by a combination of diseases, so that even the most hopeful began to fear the worst. Nothing was however done to alter the succession till the spring of the following year. In May, took place the marriage of Lord Guildford Dudley, fourth son of the Duke of Northumberland, to the Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII.’s sister Mary, who, first married to the King of France, became afterwards the wife of Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. This marriage of his son to one so nearly related to the royal family was Northumberland’s first step in what Turner calls “that nefarious combination,” by which the Crown was to be alienated from its rightful possessor, and placed on the head of a usurper. The injustice of the proceeding was threefold: 1. Henry VIII. had determined the succession by virtue of a statute of the realm, and it could not legally be set aside. 2. In the event of the failure of both his daughters, the next in succession would have been Mary Stuart, but Northumberland passed her over with the inconsistent pretext, that Henry had excluded the issue of his elder sister, Margaret, from his will. 3. The Lady Frances, daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk, married to Henry, Lord Grey, created Duke of Suffolk, was also set aside, in favour of her eldest daughter, the better to satisfy Northumberland’s ambition by marrying this young lady to his son. On the 25th June Edward was so ill that it was reported he was dead, and one of his physicians told the French ambassador that he could not get beyond the month of August. He died on the 6th July, having been persuaded to exclude both his sisters from the succession, in defiance of his father’s will, and to leave the Crown to the Lady Jane Grey. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 252: Harl. MS. 5087, art. vi., Brit. Mus. Ellis’s _Letters_, ii., 134, 1st series.] [Footnote 253: _Letters of the Kings of England_, vol. ii., p. 8, edited by J. O. Halliwell.]