Young Edward VI. was brought up to the Tower with great ceremony, and began his reign when but a boy of ten. In the Tower he was made a knight, and rejoicings in anticipation of his coronation made the old walls ring again to gladness. The State procession from the Tower to the Abbey was conceived and carried through in a spirit of regal magnificence, and from Eastcheap to Westminster the streets were bedecked in a manner expressive of the joy of the people that Henry’s reign of terror had ended. The boy King had not long been on the throne, when, under the guidance of Protector Somerset, in whose hands was all the power of an actual ruler, bloodshed began afresh. Thomas, Lord Seymour, brother of Somerset and uncle of the King, was immured in the Tower, and, accused of ambitious practices, beheaded on Tower Hill on March 20, 1549. This act brought down the rage of the populace upon Somerset, who was already unpopular by reason of his seizure of Church property. By his ill-gotten gains he had built the magnificent Somerset House, and in order to clear the ground for it he had demolished a church and scattered the human remains found there--an act of desecration that the citizens regarded as a crime. The Earl of Warwick headed the opposition, seized the Tower, and the Protector was lodged in the Beauchamp Tower. Later, however, he was pardoned, and the young King records in his diary that “My Lorde Somerset was delivered of his bondes and came to Court.” But the feud soon came to a head again, and in 1551 Somerset was shut up in the Tower once more, and his wife with him, on a charge of high treason. He was taken, by water, to his trial at Westminster Hall, where he was “acquitted of high treason,” but condemned “of treason feloniouse and adjudged to be hanged.” The King, who appears to have written a full account of events in his diary, notes that “he departed without the axe of the Tower. The people knowing not the matter shrieked half-a-dozen times so loude that from the halle dore it was heard at Charing Crosse plainely, and rumours went that he was quitte of all.” But, far from being “quitte of all” he was conveyed back to the Tower, and while some maintained that he was to be set at liberty, others with equal heat asserted that he was to die speedily. The dispute was set at rest by his execution on Tower Hill, “at eight of ye clok in the morning.” The boy Edward seems to have had some of the callousness of his father in his nature, for he signed the death warrants of both his uncles with calmness, and in his commentary on their executions he betrays no emotion whatever, taking it all as very commonplace happening. “The Duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Touer Hill” is the entry in the royal manuscript book. At the time of the Protector’s committal to the Tower there came with him, as prisoners, his supporters the Earl of Arundel, Lords Grey and Paget; also Sir Thomas Arundel, Sir Ralph Vane, Sir Miles Partridge and Sir