number of peers in spite of recent creations still stood at about fifty
such a group constituted a power in the Upper House. Alleged directions
of the king were conveniently remembered to endow the new peers with
public money, though the treasury was beggared and the debt pressing.
The expulsion of Wriothesley from the Chancellorship and Council soon
left the "new men" without a check; but they were hardly masters of the
royal power when a bold stroke of Somerset laid all at his feet. A new
patent of Protectorate, drawn out in the boy-king's name, empowered his
uncle to act with or without the consent of his fellow-executors, and
left him supreme in the realm.

[Sidenote: Somerset and the Protestants.]

Boldly and adroitly as the whole revolution had been managed, it was
none the less a revolution. To crush their opponents the Council had
first used, and then set aside, Henry's will. Hertford in turn by the
use of his nephew's name set aside both the will and the Council. A
country gentleman, who had risen by the accident of his sister's
queenship to high rank at the Court, had thus by sheer intrigue and
self-assertion made himself ruler of the realm. But daring and
self-confident as he was, Somerset was forced by his very elevation to
seek support for the power he had won by this surprise in measures which
marked the retreat of the Monarchy from that position of pure absolutism
which it had reached at the close of Henry's reign. The Statute that had
given to royal proclamations the force of law was repealed, and several
of the new felonies and treasons which Cromwell had created and used
with so terrible an effect were erased from the Statute Book. The
popularity however which such measures won was too vague a force to
serve in the strife of the moment. Against the pressure of the
conservative party who had so suddenly found themselves jockeyed out of
power Somerset and the "new men" could look for no help but from the
Protestants. The hope of their support united with the new Protector's
personal predilections in his patronage of the innovations against which
Henry had battled to the last. Cranmer had now drifted into a purely
Protestant position; and his open break with the older system followed
quickly on Seymour's rise to power. "This year," says a contemporary,
"the Archbishop of Canterbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the Hall of
Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian
country