the lord-treasurer's means to the
queen and council, hoping _that they will grant him the benefit of the
laws of the realm_; that it would please his lordship to send for him by
his warrant; and that he might not be injured by his father's men,
though hardly dealt with by himself. Such were the lengths to which, in
this age, a parent could venture to proceed against his child, and such
the measures which it was then necessary to take in order to obtain the
protection of the laws. It is not stated whether lord Beauchamp was at
this time a minor; but if so, he probably made application to Burleigh
as master of the wards. Apparently his representations were not without
effect; for he procured in the end both a re-union with his wife and a
reconciliation with his father.

The grandmother of this young nobleman, Anne duchess-dowager of
Somerset, died at a great age in 1587. Maternally descended from the
Plantagenets, and elevated by marriage to the highest rank of English
nobility, she perhaps gloried in the character of being the proudest
woman of her day. It has often been repeated, that her repugnance to
yield precedence to queen Catherine Parr, when remarried to the younger
brother of her husband, was the first occasion of that division in the
house of Seymour by which Northumberland succeeded in working its
overthrow. In the misfortune to which she had thus contributed, the
duchess largely shared. When the Protector was committed to the Tower,
she also was carried thither amid the insults of the people, to whom her
arrogance had rendered her odious; and rigorous examinations and an
imprisonment of considerable duration here awaited her. She saw her
husband stripped of power and reputation, convicted of felony, and led
by his enemies to an ignominious death; and what to a woman of her
temper was perhaps a still severer trial, she beheld her son,--that son
for whose aggrandizement she had without remorse urged her weak husband
to strip of his birthright his own eldest born,--dispossessed in his
turn of title and estates, and reduced by an act of forfeiture to the
humble level of a private gentleman.

Her remarriage to an obscure person of the name of Newdigate, may prove,
either that ambition was not the only inordinate affection to which the
disposition of the duchess was subject, or that she was now reduced to
seek safety in insignificance.

During the reign of Mary, no favor beyond an unmolested obscurity was to
be