20 Earls of Wiltshire. 



turn in the opposite direction so soon as perils are discerned ahead. 

 Actuated by this characteristic discretion, Lord Winchester, as the 

 intimate friend and ally of Northumberland, took part in his am- 

 bitious intrigues for raising his daughter-in-law, the Lady Jane 

 Grey to the throne, by virtue of the Patent obtained from the 

 immature and expiring Prince, but stopped short when after the 

 death of the King, he found that the attempt was likely to fail ; 

 signed the order to the Duke to lay down the arms levied in her 

 name against Mary, and led the array of the Council of State to 

 proclaim the latter as Queen in the city. As a natural result, he 

 was retained by the new Sovereign in his office of Lord Treasurer. 

 Indeed he soon obtained great influence over that Princess, which 

 it is but justice to him to say, he appears to have wisely and 

 honestly exercised. He persuaded the Queen to refuse to grant 

 away any crown lands without his assent, and introduced much 

 order and economy into the Exchequer, of which he had through- 

 out her reign the control. He was elected by Mary to the Order 

 of the Garter, and appointed her Lieutenant General of the King- 

 dom south of Trent.^ 



On the death of Mary, (1558), he was still continued in the 

 ofl&ce of High Treasurer by her sister Elizabeth. In 1560, and 

 again in 1569 he splendidly entertained the Queen and her Court 

 at his mansion of Basing ; on one of these occasions Elizabeth is 

 reported to have playfully lamented his great age, (he must have 

 been then near eighty), saying "By my troth, if my Lord Trea- 

 surer were but a young man I coiild find my heart to have him for 

 a husband before any man in England." No doubt he would have 

 made a very amiable and acquiescent one. 



At length having served in the highest offices of State, (among 

 the rest for more than thirty years as Lord Treasurer,) and sat in 

 the Privy Councils of no less than five Sovereigns, Henry VII., 

 Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, this venerable 

 nobleman died at the advanced age of eighty-seven, at Basing, 

 (where he was buried) on the 10th March, 1571. He lived it is 



1 Strype. Index to Anne. 



