Edward VI

• 1. Introduction

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  Edward VI was born on the 12th of October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace, and the entire realm erupted in celebration. Bonfires blazed across England. More than two thousand guns fired from the Tower of London in salute. After three marriages and years of anxious waiting, Henry VIII finally had a legitimate male heir. But the joy was immediately shadowed: Queen Jane Seymour died from postnatal complications on the 24th of October, just twelve days after her son came into the world. The child who inspired such national relief would grow up without his mother, under the watchful eye of a court in perpetual political crisis.

  Edward became king at nine years old, never ruled without a regency council, and died at fifteen. In those six years, England's church was transformed beyond recognition. The question worth asking is how a boy who never reached adulthood came to reshape an institution that had stood for centuries.

• 2. A Prince in the Schoolroom

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  Margaret Bryan, titled "lady mistress" of the prince's household, was the first person formally charged with raising the future king. Until Edward was six, he was brought up, as he later wrote in his own Chronicle, "among the women." His father, who visited regularly and once held the infant Edward at a window so crowds below could share his delight, demanded exacting standards of security and hygiene, calling his son "this whole realm's most precious jewel."

  From age six, Richard Cox and John Cheke took over his formal education. Edward studied what he later described as "learning of tongues, of the scripture, of philosophy, and all liberal sciences." Roger Ascham, who also tutored his sister Elizabeth, contributed to his lessons, as did the Frenchman Jean Belmain. Edward learned French, Spanish, Italian, geometry, and how to play the lute and the virginals. Coinage historian C. E. Challis observed that Edward developed a grasp of monetary affairs that indicated high intelligence.

  Barnaby Fitzpatrick, son of an Irish peer, became Edward's closest childhood friend among the sons of nobles brought to court to attend on him. Edward was described as more devoted to his schoolwork than any of his classmates, motivated by what he called his duty and by competition with his academically formidable sister Elizabeth. By 1549, he had written a treatise on the pope as Antichrist and was making detailed notes on theological controversies. His rooms were hung with Flemish tapestries; his books, cutlery, and clothes were encrusted with precious jewels and gold. Like his father, he was fascinated by military arts, and many of his portraits show him wearing a gold dagger with a jewelled hilt in imitation of Henry.

• 3. The Rough Wooing

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  On the 1st of July 1543, Henry VIII signed the Treaty of Greenwich, betrothing the six-year-old Edward to the seven-month-old Mary, Queen of Scots, granddaughter of Henry's own sister Margaret Tudor. The Scots had been in a weak position after their defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss in November 1542, and Henry's terms were severe: Mary was to be handed over and raised in England.

  When the Scots repudiated the treaty in December 1543 and renewed their alliance with France, Henry's response was devastating. He ordered Edward's uncle Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, to invade and "put all to fire and sword, burn Edinburgh town... as there may remain forever a perpetual memory of the vengeance of God." Seymour responded with the most savage English campaign ever launched against Scotland. The conflict, which continued into Edward's own reign, became known as "the Rough Wooing." Edward's Chronicle later recorded John Dudley's near capture at Musselburgh in 1547 with evident fascination, hinting at the military enthusiasm the boy king shared with his father.

• 4. Two Protectors

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  Henry VIII's will named sixteen executors to govern collectively during Edward's minority until the king reached eighteen. Within days of Henry's death, that plan was set aside. On the 4th of February 1547, thirteen of the sixteen executors invested near-monarchical power in Edward's uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. In March 1547, Somerset secured letters patent granting him the right to appoint Privy Council members himself and consult them only when he chose. Historian Geoffrey Elton wrote that "from that moment his autocratic system was complete."

  Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor and a religious conservative, immediately challenged Somerset's seizure of power and was abruptly dismissed on charges of improperly delegating his offices. Somerset's own brother Thomas proved harder to manage. Thomas Seymour secretly married Henry VIII's widow Catherine Parr, whose household included the eleven-year-old Lady Jane Grey and the thirteen-year-old Lady Elizabeth. He smuggled pocket money to the young king, telling Edward that Somerset kept him a "beggarly king." When Catherine Parr died shortly after childbirth in September 1548, Thomas moved to resume his attentions to Elizabeth by letter. The council had him arrested in January 1549 on charges including embezzlement at the Bristol mint. Unable to prove treason in court, they condemned him by an act of attainder. He was beheaded on the 20th of March 1549.

  Somerset's military record was initially strong. After a crushing victory at the Battle of Pinkie in September 1547, he established garrisons across Scotland as far north as Dundee. But his ambition to unite the two realms through conquest became untenable once the Scots allied with France. French reinforcements reached Edinburgh in 1548. Mary, Queen of Scots, was moved to France and betrothed to the Dauphin. A French attack on Boulogne in August 1549 finally forced Somerset to begin withdrawing from Scotland.

  By October 1549, armed rebellions had erupted across England, and a united council moved against Somerset. He retreated to Windsor Castle with the young king, who wrote in his Chronicle, "Me thinks I am in prison." On the 11th of October the council arrested Somerset and brought Edward to Richmond Palace. John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, emerged as the council's new leader in February 1550. Somerset was released, restored to the council, but eventually executed for felony in January 1552 after scheming to overthrow Dudley. Edward recorded the event in his Chronicle in plain terms: "the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o'clock in the morning."

  Dudley, who became Duke of Northumberland in 1551, operated very differently. Careful always to command a council majority, he encouraged collective deliberation and used it to legitimise his authority. Historian John Guy noted that, like Somerset, he became quasi-king, but managed the bureaucracy on the pretence that Edward had assumed full sovereignty. A special "Counsel for the Estate" was created when Edward turned fourteen; Edward chose its members himself. The king's greatest personal influence was consistently in matters of religion.

• 5. Reforming the Church

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  Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the man Edward trusted most, and under their working relationship the English church moved from a body that rejected papal authority while preserving Catholic doctrine to one that was institutionally Protestant. Edward himself was said to read twelve chapters of scripture daily. John Foxe commemorated him as a "godly imp" and depicted him as a new Josiah, the biblical king who destroyed the idols of Baal.

  Cranmer set himself the task of writing a uniform liturgy in English. The first Book of Common Prayer of 1549 was intended as a compromise but pleased almost nobody. Traditionalists attacked it for abandoning cherished rituals such as the elevation of the bread and wine. Reformers complained it retained too many Catholic elements. Bishops Stephen Gardiner of Winchester and Edmund Bonner of London opposed it openly; both were imprisoned in the Tower and deprived of their sees. In Devon and Cornwall, over five thousand, five hundred people died in what became known as the Prayer Book Rebellion.

  After 1551, Edward began exerting more personal influence as Supreme Head of the church. John Knox, employed as a minister in Newcastle upon Tyne under Northumberland, preached at court and prompted the king to oppose kneeling at communion. Cranmer was also shaped by the continental reformer Martin Bucer, who died in England in 1551, and by Peter Martyr, teaching at Oxford. In the winter of 1551-52, Cranmer rewrote the prayer book in less ambiguous terms, revised canon law, and prepared the Forty-two Articles. Historian Geoffrey Elton described the publication of this revised prayer book in 1552, backed by a second Act of Uniformity, as marking "the arrival of the English Church at Protestantism." That prayer book of 1552 remains the foundation of the Church of England's services today.

• 6. The Devise for the Succession

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  In February 1553, Edward fell ill. By June he was in a condition his doctors described as hopeless. The imperial ambassador Jean Scheyfve reported that Edward "suffers a good deal when the fever is upon him, especially from a difficulty in drawing his breath, which is due to the compression of the organs on the right side."

  Edward's response was to draft a document he headed "My devise for the Succession." He passed over both his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, citing their status as bastards under Henry VIII's earlier legislation, and settled the crown on his sixteen-year-old first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, who on the 25th of May 1553 had married Lord Guilford Dudley, a younger son of Northumberland. Historians have debated for decades whether the plan originated with Northumberland or with Edward himself. David Starkey wrote that "Edward had a couple of co-operators, but the driving will was his."

  On the 15th of June, Edward summoned high-ranking judges to his sickbed, commanding them "with sharp words and angry countenance" to prepare the devise as letters patent. Chief Justice Edward Montagu later recalled that Northumberland had threatened the assembled lawyers, saying he would fight any man "in his shirt" who resisted. On the 21st of June, over one hundred notables, including councillors, peers, archbishops, bishops, and sheriffs, signed the document. Many later claimed they had been coerced.

  Edward made his final public appearance on the 1st of July, showing himself at his window at Greenwich Palace in a condition that horrified onlookers. He died at Greenwich at eight in the evening on the 6th of July 1553, aged fifteen. His last words, recorded by Foxe, were: "I am faint; Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit." He was buried on the 8th of August at Westminster Abbey, immediately to the west of his grandfather Henry VII's tomb, with reformed rites performed by Thomas Cranmer. His burial place remained unmarked for over four centuries, until Christ's Hospital school laid an inscribed stone in the chapel floor on the 7th of October 1966.

• 7. The Short Reign's Long Shadow

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  Mary I, Catholic and determined, reversed her brother's Protestant reforms during her reign. She burned leading Protestant churchmen and sent others into exile. Yet she found herself entirely unable to restore the vast ecclesiastical properties already sold or transferred to private landowners during Edward's reign. The financial dismemberment of the church was irreversible.

  When Mary died in 1558, Elizabeth replaced her councillors and bishops with men who had served under Edward. William Cecil, who had worked in the Privy Chamber during Edward's reign, returned to government. Richard Cox, Edward's old tutor, preached an anti-Catholic sermon at the opening of Parliament in 1559. Parliament that spring passed an Act of Uniformity that restored Cranmer's 1552 prayer book with modifications. The Thirty-nine Articles of 1563 were drawn largely from Cranmer's Forty-two Articles of Edward's reign. The theological framework built during six years of a boy king's rule provided the foundation on which the Elizabethan church was constructed.