Edward VI, Part Seven

Edward became ill with boiling fever and coughing fits in February 1553, and over the next several months his fever came and went – but it was evident he wasn’t getting better. The Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador reported that ‘[the king] suffers a good deal when the fever is upon him, especially from a difficult in drawing his breath, which is due to the compression of the organs on the right side.’ The ambassador’s knowledge of Edward’s condition came from an informant in the king’s household, who went on to confess that ‘the matter [Edward] ejects from his mouth is sometimes coloured a greenish yellow and black, sometimes pink, like the colour of blood.’ The royal doctors believed he was suffering from ‘a suppurating tumour’ of the lung, and they didn’t see any way for him to recover. Edward’s legs swelled up so much that he had to lie on his back; the pain was so immense that he confessed to his tutor that ‘I am glad to die.’ But before he could slip into the sweet relief of death, he had to preserve the Reformation’s advance in England.

Lady Jane Gray

He was hot against Mary taking the throne: in the first instance, she would reverse the Reformation; in the second instance, he had firm concerns on her legitimacy and the priority of male inheritance (which excluded Elizabeth, too). He personally drew up a draft entitled My devise for the succession. His father had success with revising succession, so why shouldn’t he give it a go? His ‘bizarre and illogical’ provision excluded his half-sisters and settled the crown on his first cousin once removed, the sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Gray. Jane Gray had had recently married Lord Guilford Dudley, a young son of Northumberland, giving Northumberland a way to keep power when the sick king passed. Edward, who was against violating the rule of male headship, nonetheless acceded for Jane’s Gray’s succession because she was the best hope for keeping the throne out of Mary’s hands and preserving the Reformation. The document excluded Mary and Elizabeth because of their ‘bastardry’ (having been born to different mothers than he, who represented the current ‘pure’ bloodline); their ‘bastardry’ had been declared by Henry VIII, and in strict legal terms, they had never won back their legitimacy. 

The first draft needed a lot of polishing, and Edward personally saw to the touch-up job. He signed the document in several places and summoned the country’s high ranking judges to his sickbed, where he demanded their allegiance ‘with sharp words and angry countenance’ and ordered them to prepare his document as letters patent. He told them that in just a short time, the succession would be upheld by parliament. He then had the leading councilors and lawyers sign under his watchful eye a bond promising the faithful execution of his will after death. Some of the councilors had the nerve to raise questions about the plan; they were quickly shut down by Northumberland, who threatened them ‘trembling for anger, and… further said that he would fight in his shirt with any man in that quarrel.’ Chief Justice Edward Montagu overheard a group of lords whispering about how it’d be treason to refuse Edward’s demands. The pressure was on, and on 21 June the devise was signed by over a hundred of England’s biggest players. The roster included bishops and archbishops, sheriffs, councilors and peers. Many of them would later insist that Northumberland forced them to give their mark.

putting together the Devise for Succession

As word of the new plan of succession got out – and as Edward crept ever nearer to death – the foreign powers were getting concerned. The French, who were at odds with the Holy Roman Empire, didn’t like the idea of Mary sitting on the English throne. Though Mary was Catholic like the French, she was also the Holy Roman Emperor’s first cousin; that just would not do. French representatives gave Northumberland their support for Jane Gray’s accession. Though it was believed that most of England preferred Mary, Edward’s councilors were certain they could, over time, win support for Jane. 

Edward made his final public appearance on 1 July, when he showed himself at his window at Greenwich Palace. Those who saw him were mortified by his ‘thin and wasted’ condition. His frail form wasn’t off-putting enough to make people turn their heads, and over the next two days, large crowds gathered outside the palace hoping for a glimpse of their ailing king. On 3 July they were told that the weather was too chilly for Edward to appear, and three days later, at eight in the evening on 6 July 1553, the fifteen-year-old Edward died in his palace. John Foxe reported that his last words were: ‘I am faint; Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit.’ Though theories of poisoning abounded – some speculated that Northumberland was poisoning Edward to take control of the throne; others that his half-sister Mary was behind the plot, trying to kill him off so that she (next in line for the throne if Edward’s devise for succession failed) could take his place and bring Catholicism back to England – but the autopsy revealed that he died of ‘a disease of the lungs.’ The Venetian ambassador reported that Edward had died of tuberculosis; historian Chris Skidmore speculates that the king contracted tuberculosis after a bout of measles and smallpox in 1552 that suppressed his natural immunity to the disease. Historian Jennifer Loach postulates that his symptoms were typical of acute bronchopneumonia that led to a ‘suppurating pulmonary infection’ or lung abscess, septicaemia, and kidney failure.  The late Edward VI was buried at Westminster Abbey two days later; Archbishop Cranmer presided over the funeral. His burial place was unmarked until 1966 when an inscribed stone was laid in the chapel floor. Per Edward’s devise of succession, the throne passed to Lady Jane Gray – but she would ‘rule’ for only nine days.