Edward VI, Part Six

Though the two major rebellions of 1549 were put down, the fact that they had taken place at all reflected poorly on the government – and especially on Somerset. In July of that year, Somerset’s secretary warned him, ‘Every man of the council has misliked your proceedings… would to God that, at the first stir you had followed the matter hotly, and caused justice to be ministered in solemn fashion to the terror of others…’ In other words, because Somerset had dallied in putting down the rebellions, the council was questioning his leadership. Come autumn the crown was facing financial ruin, and Somerset was hard-pressed to cling to his power. His arrogance and aloofness, as well as his lack of political and administrative skills, was catching up to him. When he received news of a cabal against him on 1 October, he issued a proclamation calling for assistance, took possession of Edward VI, and withdrew to the safety of the fortified Windsor Castle. As Somerset hid, the council published details of Somerset’s ineptitudes. They emphasized that Somerset’s power came from the council, not Henry VIII’s will, and on 11 October they had Somerset arrested and brought Edward VI – who’d complained that he felt imprisoned at Windsor – to Richmond. Edward listed the charges leveled against his Protector in his Chronicle: ‘ambition, vainglory, entering into rash wars in mine youth, […] enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority.’ In February 1550 John Dudley, Earl of Warwick – who had won prominence in battle against Scotland and in quelling Kett’s Rebellion – became the leader of the royal council (and, in effect, Somerset’s replacement). Though Somerset was released from the Tower and restored to the council, his reprieve was short-lived: he was executed for felony in January 1552 after scheming to overthrow Warwick’s regime. The young Edward noted Somerset’s death in his Chronicle: ‘the duke of Somerset had his head cut off upon Tower Hill between eight and nine o’clock in the morning.’ 

the execution of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset

Different ages have different takes on historical characters; this is never truer than in historical perspectives on the Duke of Somerset on the one hand and the Earl of Warwick (made Duke of Northumberland in 1551) on the other. While Somerset was viewed positively by older historians, now he is perceived as inept and unqualified for leading the country; while older historians denigrated Northumberland as a ‘grasping schemer’ who enriched himself on the crown, recent historians have been more generous: it was he, they insist, who restored the authority of the King’s Council and steered the government to a steady harbor after Somerset’s misfires. At Somerset’s fall, Warwick was there to fill the vacuum – and he did it with political ruthlessness. He won the support of the Council through bribes and titles; with the power of the Council in his hands, he ousted his rivals and won himself the title ‘Lord President of the Council’ and ‘Great Master’ of Edward VI’s household. He distanced himself from Somerset’s rule by refusing the title ‘Protector,’ and though he still held the Council’s power, he gave them more of a rule than his predecessor had and thus won their favor. He became the new quasi-head of England. Historian John Guy notes, ‘Like Somerset, [Northumberland] became quasi-king; the difference was that he managed the bureaucracy on the pretence that Edward had assumed full sovereignty, whereas Somerset had asserted the right to near-sovereignty as Protector.’

Northumberland slaved to win favor and power in the Royal Council. Because he, unlike Somerset, lacked any blood relation to the young king, Northumberland staffed the council with several of his own family members – and he even included family in the royal household tasked with supporting and ministering to the young king. His support of the council was bolstered by the fact that, unlike Somerset, he actually treated the council with appropriate respect. Whereas Somerset used the council to rubber-stamp his decisions, Northumberland made them integral to the machinery of government. Their voices were heard and their advise interred, though Northumberland remained in control of the government’s ultimate direction. He took a different tack than Somerset; taking to heart the lessons of the late Henry VII, who had also inherited a financially bankrupt and politically fractured state, Northumberland focused on peace and prosperity to get England back on an even keel. He pursued peace with France and signed that peace in 1550; many hated the peace, as Northumberland sacrificed Boulogne (won in the latter part of Henry VIII’s reign) back to France. He irritated the veterans of the ‘Rough Wooing’ by withdrawing all English garrisons from the southern Scottish frontier; but this was a shrewd move, as there was no hope of establishing a permanent peace with Scotland, and the frontier forts were both ineffective and a drain on the economy. In 1551 Northumberland betrothed Edward to Elisabeth of Valois, the daughter of King Henry II of France. Closer to home he worked to stabilize the countryside to prevent the sort of rebellions that wracked Somerset’s Protectorate. He tightened his fist on local unrest by establishing permanent crown representatives in all localities and commissioning lords lieutenants, commanders of small military forces, to pacify the countryside and report any mischief back to the central government.

With the economic drain of warfare and rebellion remedied, Northumberland bent to the task of reversing England’s financial strain. Though political blame for England’s state-of-affairs fell to Somerset, in reality the late Protector had ‘inherited’ Henry VIII’s morbid financial cesspool. His mistake was worsening the treasury with his wars and lack of financial measures. Northumberland sought to remedy this by pursuing peace and trade and reworking the nation’s broken financial system. His first measures were a disaster, resulting in debased coinage; he then brought in an economic expert, Thomas Gresham, who reversed course. Gresham cracked down on widespread embezzlement of government moneys and launched a top-to-bottom review of revenue collection practices, which one historian called ‘one of the more remarkable achievements of the Tudor administration.’ By 1552 confidence in the coinage was restored, prices fell, and trade was on the uptick. The groundwork for financial recovery had been laid, though England wouldn’t fully recover until the reign of Queen Elizabeth. 

Northumberland included Edward in numerous state decisions, though the exact extent of Edward’s involvement in government has been a matter of debate. Stephen Alford notes that the wide range of theories ‘[balance] an articulate puppet against a mature, precocious, and essentially adult king.’ Here is what we know: when Edward turned fourteen, Northumberland created a special ‘Counsel of the Estate’ specifically for him. He chose his own members, and in weekly meetings Edward heard ‘the debating of things of most importance.’ He became involved in the Privy Chamber where he worked closely with Northumberland’s favored councilors and the Principal Secretaries. While Northumberland drove the government machinery back on a path towards peace and prosperity, Edward focused on continuing his father’s English Reformation – but he took it much further than his father would’ve liked. 

Henry VIII had launched the English Reformation to break away from the Catholic rules against divorce and remarriage. He was a ‘Catholic’ at heart, and so the English Reformation – despite its despoiling monasteries and breaking the Catholic stranglehold on the English government – resembled the Catholic Church in most ways. In order to win support for the breakaway, Henry had been forced to rely on leaders who had far more radical views than his own. This radical ‘Protestantism’ took root in the English Reformation, and it flourished under Edward VI. The new king followed in his father’s footsteps by relying on the sage wisdom (and power) of Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like his father he continued the despoiling of Catholic property, turning his attention against chantries – funds of money that were used to perform masses for the recently departed – and in so doing further enriched the crown’s treasury. Henry VIII would’ve approved of these policies, but he would’ve rolled over in his grave if he knew just how far Edward would take things.

Edward was a pious king who read twelve chapters of scripture daily and enjoyed sermons. He was portrayed, both during his life and after, as a new King Josiah, the biblical king who brought pagan Israel back to the right path, and who destroyed all the idols of Baal. Cranmer and other religious leaders were able to mold the young king towards a rejection of Catholic pageantry and a conviction that ‘true religion’ must spread through England. During Edward’s reign, Reformed doctrines became official, most notably the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Ordinal of 1550 replaced the divine ordination of priests with a governmental system that established appointments and authorized ministers. It was Cranmer who wrote a uniform liturgy in English, detailing all weekly and daily services and religious festivals, that was made compulsory in the Act of Uniformity of 1549. His Book of Common Prayer had been influenced by both the traditionalists and radicals, but that didn’t make it any less volatile in more pro-Catholic places (as the Prayer Book Rebellion showed). The Reformation advanced heavily after Somerset’s fall and the rise of Northumberland. Edward, given more power under Northumberland than he’d had under Somerset, took to task his role as Supreme Head of the English Church. More and more reformers were consecrated as bishops, canon law was revised, and the Forty-Two Articles were compiled to clarify the practice of the Reformed faith. Official English doctrine rejected transubstantiation – the idea that the living Christ was present in the communion emblems – and the Catholic mass was wholly eradicated. Cranmer rewrote the Book of Common Prayer in 1552; according to historian G.R. Elton, the publication of the revised prayer book ‘marked the arrival of the English Church at Protestantism.’ Even to this day, the 1552 Book of Common Prayer remains the foundation of the Church of England’s services. 

Cranmer was well on the path to cementing Protestantism in England; by the end of Edward’s long reign, he hoped, Catholicism and all its heretical entrapments would be a thing of the past. His good humor was dashed, however, when the young boy became sick and the doctors gave a terminal diagnosis. The king’s reign, it became apparent, would be rather short. Next in line to the throne was the fiery pro-Catholic Mary Tudor; if she became monarch, she would undoubtedly reverse all of Cranmer’s reformations and set the clock back to the days before Henry VIII. Fearing a Catholic reconciliation, and the demise of all they’d worked for, the ailing Edward and his loyal Protestant council set about a desperate revision of the succession to keep Mary from taking the throne.