Henry the Eighth had made a will,
appointing a council of sixteen to govern the kingdom
for his son while he was under age (he was now only
ten years old), and another council of twelve to help
them. The most powerful of the first council
was the EARL OF HERTFORD, the young King’s uncle,
who lost no time in bringing his nephew with great
state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower.
It was considered at the time a striking proof of
virtue in the young King that he was sorry for his
father’s death; but, as common subjects have
that virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about
it.
There was a curious part of the late
King’s will, requiring his executors to fulfil
whatever promises he had made. Some of the court
wondering what these might be, the Earl of Hertford
and the other noblemen interested, said that they
were promises to advance and enrich them.
So, the Earl of Hertford made himself DUKE OF SOMERSET,
and made his brother EDWARD SEYMOUR a baron; and there
were various similar promotions, all very agreeable
to the parties concerned, and very dutiful, no doubt,
to the late King’s memory. To be more dutiful
still, they made themselves rich out of the Church
lands, and were very comfortable. The new Duke
of Somerset caused himself to be declared PROTECTOR
of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King.
As young Edward the Sixth had been
brought up in the principles of the Protestant religion,
everybody knew that they would be maintained.
But Cranmer, to whom they were chiefly entrusted,
advanced them steadily and temperately. Many
superstitious and ridiculous practices were stopped;
but practices which were harmless were not interfered
with.
The Duke of Somerset, the Protector,
was anxious to have the young King engaged in marriage
to the young Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent
that princess from making an alliance with any foreign
power; but, as a large party in Scotland were unfavourable
to this plan, he invaded that country. His excuse
for doing so was, that the Border men that
is, the Scotch who lived in that part of the country
where England and Scotland joined troubled
the English very much. But there were two sides
to this question; for the English Border men troubled
the Scotch too; and, through many long years, there
were perpetual border quarrels which gave rise to
numbers of old tales and songs. However, the
Protector invaded Scotland; and ARRAN, the Scottish
Regent, with an army twice as large as his, advanced
to meet him. They encountered on the banks of
the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; and
there, after a little skirmish, the Protector made
such moderate proposals, in offering to retire if the
Scotch would only engage not to marry their princess
to any foreign prince, that the Regent thought the
English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible
mistake; for the English soldiers on land, and the
English sailors on the water, so set upon the Scotch,
that they broke and fled, and more than ten thousand
of them were killed. It was a dreadful battle,
for the fugitives were slain without mercy. The
ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was
strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and
heads. Some hid themselves in streams and were
drowned; some threw away their armour and were killed
running, almost naked; but in this battle of Pinkey
the English lost only two or three hundred men.
They were much better clothed than the Scotch; at the
poverty of whose appearance and country they were
exceedingly astonished.
A Parliament was called when Somerset
came back, and it repealed the whip with six strings,
and did one or two other good things; though it unhappily
retained the punishment of burning for those people
who did not make believe to believe, in all religious
matters, what the Government had declared that they
must and should believe. It also made a foolish
law (meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived
idly and loitered about for three days together, should
be burned with a hot iron, made a slave, and wear
an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity soon
came to an end, and went the way of a great many other
foolish laws.
The Protector was now so proud that
he sat in Parliament before all the nobles, on the
right hand of the throne. Many other noblemen,
who only wanted to be as proud if they could get a
chance, became his enemies of course; and it is supposed
that he came back suddenly from Scotland because he
had received news that his brother, LORD SEYMOUR, was
becoming dangerous to him. This lord was now
High Admiral of England; a very handsome man, and
a great favourite with the Court ladies even
with the young Princess Elizabeth, who romped with
him a little more than young princesses in these times
do with any one. He had married Catherine Parr,
the late King’s widow, who was now dead; and,
to strengthen his power, he secretly supplied the
young King with money. He may even have engaged
with some of his brother’s enemies in a plot
to carry the boy off. On these and other accusations,
at any rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached,
and found guilty; his own brother’s name being unnatural
and sad to tell the first signed to the
warrant of his execution. He was executed on
Tower Hill, and died denying his treason. One
of his last proceedings in this world was to write
two letters, one to the Princess Elizabeth, and one
to the Princess Mary, which a servant of his took
charge of, and concealed in his shoe. These letters
are supposed to have urged them against his brother,
and to revenge his death. What they truly contained
is not known; but there is no doubt that he had, at
one time, obtained great influence over the Princess
Elizabeth.
All this while, the Protestant religion
was making progress. The images which the people
had gradually come to worship, were removed from the
churches; the people were informed that they need not
confess themselves to priests unless they chose; a
common prayer-book was drawn up in the English language,
which all could understand, and many other improvements
were made; still moderately. For Cranmer was
a very moderate man, and even restrained the Protestant
clergy from violently abusing the unreformed religion as
they very often did, and which was not a good example.
But the people were at this time in great distress.
The rapacious nobility who had come into possession
of the Church lands, were very bad landlords.
They enclosed great quantities of ground for the
feeding of sheep, which was then more profitable than
the growing of crops; and this increased the general
distress. So the people, who still understood
little of what was going on about them, and still readily
believed what the homeless monks told them many
of whom had been their good friends in their better
days took it into their heads that all this
was owing to the reformed religion, and therefore rose,
in many parts of the country.
The most powerful risings were in
Devonshire and Norfolk. In Devonshire, the rebellion
was so strong that ten thousand men united within a
few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But
LORD RUSSELL, coming to the assistance of the citizens
who defended that town, defeated the rebels; and,
not only hanged the Mayor of one place, but hanged
the vicar of another from his own church steeple.
What with hanging and killing by the sword, four
thousand of the rebels are supposed to have fallen
in that one county. In Norfolk (where the rising
was more against the enclosure of open lands than
against the reformed religion), the popular leader
was a man named ROBERT KET, a tanner of Wymondham.
The mob were, in the first instance, excited against
the tanner by one JOHN FLOWERDEW, a gentleman who
owed him a grudge: but the tanner was more than
a match for the gentleman, since he soon got the people
on his side, and established himself near Norwich
with quite an army. There was a large oak-tree
in that place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, which
Ket named the Tree of Reformation; and under its green
boughs, he and his men sat, in the midsummer weather,
holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of
state. They were even impartial enough to allow
some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into
this Tree of Reformation, and point out their errors
to them, in long discourses, while they lay listening
(not always without some grumbling and growling) in
the shade below. At last, one sunny July day,
a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket
and all his men traitors, unless from that moment they
dispersed and went home: in which case they were
to receive a pardon. But, Ket and his men made
light of the herald and became stronger than ever,
until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient
force, and cut them all to pieces. A few were
hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and their
limbs were sent into various country places to be a
terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged
upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation;
and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have
withered away.
The Protector, though a haughty man,
had compassion for the real distresses of the common
people, and a sincere desire to help them. But
he was too proud and too high in degree to hold even
their favour steadily; and many of the nobles always
envied and hated him, because they were as proud and
not as high as he. He was at this time building
a great Palace in the Strand: to get the stone
for which he blew up church steeples with gunpowder,
and pulled down bishops’ houses: thus making
himself still more disliked. At length, his principal
enemy, the Earl of Warwick Dudley by name,
and the son of that Dudley who had made himself so
odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh joined
with seven other members of the Council against him,
formed a separate Council; and, becoming stronger
in a few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine
articles of accusation. After being sentenced
by the Council to the forfeiture of all his offices
and lands, he was liberated and pardoned, on making
a very humble submission. He was even taken back
into the Council again, after having suffered this
fall, and married his daughter, LADY ANNE SEYMOUR,
to Warwick’s eldest son. But such a reconciliation
was little likely to last, and did not outlive a year.
Warwick, having got himself made Duke of Northumberland,
and having advanced the more important of his friends,
then finished the history by causing the Duke of Somerset
and his friend LORD GREY, and others, to be arrested
for treason, in having conspired to seize and dethrone
the King. They were also accused of having intended
to seize the new Duke of Northumberland, with his
friends LORD NORTHAMPTON and LORD PEMBROKE; to murder
them if they found need; and to raise the City to revolt.
All this the fallen Protector positively denied;
except that he confessed to having spoken of the murder
of those three noblemen, but having never designed
it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason,
and found guilty of the other charges; so when the
people who remembered his having been their
friend, now that he was disgraced and in danger, saw
him come out from his trial with the axe turned from
him they thought he was altogether acquitted,
and sent up a loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered
to be beheaded on Tower Hill, at eight o’clock
in the morning, and proclamations were issued bidding
the citizens keep at home until after ten. They
filled the streets, however, and crowded the place
of execution as soon as it was light; and, with sad
faces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful Protector
ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful
block. While he was yet saying his last words
to them with manly courage, and telling them, in particular,
how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted
in reforming the national religion, a member of the
Council was seen riding up on horseback. They
again thought that the Duke was saved by his bringing
a reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the
Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and laid
down his head and had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders rushed forward
and steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a
mark of their affection. He had, indeed, been
capable of many good acts, and one of them was discovered
after he was no more. The Bishop of Durham,
a very good man, had been informed against to the
Council, when the Duke was in power, as having answered
a treacherous letter proposing a rebellion against
the reformed religion. As the answer could not
be found, he could not be declared guilty; but it was
now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among some
private papers, in his regard for that good man.
The Bishop lost his office, and was deprived of his
possessions.
It is not very pleasant to know that
while his uncle lay in prison under sentence of death,
the young King was being vastly entertained by plays,
and dances, and sham fights: but there is no doubt
of it, for he kept a journal himself. It is
pleasanter to know that not a single Roman Catholic
was burnt in this reign for holding that religion;
though two wretched victims suffered for heresy.
One, a woman named JOAN BOCHER, for professing some
opinions that even she could only explain in unintelligible
jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named VON PARIS,
who practised as a surgeon in London. Edward
was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign
the warrant for the woman’s execution: shedding
tears before he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged
him to do it (though Cranmer really would have spared
the woman at first, but for her own determined obstinacy),
that the guilt was not his, but that of the man who
so strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall
see, too soon, whether the time ever came when Cranmer
is likely to have remembered this with sorrow and
remorse.
Cranmer and RIDLEY (at first Bishop
of Rochester, and afterwards Bishop of London) were
the most powerful of the clergy of this reign.
Others were imprisoned and deprived of their property
for still adhering to the unreformed religion; the
most important among whom were GARDINER Bishop of
Winchester, HEATH Bishop of Worcester, DAY Bishop of
Chichester, and BONNER that Bishop of London who was
superseded by Ridley. The Princess Mary, who
inherited her mother’s gloomy temper, and hated
the reformed religion as connected with her mother’s
wrongs and sorrows she knew nothing else
about it, always refusing to read a single book in
which it was truly described held by the
unreformed religion too, and was the only person in
the kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to be
performed; nor would the young King have made that
exception even in her favour, but for the strong persuasions
of Cranmer and Ridley. He always viewed it with
horror; and when he fell into a sickly condition, after
having been very ill, first of the measles and then
of the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind
to think that if he died, and she, the next heir to
the throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion
would be set up again.
This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland
was not slow to encourage: for, if the Princess
Mary came to the throne, he, who had taken part with
the Protestants, was sure to be disgraced. Now,
the Duchess of Suffolk was descended from King Henry
the Seventh; and, if she resigned what little or no
right she had, in favour of her daughter LADY JANE
GREY, that would be the succession to promote the
Duke’s greatness; because LORD GUILFORD DUDLEY,
one of his sons, was, at this very time, newly married
to her. So, he worked upon the King’s fears,
and persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary
and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to
appoint his successor. Accordingly the young
King handed to the Crown lawyers a writing signed
half a dozen times over by himself, appointing Lady
Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiring them
to have his will made out according to law. They
were much against it at first, and told the King so;
but the Duke of Northumberland being so
violent about it that the lawyers even expected him
to beat them, and hotly declaring that, stripped to
his shirt, he would fight any man in such a quarrel they
yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated;
pleading that he had sworn to maintain the succession
of the Crown to the Princess Mary; but, he was a weak
man in his resolutions, and afterwards signed the
document with the rest of the council.
It was completed none too soon; for
Edward was now sinking in a rapid decline; and, by
way of making him better, they handed him over to a
woman-doctor who pretended to be able to cure it.
He speedily got worse. On the sixth of July,
in the year one thousand five hundred and fifty-three,
he died, very peaceably and piously, praying God, with
his last breath, to protect the reformed religion.
This King died in the sixteenth year
of his age, and in the seventh of his reign.
It is difficult to judge what the character of one
so young might afterwards have become among so many
bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But, he
was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and had
nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition which
in the son of such a father is rather surprising.