Edward VI

Edward VI (1537–53), king of England (1547–53). Since Edward was 9 years old when he succeeded Henry VIII in 1547, he was in tutelage for the greater part of his reign, with Somerset as his governor until 1549 and Northumberland thereafter. His mother Jane Seymour died when he was born, his half-sister Mary was 21 years his senior, Elizabeth four years. Edward's chronicle or journal, which he kept from the age of 12, is largely factual and reveals little of character, save perhaps reserve and caution. His main interest was in the sham fights put on to entertain him, the poor state of the currency, and the obstinacy of his sister Mary in refusing to change her religion. From the age of 6 he had learned protestant tutors— Richard Cox, Sir John Cheke the distinguished humanist, and Sir Anthony Cooke. Contemporaries saw much in him to admire. The Venetian ambassador in 1551 thought him ‘handsome, affable, of becoming stature’, and in 1552 the imperial ambassador, after a difficult conversation about Mary's religion, reported him ‘a likely lad, of quick, ready and well-developed mind’. Less sentimentally, G. R. Elton summed up: ‘Edward was naturally haughty and arrogant … he had a marked intellectual ability, which an appalling schooling had turned into a precocious passion for protestant theology—a cold-hearted prig.’

The religious policy, the central theme of his reign, must have been that of his two chief ministers, though with Edward's growing approval. The position at Henry's death was an uneasy stalemate: the king's quarrel had been with papal authority rather than the rites and doctrines of the catholic church. But a series of measures during Edward's reign pushed England into the protestant camp. Catholic bishops were replaced by reformers. Persecution of protestants ceased and a number of continental reformers made their way across the Channel. The Act of Six Articles, which had represented a shift back towards catholicism, was repealed. The chantries followed the monasteries into dissolution, thus putting even more property into the hands of the gentry and aristocracy. The new Prayer Book of 1549, though not going far enough for many protestants, shocked Devon and Cornwall catholics into revolt. The revised prayer book of 1552 and Cranmer's Forty-Two Articles of 1553 moved the Church of England nearer to calvinism.

Another preoccupation of the reign was the future marriage of the young king. Most promising seemed the suggestion that he should marry Mary, queen of Scots, five years his junior, with the prospect of uniting the two kingdoms. In 1543 the treaty of Greenwich arranged for the marriage but the Scots were extremely reluctant to endorse it. Henry's savage reprisals in 1544 and 1545 (‘the rough wooing’) alienated what support the English had in Scotland and in 1548 Mary was betrothed to the dauphin and sent to France. In 1551 there were negotiations for the hand of Elizabeth, daughter of Henri II of France, but she was even younger than Mary and, in the end, became the third wife of Philip of Spain. In April 1553 the imperial ambassador reported rumours that Edward was to marry Joanna, a daughter of Ferdinand, king of the Romans and brother of the Emperor Charles V.

Further negotiations were not needed. In 1552 the young king had measles and smallpox, from which he seemed to have recovered, but by the beginning of 1553 signs of pulmonary tuberculosis were evident. Edward's last significant action was an attempt to head off any catholic revival by a ‘devise of the crown’, switching the succession from Mary. The plan to bring in Lady Jane Grey, of the blood royal, hastily married to Northumberland's son, was not as hare-brained as the ultimate fiasco made it seem. But the puzzle is why Edward did not try to bring in Elizabeth, popular and protestant. She may have been far too prudent to involve herself in so risky a business or Northumberland might well have thought that she would not prove docile. The last weeks of Edward's life were grim as the illness took hold and diplomats speculated on his survival in terms of days, then hours. He died at Greenwich palace on 6 July. The settlement of the succession, which had meant so much to him, lasted barely a fortnight.

J. A. Cannon

Bibliography

Jordan, W. K. (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI (1966);
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Edward VI: The Young King (1968);
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Edward VI: The Threshold of Power (1970).