ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH
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.