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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Edward VI Biography EDWARD VI (1537–53). King of England from 1547 to 1553. The son of Henry VIII by his third wife, Jane Seymour. Edward was born at Hampton Court, Oct. 12, 1537. He succeeded to the throne after his father's death, Jan. 28, 1547, his uncle, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, being chosen Protector and created Duke of Somerset. Edward received a careful education and was a studious, religious, and precocious youth; but he was too young to exercise any personal influence on the important events of his reign. His religious convictions, however, were shared by the Protector, who favored the principles of the Reformation, and during his rule great strides were made towards the establishment of Protestantism in England. The images were removed from the churches; the laity were allowed the cup at the ceremony of the Lord's Supper; Henry's famous six articles (known as the Bloody Statute) were repealed; and a new service book, known as the First Prayer Book of Edward VI (see Prayer Book, Common), was compiled by Cranmer and Ridley, assisted by 11 other divines, and ordered to be used. During the first year of the protectorate Seymour invaded Scotland, on account of the refusal of the Scottish government to fulfill the contract into which it had entered with Henry VIII that Mary, Queen of Scots, should marry Edward. At the battle of Pinkie, Sept. 10, 1547, the Scots were completely beaten; but Seymour, before he could inflict other damage, was required at home and returned to find that his brother, Lord Seymour, had been intriguing against him. Somerset had him arrested, tried, and condemned for treason, and on March 30, 1549, he was beheaded on Tower Hill. In the summer of the same year the Protector quelled an insurrection of the populace headed by one Kett, a tanner; but a more dangerous adversary appeared in John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, whose party, by insinuations against Somerset, excited the nation against him and compelled the King to sign his deposition. In October, 1551, Somerset was placed in the Tower; and on December 1 he was tried before the House of Lords for treason, condemned, and executed, Jan. 22, 1552. Before Somerset's execution Dudley had been created Duke of Northumberland. He was (judging from his dying declaration) a Catholic, but took no action to reëstablish the old religion. His great aim was to secure the succession to the throne of England for his family. With this view he married his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duchess of Suffolk, to whom Henry VIII had willed the crown in default of issue by Edward, Mary, or Elizabeth. Northumberland worked upon the consumptive and dying Edward to exclude Mary and Elizabeth on the ground of illegitimacy and to nominate Lady Jane Grey as his successor. Edward consented, and a document settling the succession on this lady was drawn up in June, 1553. The King lived only a few weeks after, dying on July 6. Edward's educational accomplishments were somewhat discounted by shrewdness and a hardness of character, which were exemplified by marked callousness when signing the death warrants of Seymour and Somerset. Edward VI restored many of the grammar schools suppressed by Henry VIII. These schools are still known as King Edward's schools. Consult: Nichol, Literary Remains of Edward VI (2 vols., London, 1857); Gasquet and Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer (ib., 1891); Markham, Edward VI (ib., 1907); Fisher, History of England, 1485–1547 (ib., 1906); Pollard, History of England, 1547–1603 (ib., 1910); Innes, England under the Tudors (ib., 1905). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. VII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 493. |