CHAPTER XXIX--ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD THE SIXTH
Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council of sixteen togovern the kingdom for his son while he was under age (he was now onlyten years old), and another council of twelve to help them. The mostpowerful of the first council was the EARL OF HERTFORD, the young King'suncle, who lost no time in bringing his nephew with great state up toEnfield, and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time astriking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for hisfather'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 executorsto fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some of the court wonderingwhat these might be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemeninterested, said that they were promises to advance and enrich _them_.So, the Earl of Hertford made himself DUKE OF SOMERSET, and made hisbrother EDWARD SEYMOUR a baron; and there were various similarpromotions, all very agreeable to the parties concerned, and verydutiful, no doubt, to the late King's memory. To be more dutiful still,they made themselves rich out of the Church lands, and were verycomfortable. The new Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declaredPROTECTOR of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King.
As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the principles of theProtestant religion, everybody knew that they would be maintained. ButCranmer, to whom they were chiefly entrusted, advanced them steadily andtemperately. 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 Kingengaged in marriage to the young Queen of Scotland, in order to preventthat princess from making an alliance with any foreign power; but, as alarge party in Scotland were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded thatcountry. His excuse for doing so was, that the Border men--that is, theScotch who lived in that part of the country where England and Scotlandjoined--troubled the English very much. But there were two sides to thisquestion; for the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and,through many long years, there were perpetual border quarrels which gaverise to numbers of old tales and songs. However, the Protector invadedScotland; and ARRAN, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as large ashis, advanced to meet him. They encountered on the banks of the riverEsk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; and there, after a little skirmish,the Protector made such moderate proposals, in offering to retire if theScotch would only engage not to marry their princess to any foreignprince, that the Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this hemade a horrible mistake; for the English soldiers on land, and theEnglish sailors on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they broke andfled, and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dreadfulbattle, for the fugitives were slain without mercy. The ground for fourmiles, 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; butin 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 whoseappearance and country they were exceedingly astonished.
A Parliament was called when Somerset came back, and it repealed the whipwith six strings, and did one or two other good things; though itunhappily retained the punishment of burning for those people who did notmake believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the Governmenthad declared that they must and should believe. It also made a foolishlaw (meant to put down beggars), that any man who lived idly and loiteredabout for three days together, should be burned with a hot iron, made aslave, and wear an iron fetter. But this savage absurdity soon came toan 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 thenobles, on the right hand of the throne. Many other noblemen, who onlywanted to be as proud if they could get a chance, became his enemies ofcourse; and it is supposed that he came back suddenly from Scotlandbecause he had received news that his brother, LORD SEYMOUR, was becomingdangerous to him. This lord was now High Admiral of England; a veryhandsome man, and a great favourite with the Court ladies--even with theyoung Princess Elizabeth, who romped with him a little more than youngprincesses in these times do with any one. He had married CatherineParr, the late King's widow, who was now dead; and, to strengthen hispower, he secretly supplied the young King with money. He may even haveengaged with some of his brother's enemies in a plot to carry the boyoff. On these and other accusations, at any rate, he was confined in theTower, impeached, and found guilty; his own brother's namebeing--unnatural and sad to tell--the first signed to the warrant of hisexecution. He was executed on Tower Hill, and died denying his treason.One of his last proceedings in this world was to write two letters, oneto the Princess Elizabeth, and one to the Princess Mary, which a servantof his took charge of, and concealed in his shoe. These letters aresupposed to have urged them against his brother, and to revenge hisdeath. What they truly contained is not known; but there is no doubtthat he had, at one time, obtained great influence over the PrincessElizabeth.
All this while, the Protestant religion was making progress. The imageswhich the people had gradually come to worship, were removed from thechurches; the people were informed that they need not confess themselvesto priests unless they chose; a common prayer-book was drawn up in theEnglish language, which all could understand, and many other improvementswere made; still moderately. For Cranmer was a very moderate man, andeven restrained the Protestant clergy from violently abusing theunreformed religion--as they very often did, and which was not a goodexample. But the people were at this time in great distress. Therapacious nobility who had come into possession of the Church lands, werevery bad landlords. They enclosed great quantities of ground for thefeeding of sheep, which was then more profitable than the growing ofcrops; and this increased the general distress. So the people, who stillunderstood little of what was going on about them, and still readilybelieved what the homeless monks told them--many of whom had been theirgood friends in their better days--took it into their heads that all thiswas owing to the reformed religion, and therefore rose, in many parts ofthe country.
The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and Norfolk. In Devonshire,the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand men united within a fewdays, and even laid siege to Exeter. But LORD RUSSELL, coming to theassistance of the citizens who defended that town, defeated the rebels;and, not only hanged the Mayor of one place, but hanged the vicar ofanother from his own church steeple. What with hanging and killing bythe sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have fallen inthat one county. In Norfolk (where the rising was more against theenclosure of open lands than against the reformed religion), the popularleader 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 matchfor the gentleman, since he soon got the people on his side, andestablished himself near Norwich with quite an army. There was a largeoak-tree in that place, on a spot called Moushold Hill, which Ket namedthe Tree of Reformation; and under its green boughs, he and his men sat,in the midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairsof state. They were even impartial enough to allow some rather tiresomepublic speakers to get up into this Tree of Reformation, and point outtheir errors to them, in long discourses, while they lay listening (notalways without some grumbling and growling) in the shade below. At last,one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ketand all his men traitors, unless from that moment they dispersed and wenthome: in which case they were to receive a pardon. But, Ket and his menmade light of the herald and became stronger than ever, until the Earl ofWarwick went after them with a sufficient force, and cut them all topieces. A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and theirlimbs 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 ofReformation; and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have witheredaway.
The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion for the realdistresses of the common people, and a sincere desire to help them. Buthe was too proud and too high in degree to hold even their favoursteadily; and many of the nobles always envied and hated him, becausethey were as proud and not as high as he. He was at this time building agreat Palace in the Strand: to get the stone for which he blew up churchsteeples with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus makinghimself still more disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the Earl ofWarwick--Dudley by name, and the son of that Dudley who had made himselfso odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh--joined withseven other members of the Council against him, formed a separateCouncil; and, becoming stronger in a few days, sent him to the Towerunder twenty-nine articles of accusation. After being sentenced by theCouncil to the forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was liberatedand pardoned, on making a very humble submission. He was even taken backinto the Council again, after having suffered this fall, and married hisdaughter, LADY ANNE SEYMOUR, to Warwick's eldest son. But such areconciliation was little likely to last, and did not outlive a year.Warwick, having got himself made Duke of Northumberland, and havingadvanced the more important of his friends, then finished the history bycausing the Duke of Somerset and his friend LORD GREY, and others, to bearrested for treason, in having conspired to seize and dethrone the King.They were also accused of having intended to seize the new Duke ofNorthumberland, with his friends LORD NORTHAMPTON and LORD PEMBROKE; tomurder them if they found need; and to raise the City to revolt. Allthis the fallen Protector positively denied; except that he confessed tohaving spoken of the murder of those three noblemen, but having neverdesigned it. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, and found guiltyof the other charges; so when the people--who remembered his having beentheir friend, now that he was disgraced and in danger, saw him come outfrom his trial with the axe turned from him--they thought he wasaltogether acquitted, and sent up a loud shout of joy.
But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded on Tower Hill, ateight o'clock in the morning, and proclamations were issued bidding thecitizens 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 sadfaces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful Protector ascend the scaffoldto lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he was yet saying hislast words to them with manly courage, and telling them, in particular,how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted in reforming thenational religion, a member of the Council was seen riding up onhorseback. They again thought that the Duke was saved by his bringing areprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the Duke himself told them theywere mistaken, and laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their handkerchiefs inhis blood, as a mark of their affection. He had, indeed, been capable ofmany good acts, and one of them was discovered after he was no more. TheBishop of Durham, a very good man, had been informed against to theCouncil, when the Duke was in power, as having answered a treacherousletter proposing a rebellion against the reformed religion. As theanswer could not be found, he could not be declared guilty; but it wasnow discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among some private papers, inhis regard for that good man. The Bishop lost his office, and wasdeprived of his possessions.
It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay in prison undersentence 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 ajournal himself. It is pleasanter to know that not a single RomanCatholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion; though twowretched victims suffered for heresy. One, a woman named JOAN BOCHER,for professing some opinions that even she could only explain inunintelligible jargon. The other, a Dutchman, named VON PARIS, whopractised as a surgeon in London. Edward was, to his credit, exceedinglyunwilling to sign the warrant for the woman's execution: shedding tearsbefore he did so, and telling Cranmer, who urged him to do it (thoughCranmer really would have spared the woman at first, but for her owndetermined obstinacy), that the guilt was not his, but that of the manwho so strongly urged the dreadful act. We shall see, too soon, whetherthe time ever came when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this withsorrow and remorse.
Cranmer and RIDLEY (at first Bishop of Rochester, and afterwards Bishopof London) were the most powerful of the clergy of this reign. Otherswere imprisoned and deprived of their property for still adhering to theunreformed religion; the most important among whom were GARDINER Bishopof Winchester, HEATH Bishop of Worcester, DAY Bishop of Chichester, andBONNER that Bishop of London who was superseded by Ridley. The PrincessMary, who inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated the reformedreligion as connected with her mother's wrongs and sorrows--she knewnothing else about it, always refusing to read a single book in which itwas truly described--held by the unreformed religion too, and was theonly person in the kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to beperformed; nor would the young King have made that exception even in herfavour, but for the strong persuasions of Cranmer and Ridley. He alwaysviewed it with horror; and when he fell into a sickly condition, afterhaving been very ill, first of the measles and then of the small-pox, hewas greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and she, the nextheir to the throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be setup 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 withthe Protestants, was sure to be disgraced. Now, the Duchess of Suffolkwas descended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if she resigned whatlittle or no right she had, in favour of her daughter LADY JANE GREY,that would be the succession to promote the Duke's greatness; becauseLORD GUILFORD DUDLEY, one of his sons, was, at this very time, newlymarried to her. So, he worked upon the King's fears, and persuaded himto set aside both the Princess Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, andassert his right to appoint his successor. Accordingly the young Kinghanded to the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times over byhimself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to the Crown, and requiringthem to have his will made out according to law. They were much againstit at first, and told the King so; but the Duke of Northumberland--beingso violent about it that the lawyers even expected him to beat them, andhotly declaring that, stripped to his shirt, he would fight any man insuch a quarrel--they yielded. Cranmer, also, at first hesitated;pleading that he had sworn to maintain the succession of the Crown to thePrincess Mary; but, he was a weak man in his resolutions, and afterwardssigned the document with the rest of the council.
It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now sinking in a rapiddecline; and, by way of making him better, they handed him over to awoman-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 lastbreath, to protect the reformed religion.
This King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh ofhis reign. It is difficult to judge what the character of one so youngmight afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious, quarrellingnobles. But, he was an amiable boy, of very good abilities, and hadnothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition--which in the son ofsuch a father is rather surprising.