The Arrangements for the Minority-Somerset- Battle of Pinkie, and Rebellions in Devonshire and Norfolk-Ascendancy of John Dudley-The Reformation -Unpopularity of the Government-Plot to alter the Succession. HENRY VIII. left the crown by will to Edward, his son by Jane Seymour, and in event of Edward's death without children, to his daughters Mary and Henry Elizabeth successively. Failing their issue it was to go to VIII.'s Will. the descendants of his sister Mary, duchess of Suffolk; the children of Margaret of Scotland being thus omitted from the succession. Edward was only nine years old. He was to come of age at sixteen, and until then the government was to be carried on by a council of executors named in the will. Henry had chosen these with great care, excluding, as he thought, all persons of rash and violent character, and so managing that both the old faith and the new should be represented. By this means he hoped to secure the continuation of his own moderate policy until his son came of age. The chief members of the council cillors. were Hertford, Lisle, Cranmer, and Paget, who represented the new ideas; and Wriothesley the chancellor, Sir Anthony Browne, and Tunstall, bishop of Durham, who inclined to the old order of things. No member of the council was to have precedence over the rest, so that responsibility for its actions might rest upon the whole council. Henry's chief reliance, however, was placed upon Hertford and Paget, and he spent the last two days of his life in earnestly explaining to them his ideas for the future government of the country. Chief Coun Protector. Hardly, however, was Henry dead when Hertford and Paget set to work to upset his scheme. In spite of the chancellor, they persuaded the other executors that the good of the kingdom required a Hertford single head, and Hertford accordingly was appointed Pro- becomes tector of the realm, and governor of the king's person. The executors then declared that Henry had intended to raise many of them to higher ranks in the peerage, and to give them grants of church lands. Accordingly, Hertford became duke of Somerset, and his brother, Thomas Seymour, Lord Seymour of Sudeley; Lord Lisle, earl of Warwick; and Wriothesley, earl of Southampton. Two months later, a mistake of Wriothesley's led to his removal from the chancellorship, and then Hertford induced the king to give him a new commission as Protector, not as an executor under Henry VIII.'s will, but as the nominee of Edward himself. Policy of the The Protector was one of the most remarkable characters of his time. He was a man of undaunted courage and some military ability, of generous disposition, aiming at the accomplishment of great things, and sympathetic towards the grievances of the poor. But his abilities as a statesman were by no means equal to the position to which he had raised himself. He was wanting in caution, and belonged to that class of politician whom Frederick the Great described as 'always taking the second step before they took the first.' Protector. Religion. The weakness of Somerset's character was at once shown in his treatment of religious matters. Henry VIII. had always aimed at holding the mean between the two opposing religious parties, and had hoped that his executors would follow out his policy when his son came of age. Somerset, on the other hand, over-estimating the ripeness of the country for change, and not understanding that what was popular in London and the seaport towns would probably not commend itself to the slower minds of the country districts, almost immediately sent out a commission to pull down all images in churches, and to whitewash the frescoes on the walls. They also abolished the mass, and ordered the service to be said in English. In London the commissioners were well received, but it was very different in the country; and things were made worse by the gross irreverence with which the commissioners' servants carried out the orders of their masters. They might be seen parading the country, dressed out in religious vestments; and images and pictures, which had received the reverent worship of many generations of parishioners, were dragged down and burnt amidst unseemly revel. Nothing could have been more unwise. Hitherto, so far as the country people had been concerned, the Reformation had been merely a question of nominal changes; but the destruction of the images and ornaments, the substitution of English for the chanted Latin services, for which this country was celebrated, brought home to the country people the reality of the change, and caused much excitement. Disendow. ment of the Guilds. At the same time, the government foolishly attacked the interests of the artisans of the towns. In the towns the most important institution was that of the guilds, which dated back from before the Conquest, and seem to have been inseparable from English life. They were of many kinds: some, like the guilds merchant, were associations of leading merchants; others, like the craft-guilds of the weavers or dyers, were more like trades unions, except that they included both the masters and the journeymen; others were associations for common purposes, as for the cultivation of music. These guilds, besides regulating trade, performed a variety of useful functions. They acted as insurance or benefit societies, which aided members when they were sick, educated the young, helped workmen who had suffered from accident, provided for the burial of the dead, pensioned widows, and paid for masses for the repose of the souls of their members. Besides this they played a large part in the social life of the people. The feast days of the guilds were festive gatherings for their members, and in many places, as at York, miracle plays and processions formed part of the day's entertainment. In Norfolk there were no less than nine hundred and nine guilds, and in the little town of Bodmin there were forty-eight. In course of time these guilds had accumulated a considerable property, on which was charged the payment for masses for the dead; and the Protector persuaded the members of parliament, who must have been themselves unconnected with the guilds, to pass an Act confiscating their property. The London trade companies, being too powerful to be touched with impunity, were spared. In regard to Scotland Somerset pursued an equally reckless policy. Henry VIII. had been well aware that the all-important marriage which had Scotland. been arranged between Edward and Mary could only be carried out at the price of much tact, and also that it was necessary at all hazards to support the English faction in Scotland. Somerset neglected both these principles. He allowed the clerical party, with the aid of the French, to capture the castle of St. Andrews, where the murderers of Cardinal Beaton were holding out, and then exasperated the whole country by an invasion. He crossed the border in August, declaring that he came to enforce the treaty of 1543, and took with him 14,000 foot, 4000 horse, and 15 guns, marching along the coast towards Edinburgh supported by his fleet. Pinkie. He found the Scots, 25,000 strong, posted near Musselburgh, on the Edinburgh side of the river Esk, which here flows into the Forth almost at a right angle. The river was shallow, but the banks Battle of were so steep and rugged that it could only be crossed by cavalry and guns at one bridge a quarter of a mile from the mouth. Somerset encamped his men about two miles short of the bridge, and was expecting a doubtful and difficult passage of the river in face of the Scots, when the enemy, mistaking his halt for fear, determined to advance next morning and themselves attack the English camp. Accordingly at day break they crossed the river by the bridge, and, turning to their right to avoid the guns of the English fleet, made their way over some marshy and arable land in the direction of Fawside Brae, a piece of rising ground about two miles from the sea. The English, however, divining their intention, were the first to seize the brae, where they planted artillery, and then charged the Scottish right wing with the English horse under Lord Grey. The impenetrable barrier of Scottish spears, however, threw the English horsemen into disorder, and Grey himself was wounded; but the Scots, in the excitement of victory, fell into confusion. In this condition they were charged by the English foot, and so complete a rout followed that it is said that no less than 13,000 Scots were slain. The victory of Pinkie destroyed for a time the Scottish military power, but from a political point of view it was worse than useless. Even Scotsmen who were not unfavourable to the English alliance were repelled by the barbarity of the invasion. The marquis of Huntly's remark that he 'misliked not the match but he hated the manner of wooing,' spoke the general sentiment. The Scots were thrown into the arms of France, and the little queen was at once sent across the water to be brought up at Paris as the future wife of the Dauphin. Next year the Protector sent a force to occupy Haddington, which was held for some years by the English. First Prayer Edward VI. The chief event of the session of 1549 was the issue of a new prayerbook, called the First Prayer-book of Edward vi. This was prepared by a committee of divines sitting at Windsor, of whom the best known were Cranmer and Nicolas Ridley, bishop of Rochester. It was approved by convocation, and was then book of laid before parliament. It received the sanction of both houses, and an Act of Uniformity was passed substituting it for the Uses and other services hitherto employed. This prayer-book was founded upon the old missal and breviary, and the work of translation was mainly done by Archbishop Cranmer. The question of the exact position of the Sacraments was long debated, and in the end was settled by a compromise which left room for some latitude of opinion, neither strictly following the views either of the old Catholics or of those who took their views from the teaching of Calvin at Geneva. This servicebook was revised in 1552, 1559, 1603, and 1662 At its introduction, when it had to contend against the popularity of old-established uses, it was little liked, but the beauty of its language and its devotional tone have long endeared it to members of the Church of England. The same session of parliament had to deal with the treason of Lord Seymour of Sudeley. This man, who was a notorious evil liver, was far Lord Sey mour's Treason. inferior to his brother in every way. He was extremely ambitious and intriguing. He first aspired to marry the Princess Elizabeth, then clandestinely married Henry's widow, Katharine Parr. On her death in 1548 he reverted to his former scheme, and bribed Elizabeth's attendants to influence her in his favour. Besides this, he used his influence as admiral to make friends with the pirates of the Channel; had money coined for him at Bristol; set on foot two cannon foundries; forged twenty-four cannons and thirteen tons of shots; and fortified and provisioned Holt Castle. These things having come to light, their treasonable character was manifest, and Seymour was put to death by an act of attainder. 'He was a wicked man,' said Latimer, and the realm was well rid of him.' Trouble next arose in the West; the new service-book was read for the first time on Whit Sunday, 1549. It created a storm of indignation; Rising in and in one village, at any rate, the congregation compelled the West. the priest to sing mass as usual. The malcontents soon appeared in arms, and an abortive attempt of Sir Peter Carew to put down the insurrection only added fuel to the flame. The rebels marched on Exeter, 10,000 strong, under Sir T. Pomeroy and Sir Humphrey Arundel, demanding the religious laws of Henry VIII., especially the Six Articles, the restoration of the mass and the elevation of the host, the suppression of the English version of the Bible, and the recall of Cardinal Pole. Had they marched on London at once, the situation would have been extremely serious, for insurrections had also broken out in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and other counties; but time was wasted in an unsuccessful siege of Exeter, and in August, Lord Russell and Lord Grey de Wilton, aided by a body of German troops whom the government had hired as a standing army, attacked them at St. Mary's Clyst, a village about four miles from Exeter. The rebels fought St. Mary's with the utmost determination, and Grey, who had led Clyst. the cavalry at Pinkie, said he had never seen such steadiness; but in the end the German bullets proved too much for the valour Battle of |