both men of little principle. From merely political motives, they joined with Cranmer and other real Reformers in establishing the Church of England substantially on its present footing; but they confiscated its possessions, laboured to render its ministers, from the highest to the lowest, mere creatures of the State, and treated the Princess Mary, Gardiner, Heath, Bonner, and others in a manner altogether unjustifiable, and which unquestionably had a great share in bringing about the persecution by which the following reign was rendered so unhappy and so odious.

Somerset, the Protector, after driving from the council the lord chancellor, (Wriothesley,) who was a decided Romanist, applied himself with vigour to carry forward the work of reformation. He also made an expedition against Scotland, but though he gained a victory in the field, he could not bring about the marriage which Henry VIII. had projected between his son and the

fall the real ruler of the kingdom, obtained the high offices of lord steward and earl inarshal, and was created duke of Northumberland, receiving at the same time the county palatine of Durham. By a feigned zeal for Protestantism he gained a great ascendancy over Edward VI., and prevailed on him to bequeath the crown to his cousin, Lady Jane Grey; but this enterprise failed in the execution; Northumberland was deserted by his adherents, and, in spite of his abject submission, was tried, condemned, and executed as a traitor, and owed Christian burial to the gratitude of an old servant (John Cock, Lancaster herald), who begged his remains from the queen, and interred them in the chapel of the Tower. He had married Jane, daughter of Sir Edward Guildford, warden of the Cinque Ports, and had a large family; four of his sons were concerned in his treason, but only one of them (Guildford) was executed; his daughter Mary became the mother of Sir Philip Sydney. Northumberland was a bold, active, unscrupulous man, and though he greatly forwarded the Reformation, it was evidently merely from views of personal aggrandizement, for he died professing himself a Romanist, and warning the spectators to avoid the Protestant teachers as 66 sowers of sedition."

young queen as a means of uniting the kingdoms. He offended the rest of the council by assuming a superiority which they contended that Henry VIII. had not meant to exist, and alarmed them by introducing foreign troops; and being already odious to the nation for his rapacity in seizing the college and chantry lands, and his unnatural conduct in bringing his brother to the scaffold, he was easily stripped of his power by a confederacy formed against him, and committed to the Tower, in October, 1549.

The earl of Warwick was now ruler. After a while Somerset was permitted to return to the council, but was soon involved in what seems to have been a sham plot, tried, condemned, and put to death. The young king's health had long been declining, and Dudley (now become duke of Northumberland) having gained his confidence by an apparent zeal for the Reformation, persuaded him to settle the crown on his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, to the exclusion of his sisters; a change in the succession which he was incompetent to make without the authority of parliament. Edward died very shortly after, at Greenwich, on July 6, 1553, and was buried on August 8, at Westminster.

Beside the formal establishment of Protestantism, the reign of Edward is chiefly remarkable for the enactment of severe laws against vagabonds and tumultuous assem

She was the daughter of Henry Grey, duke of Suffolk, by his wife Frances, who was the daughter of Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. and Charles Brandon. Lady Jane, though only sixteen, was the wife of Guildford Dudley, the duke's son. She was learned, amiable, and pious, and her long imprisonment and violent death were the fruit of her filial piety, which induced her to accept the crown against her better judgment.

blies, the creation of a variety of new treasons", and some discreditable tampering with the coind. A peace was concluded with France, by which king Henry's conquest of Boulogne was given up, and an attempt was made to bring about a marriage between the king and Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. War was maintained, on a small scale, against the Scots, but the council feared to enter on hostilities with the emperor (Charles V.), and therefore, after an angry debate, they desisted from their design of forcing the new service-book on the Princess Mary, though they imprisoned her servants, and prevented her own escape to Flanders.

The arms of Edward VI. are the same as those of Henry VIII., but his supporters are

uniformly the golden lion and the red dragon. Only one badge, the sun in splendour, is ascribed to him.

Sien

The character of the young king, as far as it was allowed to develope itself, was amiable. To his councillors, and not to himself, must be laid the odium of the

These treasons were, however, in general, such as had been created under the reign of Henry VIII. and abolished in the first parliament of Edward VI.; they were re-enacted in the year 1552, after the fall of Somerset.

d Under the date April 10, 1551, the young king writes in his Journal: "It was appointed to make 20,000 pound weight for necessity somewhat baser, to get gains £16,000 clear, by which the debt of the realm might be paid, the country defended from any sudden attempt, and the coin amended." Several subsequent entries speak of "deliberations touching the coin," in one of which "the small money was ordered to be made of a baser state," and in another, two standards were fixed on, "one without any craft;" "the other not fully six [the nominal standard], of which kind was not a few."

execution of his uncles, and the burning of heretics; but his own better nature appeared in his noble charitable foundations of hospitals and schools; his acquirements embraced both ancient and modern languages, and he has left a monument of his literary abilities in a minute Journal, and several detached letters and papers on political and controversial subjects.

A.D. 1547. Edward received as king, Jan. 28 f.

The executors of the late king's will meet, when, after some opposition from Wriothesley, the chancellor, the earl of Hertford is declared protector of the king's realms, and governor of his person.

:

Several of the executors and others receive higher titles the earl of Hertford is created duke of Somerset ; the viscount Lisle, earl of Warwick; the lord Wriothesley, earl of Southampton.

The chancellor puts the great seal in commission without the consent of the rest of the executors, and is himself in consequence deprived of his office, and imprisoned, March 6.

The Protector receives a grant of his office by letters patent, March 13.

• His chief tutor was Sir John Cheke, a man of more learning than firmness of principle. He was of St. John's College, Cambridge, and greatly promoted the study of Greek in that University. On the death of the young king he was imprisoned, first as a partisan of Lady Jane Grey, and next as a heretic, when hard usage induced him to feign conformity to Romanism; but being put forward in the persecution of others, he died of grief and shame in the year 1557.

His regnal years are computed from this day, which was also that of the death of his predecessor,—a practice then first introduced. See vol. i. p. 419.

Francis I. of France dies, March 22; he is succeeded by Henry II.

The curate and churchwardens of a London parish (St. Martin, Ironmonger-lane) remove the images and pictures and crucifix from their church. Gardiner and the clergy generally censure this, but Cranmer and his friends resolve on a further reformation.

A book of Homilies, twelve in number, set forth, in which the doctrines of the Reformers are advocated. The castle of St. Andrew's captured and destroyed by the French, August.

Nicholas Ridley appointed bishop of Rochester %, Aug. 14.

The Protector invades Scotland, in order to enforce the marriage treaty formed in 1543h. He defeats the Scots at Pinkie (near Musselburgh), Sept. 10, captures Edinburgh, and places garrisons in Broughty, Roxburgh, and other castles, and returns to England.

An ecclesiastical visitation carried out, for the purpose of removing images, asserting the royal supremacy, and

He was born in 1500, in Northumberland, was educated at Pem. broke Hall, Cambridge, and became eminent as a preacher. He warmly embraced the doctrine of the Reformation, and ventured as early as 1540 to celebrate portions of the service in English, in his church of Herne, near Canterbury, but was saved from evil consequences by Cranmer, by whose influence also he was now raised to the episcopate. In 1550 he was translated to London, and treated the kindred and servants of his deprived predecessor Bonner with a kindness and liberality which he unfortunately did not himself experience when Bonner was reinstated. A sermon of his before Edward VI. had great effect in inducing the young king to endow the city hospitals. On the young king's death, Ridley preached in favour of Lady Jane Grey, and was in consequence thrown into the Tower, where he was for a while mildly treated, in the hope of his conformity; at length he was sent to Oxford, condemned as a heretic, and burnt with Latimer, Oct. 16, 1555.

↳ See p, 196.