Edward VI: The Boy King

Imagine the future of the Church depending, humanly speaking, upon three young Reformers. That was the case in 16^th Century England as Edward, his sister (and future queen) Princess Elizabeth and cousin Lady Jane found themselves caught in a maelstrom of danger and palace intrigue..  Two died young, Edward and Jane, but the impact they had upon Elizabeth was life-changing, and world-changing.  Here is the story of one of this intrepid trio, Edward VI, the boy king.

The traditional story of Edward VI is largely the story of his two Protectors.  The standard histories say little about the boy king himself.  The large outlines of the story are fairly consistent from writer to writer:  Edward came to the throne in 1547 upon the death of his father, Henry VIII, who had arranged for a council of advisors to oversee the boy until he came of age.  Of these, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset and the boy’s uncle, took control of the council and secured for himself the role of Lord Protector.  Somerset pursued a careful, but evangelical¹Scholars prefer the word “evangelical” to “Protestant” or “Reformed.”  At this early stage, even Cranmer was still coming to terms with what he actually believed.  The theological winds were blowing largely from Zurich.  Bullinger, Bucer, and Peter Martyr were theological stars in the evangelical sky. course in religious reform, and championed economic and political “liberty” for the lower classes.  Like the other members of the council, he was guilty of padding his own fortune with spoils from the sprawling ecclesiastical structure they all worked to dismantle.  Somerset largely ignored Edward and left the boy’s education to his tutors.  But in time the Protector’s own arrogance and his liberal economic attitudes garnered him the ire of his fellows on the council, and he fell from power.  Eventually he was executed.

John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland, took control of the council and the young king.  Unlike Somerset, he showed—or pretended to show—interest in Edward, spent time with him, and soon brought him into the workings of the council as well.  Like his predecessor, Northumberland pursued an evangelical course; on other fronts, he looked out for himself and his own.

Most of what Edward’s administration did was the work of these two men, Somerset and Northumberland, and of one other:  Thomas Cranmer.  Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, created the first English prayer book (1549) and later the second (1552).  These moved the English church away from traditional forms of worship toward something more evangelical.  They also involved the congregation more actively in worship, since they were written in the English of the time.  Cranmer also devised the 42 Articles, which summed up the new theology he hoped the English church would embrace.  They rejected purgatory and papal authority and embraced justification by faith and eternal predestination. These were later edited and rearranged to become the 39 Articles.

Edward’s story, of course, also involves his two sisters, each of whom would later ascend the throne.  Edward loved them both, though he was closer to Elizabeth, whom he called “Temperance.”

Elizabeth was only four years older than Edward,ut spurred on by a near brush with scandal, she was quickly maturing from romantic naïveté to savvy caution.²Alison Weir, The Children of Henry VIII (New York:  Ballantine Books, 1996), ch. 2, “Amorous Intrigues.”  The intrigue involved the machinations of the Protector’s brother, the Lord Admiral, who was plotting an amorous path to power.  Mary was twenty years older than Edward and singularly dedicated to what she called “the old religion,”—particularly the traditional mass— and would rather have died a martyr than have anything to do with the “new” evangelical religion.  She, too, was learning self-preservation.  She had an advantage that Elizabeth did not, however; Mary’s older cousin was Charles V, the German Emperor.  His ambassador in London kept a close eye on Mary’s interests and was authorized to threaten imperial intervention when her freedom of worship was threatened.

In this traditional version, Edward comes across as a weak and sickly boy, never his own man, who enjoyed evangelical sentiments because that’s what he had been taught.  He accomplished little, was flattered greatly, and thought more of himself than he should.  After a short reign, Edward’s frail health was further damaged by measles and small pox; eventually he succumbed to tuberculosis and died at the age of 15.  Though Foxe and other evangelicals of the day spoke of him as a new Josiah or a latter-day Solomon, later historians have called both his faith and his significance into question.

The traditional story needs a bit of overhauling, though.  First, it seems Edward was healthy and robust enough for most of his life.  He enjoyed hunting and participated in the other sports common to young nobles.  The collapse of his constitution came in the last year of his reign, and the fatal illness may have been something more complicated than tuberculosis.³Diarmaid Macculloch, The Boy King Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation (Berkley:  University of California Press, 1999), 224.   Macculloch records Jennifer Loach’s suggestion:  “complications brought on by pyogenic pneumonia, or bronchopneumonia which led to general septicaemia.”  Weir tosses in the possibility of arsenic poisoning (146, 150).

As for Edward’s faith and its ultimate significance for the English Reformation, we need to turn back to primary source documents.  Though we have Edward’s journal, it is mostly a dry record of political events.  It contains little theological reflection.  We do not have his notebook on the sermons he had heard.⁴We do know that Knox, Ridley, and Hooper were pulpit regulars at court, and that the imperial ambassador complained that the young king gave them too much attention.  We do have a good deal of Edward’s school work, however, and it shows us how Edward’s mind worked.

Edward’s education “ began at the age of three under Dr. Richard Cox, but in 1544, from the age of six, he was principally under the direction of John Cheke.”⁵Heather Hobden, “King Edward VI’s Defense of Astronomy” <http://www.cosmicelk.net/edward6.htm>.  Cheke describes his approach to education in a letter to Roger Ascham, Elizabeth’s tutor:

I would have a good Student pass rejoicing through all Authors, both Greek and Latin; but that he will dwell in these few books only, First in God’s Holy Bible, and then join with it Tully in Latin, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophanes, Isocrates and Demosthenes in Greek, must needs prove an excellent man.⁶John Strype, The Life of Sir John Cheke (London, 1705) in Hobden, “King Edward VI’s Defence of Astronomy.”

Here we have the confluence of the Reformation and the Renaissance.  The question is, Which would shape his thinking?

When Edward was about thirteen, he composed an oration in defense of astronomy, a science that had fallen into disrepute.  He wrote the original in Latin; the excerpts below are from Heather Hobden’s translation.⁷Heather Hobden, translator, in “King Edward VI’s Defence of Astronomy.” John Nicols, who reprinted the Latin original, called it: Astronomiam utilem admodum esse Humano Generi.  Edward left the oration untitled.

Knowledge, which is arisen from God, the source of all good, is divided into knowledge of the natural world, matters relating to discourse such as the arts of rhetoric and logic, and matters of ethics which apply to the morals of individuals and to the government of the State…Being part of knowledge, arisen from God, who inspires us to investigate the natural world, Astronomy is certainly useful to man, for God does everything to some purpose.

Edward goes on to credit the patriarch Seth with inventing the science of astronomy and the Egyptians and Israelites with developing it.

Yet all arts which propagate amongst men the glory of God are not lightly called useful. This indeed is the greatest good of man, that he comes to know God and depends on that knowledge. For Astronomy shows the work of God, through which he is revealed to man.

Edward then quotes Psalm 19:1 and sums up Romans 1:

Paul likewise in the first chapter of his epistle to the Roman people says that although they do not yet know God perfectly, they may come to know him through his works. The more then we get to know Astronomy the more wonderful will we see God’s work to be.

Edward points out that astronomy is vital to commerce and agriculture.  Then he sums up:

Wherefore, since all knowledge is of nature, and is the gift of God implanted in human hearts, since the abilities of the discoverers and propagators of Astronomy have been God-given, since if it be one of the liberal arts it will demonstrate truth and give satisfaction to the enquiring mind wishing all things to know, since again it is useful to farmers and merchants, showing the glory of God to the whole world, we think it far from useless to the body, the mind and the State.

The oration is standard fair for the time, though it does cast light on Edward’s attitude toward God’s creation and man’s responsibility for dominion within it.  Edward’s independence of thought and his creativity come across more clearly in his meeting with the Italian mathematician and physician, Gerolamo Cardano.  When Cardano passed through London in 1552, Cheke arranged for him to meet with the young King. They spoke in Latin and began with comets.  Cardano had a new theory about their origin.  Cardano said they originate in “the concourse of the light of the planets.” We would say the reflection, refraction, and interference of their light waves.

Now to appreciate Edward’s response, please remember that the Renaissance worldview assumed a stationary Earth surrounded by concentric crystalline spheres.⁸Or see C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1964), ch. 5.  These solid spheres bore the seven “planets” through their geocentric, circular orbits all the while intoning celestial music—the music of the spheres.  But in 1531 measurements of the parallax of what would later be called “Halley’s Comet” had shown that it was actually moving above the Moon.  So how did it pass through the spheres to get there…or to leave?

Edward asked Cardano, “How is it, since the motions of these [the planets] are different, that the light is not scattered, or does not move in accordance with their motion?”⁹Hobden.  Few teenage scientists in the 21^st Century would jump to that question in English, let alone Latin.  Yet Edward knew enough about the science to question even a leading expert of his day.  Of course, Cardano was wrong; Edward was at least on the right track.

More striking theologically is Edward’s composition on papal supremacy.  After listing arguments for and against the doctrine, he considers the rise of the papacy and the nature of the Antichrist.  Though he follows other sources, as a school boy would, he arranges them to his own tastes.  And he makes the issue personal.  “If they do not do the Pope’s bidding, that is to offer to idols and devils, he burn us, and makes us bear a faggot.”¹⁰Macculloch, 29.  Notice the “us”; Edward identifies himself with the persecuted “poor lambs of God.”  In the end he concludes that the Pope is “the true son of the devil, a bad man, an Antichrist and abominable tyrant.”¹¹Macculloch, Translated from Nicholas’s reprint.  The French reads, “le vray filz, du diable, home mauvais, un Antichirst, et tiran abominable” (226).  This at eleven years old.

Of course, theology learned in childhood may be lost in later years.  It is important that we see Edward’s perseverance in the evangelical faith both in his later words and deeds.

This is from his journal:

The lady Mary, my sister, came to me to Westminster, where after greetings she was called with my council into a chamber where it was declared how long I had suffered her mass, in hope of her reconciliation, and how now, there being no hope as I saw by her letters, unless I saw some speedy amendment I could not bear it.  She answered that her soul was God’s and her faith she would not change, nor hide her opinion with dissembled doings.  It was said I did not constrain her faith but willed her only as a subject to obey.  And that her example might lead to too much inconvenience.

On 19 March the emperor’s ambassador came with a short message from his master of threatened war, if I would not allow his cousin the princess to use her mass.  No answer was given to this at the time.

The following day the bishops of Canterbury, London and Rochester, Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley and John Scory, concluded that to give licence to sin was sin; to allow and wink at it for a time might be born as long as all possible haste was used.¹²Edward’s Journal for 1551.

Here is an extended account of the same events by another hand.  It gives us a clearer idea of Edward’s theological training and religious convictions:

The two bishops were sent to persuade him.  They did allege that there were good kings in the Old Testament, that had suffered hill altars, and yet were praised for good kings.  He answered them roundly, that, “as examples when they are good, and had God’s word to allow them, are left to us to follow them, so are evil examples set out to show that they were men, and did fail of that perfection which God requires in his, to teach us not to be followers of them, but utterly to warn us in any wise to [shun] them.  Abraham lay with Hagar his maid; David took Uriah’s wife to him, and to hide his adultery committed a murder; did they this that we should think it lawful for us to do it, or does Scripture make mention of it to this end that any should do as they did?  Solomon did worship the idol Moloch may we therefore give priests our subjects leave to honor, yea to make a piece of dough bread for God?”¹³From “A discourse written by Sir Richard Morrison, the King’s ambassador with the Emperor” in John Gough Nichols, Literary Remains of King Edward the Sixth (J.B. Nichols and Sons:  London, 1857), ccxxviii.  The spelling and some verb endings have been modernized.

Edward insisted that before he would grant their suit, the bishops would have to show him from Scripture that he would be right in allowing such idolatry.  Until they could do so, he insisted, “I shall require you to fear God with me, and to bend yourself rather to imitate me, and to contemplate any peril, than to set light God’s will, thereby to please an emperor.”  He then summed up Psalm 78, which describes how God dealt with Israel when she abandoned His covenant in favor of idols.

As for Charles V, Mary’s cousin, Edward said:

The emperor … is a man more likely to die himself every day than to do us any great harm …we must wait upon God’s will, and commit the event of things to His wisdom and mercy…I know God is able to defend me against as many emperors as ever the world had….  I must do as God gives me commandment….¹⁴Ibid.

In fact, Charles outlived Edward.  “I fell sick of the measles and the small pox,” Edward wrote in his journal for 2 April 1552.  Though he survived the disease, his constitution never fully recovered.  By that summer his health had begun to deteriorate.  In the months that followed his condition worsened greatly, and the attendant physicians could do nothing.  “He coughed and spat blood, his legs swelled painfully, eruptions broke out over his body, his hair fell out, then his nails.”¹⁵Will Durant, The Reformation (New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1957), 586.  The physicians called it consumption; but given Northumberland’s character, some suspected poisoning.

Northumberland came to Edward to insist that the throne could not pass to Mary, lest all the work of reformation be undone.  Edward concurred.  He authorized a change in the line of succession.  Lady Jane Grey, his father’s niece and now Northumberland’s daughter-in-law, would be next in line.  She stood solidly with the Reformation and exchanged intelligent correspondence with its continental leaders.  When the judges protested the illegality of the order, Edward roused himself to press them to obedience.¹⁶Weir, 146-148.

In his last hour Edward whispered a prayer he himself had prepared.

Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life, and take me amongst Thy chosen; howbeit not my will but Thy will be done.  Lord, I commit my spirit to Thee.  O, Lord, Thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with Thee; yet, for Thy chosen’s sake, send me life and health, that I may truly serve Thee.  O, my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain Thy true religion, that I and my people may praise The holy Name , for Thy Son Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.¹⁷Weir,153.

So young Edward died, having done what he could to establish the evangelical faith.  And from the sky above thunder rumbled, lightning forked and flashed, and hailstones “red as clotted blood” rained down.¹⁸Ibid.  Weir goes on to suggest that Northumberland buried Edward privately rather than let his body lie in state and, perhaps, risk an autopsy.  Remember the arsenic.