Born in 1537, the son of King Henry VIII and Jane Seymour,
Edward was only nine years old when his father died in 1547.
Effective power was exercised firstly by Edward’s maternal
uncle Edward Seymour, Earl of Somerset, and then by John Dudley, Duke of
Northumberland.
Edward was studious (he was learning Latin and Greek at the
age of five) and unemotional, and far more fervently Protestant than his
father, although the influence of Protector Somerset in this regard cannot be
ignored.
He endorsed the Church of England prayer books written by
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549 and 1552 and took steps to remove signs of
Roman Catholic influence from English churches.
Somerset’s other main aim was to continue the wars against
France and Scotland that had been instigated by King Henry VIII. One of
Somerset’s objectives was to force a marriage between Edward and Mary Queen of
Scots, who was five years younger than Edward. However, Somerset’s policy only
served to strengthen the alliance between Scotland and France, as a result of
which Mary married the heir to the French throne.
When Somerset was overthrown in 1549 he was succeeded by the
Earl of Warwick who was later declared Duke of Northumberland. He was able to
extricate England from the French and Scottish wars and then turned his
attention to the question of who would reign after Edward.
When Edward fell ill with tuberculosis in February 1553 it
soon became clear that his illness was terminal and there was clearly no
prospect of him producing an heir. Northumberland was determined that Edward’s
Catholic sister Mary should not become Queen and so hatched a plot to make Lady
Jane Grey (a great-niece of Henry VIII and Edward’s cousin) the next monarch.
Northumberland sought to advance his own position by marrying his son Guildford
Dudley to Lady Jane, much to the latter’s disgust.
However, after Edward’s death in July 1553 (aged 15) the
plot fell apart and Mary did indeed become Queen and tried her hardest to undo
Edward’s work in promoting Protestantism in England. Among the many victims of
her reign were 17-year-old Lady Jane and her husband and father-in-law.
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