Henry VIII’s will named sixteen executors who would act as young Edward’s advisors until he reached the age of 18. They were assisted by a twelve-man council who would carry out his wishes. But Henry had added a controversial clause just before he died. The executors were allowed to reward themselves and the council members with lands and honours. It was a recipe for nepotism and corruption.
John Dudley had been one of Henry’s advisors in his final years and a leader of the religious reform party. He was created Earl of Warwick and appointed Lord Great Chamberlain. Edward’s uncle Edward Seymour was appointed Governor of the King’s Person and created Duke of Somerset. Seymour’s son was created Earl of Hertford and he was raised along with the young Prince Edward.
The Regency Council was supposed to be a democratic body which ruled by majority decision but it had soon appointed Seymour the Lord Protector of the Realm. He obtained permission to appoint members to the Privy Council but he rarely consulted them and used proclamations to run the realm. Chancellor Thomas Wriothesley was charged with selling off some of his offices and was dismissed from his post when he protested.
Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, was due to be executed for treason when Henry VIII died on 28 January. Edward VI’s regency council decided not to begin the new reign with bloodshed so they confiscated his estates instead. They also announced an amnesty on all prisoners of the previous regime. That was all except Edward Courtenay, 1st Earl of Devon, a great-grandson of Edward IV and an heir to the House of York.
Lord Protector Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, immediately restarted the war in Scotland. To begin with the campaign went well and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, was described as ‘one of the key architects of the English victory’ at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh in September 1547.
But Mary, Queen of Scots, renewed the Auld Alliance and she was escorted to France to marry Henry II’s son Francis. The arrival of French reinforcements in Scotland stalled Somerset’s campaign and he found it too expensive to maintain military garrisons. Henry Manners, 2nd Earl of Rutland, was soon forced on the defensive in his role as Warden of the Scottish Marches and a French attack on Boulogne in August 1549 forced Somerset to withdraw his troops from Scotland.
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, may have been Lord Protector of the Realm but he had a problem: his younger brother. He had given Thomas appointments when he demanded the post of Governor of the King’s Person. Thomas then smuggled pocket money to King Edward, telling him Edward was refusing to give him more, earning him the title, ‘the worm in the bud’. He also advised the king to dismiss his brother and ‘bear rule as other kings do’ but Edward was too young to do anything.
In 1547 Thomas secretly married Henry VIII’s widow Catherine Parr and she was soon pregnant. But he was sacked from her household when she caught him kissing the teenage Princess Elizabeth the following summer. Catherine died in childbirth and the brazen Thomas Seymour asked the council for permission to marry Elizabeth.
This time the worm had turned too far and Thomas was arrested on various charges, including embezzlement, in January 1549. Edward VI gave evidence against Seymour and he was also accused of discussing a marriage between the king and Jane Grey, daughter of Henry Grey, soon to be the 1st Duke of Suffolk. The lack of any evidence ruled out a trial but Thomas Seymour was still beheaded on 20 March 1549.
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, had complete control of the kingdom but his uncoordinated proclamations caused unrest. Commissioners sent out to implement the decrees often encountered hostility because of their contradictory terms. Unrest turned into two armed rebellions in April 1549. The decision to hold all church services in English resulted in the Prayer Book Rebellion. Then Robert Kett rebelled at Norwich when landlords were given permission to take over common grazing ground. William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, was unable to crush the Norfolk rebellion so John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, and his son Ambrose, offered Kett a pardon if he disbanded his army of peasants. He refused and Dudley’s troops massacred 2,000 rebels; another 300 were rounded up and executed.
The privy councillors blamed Seymour for the violence and they wanted him removed. Paget went so far as to say, ‘every man of the council has misliked your proceedings...’ Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, and Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, met at John Dudley’s home in October 1549 to discuss how to remove the Protector. Seymour failed to raise enough troops to counter them when they made their move so he took the king to Windsor Castle where he wrote, ‘me thinks I am in prison’.
The Council published details of Somerset’s mismanagement after persuading Dudley and Archbishop Cranmer to surrender. The 12-year-old king finally stood up for himself and personally ordered his uncle’s arrest, accusing him of ‘ambition, vain glory, entering into rash wars… enriching himself of my treasure, following his own opinion, and doing all by his own authority…’
Then Thomas Wriothesley accused the Lord President of the Council and co-conspirator John Dudley of working with Somerset during the early years of Edward’s reign. Dudley took no chances when he answered the charge, sword in hand, with the words, ‘my lord, you seek his [Somerset’s] blood and he that seeketh his blood would have mine also’.
Henry Brandon succeeded his father as the 2nd Duke of Suffolk in 1545. The Brandon brothers were taken to the country during an epidemic of sweating sickness in 1551 but Henry died first, age 16. 14-year-old Charles died an hour later and he holds the unenviable record for the shortest tenure as an English peer. They had no more siblings so the title became extinct.
Lord President John Dudley pushed forward his religious reforms and dismissed two religious conservatives, Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, and Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, from the council. He also placed FitzAlan under house arrest on trumped-up embezzlement charges.
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, was released from the Tower and restored to the Privy Council in February 1550. Dudley married his son John to Seymour’s daughter Anne to seal their new alliance and Seymour created Dudley the 2nd Earl of Warwick.
Despite the outward show of friendship, Seymour wanted to overthrow Dudley and retake control of the kingdom. But Dudley struck first and both Seymour and FitzAlan were arrested, accused of planning a ‘banquet massacre’. Seymour was acquitted of treason due to a lack of evidence but Lord High Steward William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, found him guilty of felony. This second charge related to the time he raised an unlicensed group of armed men to escort the king to Windsor Castle. He was executed in January 1552. FitzAlan would be pardoned a year later and was readmitted to the Privy Council.
William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, and the king’s ‘beloved uncle’ William Parr, 1st Marquess of Northampton, joined Dudley and they ‘ruled the court’ on behalf of Edward VI. They would continue to pursue religious reforms across the country, persecuting both Roman Catholics and religious conservatives.
Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, was working to arrange Edward VI’s marriage to a daughter of King Henry II, to secure a peace with France. Meanwhile, John Dudley, 1st Earl of Warwick, had elevated himself to Duke of Northumberland and had promoted his wife’s half-brother Henry Grey to Duke of Suffolk. Henry Grey, 3rd Marquess of Dorset, had three daughters who became well known in court. More importantly, they were the granddaughters of Henry VIII’s sister Princess Mary and of royal blood.
The teenage Edward VI had been seriously ill since January 1553 but Dudley continued his manipulating ways. He acquired permission to betroth his son Guildford to Henry’s daughter Jane. They married on 25 May 1553 and Jane’s sister Catherine married Henry Herbert, son of William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke, the same day.
It was clear 15-year-old Edward was dying by the beginning of June and there were plans to place a Protestant monarch on the throne, ahead of Mary, the Catholic daughter of Catherine of Aragon. Guildford Dudley had just married Jane Grey, daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk. His father John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, was also considering forcing his eldest son John Dudley, 2nd Earl of Warwick, to divorce so he could marry Mary’s half-sister, 19-year-old Princess Elizabeth.
The Imperial ambassador Jehan de Scheyfve was convinced Dudley senior had some ‘mighty plot’ to seize the crown and he was right. Young Edward added a controversial clause, called, ‘My Devise for the Succession’ to his will on his deathbed. It nominated Lady Jane Grey as his successor and over one hundred signatures confirmed his decision.
Edward VI died on 6 July and Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, were joined by other members of the Privy Council when they proclaimed Jane Queen of England. It was an unpopular announcement.