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 England. At the same time the leaders of the new Protestant Church were all men of high character; Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Hooper, all Bishops of King Edward, all died for their faith in the next reign.

However much we may rightly abuse the greedy nobles, we can never wholly regret a reign which first gave us the Prayer Book in English and substituted the Communion for the Mass. Cranmer prepared two successive Prayer Books, the second (1552) somewhat more Protestant than the first of 1549, and it was the second which, with very slight alterations, became our present Prayer Book in the reign of Elizabeth. In Edward’s reign also the marriage of priests was allowed, and the Statutes for burning heretics were abolished. In his reign too, alas, the beautiful stained-glass windows, statues and pictures were removed from most of our churches, whose walls were now covered with whitewash.

Edward's first Regent or ‘Protector’ was his mother's brother, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset; a man of much higher character than most of the nobles, but rash and hot-headed, and quite unfit to lead the nation. He continued Henry’s vindictive quarrel with Scotland, won a great victory at Pinkie, and drove the Scots once more into the arms of France. Their girl-queen, Mary Stuart, who might have been a bride for our boy-king, was sent for safety to France and married to the French King’s son. Somerset was soon upset by a much more violent person, the ruffian John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who pushed on the Reformation at greater speed for purely selfish ends, and disgusted all sober men with it. He brought in a lot of foreign Protestants and gave them places in the English Church; he brought in foreign troops to be his body-