Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/92

Edward VI Horace Walpole, 1772). Fuller and Burnet assert that Fitzpatrick was the prince's 'whipping-boy,' suffering in his own person the punishments due to the prince's offences.

Edward was at Hatfield when Henry VIII died (21 Jan. 1546-7). He was little more than nine, and had never been formally created Prince of Wales, although the ceremony had been in contemplation. Henry's will, dated 30 Dec. 1546, constituted Edward his lawful heir and successor, and named eighteen executors to act as a council of regency during the prince's minority, with twelve others as assistant-executors to be summoned to council at the pleasure of the first-named body. Among the chief executors were Edward's uncle, the Earl of Hertford, and Viscount Lisle (afterwards Duke of Northumberland). On the day after Henry's death Hertford brought Edward and his sister Elizabeth to Enfield, and on Monday, 31 Jan., Edward was taken to the Tower of London. On Tuesday the lords of the council did homage, and Lord-chancellor Wriothesley announced that the council of regency had chosen Hertford to be governor and protector of the realm. The lord chancellor and other officers of justice resigned their posts to be reinstalled in them by the new king. On 4 Feb. the lord protector assumed the additional offices of lord treasurer and earl marshal. Dudley became chamberlain, and the protector's brother, Thomas Seymour, admiral. All other offices were left in the hands of the previous holders. On Sunday, 6 Feb., the young king, still at the Tower, was created a knight by his uncle, the protector, and on 18 Feb. he distributed a number of peerages among his councillors, promoting the protector to the dukedom of Somerset, Dudley to the earldom of Warwick, and Sir Thomas Seymour to the barony of Seymour of Sudeley. A chapter of the Garter was held on the same day, and the decoration conferred on the new Lord Seymour and others.

The coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on Sunday, 20 Feb. On the previous day a sumptuous procession conducted the little king from the Tower to Whitehall. Archbishop Cranmer placed three crowns in succession on the boy s head, the Confessor's crown, the imperial crown, and one that had been made specially for the occasion. A brief charge was delivered by the archbishop, in which the child was acknowledged to be the supreme head of the church. The two following days were devoted to jousts which the king witnessed. During his short reign Edward divided most of his time between Whitehall and Greenwich; but he occasionally lodged at St. James's Palace, and in summer at Hampton Court, Oatlands, and Windsor.

The religious sympathies of the young prince soon declared themselves. During the first year of his reign he made the money- offerings prescribed by the ancient catholic ritual for Sundays and saints' days, but after June 1548 the payments were discontinued, although a sum was still set apart for daily alms, and for royal maundies on Maundy Thursday and Easter-day. Dr. Nicholas Ridley, who became bishop of Rochester in 1547, regularly preached before the king from the opening of the reign. But Hugh Latimer was the favourite occupant of the pulpit in the royal chapel, and a special pulpit was erected in the private gardens at Whitehall to enable a greater number of persons to hear him preach. Edward 'used to note every notable sentence' in the sermons, 'especially if it touched a king,' and talked them over with his youthful companions afterwards. On 29 June 1548 Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, preached, and was expected to compromise himself by attacking the reformed doctrine, but he disappointed his enemies by acknowledging the king's title as supreme head of the church. When parliament (23 Nov.) was debating the Book of Common Prayer, and 'a notable disputation of the sacrament' arose 'in the parliament house,' Edward is reported to have taken keen interest in the discussion, and shrewdly criticised some of the speakers. In Lent 1549 Latimer preached his celebrated series of sermons audressed to the young king's court. A year later. Hooper, Ponet, Lever, Day, and other pronounced reformers, occupied the pulpit, and at the end of the reign John Knox delivered several sermons at Windsor, Hampton Court, and Westminster.

Somerset and his fellow-councillors were of the king's way of thinking. The early legislation of the reign respecting the prayer-book, uniformity, of service, and the formularies of the church seemed to set the Reformation on a permanent and unassailable footing. Reformers hastened to England from foreign countries, and they vied with native protestants in eulogising Edward's piety and dovotion to their doctrine, to which they pretended to attribute the religious advance. Bartholomew Traheron, writing to Bullinger of Zurich (28 Sept. 1548), says of the king: 'A more holy disposition has nowhere existed in our time. Martin Bucer reported (15 May 1550) that 'no study delights him more than that of the holy scriptures, of which he reads daily ten chapters with the greatest attention.' Bucer also wrote to Calvin ten days later that 'the king is exerting all his power