Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/95

Edward VI action (Faythful Admonition, 1554). With November 1552 Edward's journal ceases. The following Christmas was celebrated with prolonged festivities at Greenwich, but in January the king's fatal sickness began. William Baldwin, in his 'Funeralles of Edward the Sixt,' attributes it to a cold caught at tennis. A racking cough proved the first sign of rapid consumption. On 6 Feb. Princess Mary visited him in state. On 16 Feb. the performance of a play was countermanded 'by occasion that his grace was sick.' On 1 March Edward opened a new parliament; the members assembled at Whitehall in consequence of his illness, and he took the communion after Bishop Ridley's sermon. On 31 March the members again assembled at Whitehall, and Edward dissolved them.

According to Grafton, Ridley's frequent references in his sermons to the distress among the London poor powerfully excited the king's sympathy, and he expressed great anxiety in his last year to afford them some relief. He discussed the matter with Ridley, and wrote for suggestions to the lord mayor. Stringent legislation against vagabonds and beggars had been passed in the first year of the reign, but the evil had not decreased. After due consultation it was resolved that the royal palace of Bridewell should be handed over to the corporation of London as 'a workhouse for the poor and idle people.' On 10 April the grant was made, and on the next day Edward received the lord mayor at Whitehall and knighted him. The palace was not applied to its new uses till 1555 (cf. Bridewell Royal Hospital, 22-38). At the same time Edward arranged that Christ's Hospital, the old Grey Friars' monastery, should be dedicated to the service of poor scholars, and that St. Thomas's Hospital should be applied for the reception and medical treatment of the sick. The citizens of London subscribed money for these purposes, and they, and not the king, were mainly responsible for the success of the charitable schemes. A similar application of Savoy Hospital received Edward's assent.

In the middle of April Edward went by water to Greenwich. Alarming reports of his health were current in May, and many persons were set in the pillory for hinting that he was suffering from the effects of a slow-working poison. Dr. George Owen and Dr. Thomas Wendy were in constant attendance with four other medical men, but they foolishly allowed experiments to be tried with a quack remedy which had disastrous effects. In the middle of May Antoine de Noailles, the French ambassador, was received by the king, who was then very weak, and on 16 May Princess Mary wrote to congratulate him on a reported improvement. On 21 May Lord Guildford Dudley was married to Lady Jane Grey. In the second week of June the king's case seemed hopeless, and Northumberland induced him to draw up a 'devise of the succession' in Lady Janes favour and to the exclusion of his sisters. In the autograph draft the king first wrote that the crown was to pass 'to the L' Janes heires masles,' but for these words he subsequently substituted 'to the L' Jane & her heires masles' (see Petyt MS. in Inner Temple Library). On 14 June Lord-chief-justice Montagu and the law officers of the crown were summoned to the king's chamber to attest the devise. Montagu indignantly declined, but he was recalled the next day, and on receiving a general pardon from the king to free him from all the possible consequences of his act, he consented to prepare the needful letters patent. An undertaking to carry out the king's wishes was signed by the councillors, law officers, and many others. The original instrument is in Harl. MS. 35, f. 384. According to notes made for his last will at the same time Edward left 10,000l. to each of his sisters provided they chose husbands with consent of the council; gave 150l. a year to St. John's College, Cambridge; directed that the Savoy Hospital scheme should be carried out; that a tomb should be erected to his father's memory, and monuments placed over the graves of Edward IV and Henry VII. He warned England against entering on foreign wars or altering her religion. Almost the last suitor to have an audience was (Sir) Thomas Gresham, the English agent in Flanders, to whom the king promised some reward for his services, saying that he should know that he served a king. On 1 July the council declared that the alarming accounts of Edward's condition were false, but he died peacefully in the arms of his attendant, Sir Henry Sidney, on 6 July, after repeating a prayer of his own composition. The body was embalmed, and on 7 Aug., after the Duke of Northumberland's vain effort to give practical effect to Edward's devise of the succession [see, and ], the remains were removed to Whitehall. The funeral took place the next day, in Henry VII's Chapel, but no monument marked the grave. The chief mourner was Lord-treasurer Winchester, and the cost of the ceremony amounted to 5,946l. 9s. 9d. Queen Mary attended high mass for the dead in the Tower chapel on the day of the funeral.

In stature Edward was short for his age; he was of fair complexion, with grey eyes and sedate bearing. His eyes were weak (cf.