Edward VI

1537-1553, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Tudor Monarch and Protestant.

Edward was born at Hampton Court. After 28 years on the throne his father, Henry war overjoyed about the long-awaited heir. Edward commenced a classical education in such subjects as Latin, Greek and philosophy. His teachers were Cambridge scholars John Cheke, William Grindal and Roger Ascham. These eminent men were devoted to the emerging Protestant creed, and conceivably this was when Edward began to acquire his enthusiasm for the new faith.

Edward VI is called by some as the Boy King. Indeed, he came to the throne of England at the age of nine and died at the age of fifteen. Despite his short life his kingship claims a significant legacy in the British history.

At his coronation Edward was presented by Archbishop Cranmer as a godly prince, a second king Josiah guided by providence to extingish once and for all the influence of Rome in England. Edward VI's reign is associated not only with the near collapse of the Tudor system, but also with the progress of the protestant Reformation. Under the influence of Archbishop Cranmer, Edward pursued religious reform throughout his kingdom. Under his reign the church property was confiscated, the chantries dissolved, the Book of Common Prayer amended, church statues, wall paintings, stained-glas windows destroyed (image-smashing).

Due to his father's testament and the rules of primogeniture, Edward became King when his father died in 1547. Although Edward thought that he ruled England, actual power lay with the Privy Council (a rather small group of councellors and advisors) and the Lord Protector. Edward supposedly was "a cold-hearted prig", according to G.R. Elton, who liked to tell his much older sister Mary off for her Catholicism:

"The lady Mary, my sister, came to me to Westminster, where after greetings she was called with my council into a chamber where it was declared how long I had suffered her mass, in hope of her reconciliation, and how now, there being no hope as I saw by her letters, unless I saw some speedy amendment I could not bear it. She answered that her soul was God's and her faith she would not change, nor hide her opinion with dissembled doings. It was said I did not constrain her faith but willed her only as a subject to obey. And that her example might lead to too much inconvenience." (Edward wrote this in his diary in 1551. He was 14, Mary was 35).

Sources

Alford, S. Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI. Cambridge Universty Press, 2002.
Elton, G.R. England under the Tudors. London: Methuen, 1965.
MacCulloch, D. The Boy King: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. University of California Press, 2001.
http://englishhistory.net/tudor/primary.html