Protestantism of Somerset.—First English Prayer-book.
Having seized the reins of power, the Duke of Somerset soon showed himself a man of a character very different from the late king's expectation. Instead of pursuing the middle course of Anglo-Catholic policy which Henry had always marked out, he threw himself at once into the hands of the Protestants. His first actions were directed towards the completion of the Reformation, by sweeping away all those remnants of the old faith which the late king had retained himself and imposed upon his subjects. Henry VIII. had issued the Bible in English, and caused the Litany and certain other parts of the Church service to be said in the national tongue. But Somerset abolished the use of the Latin language altogether, and caused the Communion Service and all the rest of the rites of the Church to be celebrated in English. By the end of 1548 he had authorized the issue of the "First Book of Common Prayer," the earliest form of our own Anglican Prayer-book. Cranmer had the chief part in its compilation, and his great gifts of expression are borne witness to by many of the most spiritual and beautiful prayers of our splendid and sonorous liturgy. When the fear of Henry had been removed from his mind, Cranmer showed himself an undoubted Protestant; but he was a moderate man, and spared many old rites and customs, harmless in themselves, from a love of conservatism. The Prayer-book was well received by all save the extreme Romanists, and the few partisans of Continental Protestantism who complained that it did not go far enough.
If the introduction of the English Prayer-book was both popular and necessary, it was far otherwise with the measures which accompanied it. Somerset's first year of rule was the time of the demolition of all the old church ornaments and furniture, which the Protestants condemned as mere idols and lumber. Not only were the images and pictures removed, but much beautiful carved work and stained glass was ruthlessly broken up. This was done with an irreverence and violence which deeply shocked the majority of the nation, and Somerset's agents made no distinction between monuments of superstition and harmless works of religious art. Two of the bishops, Bonner of London and Gardiner of Winchester, who ventured to oppose the Protector's doings, were placed in honourable confinement.
Invasion of Scotland.—Battle of Pinkie.
While England was disturbed with these changes, many of them rational and necessary, but all of them hasty and rash, Somerset had succeeded in plunging the realm into two foreign wars. The English party north of the Tweed had promised the hand of their little five-year-old Queen Mary to King Edward, but when they proved unable to fulfil their promise, owing to the hatred of the majority of the Scots for England, the Protector resolved to use coercive measures. He declared war, and invaded the Lowlands in the autumn of 1547, wasting the country before him till he was met by the whole levy of Scotland on the hillside of Pinkie, near Musselborough. There he inflicted on them a bloody defeat, but gained no advantage thereby; for the Scots sent their child-queen over to France, to keep her safe from English hands, and when she reached the court of Henry II. she was wedded to his son, the Dauphin Francis. Thus Somerset entirely lost the object of his campaign, and only earned the desperate hate of the Scots for the carnage of Pinkie.
Plots and Rebellions in England.
The war with Scotland brought about a war with France, in which the Protector wasted much money. The struggle went against the English, and ultimately led to the loss of Boulogne, the sole conquest of Henry VIII. While this war was in progress, Somerset was involved in serious troubles within the bounds of England itself. He detected his own brother, Lord Seymour of Sudely, plotting to marry the Princess Elizabeth, and oust him from the regency. Seymour was pardoned once, but, on renewing his conspiracy, was apprehended and beheaded. But domestic plots were less to be feared than popular risings. In 1548-49 two dangerous rebellions broke out in West and East. In Devonshire the old Catholic party rose in arms, clamouring for the restoration of the Mass and the suppression of Protestantism. In the Eastern Counties an insurrection of another sort was seen; the peasantry banded themselves together under the tanner Robert Ket, who called himself the "King of Norfolk and Suffolk." They dreamed of a social revolution such as that which Wat Tyler had demanded in an earlier age, though their grievances were not the same as those of the fourteenth century. They complained of the rapacity of the new landholders who had superseded the old monastic bodies, and who were evicting the old peasantry right and left, and turning farms into sheep-runs, because wool paid better than corn. The enclosure of common lands, the debasement of the coinage, and the slowness and inefficacy of the law when used by the poor man, were also denounced. Ket and his fellows began seizing and trying unpopular landholders, and spoke of making a clean sweep of the upper classes.
Ket's rebellion put down.
Now, the Protector had no scruple in putting down the rising of the Devonshire Papists with great severity, but he felt that the Norfolk men had great excuses for their anger, and did not deal promptly and sternly with them. Ket's rising became very dangerous, and it seemed as if anarchy would set in all over the Eastern Counties. The rebels defeated the Marquis of Northampton, and stormed Norwich; they were only dispersed at last by Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, who marched against them with a mercenary force which had been collected for the Scottish war, and routed them on Mousehold Heath. Ket was then hung, and the rebellion subsided.
Deposition of Somerset.