Lady Jane Grey and Her Times

by Ida A. Taylor

With the death of the King a change, complete and sudden, passed over the face of affairs. So long as Henry drew breath all was uncertain; security there was none. The men who were in favour to-day might be disgraced to-morrow, and with regard to the government of the country and the guardianship of the new sovereign all depended upon the state of mind in which death might find him. Happening when it actually did, it left the “new men,” the objects of Surrey’s contempt, triumphant. Norfolk was in prison on a capital charge; his son was dead. Gardiner had fallen into disgrace at the same time as the Howards, and, though averting a worse fate by a timely show of submission, had never regained his power, his name being omitted by Henry from the list of his executors, all, with the exception of Wriothesley the Chancellor, adherents of the Seymours and for the most part pledged to the support of the Protestant interest. Henry had acted deliberately.

“My Lord of Winchester—I think by negligence—is left out of Your Majesty’s will,” said Sir Anthony Browne, kneeling by the King’s side, and recalling to the dying man the Bishop’s long service and great abilities. But Henry refused to reconsider the question.

“Hold your peace,” he returned. “I remembered him well enough, and of good purpose have left him out; for surely, if he were in my testament, and one of you, he would cumber you all, and you should never rule him, he is of so troublesome a nature.”[50]

Gardiner removed, there was no one left of sufficient influence to combat the Seymours. Their day was come.

The King’s death had taken place on Friday, January 28. The Council, for reasons of their own, kept the news secret until the following Monday, when, amidst a scene of strong emotion, real or simulated, the fact was made known to Lords and Commons, Parliament was dissolved, and the Commons dismissed, the peers staying in London to welcome their new sovereign. On February 1 a fresh and crowning success was scored by the dominant party, and Hertford—Wriothesley’s being the sole dissentient voice in the governing body—was made Protector and guardian of the King. That afternoon Edward received the homage of the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the new reign was inaugurated.

On the 20th of the same month the coronation took place with all magnificence. On the previous day the nine-year-old King had been brought “through his city of London in most royal and goodly wise” to Westminster, the crafts standing on one side of the streets to see him pass, priests and clerks on the other, with crosses and censers, waiting to cense the new sovereign as he went by. The sword of state was borne by Dorset, as Constable of England, and his daughter, the same age as the King, was probably a witness of the splendid pageant and watched her cousin as, in his gown of cloth of silver embroidered in gold and with his white velvet jerkin and cape, he rode through the city.[51]

At the coronation on the following day Dorset again occupied a prominent place, standing by the King and carrying the sceptre, Somerset bearing the crown. Cranmer, with no longer anything to fear from his enemies, performed the ceremony and delivered an address that can have left no doubt in the minds of any of his hearers, if such there were, who had clung to the hope that a moderate policy would be pursued in ecclesiastical matters, of what was to be expected from the men who had in their hands the little head of Church and State. As God’s Vice-regent and Christ’s Vicar, Edward Tudor was exhorted to see that God was worshipped, idolatry destroyed, the tyranny of the Bishop of Rome banished, and images removed, the hybrid ceremony being concluded by a solemn high mass, Cranmer acting as celebrant.

Signal success had attended the inauguration of the new régime. Dissentients were almost nonexistent. Wriothesley, now Earl of Southampton, remained the solitary genuine adherent of the old faith belonging to the Council. His lack of caution in putting the great seal into commission without the authority of his colleagues afforded them an excuse for ousting him from his post of Chancellor; he was compelled to resign his office, and received orders to confine himself to his house, whilst Hertford, become Duke of Somerset, took advantage of his absence to obtain letters patent by which he became virtually omnipotent in the State.

The earlier months of his government were chiefly devoted to carrying through drastic measures of ecclesiastical reform, in which he was aided by conviction in some, and cupidity in others, of his colleagues, eager to benefit by the spoliation of the Church. With the education of the King in the hands of the Protector, they could count upon immunity when he should come to an age to execute justice on his own account, and the work went swiftly forward. Gardiner, it was true, offered a determined opposition. If he had pandered to his old master, he vindicated his character for courage by braving the resentment of the men now in power, and paid for his boldness by imprisonment.

By September the internal affairs of the kingdom were on a sufficiently settled footing to allow the Protector to turn his attention to Scotland. Crossing the border with an army of twenty thousand men, he conducted in person a short campaign ending with the victory of Pinkie, after which, to the surprise of those who expected to see him follow up his success, he hurried home.