The only thing More begged of the king on the day he was beheaded was, that his dear daughter might be allowed to go to his funeral; and he felt happy when they told him all his family might go.
After Sir Thomas More’s head was cut off, the cruel king ordered it to be stuck up on a pole on London bridge; but Margaret Roper soon contrived to get it down. She kept it carefully till she died, and then it was buried with her.
As long as there are any good people in the world, Sir Thomas More and his daughter will be loved whenever their names are heard.
CHAPTER XLI.
EDWARD VI.—1547 to 1553.
How Edward the Sixth was taught to be a Protestant; how the Protector Somerset went to war in Scotland; how he caused his brother to be beheaded, and was afterwards beheaded himself; how the Duke of Northumberland persuaded the King to leave the kingdom to Lady Jane Grey.
When King Henry the Eighth died, his only son, who was but nine years old, was made king under the name of Edward the Sixth.
Of course the little prince could not do much of a king’s proper business himself; but his guardians, and especially his mother’s brother, managed the kingdom tolerably well for him at first.
The little boy was very gentle and fond of learning. He was serious and clever too: he wrote down in a book every day what he had been about, and seemed to wish to do what was right; so the people thought they might have a really good king.
I told you, when I mentioned the alteration in religion in Henry the Eighth’s reign, that though nearly all the nobles continued Papists, yet many of the gentlemen and the people were Protestants. Now King Edward’s uncles and teachers were Protestants, and they taught the young king to be one also, and laws were made by which all the people in England were ordered to be Protestants too.
The Bible was allowed to be read by everybody who chose it, in English, and the clergymen were ordered to say the prayers in English instead of Latin, which very few could understand. The king was declared to be the head of the Church; clergymen were allowed to marry; and those persons whom Henry the Eighth had put in prison were set free.