In 1552 the Prayer Book was revised in a Protestant sense. Bucer had something to do with this revision, and so did John Knox. Little was now left of the mass, nothing of private confession or anointing the sick. Further steps were the reform of the Canon Law and the publication of the Forty-two Articles of Religion. These were drawn up by Cranmer on the basis of thirteen articles agreed upon by a conference of three English Bishops, four English doctors, and two German missionaries, Boyneburg and Myconius, in {314} May, 1538. Cranmer hoped to make his statement irenic; and in fact it contained some Roman and Calvinistic elements, but in the main it was Lutheran. Justification by faith was asserted; only two sacraments were retained. Transubstantiation was denounced as repugnant to Scripture and private masses as "dangerous impostures." The real presence was maintained in a Lutheran sense: the bread was said to be the Body of Christ, and the wine the Blood of Christ, but only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. It was said that by Christ's ordinance the sacrament is not reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.
A reform of the clergy was also undertaken, and was much needed. In 1551 Bishop Hooper found in his diocese of 311 clergymen, 171 could not repeat the Ten Commandments, ten could not say the Lord's Prayer in English, seven could not tell who was its author, and sixty-two were absentees, chiefly because of pluralities.
The notable characteristic of the Edwardian Reformation was its mildness. There were no Catholic martyrs. It is true that heretics coming under the category of blasphemers or deniers of Christianity could still be put to death by common law, and two men were actually executed for speculations about the divinity of Christ, but such cases were wholly exceptional.
[Sidenote: Social disorders]
The social disorders of the time, coming to a head, seemed to threaten England with a rising of the lower classes similar to the Peasants' War of 1525 in Germany. The events in England prove that, however much these ebullitions might be stimulated by the atmosphere of the religious change, they wore not the direct result of the new gospel. In the west of England and in Oxfordshire the lower classes rebelled {315} under the leadership of Catholic priests; in the east the rising, known as Kett's rebellion, took on an Anabaptist character. The real causes of discontent were the same in both cases. The growing wealth of the commercial classes had widened the gap between rich and poor. The inclosures continued to be a grievance, by the ejection of small tenants and the appropriation of common lands. But by far the greatest cause of hardship to the poor was the debasement of the coinage. Wheat, barley, oats and cattle rose in price to two or three times their previous cost, while wages, kept down by law, rose only 11 per cent. No wonder that the condition of the laborer had become impossible.
The demands of the eastern rising, centering at Norwich, bordered on communism. The first was for the enfranchisement of all bondsmen for the reason that Christ had made all men free. Inclosures of commons and private property in game and fish were denounced and further agrarian demands were voiced. The rebels committed no murder and little sacrilege, but vented their passions by slaughtering vast numbers of sheep. All the peasant risings were suppressed by the government, and the economic forces continued to operate against the wasteful agricultural system of the time and in favor of wool-growing and manufacture.
[Sidenote: Execution of Somerset, January 22, 1552]
After five years under Protector Somerset there was a change of government signalized, as usual under Henry VIII, by the execution of the resigning minister. Somerset suffered from the unpopularity of the new religious policy in some quarters and from that following the peasants' rebellion in others. As usual, the government was blamed for the economic evils of the time and for once, in having debased the coinage, justly. Moreover the Protector had been {316} involved by scheming rivals in the odium more than in the guilt of fratricide, for this least bloody of all English ministers in that century, had executed his brother, Thomas, Baron Seymour, a rash and ambitious man rightly supposed to be plotting his own advancement by a royal marriage.
Among the leaders of the Reformation belonging to the class of mere adventurers, John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, was the ablest and the worst. As the Protector held quasi-royal powers, he could only be deposed by using the person of the young king. Warwick ingratiated himself with Edward and brought the child of thirteen to the council. Of course he could only speak what was taught him, but the name of royalty had so dread a prestige that none dared disobey him. At his command Warwick was created Duke of Northumberland, [Sidenote: Northumberland and Suffolk] and his confederate, Henry Grey Marquis of Dorset, was created Duke of Suffolk. A little later these men, again using the person of the king, had Somerset tried and executed.
The conspirators did not long enjoy their triumph. While Edward lived and was a minor they were safe, but Edward was a consumptive visibly declining. They had no hope of perpetuating their power save to alter the succession, and this they tried to do. Another Earl of Warwick had been a king-maker, why not the present one? Henry VIII's will appointed to succeed him, in case of Edward's death without issue, (1) Mary, (2) Elizabeth, (3) the heirs of his younger sister Mary who had married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Of this marriage there had been born two daughters, the elder of whom, Frances, married Henry Grey, recently created Duke of Suffolk. The issue of this marriage were three daughters, and the eldest of them, Lady Jane Grey, was picked by the two dukes as the heir to the throne, and was married to {317} Northumberland's son, Guilford Dudley. The young king was now appealed to, on the ground of his religious feeling, to alter the succession so as to exclude not only his Catholic sister Mary but his lukewarm sister Elizabeth in favor of the strongly Protestant Lady Jane. Though his lawyers told him he could not alter the succession to the crown, he intimidated them into drawing up a "devise" purporting to do this.