10. Latimer's Sermons. 1548-1550.—Latimer had refused to return to the bishopric from which he had been thrust by Henry VIII., but he lashed from the pulpit the vices of the age, speaking plainly in the presence of the court of its greed and oppression. It was not enough, he said, for sinners to repent: let them make restitution of their ill-gotten gains. In 1550 the courtiers became tired of his reproofs, and he was no longer allowed to preach before the king.
11. Warwick and Somerset. 1550-1552.—In 1550 Warwick was compelled to make a peace with France, and gave up Boulogne as its price. In 1551 he was very nearly drawn into war with the Emperor on account of his refusal to allow mass to be celebrated in the household of the king's sister, Mary. Finally, however, he gave way, and peace was maintained. There was a fresh issue of base money, and a sharp rise of prices in consequence. Now that there were no monasteries left to plunder, bishoprics were stripped of their revenues, or compelled to surrender their lands. Hooper was given the ecclesiastical charge of the see of Worcester in addition to that of Gloucester, but he was driven to surrender all the income of the bishopric of Gloucester. The see of Durham was not filled up, and before the end of the reign it was suppressed by Act of Parliament, and ceased to have a legal existence till it was restored by Edward's successor. So unpopular did Warwick become that Somerset began to talk as though he might supplant his supplanter. His rash words were carried to the young king, who had for some time shown an interest in public affairs, and who now took the part of Warwick, whom he created Duke of Northumberland, against his own uncle. Somerset was arrested, and in 1552 was tried and beheaded.
12. The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. 1552.—In 1552 Parliament authorised the issue of a revised Prayer Book, known as the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. The first book had been framed by the modification of the old worship under the influence of Lutheranism. The second book was composed under the influence of the Swiss Reformers. The tendency of the two books may be gathered from the words ordered to be employed in the administration of the bread in the Communion. In the first Prayer Book they had been: "The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life." In the second they were: "Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on Him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving." There were some who urged that the Communion should no longer be received kneeling. It was significant that their leaders were foreigners—John Alasco, a Pole, and John Knox, a Scot, who was hereafter to be the father of a Scottish reformation more drastic than that of England. Cranmer withstood them successfully. The dispute marked the point beyond which the spirit of the Renascence refused to go. In the midst of his innovations Cranmer preserved not only a reverent spirit, but an admiration for the devotional style of the prayers of the medieval Church, which he therefore maintained even in the midst of the great changes made, mainly at least by himself, in the second Prayer Book. Happily, amidst these disputations, there was one point on which both parties could combine—namely, on the encouragement of education. The reign of Edward VI. is marked by the foundation of grammar-schools—too scantily carried out, but yet in such a measure as to mark the tendencies of an age which was beginning to replace the mainly ecclesiastic education of the monasteries by the more secular education of modern times.
King Edward VI.: from a picture belonging to H. Hucks Gibbs, Esq.
13. The Forty-two Articles. 1553.—Edward was now a precocious youth, taught by much adulation to be confident in his own powers. He had learnt to regard all defection from Protestant orthodoxy as a crime. The statute which repealed the heresy laws did not altogether stop the burning of heretics, as the lawyers discovered that heresy was punishable by the common law. In 1550 Joan Bocher was burnt for denying the Incarnation, and in 1551 Van Parris, a Fleming, was burnt on the same charge. The persecution, however, was much more restricted than in the preceding reign. Few persons were punished, and that only for opinions of an abnormal character. In 1553 forty-two articles of faith, afterwards, in the reign of Elizabeth, converted into thirty-nine, were set forth as a standard of the Church's belief by the authority of the king. So completely did the reforming clergy recognise their entire dependence on the king, that by a slip of the pen Hooper once wrote of 'the king's majesty's diocese of Worcester and Gloucester.'