A ягненок, баранина in Lion’s Garb: Evolving perspectives on Edward VI 

A Lamb in Lion’s Garb: Evolving perspectives on Edward VI

Published in History Review Issue 48 March 2004

John Matusiak referees the debate about the influence of Henry VIII’s son.

By the end of May 1553, Edward VI was, aged almost 16, suffering an agonising and prolonged approach to death from pulmonary tuberculosis. According to John Banister, a young medical student attached to the royal household, the king could not sleep ‘except he be stuffed with drugs’, while ‘the sputum which he brings up is livid, black, fetid and full of carbon’, smelling ‘beyond measure’. As dusk fell on July 6th 1553, after Edward had breathed his last, rain is said to have fallen in torrents, sweeping houses away and uprooting trees. Church spires apparently crashed amid the lightning, and hail, said to be the colour of blood, covered the gardens by the Thames. 

Yet if such dramatic signs might seem to have betokened the passing of a momentous ruler, many historians have been unimpressed by Edward VI’s personal political significance, at least until recently. For G.R. Elton, Edward VI’s ‘character and views mattered a little’ but ‘his so-called opinions were those of his advisers, and his so-called acts were his endorsements of accomplished fact’. According to D.E. Hoak, Edward emerges from the evidence of his ‘speeches’ and papers as ‘the somewhat pathetic figure of an articulate puppet removed from the realities of government’. In keeping with this general line, albeit less cuttingly, Jennifer Loach wrote more recently that Edward ‘was obviously too young to rule and the history of his reign must therefore be the history of those who ruled in his name’.

Five and a half centuries after his death, however, there is a growing trend amongst historians, such as Diarmaid MacCulloch and Stephen Alford, to assign the king a fuller, more multi-dimensional role in affairs. He is now seen as, amongst other things, a highly influential advocate of evangelical causes and, on this reading of events, he appears, particularly from 1550 onwards, to be creating his own political agenda and skilfully developing his political role and image.

What, then, was the scope of Edward VI’s influence? Was he agent or figurehead or master – or merely manikin?

The mind of the boy-king, who came to the throne at the age of nine and died just before he was 16, is readily accessible to us by means of his ‘Chronicle’, a full journal of the reign, which he kept personally. It has long been recognised that Edward was potentially the ablest of all the Tudors. It has been acknowledged, too, that, had he lived longer, he might well have become the least attractive of his line. He was highly educated, and rigidly indoctrinated in the process, having studied with Roger Ascham and John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, both of whom were hard-line Protestant enthusiasts. Edward knew Greek well and read some Aristotle in his fourteenth year. He also wrote essays in French on the royal supremacy in the church and on the reform of ecclesiastical abuses. His intellect was, though, a hothouse flower, splendid in its way, but forced and sheltered from too many of the essential elements of real life. The young king was, from certain perspectives, living proof of how broadening the mind sometimes serves only to narrow it.

As to Edward’s precocity, we have much independent testimony, not only from courtiers and tutors, but also from foreign visitors like Girolamo Cardano, the eccentric Italian doctor, mathematician, astrologer and necromancer who was called upon in October 1552, shortly after the king fell ill, to diagnose his condition and cast his horoscope. In no time, the boy was probing and attempting to expose his physician’s charlatanry on the causation of comets, conducting the whole inquisition in highly technical Latin, although confusing astronomy with astrology in the process. Such self-confident intellectual assertiveness was, of course, double-edged. For all its heavy-duty acuteness, Edward’s intellect remained literal, unimaginative and uncompromising, and whether time would have served to mellow his dogmatic edge is uncertain. The court culture in which he grew up was steeped in the propaganda of royal adulation and hyperbole, and his gradual transition from prodigy to high-handed adulthood was a definite possibility.

For sure, Edward, in his lighter moments, remained a boy. Mingled with affairs of state in Edward’s ‘Chronicle’ are accounts of his sports and relaxations. In April 1550, he wrote, ‘I lost the challenge at shooting at rounders and won at rovers’; and a month later he sounded a timeless adolescent note in blaming the umpiring after he had he lost a contest at tilting at the ring. On one occasion, he was severely rebuked by his tutor for swearing, a misdemeanour which resulted, with due deference to Edward’s rank, in a thrashing for the king’s hapless ‘whipping boy’.

The key question which now increasingly preoccupies historians, however, is the extent to which Edward VI was a boy in matters of state. In many quarters these days his political weight is no longer casually dismissed. Diarmaid MacCulloch is in no doubt that Edward was possibly beginning to make his presence felt even as early as 1549. The success of the Dudley putsch was, after all, dependent on persuading the king that all would be as it should be, despite Somerset’s departure. Edward’s personal religious inclinations may also have been decisive in determining the religious complexion of the new post-Protectorate regime. It has been suggested, for instance, that the boy’s unwillingness to be served by conservatives in the Privy Chamber after Somerset’s fall sealed that group’s fate.

Stephen Alford emphasises the ‘mystical and cultural resonances’ associated with Edward’s rule. It seems that the boy-king exercised his own distinctive brand of kingship, which, while relying upon adult counsel, was nevertheless personal in nature and was accepted as such by his mentors and consorts. As he approached adulthood, he was, apparently, increasingly inclined to initiate, evaluate and adjudicate within the decision-making process. If this is right, the king’s opinions and prejudices created an ethos and agenda within which those around him had to operate.

Mid-Tudor propaganda was, naturally enough, unrelenting in its advocacy of the king’s virtues, gifts and pre-eminence. Shortly after Edward Seymour’s promotion to Lord Protector, the king’s prerogative was officially declared to be that of an adult. Biblical analogy and symbolism were giddily exploited in his elevation. Edward was equated with Josiah of the Old Testament who had purged his land of idols. He was also identified with King Solomon, not merely because of his wisdom, but by virtue of the fact that Solomon had been allowed to build the Temple of Jerusalem, a privilege which had been denied to his father, David. Edward was thus depicted as both temple-builder and purifier, and the seal and embodiment in his own right of the work of reformation left undone by Henry VIII. To this extent, the iconography of the Tudor court depicted him not merely as the culmination of his father’s work, but also as its supercessor.

From 1550 onwards Edward did indeed display some signs of growing assertiveness. He could not achieve majority until the age of 18, but, in the first flush of his teenage years, he managed to posture aptly. At Bishop Hooper’s investiture he objected that the oath of supremacy referred to the saints, and he decided of his own that it be erased. Three months later St George himself was ejected from the Order of the Garter at Edward’s behest. According to Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, Edward’s ‘princely gravity and majesty’ became more noticeable during his public audiences. The Venetian ambassador described how methodically and quickly he would divide what was said to him under separate headings, answering each in turn.

Particularly from his thirteenth year onwards, Edward was expanding his participation in government, a development which was very consciously encouraged by John Dudley. He wrote state papers on a variety of subjects, which were read at Council meetings, and wrote regularly in his ‘Chronicle’ about a range of topics, such as debasement of the coinage, trade, foreign policy and the question of his own marriage. By mid-1551, he took part in his first tournament, an important right of passage, and from August 1551 onwards Edward regularly attended Council meetings and had sessions with Sir William Petre to learn the mechanics of government. From May 1552 he was directly participating in the everyday financial affairs of government and, prior to his death, it was anticipated confidently that he would take formal control of government on his sixteenth birthday, in October 1553.

The king’s most sustained intervention in politics, though, was in the struggle to force his half-sister, Mary, to religious heel. There was certainly more than boyish baiting of his Catholic half-sister involved. In fact, he showed a tenacity that was as naïve as it was audacious, for his steadfast refusal to grant Mary the right to hear mass brought him not only into conflict with the Council but also with the Emperor Charles V. In his determined stand, he ignored the entreaties of the Lord Chancellor, Paulet, and met Cranmer’s reasoned pleas for pragmatism with scriptural references of his own, finally bursting out: ‘I require you to fear God with me and rather to contemn any peril than to set aside God’s will to please an emperor’.

The impression persists, however, that at least some of the king’s thinking may still have been done for him, albeit subtly. There is, of course, a striking resemblance at times between the will of the king and the political interests of his keepers, which is unlikely to have been entirely coincidental. Significantly, for instance, no less a figure than William Cecil was of the opinion that Edward’s dealings with his sister may well have resulted from priming by gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. In October 1551, it was the king who appeared to ensure that Sir Richard Rich, a supporter of the Duke of Somerset, lost his position as Lord Chancellor, a dismissal which was certainly favoured by Dudley. 

The ‘Device’ to alter the line of succession is, of course, the instance which has been most often used to illustrate the subtle manipulation of Edward. These days, in fact, it is generally accepted that the Device was the king’s scheme, but, even if he laid it, it is unlikely that Edward could have hatched this egg without Dudley’s enthusiastic assent. The hundred plus signatures of consent were all achieved under Dudley’s insinuating shadow, and none more so than that of Chief Justice Sir Edward Montagu, who was told by Dudley that he would ‘fight with any man in his shirt’ on this issue.

The most modern perspective on Edward, which emphasises his dynamic role as the fulcrum of political power, should not encourage us to go too far. In spite of the current preoccupation with it, the propaganda onslaught on Edward’s behalf must be treated with some caution. Indeed, the very vehemence of the claims is more likely to reflect the strains at the centre of politics, caused by the king’s minority. All nature abhors a vacuum, and so too did ambitious mid-Tudor politicians with slender power bases. The propagators of the ‘myth’ may well have believed it, as the best propagandists do, but the myth-makers were also practical politicians. The trappings of power should not be mistaken too readily for the substance.

To some extent, then, the ‘old’ view of Edward’s role is still persuasive. G.R. Elton’s observation that Edward VI was ‘easily swayed by cunning men’ remains resonant. The king’s apparent primacy was, in all likelihood, founded in part upon a degree of conventional indulgence by courtiers and councillors who actively promoted the exercise of youthful royal will in peripheral matters. However, if the ‘new’ view has not entirely supplanted its predecessor, it has certainly enhanced it. We now appreciate more firmly than ever how and why it was that, in Elton’s words, the king ‘could not be ignored and had to be persuaded’. Moreover, we now know that Elton was plainly wrong when he described the king as essentially an ‘inconvenience’. Edward was the centrepiece of the political game and a thinking, active and respected one at that.

For most of the time, the key players had no option or wish to re-invent the rules of this game and, indeed, saw themselves very consciously as servants of the king. Where they manipulated they did so, generally, with a view to serve. Edward was both regal and an innocent: a lamb in lion’s garb.

John Matusiak is Head of History at Colchester Royal Grammar School.

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