🪴 GoDeep
Search
← University Challenge
Portrait of Edward VI

Monarchs · Tudor

Edward VI

1537–1553

House of Tudor — the Protestant Reformation in England

In office: 1547–1553

The long-awaited son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour succeeded at nine and never ruled in his own right. Government passed first to his uncle Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and then to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland. In those six years England became genuinely Protestant: services in English, Cranmer's prayer books of 1549 and 1552, married clergy and whitewashed walls. Dying of tuberculosis at fifteen, he tried to divert the crown to Lady Jane Grey.

How to spot them

  • ▸A boy king of nine, precocious in Greek and Latin, who kept a terse journal of his own reign
  • ▸Clue words: 'Lord Protector Somerset', 'Northumberland', 'Book of Common Prayer', 'Kett', 'Devise'
  • ▸Two prayer books, 1549 and 1552, and the Forty-Two Articles
  • ▸The rebellions of 1549: the Prayer Book Rebellion in the West and Kett's rising in Norfolk
  • ▸Died at fifteen having named a cousin his heir, setting up the nine days' queen

In the reign

A boy of nine crowned in February 1547, the ceremony shortened for his sake, with his uncle ruling as Lord Protector (1547)

Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, brother of the late queen.

A victory at Pinkie Cleugh near Musselburgh in 1547, the last pitched battle between the English and Scottish kingdoms (1547)

Part of the 'Rough Wooing' — an attempt to force a marriage with the infant Mary, Queen of Scots.

An English-language service book imposed at Whitsun 1549, which provoked a rising in Cornwall and Devon (1549)

Cranmer's first Book of Common Prayer; the rebels called it 'a Christmas game'.

A rising in Norfolk in 1549 against enclosure, camped for six weeks on Mousehold Heath above Norwich (1549)

Kett's Rebellion; Robert Kett was hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle.

A second and more radically Protestant service book of 1552, accompanied by forty-two articles of religion (1552)

Cranmer's revision, with communion tables replacing stone altars; the articles were later cut to thirty-nine.

A Lord Protector deposed in 1549 and beheaded on Tower Hill in 1552, the event recorded by his nephew in a single flat sentence (1552)

The journal entry reads that the Duke of Somerset 'had his head cut off upon Tower Hill'.

A document drafted in the last weeks of a reign to divert the crown from two half-sisters to a cousin (1553)

The 'Devise for the Succession', which named Lady Jane Grey.

A death at Greenwich on 6 July 1553, aged fifteen, probably of tuberculosis (1553)

Buried in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey, in a Protestant rite conducted by Cranmer.

Quick-fire facts

  • •Born at Hampton Court on 12 October 1537; his mother, Jane Seymour, died twelve days later.
  • •He succeeded on 28 January 1547 and was crowned on 20 February 1547, aged nine.
  • •He was taught by John Cheke and Roger Ascham and was fluent in Latin and Greek; his chronicle of his reign survives.
  • •Somerset was Lord Protector from 1547 to 1549; John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and later Duke of Northumberland, then led the council as Lord President.
  • •Somerset's brother Thomas Seymour, who had married Catherine Parr and intrigued around Princess Elizabeth, was executed in 1549.
  • •The Act of Uniformity of 1549 imposed the first Book of Common Prayer; a second Act in 1552 imposed the revised one.
  • •Northumberland married his son Guildford Dudley to Lady Jane Grey in May 1553, weeks before the king's death.
  • •The Devise was signed by the council under pressure; Mary nevertheless gathered support and was proclaimed queen on 19 July 1553.
  • •His reign saw the first English poor laws to distinguish the impotent poor, and the founding or refounding of many grammar schools that bear his name.

Drill it — 7 cards

1 / 7new card

Sources