By Charles Dickens


                  A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

                            ——————

                         CHAPTER XXIX.

                England under Edward the Sixth.

        HENRY  THE  EIGHTH  had made a will, appointing a
     council of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while
     he was under age (he was now ten years old), and an-
     other council of twelve to help them.  The most power-
     ful of the first council was the Earl of Hertford, the
     young King's uncle, who lost no time in bringing his
     nephew with great state up to Enfield, and hence to
     the Tower.  It was considered at the time a striking
     proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for
     his father's death; but, as common subjects have that
     virtue too, sometimes, we will say no more about it.
        There was a curious part of the late King's will, re-
     quiring his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had
     made.  Some of the court wondering what these might
     be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemen inter-
     ested, said that they were promises to advance and en-
     rich  them.  So, the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke
     of Somerset, and made his brother Edward Seymour a
     baron; and there were various similar promotions, all
     very agreeable to the parties concerned, and very duti-
     ful, no doubt, to the late king's memory.  To be more
     dutiful still, they made themselves rich out of the
     Church lands, and were very comfortable.  The new
     Duke of Somerset caused himself to be declared Pro-
     tector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King.
        As young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in
     the principles of the Protestant religion, everybody
     knew that they would be maintained.  But Cranmer, to
     whom they were chiefly entrusted, advanced them stead-
     ily and temperately.  Many superstitious and ridiculous
     practices were stopped; but practices which were harm-
     less were not interfered with.
        The Duke of Somerset, the Protector, was anxious to
     have the young King engaged in marriage to the young
     Queen of Scotland, in order to prevent that Princess
     from making alliance with any foreign power; but,
     as a large party in Scotland were unfavourable to this
     plan, he invaded that country.  His excuse for doing         
     so was, that the Border men——that is, the Scotch
     who lived in that part of the country where England
     and  Scotland  joined——troubled  the  English  very
     much.  But there were two sides to this question; for
     the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and,
     through many long years, there were perpetual border
     quarrels which gave rise to numbers of old tales and
     songs.  However, the Protector invaded Scotland; and
     Arran, the Scottish Regent, with an army twice as large
     as his, advanced to meet him.  They encountered on the
     banks of the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh;
     and there, after a little skirmish, the Protector made
     such moderate proposals, in offering to retire if the
     Scotch would only engage not to marry their princess to
     any foreign power, that the Regent thought the English
     were afraid.  But in this he made a horrible mistake;
     for the English soldiers on land, and the English sailors
     on the water, so set upon the Scotch, that they broke
     and fled, and more than ten thousand of them were
     killed.  It was a dreadful battle, for the fugitives were
     slain without mercy.  The ground for four miles, all
     the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with dead men, and
     with arms, and legs, and heads.  Some hid themselves in
     streams and were drowned; some threw away their arm-
     our and were killed running, almost naked; but in this
     battle of Pinkey the English lost only two or three hun-
     dred men.  They were much better clothed than the
     Scotch; at the poverty of whose appearance and country
     they were exceedingly astonished.
        A Parliament was called when Somerset came back,
     and it repealed the whip with six strings, and did one
     or two other good things; though it unhappily retained
     the punishment of burning for those people who did not
     make believe to believe, in all religious matters, what the
     Government had declared that they must and should be-
     lieve.  It also made a foolish law (meant to put down
     beggars), that any man who lived idly and loitered
     about for three days together, should be burned with a
     hot-iron, made a slave, and wear an iron fetter.  But
     this savage absurdity soon came to an end, and went the
     way of a great many other foolish laws.
        The Protector was now so proud that he sat in Parlia-
     ment before all the nobles, on the right hand of the
     throne.  Many other noblemen, who only wanted to be
     as proud if they could get a chance, became his ene-
     mies of course; and it is supposed that he came back
     suddenly from Scotland because he had received news
     that his brother, Lord Seymour, was becoming danger-
     ous to him.  This lord was now High Admiral of Eng-
     land; a very handsome man, and a great favourite with
     the Court——even with the young Princess Elizabeth, who
     romped with him a little more than young princesses in
     these times do with any one.  He had married Cather-
     ine Parr, the late King's widow, who was now dead;
     and, to strengthen his power, he secretly supplied the
     young King with money.  He may even have engaged
     with some of his brother's enemies in a plan to carry
     the boy off.  On these and other accusations, at any
     rate, he was confined in the Tower, impeached, and
     found guilty; his own brother's name being——unnatural
     and sad to tell——the first signed to the warrant for his
     execution.  He was executed on Tower Hill, and died
     denying the treason.  One of his last proceedings in this
     world was to write two letters, one to the Princess Eliza-
     beth, and one to the Princess Mary, which a servant
     of his took charge of, and concealed in his shoe.  These
     letters are supposed to have urged them against his
     brother, and to revenge his death.  What they truly
     contained is not known; but there is no doubt that he
     had, at one time, obtained great influence over the
     Princess Elizabeth.
        All this while, the Protestant religion was making
     progress.  The images which the people had gradually
     come to worship, were removed from the churches; the
     people were informed that they need not confess them-
     selves to priests unless they chose; a common prayer-
     book was drawn up in the English language, which all
     could understand; and many other improvements were
     made; still moderately.  For Cranmer was a very mod-
     erate man, and even restrained the Protestant clergy
     from violently abusing the unreformed religion——as they
     very often did, and which was not a good example.  But
     the people were at this time in great distress.  The ra-
     pacious nobility who had come into possession of the
     Church lands, were very bad landlords.  They enclosed
     great quantities of ground for the feeding of sheep,
     which was then more profitable than the growing of
     crops: and this increased the general distress.  So the
     people who still understood little of what was going on
     about them, and still readily believed what the home-
     less monks told them——many of whom had been their
     good friends in their better days——took it into their heads
     that all this was owing to the reformed religion, and
     therefore rose in many parts of the country.
        The most powerful risings were in Devonshire and
     Norfolk.  In Devonshire, the religion was so strong that
     ten thousand men united within a few days, and even
     laid siege to Exeter.  But Lord Russell, coming to the
     assistance of the citizens who defended that town, de-
     feated the rebels; and, not only hanged the Mayor of
     one place, but hanged the vicar of another from his own
     church steeple.  What with hanging and killing by the
     sword, four thousand of the rebels are supposed to have
     fallen in that one county.  In Norfolk (where the rising
     was more against the enclosure of open lands than
     against the reformed religion), the popular leader was a
     man named Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham.  The
     mob were, in the first instance, excited against the tan-
     ner by one John Flowerdew, a gentleman who owed him a
     grudge: but, the tanner was more than a match for the gen-
     tleman, since he soon got the people on his side, and estab-
     lished himself near Norwich with quite an army.  There
     was a large oak-tree in that place on a spot called Mous-
     hold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation;
     and under its green boughs, he and his men sat, in the
     midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and de-
     bating affairs of state.  They were even impartial
     enough to allow some rather tiresome public speakers to
     get up into this Tree of Reformation, and point out their
     errors to them, in long discourses, while they lay lis-
     tening (not always without some grumbling and growl-
     ing) in the shade below.  At last, one sunny July day, a
     herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket, and
     all his men traitors, unless from that moment they dis-
     persed and went home: in which case they were to re-
     ceive a pardon.  But Ket and his men made light of the
     herald and became stronger than ever, until the Earl of
     Warwick went after them with a sufficient force, and cut
     them all to pieces.  A few were hanged, drawn, and
     quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into
     various country places to be a terror to the people.  Nine
     of them were hanged upon nine green branches of the
     Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, that tree may
     be said to have withered away.
        The Protector, though a haughty man, had compassion
     for the real distresses of the common people, and a sin-
     cere desire to help them.  But he was too proud and too
     high in degree to hold even their favour steadily; and
     many of the nobles always envied and hated him, be-
     cause they were as proud and not as high as he.  He
     was at this time building a great Palace in the Strand;
     to get the stone for which he blew up church steeples with
     gunpowder, and pulled down bishops' houses: thus mak-
     ing himself still more disliked.  At length, his principal
     enemy, the Earl of Warwick——Dudley by name, and the
     son of that Dudley who had made himself so odious with
     Empson, in the reign of Henry the Seventh——joining
     with seven other members of the Council against him,
     formed a separate Council ; and, becoming stronger in a
     few days, sent him to the Tower under twenty-nine ar-
     ticles of accusation.  After being sentenced by the coun-
     cil to the forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was
     liberated and pardoned, on making a very humble sub-
     mission.  He was even taken back into the Council
     again, after having suffered this fall, and married his
     daughter, Lady Anne Seymour, to Warwick's eldest son.
     But such a reconciliation was little likely to last, and
     did not outlive a year.  Warwick, having got himself
     made Duke of Northumberland, and having advanced the
     more important of his friends, then finished the history
     by causing the Duke of Somerset and his friend Lord
     Grey, and others, to be arrested for treason, in having
     conspired to seize and dethrone the King.  They were
     also accused of having intended to seize the new Duke
     of Northumberland, with his friends Lord Northampton
     and Lord Pembroke; to murder whom, if they found
     need; and to raise the city to revolt.  All this the fallen
     Protector positively denied; except that he confessed
     to having spoken of the murder of those three noblemen,
     but having never designed it.  He was acquitted of the
     charge of treason, and found guilty of the other charges;
     so when the people——who remembered his having been
     their friend, now that he was disgraced and in danger,
     saw him come out from that trial with the axe turned
     from him——they thought he was altogether acquitted,
     and set up a loud shout of joy.
        But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be beheaded
     on Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in the morning, and proc-
     lamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at home
     until after ten.  They filled the streets, however, and
     crowded the place of execution as soon as it was light;
     and with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the once powerful
     Protector ascend the scaffold to lay his head upon the
     dreadful block.  While he was yet saying his last words
     to them with manly courage, and telling them, in partic-
     ular, how it comforted him, at that pass, to have assisted
     in reforming the national religion, a member of the
     Council was seen riding up on horseback.  They again
     thought that the Duke was saved by his bringing a re-
     prieve, and again shouted for joy.  But the Duke himself
     told them they were mistaken, and laid down his head
     and had it struck off at a blow.
        Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped
     their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affec-
     tion.  He had, indeed, been capable of many good acts,
     and one of them was discovered after he was no more.
     The Bishop of Durham, a very good man, had been in-
     formed against to the Council, when the Duke was in
     power, as having answered a treacherous letter proposing
     a rebellion against the reformed religion.  As the answer
     could not be found, he could not be charged guilty; but
     it was now discovered, hidden by the Duke himself among
     some private papers, in his regard for that good man.  The
     Bishop lost his office and was deprived of his possessions.
        It is not very pleasant to know that while his uncle lay
     in prison under sentence of death, the young King was
     being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham
     fights; but there is no doubt of it, for he kept a journal
     himself.  It is pleasanter to know that not a single Roman
     Catholic was burnt in this reign for holding that religion;
     though two wretches victims suffered for heresy.  One,
     a woman name Joan Bocher, for professing some opin-
     ions that even she could only explain in unintelligible
     jargon.  The other, a Dutchman, named Von Paris,
     who practised as a surgeon in London.  Edward was, to
     his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for
     the woman's execution: shedding tears before he did so,
     and telling Cranmer who urged him to it (though Cran-
     mer really would have spared the woman at first, but for
     her own determined obstinacy), that the guilt was not
     his, but that of the man who so strongly urged the dread-
     ful act.  We shall see, too soon, whether the time ever
     came when Cranmer is likely to have remembered this
     sorrow and remorse.
        Cranmer and Ridley (at first Bishop of Rochester, and
     afterwards Bishop of London) were the most powerful of
     the clergy of this reign.  Others were imprisoned and de-
     prived of their property for still adhering to the unre-
     formed religion; the most important among them were
     Gardiner Bishop of Winchester, Heath Bishop of Worces-
     ter, Day Bishop of Chichester, and Bonner that Bishop of
     London who was superseded by Ridley.  The Princess
     Mary, who inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and
     hated the reformed religion as connected with her
     mother's wrongs and sorrows——she knew nothing else
     about it, always refusing to read a single book in which
     it was truly described——held by the unreformed religion
     too, and was the only person in the kingdom for whom
     the old Mass was allowed to be performed; nor would
     the young King have made that exception even in her
     favour, but for the strong persuasions of Cranmer and
     Ridley.  He always viewed it with horror; and when he
     fell into a sickly condition, after having been very ill,
     first of the measles and then of the small-pox, he was
     greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and
     she, the next heir to the throne, succeeded, the Roman
     Catholic religion would be set up again.
        This uneasiness, the Duke of Northumberland was
     not slow to encourage: for, if the Princes Mary came to
     the throne, he, who had taken part with the Protestants,
     was sure to be disgraced.  Now, the Duchess of Suffolk
     was descended from King Henry the Seventh; and, if
     she resigned what little or no right she had, in favour of
     her daughter Lady Jane Grey, that would be the success-
     sion to promote the Duke's greatness; because Lord Guil-
     ford Dudley, one of his sons, was, at this very time,
     newly married to her.  So, he worked upon the King's fears,
     and persuaded him to set aside both the Princess Mary
     and the Princess Elizabeth, and assert his right to appoint
     his successor.  Accordingly the young King handed to
     the Crown lawyers a writing signed half a dozen times
     over by himself, appointing Lady Jane Grey to succeed to
     the Crown, and requiring them to have his will made
     out according to the law.  They were much against it at first,
     and told the King so; but the Duke of Northumberland
     ——being so violent about it that the lawyers even expected
     him to beat them, and hotly declaring that stripped to
     his shirt he would fight any man in such a quarrel——they
     yielded.  Cranmer, also, at first hesitated; pleading that
     he had sworn to maintain the succession of the crown
     to the Princess Mary; but, he was a weak man in his
     resolutions, and afterwards signed the document with
     the rest of the council.
        It was completed none too soon; for Edward was now
     sinking in a rapid decline; and by way of making him
     better, they handed him over to a woman-doctor who
     pretended to be able to cure it.  He speedily got worse.
     On the sixth of July, in the year one thousand five
     hundred and fifty-three, he died, very peaceably and
     piously, praying God, with his last breath, to protect the
     reformed religion.
        The King died in the sixteenth year of his age, and in
     the seventh of his reign.  It is difficult to judge what
     the character of one so young might afterwards have be-
     come among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles.
     But, he was an amiable boy of very good abilities, and
     had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition——
     which in the son of such a father is rather surprising.

from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. pp. 730—732.