A Machiavellian Regent
By the standards of the time, the Duke of Somerset's opponents treated him gently. They seized all the property he had gathered in his years of power, but released him from prison on 6 February 1550 and elected him to the royal council. The regency was taken by the Earl of Warwick.
As regent the Earl of Warwick turned to Machiavellian ways. Personally he leaned toward Catholicism, but since his rival, the Earl of Southampton, led the country's Catholics, and most of England's nobles were tied by unbreakable financial bonds to Protestantism, he followed a policy in government that pleased the Protestants. Though skilled in war, he knew that a bankrupt government and an impoverished nation could not contend with France, stronger than England, over Boulogne, so he surrendered the city to Henri II, King of France, and made a humiliating peace with France from which there was no turning back (1550).
Landlords, Poverty and Religious Confusion
Parliament, in which noble and common landlords held the majority, passed a law against rebels (1549). Ownership of enclosed land was made lawful, and the rules Somerset had made against enclosures for sheep and wool were repealed. Heavy penalties were fixed for workers who combined to raise their wages. Meetings where the need to lower rents or prices was discussed were declared illegal, and the property of those who attended was confiscated. Robert Kett and his brother were hanged. Poverty spread, yet in place of the charitable institutions dissolved during the Reformation no new bodies arose to help the destitute. Sickness spread among the poor while the hospitals stood empty. Despite the spread of want, the value of money fell further and the cost of living rose; small landowners were ruined, and the poorest people sank toward savagery.
Religious turmoil was joined to economic disorder. Most English people were still Catholic, but Warwick's victory over Southampton left Catholics without friend or helper. The weakening of the priests, who bore the spiritual and moral leadership of society, together with the decay of government, not only spread moral corruption but also gave rise to ideas that frightened Protestants as much as Catholics. In 1556 John Clement spoke of "strange sects" appearing everywhere, "not only among the papists ... but among followers of Arianism, Anabaptists and every heretical group. Some denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit, some original sin, some the Creator's eternal decree, and they were beyond counting." About 1550 Roger Hutchinson referred to "Sadducees and libertines" (free thinkers) who held that "the devil is nothing but the foul and unruly flesh of man ... beyond this world there is neither a place of comfort nor of pain. Hell is only the tormented conscience of man, and paradise the calm, easy and untroubled conscience." John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, writes that some held that man's soul is no different from the souls of beasts, both mortal and perishable; and that in their secret gatherings these wretches not only did not hold Christ the Savior but called the blessed Son of God a hypocrite and deceiver. A group of bold Protestants, using the freedom Somerset had given them, mocked Catholic beliefs and customs. Oxford students held a mock Mass, tore up prayer books, and snatched the consecrated bread from the altar and trampled it. London preachers denounced priests as servants of Babylon, meaning the pope. When merchants gathered to talk at St. Paul's, bands of young zealots burst in, fought with them and killed some.
Protestant Rule Hardens
England's new regent now openly favored Protestantism. Reformers were made bishops on condition that they hand over part of their sees' estates to the courtiers who had named them. In 1550 Parliament passed a law ordering that all images and statues, except "memorial figures of kings and nobles who are not saints," be removed from the churches and all service books, except Cranmer's, destroyed. Priests' vestments and altar cloths were either thrown away or sold, and many became furnishings in the houses of nobles. The privy council seized for the treasury the vessels that remained in churches after 1550. Parliament then assigned to the government the coins gathered in the churches' alms-chests to help the poor. The government also took for itself the funds for needy students and the salaries of the professors Henry VIII had appointed to teach at the universities. In 1552 Parliament advised the clergy to remain celibate but allowed marriage to priests who suffered from celibacy.
In place of the Protestants, who till lately had been persecuted for heresy, Catholics and dissenters from the beliefs of the authorities of the day were now punished in England, as in Protestant Switzerland and Germany. Cranmer drew up a list of erroneous opinions, and those who held them and would not recant were condemned to death. Belief in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament, the supremacy of the pope over the Church, denial of the two natures of Christ, belief that man is saved by faith alone, and denial that the Old Testament is a revelation of God were counted among the erroneous opinions. Joan Bocher of Kent was burned alive (1550) because she did not hold Christ to be the manifestation of the Creator. To Ridley, Bishop of London, who proposed that she retract her belief, she said: "A while ago you burned Anne Askew for a piece of bread [denying transubstantiation], and soon after you accepted her belief. Now you burn me for a piece of flesh [meaning the passage in John that says the Word became flesh], and in the end you will accept this belief too." In Edward's reign only two people were burned for heresy, but many Catholics were imprisoned for attending Mass or openly criticizing the religious beliefs of the authorities of the day.
Stubborn Catholic priests were removed from their posts, and some were imprisoned in the Tower. Gardiner, still in the Tower, was told he would be pardoned if he preached the new religion, but when he refused he was moved to "a humbler cell" and denied pen, paper and books. In 1552 Cranmer published his "Second Book of Common Prayer," in which he called belief in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist baseless, rejected extreme unction, and, by including some Protestant ideas, revised his earlier liturgy. Parliament passed a second "Act of Uniformity," which bound everyone to attend regularly, and only, the religious assemblies held under Cranmer's new liturgy, and the penalty for a third violation was death. In 1553 the royal council made obedience to the forty-two articles of the "religious law" drawn up by Cranmer compulsory for all England.
The Fall of Somerset
In the same corrupt age, when piety and orthodoxy were being made law, the regent Earl of Warwick ruined his honor and standing by crime; yet this did not stop the young and weak-willed Edward from raising him to Duke of Northumberland (4 October 1551). A few days later the Earl of Warwick (now the new Duke of Northumberland) accused the Duke of Somerset, whom he himself had freed from prison, of trying to regain power. Somerset was arrested, tried and condemned on the strength of evidence that Sir Thomas Palmer gave the judges to prove his guilt. Edward was forced to sign the order for his execution, and the Duke of Somerset met death with courage and dignity on 22 January 1552. The Duke of Northumberland, who was himself condemned to death some time later, confessed that his baseless report had brought about Somerset's condemnation, and Palmer too, before his death, admitted that the evidence he had given the judges was Northumberland's own fabrication.
In English history we seldom meet a government so hated by the people. The regent's growing crimes turned from him the Protestant clergy, who had at first supported him for backing the Protestant faith. Parliament, foreseeing Edward VI's early death, recognized Mary Tudor as heir to the English throne should Edward leave no child. It was clear that if Mary became queen she would take revenge on those who had turned England from Catholicism. The Duke of Northumberland now saw his life in danger, and what consoled him was the influence his agents had managed to win with Edward. Using it, he persuaded the king to name as his successor Lady Jane Grey, daughter of the Duke of Suffolk and granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister, who had just married his own son. Parliament, unlike with his father, had given Edward no power to name an heir. Most English people regarded Mary's accession to the throne as settled and just, and Jane refused to succeed Edward. Jane was a learned and accomplished woman, mastered Greek, was learning Hebrew, and the Latin letters she wrote to Bullinger were no less fluent and polished than his own. She was not a prude, she found fault with the Catholics and smiled at their belief in transubstantiation; she suffered far more than she had sinned. At first she did not take her father-in-law's plan seriously. When her mother-in-law pressed her to accept the succession, Jane refused even that proposal stubbornly. At last, at her husband's insistence, she submitted to the Duke of Northumberland's plan, saying herself, "I did not wish to disobey my husband's command." After imposing his will on Jane, the Duke of Northumberland set about arresting Mary's well-known supporters, jailing Mary herself and forcing her to give up her claim to the throne.
Edward's Death and the Nine Days
At the beginning of July the king's illness grew worse. He coughed, blood came from his throat; his legs swelled and ached; sores covered his body, and his hair and then his nails fell out. No one understood his illness, and many thought the Duke of Northumberland had poisoned him. At last, on 6 July 1553, he closed his eyes on the world. At his death he was too young for the horrors of his reign to be counted against him.
The next morning the Duke of Northumberland rode to Hunsdon to arrest Mary. Mary, who had discovered his intent, fled to her Catholic friends in Suffolk, and the duke returned to London empty-handed. After this failure he used promises, threats and bribes to make the privy council proclaim Jane Grey queen. When Jane learned of the council's decision she fainted; and when she came to she declared again that she did not think herself fit for so high and perilous a post. Her relatives pressed her, arguing that their existence depended on her rule over England. On 9 July Jane, with reluctance and unwillingness, called herself Queen of England.
But the next day news reached London that Mary had proclaimed herself Queen of England, that the nobles of the north had risen to support her, and that their forces were marching to take London. The Duke of Northumberland raised a force to meet Mary's supporters, but his soldiers at Bury told him they would take not a step forward to fight their lawful queen. The duke sent his brother with gold and jewels to Henri II, King of France, promising to give him Calais and Guînes if he sent an army to England. The privy council, which had discovered the duke's plot, stopped his brother from going to France and recognized Mary as lawful queen of England. The next day the Duke of Suffolk went to Jane and told her that her ten-day reign was over. Jane received the news with relief and innocently asked the Duke of Northumberland's leave to return home. But the privy council, though it had recently recognized her as queen, arrested her in the Tower. A few days later the Duke of Northumberland, who was imploring God for pardon but awaiting death, joined Jane in the Tower. The privy council then sent messengers to every corner of the country to inform the people of Mary's accession; the English people welcomed her rule with pleasure. All through that summer night church bells rang and fireworks were set off in London. People held feasts in the streets and danced and made merry.
Why England Turned Back
It seemed that the English people had turned from the Reformation and longed for a past that would never return. They had a right to turn from it, for the movement had so far shown them only its ugly and hateful face. Instead of removing dogma, inquisition and tyranny, the Reformation had sharpened them, and instead of spreading enlightenment it had plundered the universities and closed hundreds of schools. Instead of securing welfare and comfort and spreading charity, it had fed poverty and misery and plunged the people into a want such as England had rarely known for centuries and may perhaps never see again. The people, worn out by this state of things, welcomed with open arms any change that would bring down the Duke of Northumberland and his gang, and hoped that under a merciful and kind queen like Mary, who over twenty-one years of suffering and humiliation had won the people's sympathy, the nation of England would see ease.