PART TWO
CHAPTER 26
Edward VI, by the grace of God King of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith and of the Church of England and also of Ireland in earth the supreme head, to all our most loving, faithful, and obedient subjects, and to every of them, greeting.
Where it hath pleased Almighty God, on Friday last past in the morning to call unto his infinite mercy the most excellent high and mighty prince, King Henry VIII of most noble and famous memory, our most dear and entirely beloved father, whose soul God pardon; forasmuch as we, being his only son and undoubted heir, be now invested and established in the crown imperial of this realm.1
—PROCLAMATION OF KING EDWARD VI, WESTMINSTER, JANUARY 31, 1547
AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON OF MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 1547, nine-year-old King Edward VI entered the City of London to take possession of his kingdom. Guns fired from ships on the Thames as the nobility of the realm accompanied the boy king to his lodgings.2
The following day the Privy Council gathered in the Presence Chamber, where Edward sat in a chair of estate, and Henry’s will was read out. The executors announced that it had been “agreed with one assent and consent” that Edward Seymour, the king’s uncle, should be “preferred in name and place before others” and become lord protector. This was not as Henry had decreed. The sixteen executors were to have formed a regency council with all men having equal status; now Seymour emerged as the foremost councillor. Two weeks later, amid a general granting of lands and titles, Seymour would become duke of Somerset. “There was none so mete … in all the realm as he,” the House of Lords declared.3
Having sworn oaths to the king, his councillors cried together, “God save the noble King Edward!” Edward thanked them heartily and doffed his cap.4 He would remain in the Tower for the next three weeks until after his father’s funeral had taken place and preparations had been made for his own coronation. From there he wrote letters of condolence to his stepmother Katherine Parr and this to his sister Mary, then thirty-one, who remained in the dowager queen’s household:
Natural affection, not wisdom, instigates us to lament our dearest father’s death. For affection thinks she has utterly lost one who is dead; but wisdom believes one who lives with God is in happiness everlasting. Wheretofore, God having given us such we ought not to mourn our father’s death, since it is his will, who works all things for good … so far as lies in me, I will be to you a dearest brother, and overflow with all kindness.5
On Wednesday, February 2, between eight and nine at night, Henry’s body was moved from the Privy Chamber to the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. Ten days later it was taken to Windsor in a gilded chariot pulled by seven horses, all bedecked in black velvet. The roads had been cleared and widened to allow the easier passage of the procession, which stretched over four miles. In front were 250 poor men, dressed in mourning gowns and carrying torches, followed by gentlemen bearing the king’s standards and heralds with the king’s helmet, targe (sword) shield, and coat of arms. Upon the coffin, draped in cloth of gold and blue velvet, was a life-size, lifelike effigy of King Henry, a scepter of gold in his right hand, in his left the ball of the world with a cross. On his head rested the imperial crown, and around his neck was the collar of the Garter.6 According to one observer, it “looked exactly like that of the King himself … just as if he were alive.”7 Behind the coffin rode the king’s chief mourner, the marquess of Dorset, constable of England, and the king’s guard, all in black, their halberds pointing to the ground.
The procession reached Syon, the former Bridgettine house on the banks of the Thames in Middlesex, at two in the afternoon. There, after Masses were said, the corpse remained overnight. One account describes how, at Syon, “the leaden coffin being cleft by the shaking of the carriage, the pavement of the church was wetted with his [Henry’s] blood.” When plumbers later came to solder the coffin, they saw a “dog creeping, and licking up the King’s blood.”8
At seven the following morning, the procession resumed its slow progress to Windsor. Funeral knells were rung, and townspeople lined the route through each town it passed. Finally the gilded chariot arrived at the chapel of the Order of the Garter, where the coffin was placed in a hearse thirty-five feet tall and covered with tapers and candles. The next morning, February 15, Henry’s burial took place. Stephen Gardiner preached the funeral sermon, and sixteen yeomen of the Guard lowered the coffin into the vault next to that of Jane Seymour, just as Henry’s will had instructed.9
As Edward Hall wrote in his chronicle, “The late King was buried at Windsor with much solemnity, and the officers broke their staves, hurling them into the grave. But they were restored to them again when they came to the Tower.”10 With Henry laid to rest, Edward’s reign could be formally inaugurated.
AT ONE IN THE afternoon of Saturday, February 19, Edward left the Tower, dressed in white velvet and cloth of silver embroidered with precious stones, to ride on horseback through the city to Westminster.11 Before him went an ordered procession: his messengers walking side by side; his gentlemen, chaplains, esquires of the body, and nobles; and his councillors, each paired with a foreign ambassador. The marquess of Dorset walked ahead of the young king, bearing the sword of state. Bringing up the rear were the gentlemen and grooms of the Privy Chamber, the pensioners, and the Guard.12
Along the route were pageants celebrating Edward’s arrival, many echoing those that had greeted the last boy king, Henry VI, on his entry into London in 1432.13 Edward was heralded as “a young King Solomon,” charged with “rebuilding the Temple”—that is, continuing his father’s reformation.14 In one pageant, a phoenix, representing Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour, emerged from an artificial Heaven of suns, stars, and clouds to be met by a crowned golden lion (Henry). Two angels then crowned their offspring; the phoenix and the old lion vanished, leaving the cub to rule on his own. The highlight of the pageantry, in nine-year-old Edward’s eyes, was an acrobat who “came sliding down” a rope strung from the uppermost part of the steeple of St. Paul’s to an anchor in the garden of the dean’s house. The tumbler stood up, kissed Edward’s foot, then walked back up the rope, “tumbling and casting himself from one leg to another.”15 By the time the procession reached Westminster, it was nearly six in the evening, five hours after it had set off from the Tower.16
Early the following day, noblemen were summoned to accompany the king to Westminster Abbey and attend the coronation.17 Edward was taken by barge to Whitehall and dressed in a robe of crimson velvet, “furred with powdered ermines throughout.” At the abbey a scaffold seven stairs tall had been erected, on top of which was set the throne, a white chair covered with damask and gold. Two cushions had been placed on the seat, one of cloth of tissue, the other black velvet embroidered with gold, upon which the diminutive boy king would sit.
Edward was not the youngest king to be crowned; Henry VI had been just eight at his coronation in 1429. However, his would prove to be the most radical English coronation in its thousand-year history. He would be the first monarch to be anointed “Supreme Head of the English Church,” and though the coronation would broadly follow the Liber Regalis—the Book of Kingship—which had dictated the ceremony for kings since 1375, there would be some significant departures.18
The week before, the Council had announced its decision, “upon mature and deep deliberation,” that the “old observances and ceremonies [should] be corrected” on account of the king’s “tender age” and so that they might conform to the “new laws of the realm,” particularly concerning the supremacy and abolition of papal authority. A new king would traditionally swear to confirm laws and liberties that had been granted to people by kings before him and to observe “such laws as … shall be chosen by your people.”19 This was drastically altered. It was now left to the king to decide which laws and liberties he would obey. The clause ensuring the protection of the liberties of the clergy was entirely omitted, and the final part of the oath was rewritten: the people, not the king, now had to consent to the new laws.
As Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, explained in his sermon, the oaths Edward had sworn were not to “be taken in the bishop of Rome’s sense,” and the clergy had no right to hold kings to account (“to hit your Majesty in the teeth”).20 Although Edward was to be anointed, Cranmer made clear that this was “but ceremony.” He was king “not in respect of the oil which the bishop useth, but in consideration of their power which is preordained … the King is yet a perfect monarch notwithstanding, and God’s anointed, as well as if he was inoiled.” Edward had come to the throne “fully invested and established in the crown imperial of this realm.”21
Now the young king was called upon to do his princely duty:
Your Majesty is God’s vice-regent and Christ’s vicar within your own dominions, and to see, with your predecessor Josiah, God truly worshipped, and idolatry destroyed; the tyranny of the bishops of Rome banished from your subjects, and images removed. These acts be signs of a second Josiah, who reformed the church of God in his days.22
Edward was to model himself on the young biblical King Josiah and purge the land of idols. The coronation was an opportunity to showcase the Protestant aspirations of the new regime.
With the oaths made and litanies sung, Edward was anointed and crowned with the crown of Edward the Confessor, the imperial crown—styled as such since the reign of Henry V—and a third crown made especially for his small head.23 Normally the imperial crown was not part of the crowning ritual; its inclusion here emphasized the imperial status of the king and echoed the triple crowning of the pope. The spurs, orb, and scepter were then presented to the young king and Te Deums were sung as the lords spiritual and temporal paid him homage.
Recalling the coronation in his journal, Edward noted only that he had sat next to his uncle Edward Seymour and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and that he had worn “the crown on his head.”24