The Boy King

The Boy King

Talk about not having a childhood.

IN 1534 King Henry VIII of England made himself the head of the Church of England. His reason? He wanted to divorce his wife and remarry in hopes of having a male heir. Ultimately he went through a series of six wives resulting in but one surviving son.

Edward, Henry’s son, was born in 1537. Henry VIII did Edward a great favor by providing him with Protestant tutors and by placing a Protestant majority on the Council of Regency, which would appoint a protector for Edward if he became king before adulthood.

Henry VIII died when Edward was just nine, and he was crowned Edward VI. Although initially healthy, as a youth Edward suffered from congenital syphilis.

Though young, Edward VI was a committed Christian. With Henry VIII’s death, the English had buried an ogre and crowned a saint. The Council of Regency appointed the young king’s Protestant uncle, Edward Seymour, soon to be made the duke of Somerset, as regent for him, giving him the title “Protector of the Realm.”

Under Henry VIII England had rejected papal authority but retained medieval dogma. Now the child king and Protector Somerset set out to reform the Church of England. A statute was issued ordering that all services be conducted in English and that communicants be offered both the bread and the cup. Purgatory and Masses for the dead were repudiated.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer issued his first Book of Common Prayer, in which the Protestant faith was stated with solemn beauty. Cranmer was able to diplomatically transform the Mass into the Lord’s Supper without creating a reaction. He submitted the book to Parliament, which ordered every church in England to adopt it. But complete religious freedom was yet to come.

The resulting improvement in the religious climate caused the Protestants who had fled England under Henry VIII to come streaming back, bringing with them the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and the Anabaptists. A new day had dawned in England.

The English nobility was enraged by the duke of Somerset’s sympathy for the poor. When the army had to put down a revolt of Roman Catholic peasants, Somerset was accused of having encouraged the uprising by his outspoken concern for the poor. He was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Somerset’s responsibilities were taken over by John Dudley, the head of the Privy Council, whom King Edward made duke of Northumberland. Among the adventurers drawn to Edward, Northumberland proved to be both the ablest and the worst. A Roman Catholic at heart, he espoused the Protestant cause only because that was where power currently resided.

In spite of Northumberland’s corrupt and self-serving leadership, the Reformation accelerated in England. By 1553 England had abandoned most of what was distinctly medieval Catholicism. The prayer book was revised once more with very little left of the Mass and nothing of private confession. The Edwardian Reformation was noteworthy for its mildness. During his reign two were executed for their speculations about the deity of Christ, but these were exceptions, not the rule.

Edward then contracted tuberculosis in addition to his syphilis. Finally on July 6, 1553, at the age of just fifteen, Edward was dying. Three hours before his death, thinking that he was alone in the room, he prayed:

Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life, and take me among thy chosen: howbeit not my will but thy will be done. Lord, I commit my spirit to thee. O Lord, thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with thee; yet for thy chosen sake send me life and health that I may truly serve thee. O my Lord God, bless thy people and save thine inheritance. O Lord God, save thy chosen people of England. O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry, and maintain thy true religion, that I and my people may praise thy holy name, for thy Son Jesus Christ’s sake.

Reflection

For the Protestants of England, the reign of Edward VI was the high point of the sixteenth century. God may not have called you to earthly royalty, but where in your world do you think God wants you to make a difference?

Whatever you do, you must do all for the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31