Henry died on January 28, 1547.  He was attended in his last moments by Cranmer, having sent specially for the archbishop.

The king did not leave the world without expressing his views on the future with elaborate explicitness.  He spent the day before his death in conversation with Lord Hertford and Sir William Paget on the condition of the country.  By separate and earnest messages he commended Prince Edward to the care both of Charles V. and of Francis I. The earl, on the morning of Henry’s death, hastened off to bring up the prince, who was in Hertfordshire with the Princess Elizabeth, and in the afternoon of Monday, the 31st, he arrived at the Tower with Edward.  The Council was already in session, and Hertford was appointed protector during the minority of Edward.  Thus, the reforming Protestant party was in full power.  Cranmer set the willing example, and the other prelates consented, or were compelled to imitate him, in an acknowledgment that all jurisdiction, ecclesiastical as well as secular, within the realm, only emanated from the sovereign.  On February it was ordered in council that Hertford should be Duke of Somerset, and that his brother, Sir Thomas Seymour, should be Lord Seymour of Sudleye; Lord Parr was to be Marquis of Northampton; Lord Wriothesley, the chancellor, Earl of Southampton; and Viscount Lisle was to be Earl of Warwick.  The Duke of Somerset was the young king’s uncle, and the real power was at once in his hands.  But if he was ambitious, it was only—­as he persuaded himself—­to do good.

Edward’s Guardian

Under his rule the spirit of iconoclasm spread fast, and the reformation proceeded to completion.  Churches were cleared of images, and crucifixes were melted into coin.  Somerset gave the popular movement the formal sanction of the Government.  Injunctions were issued for the general purification of the churches.  The Book of Homilies was issued as a guide to doctrine, care was taken that copies of the Bible were accessible in the parish churches, and translations of Erasmus’s “Paraphrase of the New Testament” were provided as a commentary.

Somerset was a brave general as well as a great statesman.  He invaded Scotland during the first year of his protectorate, on account of the refusal of the Scottish government to ratify the contract entered into with Henry VIII., by which it was agreed that Mary Queen of Scots should marry Edward.  At the memorable battle of Pinkie, on September 10, 1547, the Scots were completely beaten.  But Somerset was hastily summoned southward.  His brother, Lord Seymour, had been caballing against him, and was arrested, tried, and beheaded on Tower Hill, on March 20, 1549.  But the fall of the protector himself was not long delayed, for under his administration of three years his policy gradually excited wide discontent.  In various parts of the country insurrections had to be suppressed.  The French king had taken away the young Scottish queen,