Edward VI by Chris Skidmore

Author:Chris Skidmore [Skidmore, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780220765
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2011-07-20T23:00:00+00:00

Remember poor suitors who doth sustain great wrong

Speak & dispatch them, they busy too long

They be deferred from morrow to morrow

Their silly poor hearts like to break for sorrow

Yet come from them daily to know the lords pleasure

Their answer is made ‘The lords be not at leisure’

They walk up and down at the chamber door

Make room for the rich, and keep back the poor.79

Even if Somerset had wanted to, it seems as if he would have been hard pressed to distance himself from the ‘commonwealth men’ whose attitudes and ideas he had so disastrously followed. Others were sceptical that Somerset would ever forgive the wrongs inflicted upon him. His friend Richard Morison was confident that the duke would ‘not forget good turns so lately done to him’, telling Sir Nicholas Throckmorton that ‘imprisonment and such a throng of faults forgiven him would have made him a new heart if his old had been anything set upon revenging’. Throckmorton disagreed, and was adamant that Somerset would be unable to forgive those that had brought him down.80

With Edward fully recovered, the pace of religious change quickened. The destruction of altars that had taken place earlier in the year now became official, and in November letters were sent to bishops ordering them ‘to pluck down the altars’ and in their place to erect communion tables. Those that refused to enforce the instructions were sent to the Fleet prison. Elsewhere there was reluctant obedience; the curate Robert Parkyn, blaming ‘Edward Seymour and the Earl of Warwick [Dudley], two cruel tyrants and enemies to God and holy Church’, reported that altars were removed ‘from Trent northwards’ in December, whilst in Winchester conservatives argued this new step had been orchestrated by the king’s wicked advisers: ‘But when he cometh once of age, he will see another rule, and hang up an hundred of such heretic knaves!’81

This new burst of reform was matched by an equally uncompromising stance upon Mary’s right to hear mass in her household, which she claimed to have been promised to her by Somerset. Throughout December tensions between Mary and the council had continued to mount, with their exchanges following the familiar pattern of accusation and denial. Now the council sought to target her chaplains, issuing warrants for their arrest for practising mass. Mary refused to serve them – claiming that she had no idea of their whereabouts – which prompted a lengthy rebuke from the council that read more like a Protestant sermon. Matters did not improve at Christmas when Mary paid a visit to court, only to be confronted by Edward himself who challenged her to admit the truth – had she been allowing her household to hear mass? After attempts to explain her situation failed, Mary burst into tears, the sight of which caused Edward himself to weep, asking Mary to dry her tears ‘saying he thought no harm of me’.

Mary departed with the impression that all was resolved, and felt confident enough to reel off a letter to the

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